Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Cornyn, Tillis Says Deal Struck To Advance Blanche's Confirmation; Blanche Formally Rescinds Trump's "Anti-Weaponization" Fund; Senate GOP Splinters Over Tensions With Trump; Trump: I "Disagree 100 Percent" With Pirro's Funding; Tomorrow: Democrats' Marquee Senate Primary In Michigan. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 03, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Is the $1.8 billion so-called anti-weaponization fund dead, or just mostly dead?

I'm Manu Raju, in for Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

President Trump's pick to be the nation's top law enforcement officer is now on fast track towards Senate confirmation. This morning, Republican Senate holdouts John Cornyn and Thom Tillis said they'll vote to confirm him at tomorrow's committee vote, ending a two-week standoff between the lame duck Republicans and the White House.

Here's the thing, though. It was Blanche who conceded in this fight with this signed one-page letter that reads, quote, this order establishes beyond any doubt that there is no fund. The fund in question is President Trump's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which would have made it easier to give January 6 rioters taxpayer- funded settlements.

Tillis and Cornyn slammed that idea and demanded in writing that Blanche would not pursue it, something Blanche had resisted up until this point. Blanche also limited the scope of the tax immunity deal, Trump reached with the Treasury Department to protect the president and his family over audits from past tax returns, not future ones.

I'm joined now by a terrific group of reporters and analysts, including John Bresnahan, who, along with Tia, walks the halls of the Capitol with us every single day. OK, tomorrow's vote are sure now. Is Senate Judiciary Committee his nomination will get advance to the Senate floor? Now it's going to be along straight party lines. The question is, will he get full Senate confirmation? Because you get -- look at the numbers 53-47 Senate. Mitch McConnell is gone, down 52 senators. That means he can only lose two. Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, will they fall in line with the president, or will they buck the president on this?

JOHN BRESNAHAN, CO-FOUNDER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: I think probably they're going to fall in line. It feels like it, I mean, we talked to them all. I mean, Murkowski, I think, is one to watch here. I think Collins will fall in line. She's up for reelection. She needs Trump. She needs Republicans right now in November. So, I don't think this is a place where she would do this. Cassidy, I think, will fall in line.

They also were saying all these senators who are on the fence outside the Judiciary Committee, outside of Cornyn and Tillis, who are on judiciary, said we'll see what Cornyn does. For them, Cornyn was the key to this, you know, a former Texas attorney general, Supreme Court judge, state Supreme Court justice, longtime committee member. They felt like he was -- if he makes a deal, that's good enough for us.

I did find the statement fascinating. I know you'll talk about it. It doesn't mention the word Trump in it. I just want to have fascinating, like Trump went after them, they went back and forth all weekend. There's no mention of Trump in it there.

RAJU: Yeah. And before we just dive into the statement, do you agree? You see, is he virtually assured confirmation at this point?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: I do, but I would say that you mentioned the statement doesn't mention Trump. I think Trump could make things difficult if he continues to post on social media saying, no. I actually think the Trump that this account should be -- should exist. I don't agree with letting it go away, which he indicated some of that over the weekend, kind of undercutting this agreement with Blanche to get him confirmed. He could make it difficult, but I do think if barring any, you know, any pivots from the president, I do think he can get confirmed.

RAJU: Now, this is a part of the statement that came out. So, this is from the Senator Cornyn spokesperson. Put out a statement last night announcing this deal, saying the Senator Cornyn has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice, which will be issuing a formal order permanently terminating the anti-weaponization fund and making it clear in a, quote, binding written document that the scope of the audit settlement is limited to only the plaintiffs, including the president and the IRS.

Now, in Todd Blanche's statement, they say this order establishes beyond any doubt that there is no fund. Present tense is, you know, as a former president once said. Does it depend what the definition of is, is?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST & FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: And it depends on what the definition of -- I don't know, man, I can't stretch the metaphor any further. But no, it does depend on what the definition of is. Look, you read that statement. They -- Blanche goes very hard on making clear that the fund has ended. That's the sentence at the end of it. At the beginning of it, they do say once again, this is the formal termination of the fund.

[12:05:00]

Now, if there is any funding business here, I can assume that the two judges who have looked at this already and already ruled quite critically about this fund would take the Justice Department to task. I think I read that and see what appears to be an attempt to end this fund, but we may not have seen the end of the --

RAJU: Is there an end run around it?

WILLIAMS: I don't think there's an end run around it that would not be immediately slapped down by a judge. Based on the fact that the deputy, or now soon to be perhaps attorney general of the United States, number one, said the fund is terminated. Then number two wrote this statement indicating that -- that it was terminated in full, mentioning twice that it's done in full. I don't know how they get out of that. If they're going to try, it is going to be an enormous legal fight for the administration, and they'll lose in court.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, and that was one of the things that Cornyn's team had been looking at was the language and kind of hand wringing over, because every time that they went through and parse the language, one of the aides would say something along the lines of, there's still a loophole here. There's still something that they could get around. So, the language crafted in this has been meticulously thought out by all of the sides for that idea that if they are to double back on it, it will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

WILLIAMS: Yeah. And the person with recourse is not John Cornyn. He's done what he's had.

HOLMES: Right.

WILLIAMS: He's coming -- not going to be a senator in a matter of months anyway. The recourse is someone will sue. It will go to court. They will lose. There are two judges, one in Florida, one in Virginia, who have looked at this and really taken the Justice Department to task for their funding business, and I don't think they can do it again.

RAJU: And the reason why this is a question, of course, is because it's Trump himself. I mean, Trump himself who wants this fund. He has supported this fund, and that's why both Thom Tillis and John Cornyn insisted it be in writing, despite what Todd Blanche had testified to in the Senate Judiciary Committee saying that this fund would not go forward because of comments that Trump made like this last night on Air Force One.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Honestly, there's never been an attack on any group of people in this country, in my opinion. Maybe one. There's one group that was attacked violently and viciously, like these people were attacked, and this would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffer. A lot of people like it. If they don't -- if they don't approve that, I put it back on the table.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, to your point, Tia, that's what Trump is saying. He'll put it back on the table. He's talking about January 6 riots. MITCHELL: Yes. And I think, you know, we got to pause and say, police were attacked. The core of our government and the essential function of the peaceful transfer of power was threatened and came within inches quite literally of going away. And I think we can't ignore that, even though the president is trying to rewrite history of what happened that day.

RAJU: Yeah.

MITCHELL: And so, there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who don't want January sixers getting a check, particularly those members of Congress who are running for their lives that day.

RAJU: And some of them have already gotten a check. Just look at the settlements that the Justice Department did reach with some of these folks who claim that they had been aggrieved by the Justice Department, including Ashli Babbitt's family, of course, one of those rioters. She was killed on that day by police on January 6 during that attack on the Capitol. So, we'll see whether folks can get settled in -- get settlement payouts in other ways beyond this fund that is apparently dead.

All right, meantime, this fund has just created so many problems on the Hill for Trump, his agenda, blindsiding John Thune, blindsiding Republicans, a part of a whole laundry list of things. We've done some reporting, you too as well, John. I know about the Trump, Thune gulf right now, which is really something to watch. This was not necessarily the case last year. They've been talking a lot more. They're really not talking all that frequently as Trump.

Thune has seen Trump come out and blindside him on issue after issue, whether it's backing John Cornyn's primary foe, whether it's dropping this anti-weaponization fund that had completely blown up the agenda. And now, it's coming to a head this week as Trump wants to move forward with his big agenda package to move forward on this budget resolution that John Thune simply does not have the time or the votes to advance.

As John Curtis, the senator from Utah, told me. I would say we're all longing for a relationship with the White House where we work more in harmony. I think that's an understatement at the moment. John, what are you hearing about the concerns about the way the president has completely undercut and oftentimes blindsided the Senate GOP leader?

BRESNAHAN: Yeah, you guys have written. We've written a ton about it. I mean, look, we're to the point where, like, I -- myself and my colleagues are like, you know, talking to Senate Republicans. Is Trump trying to dump Thune right now? You know, like is he -- does he want him out?

RAJU: Scapegoat him for that possible --

(CROSSTALK)

BRESNAHAN: --scapegoating for the losses, or will he run someone else against him in November as a leader, which is a possibility? I'm not saying that somebody would win or he'd urge somebody else to get a win (Ph). I mean, it's extraordinary. Now, Thune and Trump don't talk a lot. I mean, their styles couldn't be more different. I don't think Thune is in the Mitch McConnell zone, where, you know, Trump went after McConnell for years and said terrible things about him and his wife and everything.

[12:10:00]

I do think, you know, there's a lot of communications between Thune and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff. She was there in Thune's office the other day. James Blair, the deputy White House chief of staff for legislative affairs, is there. There's a lot of on the staff level. I know Thune talks to them and Thune's staff. But with the president and Thune, I can't remember things being so publicly this bad between leaders, maybe ever in my time.

RAJU: And a lot has to do with Trump's demand that they do away with the Senate's filibuster, pass bills along party lines. Thune says, no way. And again, that coming to a head as Trump demands this SAVE America Act go to his desk, but they don't have the votes in the Senate and Trump won't take no for an answer.

All right, coming up. The reflecting pool saga makes another splash. President Trump says it was vandalism, but his close ally and U.S. attorney says, well, the evidence just doesn't back that up. Plus, a bitter family dispute takes a political turn. You'll hear why a Republican senator is now calling for his former son-in-law to resign from Congress.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: President Trump is not happy with his favorite U.S. attorney. The administration spent the last month, blaming vandals for damage to the reflecting pool that Trump spent $14 million of taxpayer money to upgrade. But late Friday afternoon, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro dropped charges against a 67-year-old Olympian canoeist, and said the real culprit was a, quote, botched installation.

In an even more extraordinary move, she accused the interior department of misleading federal prosecutors. Within hours, Trump posted, quote, I disagree, 100 percent with Pirro. And says, I don't know what she was thinking. It was a pure case of vandalism. My excellent panel is back. This is a wild. What a story, and it is real life. It is. Kristen, you cover the White House. What are you hearing about how Trump is going to respond?

HOLMES: He's incredibly angry.

RAJU: Is he going to dump Pirro?

HOLMES: It's unclear. I mean, what we've seen this time around is it takes a little bit more to actually get him to fire somebody than it did the first time around. But if he is calling you out by name and saying that he's 100 percent disagrees with you. I will just remind you of our reporting a week or two ago, when Wright signed this deal with Saudi Arabia, this nuclear deal that President Trump was not briefed on. He was livid at Chris Wright. His team was livid at Chris Wright. Trump thinks he should be the one if there's any kind of deal being made that he gets to be the one to announce it.

He was asked in the Oval Office if he was mad, and he brushed off the question multiple times. He has started doing that even when he is very mad. If he is writing on Truth Social that he is 100 percent in disagreement with you, you are in a very bad place with the president.

RAJU: Because the administration spent weeks trying to convince the American public that there was actual vandalism, including Jeanine Pirro. Listen?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No, we had vandalism. No, vandals. You know, we have 100, and we have a, I think 290, 300-foot slit, right through it, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind.

JEANINE PIRRO, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: This is a case with tremendous evidence, and this is a case where the evidence dictates where we land.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: It peeled off. Why did that happen? Do you know?

DOUG BURGUM, INTERIOR SECRETARY: It didn't peel off. There was -- there was -- there was vandalism. There was box cutters. There have been seven arrests. There was people literally trying to destroy part of a monument.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: He doesn't get more loyal than Jeanine Pirro.

MITCHELL: Right. And so, to me, what's striking is how bad did what she received and what she reviewed refute -- what she had been saying for her to take the extraordinary step, not just of dropping the charges, but saying that the interior department had misled the U.S. attorney's office. Like, for her to go out there and say that, for her to completely reverse course for her to openly contradict the Trump administration means to me that it was really bad behind the scenes, and that she really feels like she had no choice but to protect her own integrity, her own license, or you know, her own livelihood, so to speak, by saying, nope, I'm not going any further with that.

RAJU: Yeah. It was just -- this is what she said, Elliot. It was not until USAO-D.C. repeatedly reached out to DOI interior department, dozens and dozens of times that the DOI slowly started trickling information to the U.S. attorney in D.C. Had the Department of Interior been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession. The government would not have sought a grand jury indictment. Have you ever seen anything like this? WILLIAMS: No. Manu, I have not. That is vicious to put in a court pleading, and quite frankly, they did not have to. This was one cabinet department, or at least one sub cabinet department, throwing another under the bus. She really went after. Other, language is DOI, Department of the Interior provided less than fulsome information about the case.

They are saying -- and you know, the interesting thing is, you know, you played a series of clips about people saying there was vandalism. Maybe there was vandalism at some point. You know the one place that it was never established that there was vandalism. In a court, never once did the U.S. attorney's office come forward and say that this person maliciously, which is the word used in the statute, maliciously intended to destroy government property.

[12:20:00]

Nowhere was that ever presented to a court. It's just the president and the secretary just simply throwing it out there into the world. And so, that filing, and I would urge all Americans to read it. It's only about 10 pages long. Is really a remarkable exercise in members of government sniping at each other behind the scenes because they were misled --

HOLMES: But also, it's for survival.

RAJU: And speaking of survival, this is Doug Burgum, posting just yesterday. He says we also provided the U.S. attorney's office expert and eyewitness testimony to the damage done by vandals and provided every piece of evidence, they asked for in the requested timeline detailing each area of damage at the poll. He's siding with Trump, perhaps not surprisingly.

BRESNAHAN: We have senior level officials, the president of the United States, the interior secretary, the U.S. attorney for D.C. spending -- God knows how much time on this ridiculous issue. I mean, it's just insane. It's just completely insane. When I saw Burgum's statement, I was like, are you got to be kidding me? You know, but her statement was so, you know, because you were -- going back to your point because she's got to go in court. Prosecutors got to go in court, and say it, and that's a different stand.

RAJU: And Elliot, there's this bunch of cases here and the viewers can see about how Pirro had struggled on a number of cases in the U.S. attorney's office?

WILLIAMS: Right. And to be clear, prosecutors jeopardize their law licenses when they go into court, trying to argue cases that are not based in reality or fact that aren't supported by the law. And this became a serious, quite literally, legal ethics question for the Justice Department. If they were to have tried to proceed with prosecuting this person on the basis of literally no evidence, and I'll be the first person, Manu, to tell you.

If you see someone vandalizing federal property, that is a crime and they ought to go to jail for it, but the simple fact is that didn't happen here. It was sort of pulled out of thin air by the president, at least -- at least in this case, as it seems. And to some extent, the right result happened here.

RAJU: Yeah. And the president put out a video on Truth Social on Saturday, defending what he said, but the video didn't really back up what he said. So, there you go. All right, next. James Carville is the most famous Democratic strategist out there. Now he says he might leave the party he's called home for his entire life. We'll tell you why after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

RAJU: Tomorrow is the biggest test yet for the far left, trying to shove aside establishment Democrats. In Michigan, millions of Democrats will choose between progressive public health expert Abdul El-Sayed and the more moderate Congresswoman Haley Stevens. To paraphrase Joe Biden, it's a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. Jeff Zeleny is in Michigan. So, Jeff, with just a few hours left, the El-Sayed camp seems to be pretty -- feeling pretty good about their chances.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Manu, there's no doubt that they feel some energy and a momentum on their side. Part of that is really what's been happening in Democratic primaries throughout the country this year, but this is a different moment and it's a different state. It's battleground Michigan. So, that is why neither campaign advisors that I've been speaking to are all that confident going into election day.

There's a lot of a trepidation here. I caught up with both candidates over the weekend, and it's clear they are fighting for every vote and trying to make this nationalized race more about Michigan. Well, the congresswoman has made clear that she knows she's been a bit of a punchline here in this race. Her accent and other things. She's leaning into that as she's trying to bring out her supporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HALEY STEVENS (D-MI): This is East Coast people, making fun of how I talk, and how many times have we really heard that in our lives. You know, when we visit other places, they comment on our accent. Where are you from? Whether they're making fun of me or they're just making fun of Michigan. They don't get to think they're better than us, because what I know is I am your voice, and I am eager to be your voice. The jokes, they just make me want to fight harder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, Stevens clearly is making the case that she is pure Michigan, that she has represented the state since 2018. Of course, she flipped a Republican-held House seat back in the first midterm election of the first Trump administration. But this is certainly a different time for the Democratic Party. There's no doubt about it. Some of that energy that is behind Abdul El-Sayed campaign also was clear. Even as questions of electability really are hanging over this, we asked him about that as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: Is that electability is about whether or not, you can inspire a movement of people to want to elect you. I mean, frankly, if you have to bring $70 million of outside spending into your race, you are foundationally unelectable on your own terms. So, you know, to me, the vision I have for electability is one where you can inspire a movement of people around a set of ideals that allows you then to go out and legislate around those goals, right? That's what electability means to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, he also goes on to say that he thinks that some of this electability argument here, that Haley Stevens and the Democratic establishment behind her is pushing pretty aggressively. He thinks it's a bit of a -- of a lowed question here. He believes that Michiganders will elect him. And he said, you know, an elected official always says that electability is on their side, but he, of course, is running from the outside