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Senate Panel Approves Blanche; Nomination Now Goes To Full Senate; Sources: Trump "Furious" With Pirro But Hasn't Fire Her Yet; Trump Endorses Darline Graham In SC Senate Primary As Best To Honor Lindsey's Legacy; Gov. Abbott Freeze New Data Center Construction In Texas; Hong: Thanksgiving Is "Incredibly Painful For Many People". Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 04, 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]

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: -- the IRS for Trump and his family. Did Trump -- did Tillis and Cornyn really get what they wanted here? Because Trump obviously still wants the weaponization fund.

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes.

RAJU: I heard him talk about it yesterday.

BLAKE: I mean on the anti-weaponization fund, I think it's pretty clear that this is not fully 100 percent dead. What Todd Blanche did in writing this document was basically reverse a document that he had written before, but it didn't actually alter the settlement, which according to the settlement's terms would require the plaintiffs in the case, which is Donald Trump, to say that he is willing to alter the settlement.

So, you know, there is a circumstance and John Cornyn in his questioning of Blanche at the hearing went through this, where Trump could sue and say we still have this settlement and I want to enforce it and could kind of revitalize this thing. Now, I do think that what we saw this week with this very, you know, long standoff over this and with Blanche putting out this, basically, this memo makes that less likely and we saw President Trump kind of back off the whole thing. But I -- you know, legally speaking, it's not necessarily dead.

RAJU: And listen to how Cornyn and Tillis described this deal this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R), TEXAS: They've been consistent about their assertion on behalf of the United States of America that weaponization fund is dead. And of course, I expect them to live up to that in any future litigation.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: The first one, I called the payout pot for punks. I've never liked this 1776 fund. It made no sense to me and I thought it was an insult to the police officers and the people that defended us on January the 6th. It's done. It's been rescinded and I am satisfied.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Is Trump going to drop this?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: For now. I mean --

RAJU: For the confirmation votes.

TREENE: You know, yes. But I had some conversations yesterday with people at the White House about this. One, you did hear Trump kind of try to downplay this yesterday, argue I don't know anything much about it. You know, I heard they're either saying some -- they're doing something he's already said, Blanche.

The White House was deeply involved in this, though. I think it was kind of a shocker when it came out in writing. Blanche just dropped it on social media, this new document formally putting in writing that he was withdrawing the fund. The White House knew, of course, that this was happening.

Susie Wiles was involved. The head of Leg Affairs, James Braid, was involved, I'm told. So they -- and Trump was aware, I should note, you know? And even though he didn't sign it himself, he knew this was happening. And the view from inside the West Wing, I'm told, is that the President wants Blanche in this position.

He wants him to be confirmed and he was convinced --

RAJU: Yes.

TREENE: -- by his advisers, this is the way to do it.

RAJU: And just to -- viewers see the Republicans to watch. This is not over yet because the full Senate has to vote. It's going to happen later this week. Will it go into this weekend? That's one of the questions. But these are the Republican senators to watch right here. Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Curtis of Utah, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Each have their own interesting dynamics.

Murkowski, a frequent swing vote. Curtis told me last week he wasn't quite sure. Murkowski, or Collins, of course, up for re-election in Maine. How will she come down? And Cornyn talked to Collins last night about this. We'll see what Bill Cassidy does since -- after Trump, of course, backed his primary foe and Cassidy lost his primary. How will he vote on this? Last night he declined to comment when I asked him.

All right, up next for us, Jeanine Pirro survived a trip to the White House yesterday, but she's still in hot water with her boss. Can Pirro find a bridge over troubled water? More when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:38:06] RAJU: President Trump is still furious with Jeanine Pirro over admitting in court that the reflecting pool fell apart due to the botched installation, not vandals. But Pirro did get a reprieve of sorts. After meeting President Trump at the White House yesterday, he did not decide to fire Pirro but he did take time during an unrelated Oval Office event to bash her and reiterate his vandalism conspiracy theory about that $14 million liner he had installed in the reflecting pool.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Jeanine Pirro made a mistake. It was vandalism. The judge was extremely unfriendly to Jeanine. And frankly, I think she choked because the judge was really vicious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: The panel is back. So Alayna, is Pirro going to get fired?

TREENE: We'll see. I mean, look, before that Oval Office meeting yesterday, I had met with some people and had conversations with different sources who had been talking to the President about this all weekend. They said he was fuming all weekend about Pirro specifically. He was furious about all of this and that he was very likely considering firing her, that he -- they believed after what he was saying about her over the weekend, that he was going to move forward and remove her from her role.

That didn't happen yesterday. So we have to figure out where his mind is at on -- is on this. I'm told today he's still very frustrated. I'd remind you why. I mean, all of these projects, particularly the reflecting pool, this is not only stuff that he's gone on a limp for. He's been saying it's been vandals to anyone who would ask him, you know, unsolicited even, going on saying, look at the vandals at the reflecting pool.

But he also cares deeply about these projects. He's -- people in the White House say he has an obsessive nature towards it.

RAJU: Yes. Speaking of that obsession, if you will.

TREENE: Yes.

RAJU: So during this Oval Office event yesterday, he went on and on and on for 8 minutes plus about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You have people leaning over the side, the weakest part because of the flexibility. You know, it moves. It's very complicated. It moves. And the softest part has to be flexible. And that's the stuff you can cut. And these guys knew what they were doing.

[12:40:14] And they cut all the way along the base. Cut, cut, cut. Now, when Janine looked at it, it was a day after the 4th of July with the largest fireworks display in the world. And the stuff was laying all over the pool, the fireworks, because they used the pool as one of the -- and it was all over the pool as a day after very shortly thereafter. But that was working beautifully. And it was vandalized.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And that was 43 seconds. It went on for 8 minutes plus. And we decided not to play the whole thing. But he's saying all these things without offering any evidence to back any of this up.

ALEX GANGITANO, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, POLITICO: That's right. And it shows how deeply personal this is to him. He will talk for 8 minutes about this to defend his case on this. And all these projects in D.C. are something that if they go awry, it's all on the President because this is his kind of side project that in his second term.

But does that carry more weight than his personal relationship with Jeanine Pirro? And I think that's going to be the question for the next, you know, 48 hours. He didn't fire her yesterday. Who knows what could happen? But they are longtime allies, friends. She's been very loyal to him. Can the fact that he's been embarrassed about the reflecting pool outweigh how he's feeling about her?

BLAKE: But even just aside from how much Trump cares about the reflecting pool and how it kind of makes him look bad because it contradicts the things he said, this filing, if you look at it, not only does all of that, but it also points the finger at the Department of Interior and says these people withheld information from the Justice Department that led the Justice Department to charge somebody who was innocent.

I think in any normal Congress, in any circumstance where the other party controlled Congress, at least, that would probably lead to hearings or at least subpoenas trying to figure out exactly how this went down, whether the Interior Department actually did allow for this circumstance to happen, if it was deliberate. These are the kinds of things that look pretty bad for an administration, I would say.

RAJU: Yes. And just -- this is what Jeanine Pirro said in that filing that "A National Park Service engineer stated that the cause of the damage was contractor error via overspray. An inspection by contractors confirmed that overspray and delamination had occurred, again pointing to contractor error." And went on to say that "a vandal would not likely to attempt to peel the lining."

But why this is so such a fascinating, if you will, situation is because Pirro was such a loyal ally of President Trump's over the years. And this is just a taste of things that she had said over the past several months and years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX HOST: This man is the tip of the spear who goes out there every day and fights for us. If you like the America that he is making now, you've got to make sure you get out there tomorrow.

This is the only man that our enemies feared. Donald Trump is the only man that our enemies feared.

Thanks to the work that the President has done, violent crime is down, homicides are down, historic levels.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And David, it shows you why perhaps she got that job.

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Yes. And even she can't win a case like this. So she can't move the jurisdiction to Amarillo or something where she might find a jury that would not throw this out. That's what happened with the sandwich thrower case in D.C. last year. So I don't think you can find any U.S. attorney who'd be able to bring one of these cases, because there's a whole office where you're thinking of the President, you're thinking of your next job.

Do you really want to litigate something that you're going to lose because the facts are all marshaled against you --

RAJU: Yes.

WEIGEL: -- just because the President asked? He's asking attorneys to do something they cannot ethically do.

RAJU: If she can't do it, I'm not sure who else could do --

WEIGEL: Yes.

RAJU: -- bring this kind of case. All right, we have more to discuss.

Coming up next, Darline breaks with Lindsey to side with Donald. Inside Darline Graham's first debate and the President's bet on South Carolina Senate race.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:48:42]

RAJU: It's a sprint in South Carolina. Just one week of campaigning is left in the special Republican primary to replace the late Senator Lindsey Graham on the ballot. It's a crowded field of experienced politicians and outsiders, including Graham's sister, Darline, who was appointed to temporarily replace Lindsey through the end of the year.

Today, President Trump reiterated his endorsement for Darline Graham and that he asked her to run. While Graham's views have pretty closely aligned with both her late brother and the President. And last night's debate, Graham revealed one issue where she's on the President's side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DARLINE GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: One of the first things I did was co-sponsor the SAVE America Act. As I said earlier, I'm willing to stay through recess to get it done. What's up with recess anyway? Who gets a month off from work? I think we should stay up there and work and get it done.

I am all for, this is where I differ from my brother, getting rid of the filibuster to get this done, because eventually the Democrats are going to get rid of it anyway.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Mr. Weigel, you're watching this debate pouring through the -- all the answers. What was your takeaway from how she handled this?

WEIGEL: That was my takeaway. She needed to clarify to voters that she was not Lindsey Graham. That's why she's in the Senate. She said she feels that God put me here.

[12:50:01]

But Lindsey Graham always had to deal with about 40 percent of the Republican electorate not trusting him voting for primary challengers, always had to campaign. That was largely about foreign interventionism, immigration, and stuff like that. So she took one off the table, immigration not really on the table in the debate.

Iran, I didn't see -- there was a little bit of distance when you saw Lynch and Sanford say. They would -- Lynch said we should bring the troops home. Sanford said this Congress should be involved in the war a bit more than it is, more than zero. And Graham took the Trump position. So that was the story, is that she is saying, I'm -- I have Lindsey Graham's heritage and I'm also going to be more loyal to Trump than he was.

RAJU: And listen to how the candidates talked about Trump, the loyalty to Trump, that very question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've disagreed. I have disagreed. And I think that that's the American way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the short answer is, yes, the President was elected to be our commander in chief. Over 80 million people supported him in that endeavor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He set the right course. And he has a -- he likes people who can disagree with him.

GRAHAM: To me, this one's simple. I completely support the President's agenda. I'm 100 percent behind him.

MARK LYNCH (R), SOUTH CAROLINA SENATE CANDIDATE: Iron sharpens iron. If we have a disagreement, I'll go to President Trump and tell him what I think.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Is Trump endorsement enough to get Darline Graham over the finish line here?

BLAKE: I mean, I think without it, she probably would struggle a little bit more. I think the combination of the Trump endorsement, the fact that she is now an incumbent senator, and the fact that you saw five candidates on that stage is going to help her a lot, because it is going to be a situation where the anti -- or the non-Trump endorsement vote is going to be split up between these candidates to some degree.

If it was a one-on-one race, it might be a little bit more of a situation like that. But it's going to be really interesting to me to see in the coming weeks here, do some of these candidates start to hint at, like, you know, maybe we don't understand really what her politics are.

Because this is a very unusual circumstance where this is somebody who not only hadn't been in elective office, but hadn't really even been a political activist before, didn't really have the same kind of paper trail. And Lindsey Graham did have some issues where he wasn't in line with the Republican base, especially on issues like immigration. So it could get kind of ugly if I know South Carolina politics.

RAJU: Because the Graham name, you know, he had a lot of support, but he had a lot of detractors, too, in the South Carolina GOP. And we're just hearing some criticism actually coming from one of her foes, Darline Graham's foes, in this race, Russell Fry, the congressman, saying that, quote, "Darline Graham has spent this entire campaign dodging the media and hiding from tough questions." And he went on to say "That South Carolina deserves better than that. The race isn't inherited, it's earned."

So it's going to get pretty nasty here.

GANGITANO: Right. It's a question of, are voters going to be turned off by the fact that this is a handed-down seat to a late senator's sister? And I think she's really leaning on President Trump to fill that gap of, well, if you're supportive of the President, then you can be supportive of me regardless of if I'm willing to break with my brother.

I think on the filibuster point, her breaking with the late Senator Graham is fascinating to me, considering Graham was in the Senate for decades. He's a staple of the Senate. He knew that the Republican Party, the caucus, did not have the votes to get rid of the filibuster for the SAVE Act.

RAJU: Right. But we know what Trump is really animated about --

GANGITANO: Anyway.

RAJU: -- getting rid of the filibuster --

GANGITANO: Right.

RAJU: -- getting the SAVE America Act done. Neither of which is going to happen, but Trump is insisting on it, which is probably why Darline Graham is on his side.

GANGITANO: Exactly.

RAJU: All right. Coming up next, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who refuses to say, quote, "I like Thanksgiving."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:58:14]

RAJU: Topping our political radar, Texas is the latest state to freeze construction of new data centers. Republican Governor Greg Abbott is ordering an audit of how the new centers will affect the state's water supply and electrical grid. The Texas Tribune says Texas has more than 300 data centers, the second most of any state after Virginia.

Texas provides generous tax incentives to data centers in -- which is becoming an issue in Abbott's reelection campaign. His Democratic opponent accused Abbott of making Texas, quote, "the wild west of data centers."

The frontrunner to be the next Democratic nominee in Wisconsin isn't disavowing comments she made years ago about ending Thanksgiving. A Democratic socialist candidate wrote this in 2020 on Twitter, quote, "Cancel Thanksgiving. Should have done this in 1621" and called it the, quote, "original super spreader event that killed indigenous folks," that's folks with an X, "and women." The post has since been deleted.

Kaitlan Collins asked her about this last night on The Source.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANCESCA HONG (D), WISCONSIN GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: I'm a chef, and one of the first meals that I made that was for the community when I was 16 was a Thanksgiving meal. I always think my hospitality background and owning a restaurant for seven, eight years, that bringing folks around the table to share conversation and build community is always a good thing.

But Thanksgiving is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so, I think there I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: The likely Republican nominee, Tom Tiffany, posted on X, "Just so everyone knows where I stand, I won't cancel Thanksgiving as governor."

Thanks for joining Inside Politics. Don't miss Republican Congressman Max Miller's sit down with CNN's Jake Tapper today on The Lead at 5:00 p.m. Eastern here on CNN. CNN News Central starts right now.