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Inside Politics
This Week: Democratic Divide Comes To A Head In Michigan; Trump Versus Thune Showdown Splinters GOP Ahead Of Midterms; Trump Criticizes Pirro Over Reflecting Pool Admission. Will Trump's Low Approval Lead to a Blue Wave?; Sen. Darline Graham in First Primary Debate; McConnell Skips Major Political Event Ahead of Key Deadline. Aired 8-9a ET
Aired August 02, 2026 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:22]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
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MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Great Lakes stakes. Two days to go, Michigan senate candidates make their closing pitches.
ABDUL EL-SAYED (D), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I'm the only candidate in this race who does not take corporate money.
REP. HALEY STEVENS (D-MI), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: No one knows who's putting the money in your pocket.
RAJU: Would a progressive win set off a Democratic earthquake?
And low point? The president lashes out over a reflecting pool admission, and my new reporting on his messy fight with his party.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): Maybe they think they can roll me.
RAJU: Can they roll?
CORNYN: No.
RAJU: We'll ask two pollsters how that's playing with voters.
Plus, M.I.A.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Oh, how things have changed.
RAJU: Mitch McConnell skips his decades long Kentucky ritual, with a key deadline tomorrow. When will he come back?
INSIDE POLITICS, the best reporting from inside the corridors of power, starts now.
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(END VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU (on camera): Good morning. And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Manu Raju.
In just two days, Democrats face one of the defining political moments of the 2026 midterms. Michigan voters will choose their nominee for a Senate seat that Democrats must hold to regain the majority. And they'll send a powerful signal about what kind of Democrat they believe can win in America today. Experience or insurgency? Electability or ideological energy?
Do they rally behind an establishment backed pragmatist, Haley Stevens, or embrace the progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who has electrified the Democratic base despite concerns about his appeal? Beyond it, the race has become more than just a primary now a proxy battle over the Democratic Party's future, with implications that could stretch well beyond Michigan and into the presidential election season.
Our excellent political insiders are at the table to break this all down. "Semafor's" David Weigel and "Politico's" Alex Gangitano.
Good morning to you both. Thank you for being here.
David, you've been on the ground like I have in Michigan. It is a very dynamic, fluid race. What are you -- the question is, who has the edge heading into -- heading into Tuesday? We've seen some polling that has come out that CNN does not consider up to CNN's standards. So, we're not -- we don't necessarily believe that that's necessarily the case. There are some signs that perhaps El-Sayed does have momentum heading into Tuesday, has the edge.
Is that what you're seeing on the ground right now?
DAVID WEIGEL, SEMAFOR NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: That's what I've been seeing in the state. I haven't been there. I was in Wisconsin this last week. I was in Michigan before that. You can tell that this is a campaign that's been going on for almost eight years. El-Sayed ran for governor in 2018, built an operation, built a fan base, couldn't beat Gretchen Whitmer, who had the entire party basically behind her.
He has done other things, but he's never stopped making the case for Abdul El-Sayed being in elected office. And he's run this very good. I think they knocked 200,000 doors over the last couple of days in Michigan, a bigger grassroots campaign than Stevens. She's run the more typical campaign that can elect a Debbie Stabenow or elected Gary Peters, which is more reliant on a very strong Democratic infrastructure in the state, less reliant on grassroots politics, events, interviews, things like that.
And I just think you were talking about the polling that's part of the story of El-Sayed's rise is compared to 2018. There's a whole progressive media infrastructure, polling infrastructure, just a mood infrastructure getting him in front of people on their phones. That has made him look like a much more competitive candidate than he did when he was kind of the, oh, he's the left guy against Gretchen Whitmer. He had now been dominating the media conversation about this race and getting in people's phones.
That's really where the campaign is. Your -- for you page for the whole time, even before he was rising.
RAJU: And who seems to think that he could be the nominee? Mike Rogers, the Republican who is definitely going to be the nominee come Tuesday. He has consolidated the field, the Republican, the Trump is behind Mike Rogers. The Republican leadership is behind Mike Rogers.
And Rogers seems to think that El-Sayed will be the nominee. Why? Because just yesterday, putting out this web ad, going after him as the potential Democratic nominee.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They'll never see us coming. They really think we're just Democrats.
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(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: And not -- not so subtle attack.
I asked El-Sayed this morning about this. He responded by saying, "Apparently Mike Rogers wants to put wants to put a data center in your backyard so he can make slop videos portraying me as Odysseus. Michiganders understand that Temu Trump is as fake as this video and paid for by all the same corporations he was when he championed the legislation that created the opioid epidemic and voted to raise our drug prices."
So, you see the general election fight starting to play out.
ALEX GANGITANO, POLITICO WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right. It's been really interesting to see how the Trump team has really coalesced around Mike Rogers. But then back, this idea of outside is going to be the nominee. We're going to attack him even before the primary race because they want him to be.
As we've discussed in the past, this is somebody who they want to take on the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, much more than they want to take on moderates and institutional Democrats. And so, this is the exact candidate that they want Trump to be able to campaign rallies in Michigan and at other states say this is the direction the Democratic Party is going. These are all, you know, people turning into communists, in his words. And that's their real hope here in November is to run on that kind of a platform.
So, this is exactly what they want in November. And a state like Michigan, it would be a huge win for them, especially as they're looking down other states, like if Texas were to flip. If they could flip Michigan, that would be a huge make up for some messiness that Trump has created elsewhere. I think he's looking at this as a cleanup state for him.
RAJU: Yeah. And Rogers, he lost in 2024 running against Elissa Slotkin by 0.3 percent. But the big difference was that Trump was on the ballot then, and Trump won the state by 1.4 percent. He tried to ride Trump's coattails. This time, Trump is not on the ballot. That's going to make it. Yes. El-Sayed may if he's the nominee, they think that they have a better shot of beating him. But it's a much different environment than it was in 2024.
WEIGEL: It was. It starts in Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Hamtramck, these places, these Arab American communities that voted for Trump as sort of a break glass emergency vote on Gaza. El-Sayed is very confident he's winning those areas.
But that's not the whole state. Like Michigan Democratic margins have been with a lot of suburbanites who have moved toward the Democratic Party. You saw that look at any map in Michigan the last ten years. You've got Kent County moving towards Democrats. You've got the outer, outer, outer suburbs, a lot of the cities moving towards them. They have not voted for someone like El-Sayed in a general election.
And yes, that's -- the goal of it. We've all covered these campaigns. The goal of any, any incumbent party is to make it look like an existential threat election by saying everything you believe in is at risk if this other party wins. So that's -- that adds pretty soft in what they're going to do.
RAJU: Yeah, they're going to say that this this candidate is a threat to your way of life from everything from and he's leaned into this the fact that he would be the first Muslim senator, a practicing Muslim senator. He has talked about it. He said it's something people might think is a vulnerability. He thinks -- like Barack Obama, he can get past a lot of the knee jerk reaction.
This is a very -- just as he's, I think, a more confident, brash, Democratic candidate. He's running against a very brash and confident Republican Party. John James is running for governor, linking Democrats together, saying these are communists. These are not Americans like us.
RAJU: Yeah. I want you to look at some of the taste of the well, first, look at the amount of money that's been spent on the. During the Democratic primary, Haley Stevens and her allies have spent roughly 64 million bucks so far. Compared to Abdul El-Sayed. It's a fraction of that amount, just $7.3 for him and his allies.
And then the AIPAC spending -- AIPAC-linked ad spending on Stevens' behalf, $30.1 million. You hear El-Sayed oftentimes make that argument on the campaign trail.
And then when you look at the ads themselves, this is a taste of what Michiganders are seeing in their living rooms heading into Tuesday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: There's those cool kids on the Internet making fun of how I talk. But let's be real, they're making fun of Michigan.
ANNOUNCER: Haley Stevens voted to fund and thank ICE.
EL-SAYED: In Michigan, we know a thing or two about ICE. This ICE, good. But right now, our government spends billions on an agency that operates outside of the law to terrorize our neighbors.
ANNOUNCER: Disrespecting women, attacking the Obamas, helping Trump win. That's the real Abdul El-Sayed.
EL-SAYED: Money out of politics, money in your pocket and Medicare.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): For all. That's the part they can't stand. That's why billionaires are spending millions to bury Abdul and this movement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: AOC playing a role in that last ad for Abdul El-Sayed. And then one of those ads backed by AIPAC as well, shows you the division within the party right there.
GANGITANO: Right. This isn't just a test of where is the future of the Democratic Party. It's also a test of can grassroots organizing the online campaigns, what he's leaned into, can those overcome these big political outside spending structures that are spending a ton of money to try to get Haley Stevens elected, versus the money that he's seen go in?
And so, I think it's a real signal ahead of 2028 of what grassroots organizing can do in this age of putting up a TikTok video, being as influential as seeing an ad on your television.
RAJU: Yeah. And come Tuesday, it's not just this. There are other key primaries in Michigan. The House could hinge on Michigan as well.
There's one race in Michigan 7 that is actually a Republican held seat. Tom Barrett is the Republican. He -- Trump had won this district by just over one point in 2024. The Democrats there are battling in a pretty intense primary there that the one person to watch there's William Lawrence. He's a progressive. He's endorsed by Bernie Sanders.
The Congressional Black Caucus has come out against Lawrence in this primary. So, a serious division in a critical race. And then there's another race, Michigan 13. This one is a very solidly blue district. Harris Kamala Harris won this district by 41 points in 2024. But the interesting thing here is that Sri Thanedar, who's the incumbent Democrat, is up against a DSA-backed candidate, Donovan McKinney.
David, what are you watching in these races come for -- come Tuesday?
WEIGEL: Well, in Detroit, in the 13th district, there's a lot of Democratic expectation that McKinney is going to win that. This is a historically black seat. It was a version of the old John Conyers seat and won it because he's very wealthy. Basically, he's been able to run against split fields, one on one against a Black candidate with progressive views.
The sense is that that might be like, it might not be like Denver, a litmus test on what Democrats think. That might just be a lot of Democrat -- Detroit Democrats saying, time to get a Black Democrat in there again.
The Lawrence race, the one in the seventh, that's one of several. And I talked about data centers and that one that where a progressive candidate really rocketed by opposing data centers, data centers that Michigan Gretchen Whitmer was celebrating, appearing at the groundbreaking of, I think an interesting event over the last week was, El-Sayed going to the place that she had met with Sam Altman and done a photo op for data centers to campaign against it.
Lawrence's campaign, it's popular for a lot of the usual progressive reasons. The quote the CBC is talking about is him saying kind of the progressive theory that there are a lot of Black Democrats in the in establishment politics who don't like to see the rising left take over.
RAJU: And he says those comments were out of context.
WEIGEL: Yeah, he says those were out of context. But the discourse there has been the left seizing the advantage on this brand-new issue and saying the moderates want public private partnerships. They want to sell your -- give your farm out to A.I. corporations. We're going to protect you. We're going to protect your jobs and your income and your livelihood.
RAJU: Yeah.
WEIGEL: And that's that is breaking through some of the socialism versus capitalism discourse. That's maybe not as good for DSA candidates.
RAJU: And in that race in Michigan 7, that is a critical swing seat that Democrats absolutely believe that they must pick up. We'll s see what happens come Tuesday in their primary.
All right. For much more on the rise of the progressive left and how it could all impact the midterms this fall, tune in to "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER" tonight at 8:00 p.m. on CNN and tomorrow on the CNN app.
Coming up for us: Why is Trump now going after his hand-picked U.S. attorney over his botched reflecting pool renovations?
Plus, Trump's feud with the Senate GOP leader could hit a new level this week. My brand new reporting after the break.
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[08:17:32]
RAJU: Typically, at this point in the midterm season, a president tries to unite his party for the campaign ahead, not Donald Trump. These days, he's lashing out, but not just on Democrats and his GOP allies, too. Yesterday, railing on his handpicked U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, over the botched renovation for the reflecting pool that sits in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
The cause of the president's anger, Pirro dropped a vandalism case that Trump had touted, and these days, going after the top Republican in the Senate. My new reporting this morning with my colleague Sarah Ferris details the gulf between the two men who have not been speaking in recent days, all making the GOP nervous ahead of a difficult midterm environment as Trump refuses to offer Thune a vote of confidence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Do you think Senate Majority Leader John Thune, after the comments you heard regarding SAVE America and some other stuff, do you think he's still the man for the job?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, we're going to find out and I'll let you know.
RAJU: What do you say to the president who's not giving you a vote of confidence? What do you say to the president? What do you say to the president?
REPORTER: When's the last time you talked to the president?
SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: He doesn't vote in our elections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: He doesn't vote in our elections, Thune said. This is true because it's Senate Republicans who voted in secret ballot after the election. And we'll see what happens there.
Thune probably in a very strong position with the Senate GOP, but the fact that they've been sparring on so many issues at this time, I mean, we put together a list and this actually doesn't even include everything that they've been disagreeing over. And a lot of it has to do with Trump's demand to get rid of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes in the United States Senate. Thune and other Republicans say no way, because they may be in the minority one day, and they need that to block Democratic bills.
But there are so many issues, the SAVE America Act. Thune says there just aren't the votes to get that passed. Trump going after John Cornyn, knocking him out of his primary by endorsing his primary challenger, doing the same thing for Bill Cassidy and this anti- weaponization fund that has caused so many problems for Trump right now because of Trump's insistence on all of this.
What are you hearing, Alex, from your sources at the White House about Trump and Thune right now?
GANGITANO: He's basically -- we know he's not going to drop this. The president has come up with different ways that he wants the Senate to pass the SAVE Act. You mentioned some of them there. And just last week was saying cancel August recess.
I thought it was very telling last week then when Chief of Staff Susie Wiles went into the Senate. He -- she met with Thune. She met with Whip Barrasso and sending her in instead of, you know, the legislative team, which obviously does their rounds there means that they are both very serious, but also that the president is tinkering on making his frustrations even more known.
[08:20:11]
If we can even envision what that would look like at this point with Senator Thune. And so, she, I think, tried to, talk some of this out in a more intimate setting rather than on Truth Social. And so that's a different approach that the White House is taking now.
RAJU: Yeah.
GANGITANO: What can we do with this third reconciliation bill? How can you get some of our SAVE America Act through this, the budget? Anything else that the president has been railing against and the fact that they're going to be going on recess?
RAJU: Yes.
GANGITANO: The president is going to have a long time to be able to think about his feelings on Thune and what he thinks his future looks like. But, of course, Thune knows that the president doesn't have a vote on that one.
RAJU: Yeah. That's right.
And five weeks, he'll be railing on them. I want you to listen to what Senator Lisa Murkowski told me about what Trump's demand is here. Trump wants to pass his agenda through the budget process that would allow them to do this along party lines.
Thune and other Republicans say, look, we don't even have an agreement about what to put in this bill. Trump wants it to spend billions of dollars for the Iran war to deal with his election restrictions bill known as the SAVE America.
And Senator Lisa Murkowski had this warning for the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): Constructive engagement goes a long way.
RAJU: Is it realistic to do a budget resolution before an August recess?
MURKOWSKI: I don't believe so. I don't believe that it is realistically possible to do it. And in fairness, I'm not sure that a late night vote-a-rama, with a lot of political hot buttons is what a lot of members who are, are up this year are really looking forward to. So, I question the political wisdom as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: David, Trump wants the senators to cancel the August recess, wants Thune to cancel the August recess. These are the Republicans who are running this year. I don't think that they want to be in Washington. Susan Collins, Jon Husted, Dan Sullivan in particular, will be in Washington, where they could be home campaigning in difficult races.
WEIGEL: Yes, sullen. And for Collins, she has the advantage that Democrats have rebooted their campaign with a new candidate. If I can understate what happened in Maine and he gets he would get running room. You cover this in 2018. Mitch McConnell wanted the senate to stay to stay in to vote for judges, but also to keep senators off the trail.
Very clear that the president doesn't care about that. And he's also -- when he says he wants to SAVE America act to pass, I think he means he wants to SAVE America Act to pass by whatever means necessary when he says that the country might be lost forever without it. And Republicans will win for 100 years if it passes. Why not take him at his word on that?
So you do have this discrepancy between what the base wants. He is speaking for the for the base Republican Party that he has personally molded, that are frustrated, that are not bird-dogging Susan Collins and demanding she vote for that, but getting less excited about voting for Republicans who are not.
RAJU: Yeah. And yesterday he went after Republicans. Two did two different things. He went he demanded that his anti-weaponization bill fund actually go forward if Republicans continue to block Todd Blanche as the next acting attorney general. He said on Truth Social that he will keep Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general and push hard to get the anti-weaponization bill passed. He said assuming he wants to get that pass through the Senate, it doesn't seem that they would have the votes to do that. But he said if Cornyn and Tillis continue to block Todd Blanche, they're doing so because they want assurances that that fund, in part, will never go forward again.
But then he also went after his handpicked attorney general -- U.S. attorney for the district of Columbia, I should say, and over her decision, Pirro's decision to abandon a case against someone they had indicted, they had tried to prosecute over alleged vandalism of that botched renovation of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Trump puts out a statement on truth social, says, I disagree 100 percent with Jeanine Pirro. He said it was a pure case of vandalism. And he goes on to say there may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major cause was caused by vandals.
I did not expect this to be what I was dealing with on Saturday morning. Why is Trump? Why can't he just accept what Jeanine Pirro said in court?
GANGITANO: Right. And I mean, handpicked Jeanine Pirro and Trump are synonymous with one another. I mean, the fact that this isn't just somebody who he's decided to put in this role because he got along with her. This is her, his person to put in the role.
So, the fact that he ever has anything negative to say and the fact that she would come out. She knew that he personally cares about this reflecting pool. He cares about the success of it. And he, you know, thought of the idea of the vandalism and is really focused on that.
[08:25:00]
And for her to say, we're not -- we're dropping the case, I'm -- that is -- that's interesting to me. The first step of that.
And then of course, he's going to come out and say, I disagree with you here.
RAJU: Yeah.
GANGITANO: This reminds me of when he took out when he removed Pam Bondi from the attorney general seat. He puts in these people thinking they'll do whatever I want. And now here's a case of not so much.
RAJU: And another example of how the Justice Department and the White House are just absolutely no lines between them, because Trump expected them to do whatever he wanted here. This time he is making very clear he's not happy when it went its own way. And just as we go to break here, Doug Burgum, the secretary of the interior, responding to Jeanine Pirro, who had said that the Department of Interior was withholding information and criticized the Department of Interior's renovation here.
He went on to say, siding with very Trump -- siding with Trump, saying, "The evidence is clear vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the reflecting pool." So, the department of -- the interior secretary very much on Trump's side in this fight.
All right. Coming up next, this week brought a slew of new poll numbers showing it's not the best time to be a Republican in office, especially if your name is Donald Trump. So, what does it actually mean for the midterms?
I'm joined by top polling experts on both sides of the aisle to dive into the details.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:30:48]
MANU RAJU, CNN HOST: A slew of new polling in the past several days confirms a souring election environment for President Trump and his party.
Democrats are favored to take the House. And while their path to control the Senate is much narrower, a Democratic rout is hardly off the table.
So what is driving the electorate at this key moment, and could Democrats blow this golden opportunity?
To dive into the numbers, I'm joined by two experts -- Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Good morning to you both. Thank you for being here.
CELINDA LAKE, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTERS: Thanks for having us.
RAJU: Absolutely. So as we all know, the midterms are oftentimes a referendum on the president and the president who's in power.
Just a dive back into history about where Obama, Trump and Biden were and the outcome of the midterms in those particular years.
When you look at Trump in 2018, this was at the same time as we are in now. He was standing at 42 percent in approval rating. Democrats had a big year that year in the House. They gained 41 seats. Republicans picked up two in the Senate. Now Trump is at 34 percent.
So, Kristen, how concerned should Republicans be about Trump's standing right now whether they should run with Trump, what it means for the race for the House?
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: Well, right now it's a very tough political environment for Republicans. It would be even absent low job approval numbers on the part of the president.
I mean, looking at those historical numbers, in 2010, Barack Obama's numbers weren't terrible back then, and yet there was a lot of room for the tide to come in and for it to be a really big red wave election.
So being the incumbent party is always tough, but it's been made worse by things like high gas prices, a tough economy, things that President Trump was elected to fix.
He used to have great job approval numbers on the economy, even if his numbers weren't so great elsewhere. But right now it is really the economy and concerns about whether or not people are going to be able to make ends meet that are driving these numbers.
RAJU: And when we dive deeper into the Trump numbers as well, you get into some of the demographic groups about who is supporting Trump, how they view him.
This is compared to back in 2018 at this time, August 2018, right before those midterm elections, where Trump was compared to now.
He's pretty much down across the board with all those groups. White voters, he was up. He had 50 -- 50 percent approval rating back then. Now he's at 40 percent.
Then a big drop off with men in particular, 50 percent then, 37 percent now. And then younger voters too, 42 percent to 22 percent, now 18 to 24.
When you see those numbers, Celinda, what do you think? LAKE: I think he's in very deep trouble. And I think the numbers are
pretty fixed. We know that it's people's perceptions in June and July of the economy that really predicted the election. Unless there's a massive turnaround and there's not going to be a massive turnaround.
And people were furious, frustrated, angry, very disturbed about the economy in June and July and continue to be very disturbed right now.
And then Trump is focused on everything else. Like, who cares who vandalized the Reflecting Pool when you can't afford your grandmothers prescription drug price?
RAJU: Right. And if someone even vandalized the --
LAKE: Well, exactly.
RAJU: -- reflecting pool as well, that's the other question.
(CROSSTALKING)
LAKE: Even buying his premise and it's not right.
RAJU: Right. So what are the opportunities for Republicans? Because, you know, you talk to the Speaker, he still thinks there is a path for them.
Yes. The districts have been gerrymandered to the Republicans' favor right now. And perhaps some things can change. And obviously, they're going very hard on the idea of Democrats are extreme. And we saw something about the Democratic Socialist wing of the party.
This is what our CNN poll said when asked if you identify as a Democratic Socialist. Roughly a third of Democrats or Democratic- leaners, according to our poll, consider themselves as Democratic socialists.
So when you see that, Kristen, what do you think that means? What opportunities does that give Republicans? And what do you think that means for November?
[08:34:41]
ANDERSON: The best thing Republicans have going for them right now are the Democrats. That right now there are a number of races where Republicans could be very vulnerable.
But there is a chance that Democrats will have somebody emerge from a primary process who is just not as electable, as much easier for Republican to go after.
And this does remind me, again, a lot of that 2010 election where that was the Tea Party Movement election. You had the base of the Republican Party saying, we need to fight harder against these folks that are in power.
In some cases, they nominated some candidates who really transformed the GOP. Folks like Marco Rubio came out of that Tea Party election.
But you also had Senate races in Delaware, in Nevada, I believe in Colorado. You had seats left on the board in a good Republican year because they just put the wrong person through a primary. That could very easily happen with this kind of rising DSA takeover on the Democratic side.
RAJU: Celinda, how should Democrats respond to this? I want you to listen to what two senators -- Jon Ossoff, who is on the ballot in November, and also Senator Chris Coons, when I asked them about the rise of the DSA within the Democratic Party.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Does that concern you, and would you disavow Democratic Socialism?
SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): I'm not looking at polling.
RAJU: This is not just one poll. It's a trend. Does that trend of the Democratic Socialists' rise? Does that concern you?
OSSOFF: You know, I stand on my voting record, my statements, my views and my positions. And Congressman Mike Collins should explain his record, which includes an office that has been communicating directly with some of America's most notorious white supremacists.
RAJU: There was a poll that we had out today that said a third of Democrats now consider themselves Socialists -- Democratic Socialists. What do you think about that?
SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): I think that's silly.
RAJU: You do. why? Why?
COONS: I don't think that's correct.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: He said I don't think that's correct. I think that's silly. Should they be shrugging this off, Celinda? Is that -- when you look at the polls?
LAKE: I think they should be embracing it. I mean --
RAJU: You do?
LAKE: -- I'd much rather be a Socialist Democrat than a Trump MAGA Republican right now, or a corporate Republican right now.
RAJU: So you don't think those senators should be running away from it?
LAKE: I don't actually think they are, because voters have no -- 50 percent of voters don't even know what socialism means. And if socialism means restoring SNAP programs, if socialism means not
taking away Medicaid for millions of people, if socialism means lowering prescription drug prices, not raising them, then let's be socialists.
RAJU: Interesting. I'm sure a lot of Democratic -- some of the Republicans may may agree with you as well. They should -- they should embrace that label.
LAKE: Game on.
RAJU: That's right. That's right.
LAKE: I mean, when Trump is ten points negative in Montana, Nebraska and Alaska, they got a problem.
RAJU: Yes. Speaking of just how the -- how Trump has affected the GOP, this was another interesting question in the CNN poll. And what does this mean for November?
It was asked among Republican voters and Republican-leaning voters, has Trump had a good effect or a bad effect on the GOP?
Back in -- back in January, 67 percent said a good effect. Now -- and now it's just 56 percent say he has a good effect, 27 percent now say he had a bad effect. That's up 12 points since January.
Are those Republican voters who maybe now, who may think differently of Trump, are they at issue in this midterm environment? Can Democrats pick them up in some of these key races?
ANDERSON: I do worry that for Republicans, they're going to be doing worse with swing voters than they did in 2024.
But also, your base is not just your most ideologically-strong voters. It's the people who are the most reliable. And there are a lot of typically pretty reliable Republican voters who may just feel like, I don't know what the stakes are this midterm.
And I think if those kind of normal rank-and-file Republicans don't turn out in huge numbers, we know that Democrats are fired up and ready to vote. That turnout differential could be a real game changer in the midterms.
RAJU: Very quickly.
LAKE: I think that's absolutely right. Democrats are energized. The biggest challenge for Democrats is they have to lay out an economic agenda. And I'm not sure we've done that as well as we should have.
RAJU: Yes. All right. That's a good question.
Thank you both for sharing your expertise. Really appreciate your time.
And still ahead for us, tomorrow Senator Darline Graham faces her first debate in the race to replace her late brother. Will the other candidates pull their punches?
[08:38:46]
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RAJU: August is a pivotal month for primaries, and not just in Michigan. There's the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, Alaska and Minnesota Senate primaries, and the special GOP primary in South Carolina to fill the late Senator Lindsey Graham's seat.
His younger sister, the appointed senator Darline Graham, will now face her biggest test in the spotlight and will be on the stage tomorrow night when she faces off against other GOP candidates in their first debate.
Graham is now out with her first ad, touting her support from President Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DARLINE GRAHAM (R-SC): I'm honored to serve South Carolina and grateful for President Trump's endorsement. And I'll work hard every day to earn it.
I'm a Conservative Republican, and I believe this. Every life is precious. Men don't belong in women's sports. And only American citizens should vote in our elections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: All right. My panel is back. Now, if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the upcoming primary, which is on August 11th, there will be a runoff on August 25th.
The interesting thing is, it doesn't seem like Graham at the moment is running away with it.
We'll see. It's very early. There was a straw poll out yesterday. Lexington, U.S. Senate. A stump straw poll said that Graham was ahead but barely over the congressman, Russell Fry, in that specific straw poll.
Is Trump going to be -- is Trump's support enough? Because Darline Graham you know, she's got the last name but Graham -- Lindsey Graham, he had a lot of support.
[08:44:50]
RAJU: But a lot of people did not like him within the GOP in South Carolina as well. And she has never held elected office before.
Is Trump's support and her last name going to be enough to get her over the finish line?
DAVID WEIGEL, SEMAFOR NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: I think Trump's support is more important in terms of getting her into the runoff. And you were just saying it about Graham, he always had a primary
challenger later in his career. The primary challengers usually run against his immigration advocacy. Later in his career, his Ukraine advocacy.
Those are not in her ad, which she mentions in her ad the issues that Graham would talk about to rectify his breaks with conservatives, being pro-life and voter integrity -- those issues.
So, yes, but you've got a lot of Republicans. Ralph Norman did very well in in the primary for governor. I do not expect her to lock this up very easily.
The fact that Trump is for her matters, although, remember, Trump had a candidate in the primary for governor. Once that candidate faltered, he very quickly endorsed the winner.
RAJU: Yes. He does both because, hey, why not? You can't lose then.
This is what C.J. Westfall, who's the chairman of the Dorchester County GOP, told our colleagues in a CNN article this morning.
He said, "The issue is that the president continues to get bad advice about South Carolina. We certainly empathize with Darline, and even the president as Lindsey was a really good friend of his. But he's certainly getting bad advice."
He goes on to say, we've got a lot more exciting options for this seat. It's a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Is South Carolina, do you think -- could they defy the president here?
ALEX GANGITANO, POLITICO WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, two things that are interesting about this. One is that the president endorsed her before seeing that -- this polling. Usually we wait -- the president waits to see, we wants to endorse a winner here.
So it is interesting that he was willing to put his backing behind her.
Second is, are we going to see this as an example of -- South Carolinians not interested in a political dynasty or someone being handed a seat or backroom deals, whatever you want to call it.
Instead, are they interested in this kind of once-in-a-generation opportunity to get somebody different. Or will they just say, we back the president? We liked Lindsey Graham? Sure.
RAJU: Which is why the debate -- this debate will be interesting to see how she starts to answer some of those questions, her positions.
Because she has not held elected office before. So where does she stand on some of these key issues?
David, you had been reporting about this Democratic Socialists this weekend. There's a Democratic Socialists of America national summit in Chicago about their platform, how they're reworking their platform.
This is a big month for the DSA. They've had such an impact this primary season, but there are several DSA-backed candidates in primaries this month.
There's Cori Bush, the former congresswoman. She's got a primary in Missouri this coming Tuesday. Francesca Hong, the Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate, clearly in the lead in that Wisconsin primary.
What did you learn from this weekend and what do you think this month means for this movement.
WEIGEL: From the rise of Hong in Wisconsin to that the Democratic base agrees with DSA on a lot of long-term goals. The Democrats do like the idea of a shorter work week and of Medicare for all those kinds of things. They disagree on how to get there.
DSA is letting candidates be pretty flexible, and you can be a DSA- endorsed candidate, but not endorse the most toxic thing on your platform that Fox is attacking you about.
They are interested the -- most of the electoral faction of DSA, which is not everybody is interested in just winning as many races as possible.
They look at Zoran as the model. Zoran did not endorse every single DSA idea. He had his own agenda and he has been completely transformational for their popularity around the country.
RAJU: Yes. No question about it. So interesting. Great story. You should read it. And a big month for them.
And on Tuesday well see what happens in Missouri as well.
Coming up, Mitch McConnell skipped a major political event he's regularly attended for more than four decades. All as a major deadline looms tomorrow for the absent senator.
[08:48:29]
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RAJU: It's been 49 days since Senator Mitch McConnell was hospitalized after the 84-year-old Kentucky Republican fell in his home, was unconscious, and suffered a bout of pneumonia, the details of which took him weeks to publicly disclose.
Now he's in a rehab facility and there's no sign of when he may return to public life. That means just yesterday, there was a notable absence in the small western Kentucky town of Fancy Farm, where since 1880, politicians have gathered for an annual church picnic.
Yesterday, reports of Democrats chanting, quote, "Where's Mitch". McConnell has been a fixture at the political cattle call for more than four decades, including just last year. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): It's no wonder everybody's so excited this time around. For four years, it was like the Biden administration was waging war on family farm itself.
But Saint Jerome's outlasted Democrats' control of Washington. And I'll outlast a church-cussing (ph) governor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: At times, he and the crowd would go at it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCONNELL: There are two reasons it's so great to come here. One is the barbecue, and the other is this is the only time of the year you'll see any Democrats in western Kentucky.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Now, as big of a force as McConnell has been in national politics, he's played a major role in the state as well, including a decade ago in working to flip the State House from blue to red for the first time in nearly a century.
But that does not mean the reception is warm at Fancy Farm.
[08:54:45]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CROWD BOOING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Now last week, McConnell said his health would keep him away this year, saying "There's no place I'd rather be on the first Saturday in August than with the good people of western Kentucky feasting on pork and mutton."
So tomorrow is actually a big deadline in Kentucky. If he resigns, there would be enough time for a special election to fill his seat for the remainder of his term, which ends in January. If not, he'll continue to occupy the seat he's held since 1985, even if he doesn't show up and can't vote in the Senate. But his allies and confidants do not expect him to resign.
That's it for INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY.
Up next, "STATE OF THE UNION WITH JAKE TAPPER AND DANA BASH". Dana's guests include HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Dr. Ashish Jha.
Thanks again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. We'll see you next time. [08:55:49]
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