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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Slams from Economic Message With Insults, Tangents; Harris Camp Slams Trump's Event, Usual Lies and Delusions; Biden, Harris Campaign Together for First Time Since His Exit; "NewsNight" Tackles The State Of Presidential Race 2024; "NewsNight" Guests Weigh In On V.P. Harris' Ethnicity. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired August 15, 2024 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, on display, Donald Trump plays show and tell at a presser that swerves from groceries --
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Bread is up 24 percent.
PHILLIP: -- to off the rails.
TRUMP: I didn't rant and rave. I'm a very calm person.
PHILLIP: Plus, shoulder to shoulder, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden share the same stage.
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: There's a lot of love in this room for our president.
PHILLIP: But will the new nominee stand next to Biden's policies?
Also --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In an ideal world --
PHILLIP: -- hard to deny this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably be Christian nation-ism.
PHILLIP: Hidden cameras catch a way too candid conversation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have the largest deportation in history.
PHILLIP: A Project 2025 plotter talking about the plans for another Trump term.
And a Trump store shilling MAGA merch.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When people see one, then they want one, same thing with the confederate hat.
PHILLIP: Owned by black Trump supporters. It's a strange story you'll only see right here.
Live at the table, Keith Boykin, Marc Lotter, Michael Eric Dyson, and Congresswoman Nancy Mace. Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight, State of the Race.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, I'm Abbey Philip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about tonight, a press conference, mostly in search of questions and definitely in search of coherence or really anything relevant to your life. Donald Trump eventually took some questions after giving an unchained, unplugged version of his rally, all the while he insisted he was perfectly in focus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think I'm doing a very calm campaign. I mean, we are here. There's no shouting. Now, you'll say he ranted and raved, and not you, but some of you will say he ranted and raved. I didn't ranted and raved. I'm a very calm person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: But will voters care about any of this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You're allowed to rob a store as long as it's not more than $950. Has everyone ever heard of that? You can rob a store. And you have these thieves going into stores with calculators calculating how much it is.
You got windmills all over the place and you have birds. You want to see a bird cemetery? Just go under a windmill. You see thousands of birds dead.
The cover of TIME Magazine, they didn't put a picture. They got a great artist to do it. What was that all about, you know? What was that all about? The whole thing is crazy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The windmills, the windmills and the dead birds continue to appear on this campaign. Trump says he's not ranting, but this press conference was a great example of a speech littered with all the things that he's been focused on for a long time. Is he capable, really, of staying completely on message here?
KEITH BOYKIN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No, of course not. This was not a press conference, first of all. This was a campaign rally speech. He even had his supporters there at Bedminster. And he fooled the press again, once again, by claiming he was going to have a press conference. He spoke for 45 minutes before he even allowed a question to be asked. And when he did, it was just filled with lies over again. He said that he made this comment about, what is it, more than 100 percent of new jobs that are created --
PHILLIP: I'll play it. I'll play it. So just so you don't have to paraphrase what it was. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants. You know that? Most of the job creation has gone to migrants. In fact, I've heard that substantially more than beyond -- actually beyond the number of 100 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Beyond a number of a hundred percent.
BOYKIN: I guess, I need my calculator so I can go shoplifting with Donald Trump, because, clearly, you can't have more than a hundred percent of jobs going to migrants. You can't even have a hundred percent of jobs, of new jobs going to migrants. It's not only mathematically impossible, it's just plain stupid.
And how does this guy get taken seriously? How is it that he is a presidential candidate for the highest office in our country when you can't even complete a press conference without spewing lies and misinformation and obvious falsehoods?
[22:05:00]
REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): Well, if you want to talk about misinformation, we can talk about Kamala Harris' Google ads, like literally taking headlines from mainstream media and rewriting them, which should be against Google ads policies. But what's stupid is being -- is allowing people, criminals, to go into stores in California and not being able to arrest them unless it's $900 or $950 and more.
PHILLIP: The problem is that that's not actually what's that's true. That's not actually what the law is.
MACE: And you see videos of people going into stores in these blue cities and blue states stealing merchandise and not being stopped. We've all seen these videos.
BOYKIN: So, should Donald Trump not be allowed to go into a store because he's a convicted criminal?
MACE: I don't think anybody at this table should be surprised that Donald Trump stood up for 45 minutes, an hour or more, taking questions, giving a speech. Because if you're holding your breath for an Oscar nod that he did that, don't hold your breath because everyone -- no one's going to believe you. This is what he does. He stands, he gives speeches, he takes the questions, he gives the answers. And to- date, more than three weeks, in Kamala Harris hasn't given a single interview. She hasn't come on your program. She's not answering questions. BOYKIN: It's Kamala, first of all. It's not Kamala. It's Kamala. And she's not yet the candidate. She's only been in office, only been a candidate for three and a half weeks.
MACE: She's been vice president for three-and-half.
BOYKIN: Yes. And Trump went a whole primary season without even taking and doing a debate. So, you know, but you can't --
MACE: It's stupid because the Republicans in this country voted for him, nominated him. She didn't earn a single vote in the Republican --
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, PROFESSOR OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: There's a false equivalence between what Donald Trump is doing as an autocrat, as a fascist, as a dictatorially inclined man. The man's aspirations are huge.
But the point is that Donald Trump has lied so repeatedly that we normalize his mendacity, his misogyny, his hatred for the ordinary citizen who happens to think logically about these issues. Now, he's got a whole bunch of stuff from the stores up there. He doesn't refer to it. His economic policies are vapid. They are empty. He has nothing to say.
MARC LOTTER, FORMER TRUMP 2020 DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: She has no policies on her website at all. She's got more pronouns.
DYSON: Donald Trump sits there and tells lie after lie, and he gets normalized by good people like y'all who don't call him out on his book.
LOTTER: Kamala Harris has more pronouns on her website than she does policy. The only thing she has on there is donate. She's running a Seinfeld campaign. The show is about nothing.
DYSON: No, absolutely not.
LOTTER: And she's winning, right? She's not winning, actually.
MACE: She's aided and abetted by mainstream media. If you saw the headline by a neighboring network a couple days, a couple weeks ago, days ago, when Donald Trump came out with his no taxes on tips policy, all of the headlines on mainstream media were derogatory. Kamala Harris comes out with her policies on no taxes on tips, which is Donald Trump's policy, by the way. All of the headlines on mainstream media were positive and glorious and thoughtful.
DYSON: I guess you all were standing up for him because he didn't say any of this today. Everything you're saying is nothing he's ever said.
PHILLIP: Congresswoman and Mark, I'll direct this at both of you. Donald Trump was supposed to give a speech focused on the economy. He himself acknowledged he could not really help himself but veer into the personal attacks. This is what he said when he was asked about why he keeps going after Harris in these personal ways.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence. And I think she'll be a terrible president. And I think it's very important that we win. And whether the personal attacks are good, bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a sound bite. And she called J.D. and I weird. He's not weird. He was a great student at Yale.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: A lot of people have been saying very publicly to Donald Trump, his allies, stop with the personal attacks. You have a lot to run on when it comes to the economy. That's what he was supposed to be doing today, but he's not.
LOTTER: He spent 45 minutes talking about the economy, the border, energy all of those things in the first half of that news conference. And when he gets asked about the personal tax when he gets asked about other issues, he answers those questions. But when you look at what he's talking about whether it was yesterday, whether it's today he's talking about the price of groceries that people can't afford because of Kamala Harris. Kamala, sorry, I didn't study how to say that. And I messed it up. I understand. My apologies, Kamala.
PHILLIP: We're going to just say it together, Kamala Harris. Vice President Kamala Harris at that --
DYSON: But do you all find it problematic that he attacks her personally. Do you find that ad hominem at some of his of attacks?
PHILLIP: I do wonder about that, Congresswoman. Do you agree with, you know, people like Nikki Haley who say, move on from that stuff and talk about the issues that matter?
MACE: Look, I'm not going to do any pearl-clutching here. I have had people come after me, you know, two times a year in primaries and general elections. This is my third cycle.
[22:10:00]
Politics does get personal. And --
DYSON: Is it right for him to be a misogynist? It's a direct commentary against --
LOTTER: You called him a fascist.
DYSON: You can call him whatever you want, but we can't respect that.
BOYKIN: He called himself a fascist. He said he was going to be a dictator on day one. He said he was going to be a dictator on day one.
DYSON: I'm asking you all directly. Do find it problematic that this man deploys ad hominem arguments?
MACE: Would not ask a woman like me to come and speak on the stage at the Republican convention. He personally called me. He did that.
DYSON: Individual women are not problematic to a misogynist who uses the category.
MACE: He puts IVF into the Republican Party platform.
DYSON: What he wants to do is grab, dispose, and rip.
MACE: He wants to protect women who've been raped. He wants to protect children and girls from victims of incest.
DYSON: If you're telling me Donald Trump is a hero for women, when the manifest lack of integrity of this man against individual --
MACE: Well, at least he knows what a woman is. I'm not even sure that Kamala is.
BOYKIN: Kamala. Kamala.
DYSON: But, look, grabbing a woman, talking about women in the way he does, I'm asking you directly, when you see him direct such venomous rhetoric against this woman, not principle disagreement, do you find that problematic? And if you don't, you've helped normalize a practice that is vicious and misogynistic regardless. Women can be misogynistic.
MACE: I am a woman who has broken a lot of glass ceilings, and I have fought my way to have a seat at the table, and I wouldn't back someone that I thought was a misogynist, and I fully backed Donald Trump in 2020 (ph).
PHILLIP: I want to play one more thing. This was Donald Trump, I guess, not really deciding whether he thinks that Kamala Harris is a radical leftist. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I believe she's maybe, in many ways, going to be worse because he wasn't really a radical left.
The decline of America is being forced upon us by Biden and the radical left lunatics.
He's following the radical left agenda.
If he wins, the radical left will be running the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, is he radical left or not? I mean, what's the strategy for Republicans here? I mean, is she -- is Biden radical left or is he not radical left now and she's radical left?
LOTTER: Well, the entire Democrat Party has been taken over by the radical left. They've abandoned the working people of America. They've abandoned the middle. They've now been taken over by California liberals who want the Green New Deal, electric cars, ban plastic straws, she wants to take away red meat. They're now going to institute government --
PHILLIP: Are you saying that because you're associating her with --
LOTTER: No, those are the things she said. These are the things she's all campaigned for. These are all the things that Kamala has campaigned for, ending, reducing the red meat, banning plastic straws, the Green New Deal. She's now talking about government price controls for groceries. She wants government housing. She's going to tell you where you have to live. These are all part of her radical socialist policies.
PHILLIP: Government housing already exists.
MACE: Well, radical left would include defunding the police would include when your attorney general saying that an undocumented immigrant is not a criminal. Radical left would be raising your taxes. Radical left would be the appeasement strategy against Iran. Radical left would be would be placating to the Hamas wing of your party and people who are anti-Semites. That is radical left, and that is who she is.
BOYKIN: And you know what? You know why she's so radical? That Donald Trump said today that San Francisco, the city where she's from, was a wonderful city 15 years ago. Guess who was the district attorney 15 years ago? Kamala Harris. Guess who donated $6,000 to Kamala Harris' campaign? Donald Trump. If she was such a radical San Francisco liberal, why did Donald Trump give so much money to her?
LOTTER: He's a businessman and that's how you deal with --
BOYKIN: Maybe Donald Trump is a hypocrite.
DYSON: I can tell you this. As a professor who teaches about radical progressives in this country, the radicals and progressives would laugh at you thinking that Kamala Harris is, in any way, a radical leftist. What she is a person who's concerned about ordinary citizens, about union folk, about middle class people, about wage earners trying to go to work every day and help their kids. And if that's radical leftism, then let's embrace it. Let's all become Marxists. She's against it.
LOTTER: Kamala Harris got ranked the most liberal senator in the United States of America, further to the radical left than Comrade Socialist Bernie Sanders, and so she's looking to the right to see him.
BOYKIN: Do you think that raising the minimum wage --
PHILLIP: Everyone, stick around for us. First of all, it'll be interesting, Bernie Sanders would be interested in hearing you say that, but everyone stick around.
Coming up next, Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned together for the very first time since he left the race, and the question now is, can she or will she separate herself from him? Our special guest will join our fifth seat on the panel. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Kitchen table focus, quite literally. Tomorrow, Kamala Harris debuts economic policy proposals centered on lowering the cost of what's on your kitchen table and lowering the cost of the house that you put your kitchen table inside. But today, Harris stood next to Joe Biden at an event as Biden insists that Harris will stand with his economic policies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: How much does it bother you that Vice President Harris might soon, for political reasons, start to distance herself from your economic plan?
BIDEN: She's not going to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: She's not going to, is what he just said there.
And, actually, that's a question, right? Like, I mean, she's going to have some proposals, but the question is she really going to try to say, what I'm proposing is going to be different from what you've been experiencing for the last four years?
[22:20:03]
GRETCHEN CARLSON, JOURNALIST: Well, I'm glad you invited the independent to the table. Yes. So, I think she's going to pivot. I think she needs to pivot to a little bit more of the center left. Because if you look at the recent Gallup poll and what Americans feel about Biden's economics, 80 percent believe that the country is going in the wrong direction.
At the same time, you have another poll that says that Kamala Harris is beating Donald Trump on the economy. So, which one is it? But I think from an independent point of view, she has to pivot to the center. I think it's very smart to be talking about the economy, because we all know that that's the first thing that people think about in an election.
I also just want to point out that she is doing very well without saying much of anything. I mean, she's now making Florida a potential swing state that could go back to her. I know you're shaking your head, but you just wait and see. She's now getting the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. votes because he's said some more crazy things. And so now the people who didn't want Trump or Biden seem to be going to Kamala Harris. And she's also chipping away at Trump's base, which is how he went through that blue wall in 2016 with Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. She's now getting to the working class white people.
So, I understand why she hasn't said a lot, even though if I were advising her, I would say do more debates and do a press conference soon.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean look, if you're a campaign, I mean I'm sure your campaign manager would say that. If things are going well, don't mess with it. Don't add more variables. And that's what they're doing. I mean, I have an interest, Gretchen, I'm sure you do too, in wanting to hear her answer questions, but I can see why the campaign is trying to avoid it.
BOYKIN: Absolutely. If you're the campaign, if you're the candidate, you don't want to go out there and subject yourself to questions from the media every day. The reason why Donald Trump took questions today is because he needs to get attention. She's getting all the attention in the world and it's all good because she's still got the enthusiasm. The campaign is excited. The party is excited. The country is excited. So, why would you mess that up and go have a press conference? The press has every right to ask for the questions, but she's answering questions, she's just not doing it in the context of a formal press conference.
DYSON: Whatever she's doing is good.
BOYKIN: And she's winning. She's winning.
LOTTER: Okay, hold on. Let's have an honest discussion by someone who's actually worked on a campaign. She is not winning.
BOYKIN: Which I have done too, by the way. LOTTER: She is absolutely not winning.
DYSON: Well, what are you worried about? If she ain't winning, what's to worry about?
LOTTER: You look at the RealClearPolitics average, you look at all the national polls, she is five to six points behind where Joe Biden was at this point in 2020, nationally and all the battleground states. The election was decided by 43,000 votes.
BOYKIN: Joe Biden had been a candidate for a year then, but she's been a candidate for three weeks.
PHILLIP: Here's what we can say about what the polls say, Marc.
LOTTER: Three weeks, she's done this in three weeks.
PHILLIP: Marc, here's what we can say about what the polls say. The CNN's poll of polls, we try to take the best polls, only the best polls here at CNN. It's basically a statistical tie between the two of them. However, that's better than where Joe Biden was a few months ago. So, the race has kind of evened up.
But here's one thing. I mean, the, one of the things that we learned about her policy that she's going to roll out is a ban -- support for a ban on price gouging.
Now, I think reasonable people would ask, what does that mean? What does that really mean? And how is the government going to be involved in it? Here's Noah Rothman in the National Review. He describes this policy as a rank pander to the economically illiterate. And despite the presence of many who fit that description in Congress, they understand that allowing the executive branch to functionally set prices is a brain dead idea that would only hurt consumers in the long run.
I mean, is this just a ploy, because it sounds kind of like it?
DYSON: Well, look, you know, if you like it, it's called good policy. If you don't like it, you call it pandering.
PHILLIP: But is it really policy, I mean, price gouging?
DYSON: Look, if she could do that, Lord have mercy. I mean, she might need to be the pope as opposed to the president, but she's able at least to set the tone.
Here's what's important. First of all, in terms of, you know, Kamala not speaking about -- Vice President Harris speaking about issues, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Everybody has said that what she is doing is genius in the sense she's out-Trumping Trump. So, Trump is pissed that Trump -- hold on, let me just finish. Trump is being undermined by Trumpian-like politics in the sense that, you know, what she's done is, I understand when I'm going to speak, I understand what I'm going to say. She's going to form her policies and she's going to articulate them. Now, whether we agree with them or not is another thing. The point is, the strategy is not backfiring on her.
Number two, in terms of polls, the polls are a statistical dead heat. You say that means that she's losing. I'm saying for Donald Trump, to have already been president once, and coming back with the same reruns, Donald Trump is in a very vulnerable position.
MACE: Well, talking about rerun, Kamala's --
[22:25:00]
BOYKIN: You had it right. You almost got it.
MACE: I will say Kamala's anyway that I want to. But Kamala's
DYSON: No, but you mispronounced it and you also misjudged it.
(CROSSTALKS)
BOYKIN: If I purposely mispronounced your name, you probably have to (INAUDIBLE) appropriate.
MACE: Kamala's policies are Joe Biden's policies. She owns it.
DYSON: You're normalizing that kind of viciousness, ma'am.
MACE: 33 times she was the deciding vote in the Senate on Joe Biden's bills.
CARLSON: We know that just -- she has to own them because she was his vice president. However, we all know that the vice president is not setting the policies, the president is.
MACE: Her vote did.
CARLSON: That's why she should come out and tell the American public what she thinks about the issues. Because the American public is craving to know, is she going to pivot? Does she agree with what she said four years ago or not, especially for people who haven't made up their mind.
BOYKIN: Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. Just today, she was in Maryland with President Biden talking about the fact that the Inflation Reduction Act, which you didn't vote for, you didn't vote for, and no single Republican in Congress voted for, it actually cut the cost of ten prescription drugs at Medicare that are used by seniors, cut them by ridiculous amounts of money, ridiculous percentage of 70, 80 percent sometimes.
And this is actually lowering, it allows Medicare to negotiate cheaper drug prices, which is a benefit to seniors. This is cutting inflation when you reduce the cost and you voted against it along with every one of the members of the Republican Congress.
MACE: I am not going to vote to increase inflation. I vote against every massive spending bill by Republicans and Democrats alike.
DYSON: Inflation has been steady since 2020.
MACE: I don't want the prices of groceries or gas to continue to go up and that's what we'll have to do.
BOYKIN: Inflation has now come down to a three year low. So, you don't have that argument today.
MACE: have you been to the grocery store lately? Do you know how much eggs cost or a gallon of milk?
BOYKIN: I go to the -- I was at Trader Joe's just today in Harlem.
LOTTER: Inflation was 1.4 percent the day that Biden took office.
PHILLIP: I feel like I have to say this today these days, okay? Prices are high. Yes, they are.
MACE: Thank you.
PHILLIP: But prices, inflation has been going down, okay? Inflation has been going down. They've gone down to --
MACE: prices are higher than they've ever been. When I filled up on a tank of gas in November 2020 --
PHILLIP: But you would acknowledge the trend line is going --
MACE: I filled up this morning at $3.89.
PHILLIP: The trend line, you would acknowledge, is heading in the right direction?
MACE: It is not. Have you tried to buy a house? Have you looked at your rent? Have you gone to the grocery store? Everything is --
PHILLIP: Interest rates for buying houses are going down.
MACE: Not in my neighborhood. Not in my neighborhood.
DYSON: There's a difference between --
CARLSON: I'll put a red herring into this, because I think this is really important. Every person says that the economy is the most important reason in how they'll vote. I'm going to throw abortion back into here, because, overwhelmingly, Republicans, independents, and Democratic women do not like the government telling them what to do with their bodies, okay? And I think especially in swing states, Arizona, Nevada, abortion is on the ballot at the state level. And I think that that is going to have a dramatic impact potentially in those states that could be close. Because if women come to the polls and they want to vote against whatever that says on the state level, then how is that going to affect them mentally about how they're going to vote for president, and all the way down as well? So, I think we discount abortion because it doesn't poll high, but I'm going to tell you right now --
MACE: Abortion is on the ballot everywhere. Whether it's on a statewide ballot, it doesn't matter. Abortion is on the ballot everywhere in this country. And I represent a swing district. Last cycle, abortion was the number two issue. It's never polled that high in that area. It'll be a top two or top three issue.
CARLSON: Are you worried about that?
MACE: I am not, because I've been fighting to protect women. I'm a survivor of rape. I've done a lot to protect women, whether it's protecting IVF, protecting rape survivors. I've got multiple bills in Title 18 to help women get not just civil torts, if they've been, you know, filmed, for example, or voyeurism, but also make it a criminal action in the federal code of laws where it's not there today. I've worked really hard to protect women.
PHILLIP: We'll talk more coming up about what the Trump policy might look like around some of those things and how it might affect this election.
But coming up next for us, Trump does say that he knows nothing about Project 2025, but there's a new hidden camera video showing otherwise. We'll see what happened there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:33:50]
PHILLIP: Candid Camera gets political. Project 2025 co-author Russell Vogt caught in a hidden camera interview revealing his work to prepare for a second Trump term. He contradicted Trump's claims about not knowing anything about who's behind Project 2025. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUSSEL VOGT, CO-AUTHOR, PROJECT 2025: We're always going off of if Donald Trump was head of this agency, what would he do with it? What has he said? And then what do we know from the first term? And that's how we've been approaching this. He's very supportive of what we do and know that we have an all manner of things that we do that's, you know, even unrelated to Project 2025. So, I see what he's doing is just very, very conscious distancing himself from my brand.
UNKNOWN: And you're not going to publish those?
VOGT: No.
UNKNOWN: They go straight to him?
VOGT: Yeah, they're very, very close.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: We're back at the table here. So, Mark -- Mark, you're not -- you don't work at Russell Vogt's outfit, but you do work at another sort of pro-Trump organization.
LOTTER: Right, another think tank.
PHILLIP: How can Trump realistically say, I have nothing to do with this, when we know hundreds of people involved in Project 2025 are close to him, used to work for him.
[22:35:04]
And as Russell was saying in that video, Trump is supportive publicly and privately of what they are doing.
LOTTER: Well, I think there's two-fold. Number one, that's what think tanks do. I mean, we and I work for a conservative one not affiliated with Project 2025. We think of things. The smart people write it down.
They hope Congresswoman Mace and senators and governors and presidents will one day take a piece of what you did over here and a little piece of what they did over there, put it together and have a great policy.
We sell it. They sell it to the donors that, oh, these people are on board. He thought he was in a meeting with a potential donor. These undercover British or whatever, I won't call them reporters, but that's how they got him in there. They thought he was in a donor meeting. And shocking. Someone's going to embellish something to a donor.
PHILLIP: Yeah, but is it, I mean, it seems kind of misleading to suggest that, oh, this has nothing to do with us. We have no idea what these plans are. We have no interest in them. The personnel that they're putting together, these are going to be the sort of backbone for a Trump transition. The policy, the backbone of a Trump transition, that seems disingenuous.
LOTTER: Well, there's no --there's no -- I mean, he's -- he has laid out his policy plans. He's put out the 20 bullet points. He will decide. And whether he takes information from one policy shop to another policy shop, there'll probably be a mixture of both and everyone in the conservative movement.
NANCY: This is just a lie by the left. You literally heard in the hidden camera video, the first thing he said is Trump supports the Heritage Foundation. The second thing he said was that the Project 2025 was unrelated.
And literally, here's a guy on hidden camera acknowledging this is not Trump's organization. He doesn't run the Heritage Foundation. I, for one, I'm a member of Congress. I'm a Republican. I don't know what's in Project 2025. I've been asked one question about it at one town hall, something about birth control. And I was like, oh, I am absolutely against Project 2025 as a woman.
PHILLIP: Well, there is -- I did want to ask you about that because, I mean, one of the things that they want to do is --
MACE: I have no idea.
PHILLIP: -- is crack down on abortions nationally. They want to address things like Mifepristone and the access to that. That's --
MACE: I've been very vocal in my support when the Mifepristone case came out in Texas.
PHILLIP: Earlier, I was asking you, I mean, are you worried about this issue for Republicans when you have a whole enterprise coming up with plans to put in place national bans and restrictions?
MACE: I worry when the mainstream media puts words in Donald Trump's mouth about policy he has never embraced, never talked about, and is not going to implement in his administration.
CARLSON: How do you know that?
MACE: As you said earlier, a think tank, they put policy papers together. They hope and pray that a president or a member of Congress -- this is on both sides of the aisle, will pick up their white paper and implement it. They rarely do.
And I can tell you, as a Republican woman and someone who has voiced support for IVF and Mifepristone and all these things, I'm not going to support policy that takes women back. I'm just not going to do it.
CARLSON: We all know why Trump is not supporting this right now, okay? Let's just call it what it is.
MACE: He's never supported it.
CARLSON: He knows this is not popular with the people that are going to determine this election, which are the people in the middle. They do not like this, especially women. You didn't like that particular part of it.
MACE: Oh no, I'm against it. I am a hundred percent against it.
CARLSON: But that's just one little part. And by the way, Trump was a Democrat before he was a Republican, so we don't know what the hell he's going to do when he's actually in office. We don't know what he's going to do.
MACE: We had a four-year record. We know what he's going to do. We had four years.
DYSON: But it's clear that many of the people in his administration are people who are involved with this think tank. So, we know the cycle feeds each other, right?
BOYKIN: It's an industry in Washington, D.C.
DYSON: It is an industry.
MACE: It's a cottage industry. It raised millions of dollars.
DYSON: But I'm saying that we know clearly that this man is a pathological liar. It's not the lying left, it's what's left of his lies after he continues to reinforce them time and time again. And I think that it's clear to us that Donald Trump doesn't want to speak honestly and openly right now --
BOYKIN: If you want to talk about policy lies --
DYSON: -- because he understands that the American people don't get what he's doing.
MACE: He has never supported Project 2025. When has he said he supported Project 2025?
BOYKIN: If you want to talk about policy lies --
DYSON: He has undergirded them in terms of his public policy.
PHILLIP: One aspect of this is that -- hang on one second, Professor and Congresswoman.
MACE: When did he say he supported Project 2025?
PHILLIP: One second, Congresswoman. J.D. Vance, the current vice presidential nominee for the Republicans, he wrote the foreword for the book of the guy who is running Project 2025.
There's a bunch to it, but this part he says, "Roberts is articulating a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics recognizing that virtue and material progress go hand in hand." There's more to it where he talks about loading the muskets and fighting for the ideas that are in the book and that are espoused in Project 2025
DYSON: Right. Donald Trump doesn't have to say I support Project 2025 in order for Donald Trump to support 2025. MACE: That's a lie. That's just not true.
DYSON: I'm not lying. I'm telling the truth.
MACE: I mean, the American people are smarter than that. He has never -- he has never said he supported Project 2025 ever. Never ever.
DYSON: It amazes me that one of the dumbest human beings ever to occupy the presidency has people defending him and calling people who disagree with him as a lie. That's ridiculous.
MACE: But you're putting words in his mouth.
BOYKIN: Wait, wait. I just think this whole conversation is hilarious because Project 2025, first of all, it is the Republican Party.
MACE: It is, again, that is not true. Absolutely not true.
DYSON: You're going to tell me what my party believes?
BOYKIN: Let me just say this. It was created by Republican Party operatives, including former Trump administration officials. And what's so funny about this whole conversation to me is that Democrats --
MACE: That's just not true.
BOYKIN: -- have been so successful in branding this.
MACE: That is not true.
BOYKIN: Every Republican is now afraid of their own policies because their policies are toxic. It's like when Trump denied Stormy Daniels.
MACE: I literally just said I don't support Project 2025 and you're going to tell me that's my party platform. My Republican Party platform was rolled out by Donald Trump a few weeks ago and it supports women.
BOYKIN: Look, I understand what the official platform is. But the reality is that the people who created this platform are the people who were working in the government.
LOTTER: The reality is, you have nothing to run on to back your policies and you have to lie about ours.
BOYKIN: You're afraid of your own policy because you know it's unpopular. Eliminating the Department of Education is an unpopular thing to do.
PHILLIP: Keith and Marc, Keith and Marc, give me second here because I want to give Gretchen --
MACE: It's a lie. What you said is not true.
BOYKIN: Trump wants to do the exact same Project 2025 -- MACE: He does not.
PHILLIP: Keith --
MACE: He does not.
BOYKIN: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education. He just said so this week. He wants to eliminate the Department of Education.
PHILLIP: Let me let Gretchen talk.
CARLSON: Do you not think that the Heritage Foundation put together a plan that they thought Donald Trump would embrace? Do we not think that? I worked at Fox News for 11 years, okay? I might know something about this.
People listen to the Heritage Foundation on the Republican side. And with all of those Trump officials making this plan, do we really think that initially he was against this? Now he is, publicly. We have no idea what he would do if he's elected.
MACE: He thinks on the Republican side, just like there are dozens and dozens.
CARLSON: But the Heritage Foundation is at the top.
MACE: Okay, so, because -- that we have Democrat students protesting against Jews and don't allow Jews to go to college campus, that defines your entire party, right? So, you're all anti-Semites. It's the same argument. We're all anti-Semites. Because those are Democrats protesting against Jews.
PHILLIP: My friends at the table, we are going to talk a little break here. Congresswoman, thank you. Everyone, hold on for just a moment. Coming up next, we have a fascinating story. Trust me, you'll want to be here for this one. CNN speaks with a black Trump supporter who runs a MAGA merchandise store. Hear why.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JO ANNE PRICE, RUNS A TRUMP STORE: It's one of those things that when people see one, then they want one.
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[22:47:04]
PHILLIP: In a Cape Cod-style house painted in red, white, and blue in Virginia, CNN's Elle Reeve met with a black Trump supporter who runs a MAGA merchandise store. It sells everything from Confederate flag bathing suits to white privilege credit cards.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRICE: Every woman ought to have one of these. It's one of those things that when people see one, then they want one. Same thing with a Confederate hat. You know why? Because people don't think you have the nerve to do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Elle Reeve is here joining us at the table. So interesting. I mean, she seems to get great joy out of being sort of like a non-traditional face of MAGA Confederate merchandise.
ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I asked her if she liked being provocative, and she said yes, but then corrected herself and said it was unifying for her to have the Confederate flag, that when people felt that something of theirs was controversial, it brought them together to hear someone like her say that it was okay.
PHILLIP: Michael.
DYSON: That sounds -- that sounds like self-hatred and justification of white supremacy. And let me just say this because this congresswoman is a wonderful human being. But when you disrespect Kamala Harris by saying you will call her whatever you want, I know you don't intend it to be that way. That's the history and legacy of white disregard for the humanity of black people.
MACE: So, now you're calling me racist.
DYSON: I didn't say it.
MACE: That is B.S. That is complete B.S.
DYSON: I just said you were racist. You don't have to intend racism to accomplish it.
MACE: No, no. You are intending that I am racist.
DYSON: Your disrespect of Kamala Harris is part and parcel of a tradition of disrespect.
MACE: You are defensive and - it's disgusting.
BOYKIN: Congresswoman, why can't you just --
DYSON: I'm not calling you a racist.
MACE: You are. You are. You absolutely are.
BOYKIN: Why can't you just hear he said?
DYSON: Disrespecting--
PHILLIP: Let me get in your key.
MACE: That is disgusting.
PHILLIP: Professor --
MACE: You know what's disgusting to women is your disrespect of them. She doesn't know what a woman is. And if 25 years ago I became -- DYSON: White women don't have the ability to tell black women who paid the price of blood to make this country what it is to tell them they're not real women.
MACE: Twenty-five years ago.
DYSON: They cared for your baby.
MACE: Twenty-five years ago, I became the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina. I fought my way through it.
DYSON: So, call her name right. So, pronounce her name right.
PHILLIP: Let me ask you again.
MACE: And Kamala Harris --
DYSON: Kamala. Kamala.
MACE: I will say it anyway I want.
BOYKIN: It's Kamala. You're doing this on purpose, Congresswoman.
MACE: I am not.
DYSON: You're disrespectful.
PHILLIP: Just a second.
DYSON: You can't expect people to respect you if you can't respect her.
MACE: If a man put on a skirt and walked that stage 25 years ago, she would have said it.
DYSON: You're a white woman disrespecting a black woman.
MACE: She would have taken that achievement away from women.
PHILLIP: Professor Dyson, let me get in here because I want to play one more bit from Elle's piece because it does have something to do with this, believe it or not. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REEVE: How do you make sense of how Trump talks about Vice President Kamala Harris? That he sort of suggests that he doesn't understand her biracial background, that first she was Indian and then she was black. What do you make of that?
PRICE: I don't understand it either.
[22:50:00]
REEVE: She's Indian and she's Jamaican. PRICE: Yeah.
REEVE: Is she black? I mean, do you not think she's black?
PRICE: Is she? Was she born here?
REEVE: Yes.
PRICE: Yes.
REEVE: Were her parents citizens?
PRICE: No.
REEVE: Okay. But we have birthright citizenship in America.
PRICE: We call that anchor.
REEVE: People can't immigrate here and not be citizens but have green cards and work permits.
PRICE: Yeah, that's true. However, she can claim to be black because of her Jamaican father. You know, that's her right. We're a melting pot, you know, because I basically have a combination in my family, as well.
REEVE: How do you reconcile that? Like, you have a history of blended families in your family. How do you reconcile that with Trump seeming to not understand how Kamala Harris could have a blended family herself?
REEVE: Herself? She could have a blended family. What I'm saying is his comments about that, I think he's making a point. And, you know, I'm not so disturbed by that.
REEVE: But what is the point he's making?
PRICE: The point he's making simply is that she is not a black, black person.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Elle, you have the patience of a saint, I'll tell you that. But, I mean, after all of that, what did you get from her? And she talks about her blended family. I mean, is she saying there were biracial people in her family? Is she biracial? What is the deal with all that?
REEVE: Yes. She said going back generations there were biracial people in her family. She -- when you get to the heart of it, she was essentially saying that Harris was not one of us, just wasn't like her. She was very much committed to Donald Trump. And this is something that's really striking about all kinds of Trump supporters that I interview all over the country is how profoundly devoted they are to him. And they will defend what he says.
PHILLIP: Pretty much anything that he has to say.
REEVE: Yeah.
PHILLIP: They'll defend it. Even these attacks that are clearly, I mean, racist toward her. It's so interesting to hear.
DYSON: Well, black people go back, I mean, generations, you know, all of us have interracial realities in our ethnic and genetic tree. But to say she's not black, more black people were dropped off in Jamaica than in the United States of America.
Blackness is not defined by African Americans. She's black because Jamaica is black in her father and her mother's Indian. So, this disrespect, again, for the complexity and the nuance, not one of us, is a traditional trope of white supremacy that's been internalized. She's colonized in her mindset. She refuses to see the black people before her. And she disrespects Kamala Harris.
BOYKIN: She was born in the United States in Oakland, California. Her father is black. She's black. She went to a black college, pledged a black sorority.
DYSON: Got a black pastor.
BOYKIN: She's got a black pastor. She's identified as black her entire life. And black people were not the ones who made this one drop rule in the first place. That was you all, white folks who made that rule.
DYSON: Exactly.
BOYKIN: Black people did not decide that we could not be black or white based on our one drop of blood. It was white America that made that rule. And we're following the rule that you all sound like.
DYSON: And her Indian mother raised her as a black woman. Her Indian mother understood you will be seen as a black woman in this society because you are. And as a result of that, she was reared within the womb of a loving, protective, and nurturing mother.
PHILLIP: So, Congresswoman, I don't want you to have to necessarily speak for Donald Trump in this way, but you are a Republican, an elected one. It sounds like this is kind of unhelpful. I mean, do you defend his use of that language, his description of her as not really black?
MACE: Well, number one, I want to go back to what we said earlier. The district that I represent, South Carolina's first congressional district, by the way, the first African American or black to represent this district or any district in the country, came from my district, from South Carolina. So, we have a lot of great, rich history, not only in Charleston, but throughout the state.
I represent an area of South Carolina where really the difference between rich and poor is literally black and white in most areas. I've worked a lot on civil rights. And just because I'm white doesn't mean I'm racist. I have worked with folks. BOYKIN: Nobody said it was.
MACE: You are.
DYSON: Mispronouncing her name.
PHILLIP: Let's let her finish.
MACE: I have worked with blacks and whites throughout the legislature, throughout Congress. I have reached across the aisle. I have a lot of friends on both sides of all walks of life. I certainly take that. A lot of rich history comes out of my district in South Carolina that I'm deeply doubted.
DYSON: Say her name with respect.
PHILLIP: Trump injecting Vice President Harris' race and then suggesting that she's not actually black.
[22:55:03]
Why is he doing that? Should he stop?
BOYKIN: Yes or no.
MACE: Well, I mean, I didn't hear him say it. I didn't hear what he said about her race. I am not going to weigh in on her race as a woman.
PHILLIP: He did say it. He definitely said it.
MACE: Okay, well, as a woman, I want to weigh in.
DYSON: She turned black, he said. He said she was Indian. She was Indian all he knew. Now she's turned black.
MACE: She's a mixed race. She's a mixed race.
BOYKIN: He said that to the National Association of Black Journalists. He went to the same event where he said he'd done more for black people than any president in history.
PHILLIP: I guess, here's the thing.
MACE: When he was president, wages for women were better than they'd been in a long time. Wages for blacks were better than they'd been in a long time. He did. He did a lot of good.
PHILLIP: Hang on a second.
MACE: He did a lot of good.
PHILLIP: Congresswoman, let me just finish this to both of you.
MACE: People from all walks of the country.
PHILLIP: It just doesn't take that much courage, honestly, to just say that was out of bounds.
MACE: I don't know what he said. I didn't see what he said.
BOYKIN: Come on.
PHILLIP: He said that she turned black. He questioned whether she was really black. I don't think that's that hard to say. That's out of bounds. Can you say that?
MACE: I mean, I didn't say it, and I would not say it. I just said it.
BOYKIN: Just say yes. Just say yes.
PHILLIP: We are out of time. We are out of time.
UNKNOWN: It's a cult.
MACE: I am not in a -- are you kidding me?
BOYKIN: It's a cult. Yes, you are. Yor a cult member.
PHILLIP: We are out of time at the table. Thank you for watching at home. No time for nightcaps tonight. "Laura Coates Live" starts right after this break.
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