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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
School Shooting Forces Voters To Confront American Crisis; Harris And Trump Both Respond To Deadly School Shooting; Liz Cheney Says She's Voting For Harris For President; "NewsNight" Discusses What The Harris-Trump Presidential Debate Would Look Like; Elon Musk Deletes Tweet Promoting Tucker Carlson's Interview With Historian. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 04, 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 VIDEO CLIP)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, violence visits another school.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And then that's when I texted my mom and my dad. I was like, I love you guys, if anything happens.
PHILLIP: And forces voters to confront an American crisis.
Plus, Donald Trump meets the voters as new swing state polls show 2024 is up for grabs, especially in Pennsylvania.
Also, Liz Cheney gets off the sidelines. The conservative who agrees with Harris on virtually nothing says Trump is so dangerous, she has no choice but to vote for her.
And Elon Musk hopes you didn't see this. The owner of X scrubs a tweet promoting Tucker Carlson's chat with an accused Nazi apologist.
Live at the table, Jamal Simmons, Tricia McLaughlin, Bryan Lanza, Julie Roginsky, and Montel Williams. Welcome to a special edition of NewsNight, State of the Race.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip in New York.
Let's get right to what America is talking about. Tonight, families fear and the fragile politics of guns. The country's attention today turned to Winder, Georgia, where four souls there are now gone, two students, two teachers, after a 14-year-old high school student shot them, gunned them down.
Those students were caught in the chaos and the simple act of going to school forced them to live through the terror of those uncertain minutes where everyone inside Apalachee High School was unsure if they were going to be next. Listen here to Isabel Rosales on the scene of the shooting retelling what one student told her, a child who's reckoning now with her own mortality.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That was the moment that she took out her phone and she showed me the text message to her mother saying, I know I haven't been a perfect daughter. I love you. I'm sorry. She couldn't think of anything else but to apologize for her being in that situation in that moment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: 385, that is the number of mass shooting, mass casualty events we've had in this country since the beginning of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
This is such a sickening habit now that we have in this country. What are you feeling today as we report on this yet again?
MONTEL WILLIAMS, TALK SHOW HOST AND ACTIVIST: You know, the first thing I did was I looked back at an op-ed piece that I wrote back in February of 2018, after Parkland shooting, because on my show, I don't know if a lot of people remember this or not, but I probably had the majority of then Columbines, several of the school victims came aboard the show. I actually went to Chardon after the mass shooting there. I was at Maryville hole shock (ph) in Washington State. And I looked into the eyes of those kids. And my op-ed started with never again, again. That was back in 2018. But it really should be never again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, again.
It's time for the adults in this conversation to take this seriously. 77 percent of the people in this country believe that we need to have stricter gun laws. Why don't we start doing that? And number two, I'm sorry. We just found this out right before it came on the air. A year before this happened, that 14-year-old, as a 13-year-old, had the FBI knock on their door and ask their family and ask him if he was talking about something like this. And the father said well, you know, I do have guns in the house, but he can't have access to him. Really?
Well now it's time to start holding the people who have for children like this. Let's start holding these parents more accountable. Let's start locking those parents up for 15, 20 years, then we're going to start seeing at least responsibility in the gun ownership world.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, there's that part of it. I mean, look, there are so many aspects of this that are just, I don't want to say mind boggling, because, in a way, we are seeing the same patterns happening over and over again.
[22:05:04]
But that part of it, the parents' responsibility, law enforcement, when they hear a report somewhat credible with a child who has access to weapons, do they have options? Are they utilizing their options? What's happening here?
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, it's interesting, the White House, when I was there a couple years ago, they were very focused on this, the president and vice president were able to get a bipartisan -- a very small bipartisan gun control legislation passed.
But you keep hearing the same refrain. I heard somebody say it today. It can't happen here. We never thought it could happen here. I mean, every community in America now has to wrestle with the fact that it can happen anywhere. And all of us are one second away from getting a phone call that we never want to get.
And so it's amazing that a very small sliver of the country that holds the Second Amendment orthodoxy that is so different than where everybody else is holding the rest of us in a position where we can't do anything to fix a problem that is really just a uniquely American problem. And it's amazing that we haven't been able to figure this out.
BRYAN LANZA, FORMER DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN: I mean, listen, you know, I today dropped off my daughter at school. And, you know, the week before we had sort of, you know, parents come in and scope out the school, talk to the teachers. You know, the very first thing I looked at was the security. She's pre- three. Yes, she's pre-three. But that's the very first thing we look at.
And, you know, I agree, you know, with Montel. You know, something has to change. I don't agree with you that it's a slim majority or a small fraction of the country believes in the Second Amendment. I think a lot of people believe in the Second Amendment.
SIMMONS: No, it's not about believing in the Second Amendment. The question is whether or not we believe that your right to own a gun is more important than my right to live.
LANZA: I went to school where we had metal detectors to get into schools. I mean, this is a long, long, long history that we've had. I mean, I went to school in the late 80s. We had metal detectors. I mean, my parents made me go to a different school.
WILLIAMS: Same with that (INAUDIBLE). We have 300 million guns in America. Let's start understanding -- I know the president has been talking to where the vice president was talking about a buyback. We're going to buy back a hundred million guns? You know, what happened after the Parkland shooting? You know, I did 22 years in the military. I collected -- I had 16 guns. How many do I have now? Zippity-doo-dah. It's my responsibility to help families like yours so you don't have to worry.
It's these people who claim, I had AR-15s, I had equivalent to MAC- 10s. I had ten millimeter, nine millimeter, five millimeters. Why do I have those many guns? Yes, I love being able to go shoot and plink, plink, plink, but, you know, it's now time for us to start looking to the future, stop looking to the past.
TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So, if you're responsible --
PHILLIP: To buy back the guns, then what? What is the solution then?
WILLIAMS: The solution is, first off, this 13-year-old boy clearly had some mental health issues if he was writing stories about doing a school shooting a year ago, and no one provided him with the services he needed. One of the biggest problems in this country, you're going to hear it for the next four or five days, well, we need to take care of the people who are mentally ill. We'll start paying to take care of the people who are mentally ill. We have got to address mental illness in this country.
JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: But we're not the only country where we have mentally ill kids. I mean, this whole mentally ill issue that, oh, these kids are mentally ill, of course, they're mentally ill. But you know where else there are mentally ill? There are mentally ill in England. There are mentally ill in France. There are mentally ill all over the world. And yet this is the only country in the world where this happens.
And I'm old enough to remember Columbine, where this was front page news for days, if not weeks, if not months on end, and now we see this on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, and we just shrug.
PHILLIP: And there are questions about whether or not this is really mattering to the American public. I mean, years ago, you know, when Parkland happened, I thought, wow, this is it. There's no way we can -- I mean, everyone did, no way we can countenance these kids.
But look at this. polling from just a couple days ago. This is really fascinating. When you ask Americans what is the most important issue to them, look at where gun violence shows up.
ROGINSKY: We've normalized it.
PHILLIP: It's almost at the very bottom. I mean, that was actually genuinely surprising to me given that there are so many people in this country for whom this is a very important issue, because it's not just the kids who are in school, it's their parents who are dropping them off, and their grandparents who want them home.
MCLAUGHLIN: I think we can all agree that a solution. There needs to be solutions. It's how do we get there. And I think many of us at this table very much disagree on how we get there. But there is something that we haven't addressed. And this is a Washington Post statistic that shows 86 percent of mass shootings happen in gun free zones.
So, Montel, you were saying how you used to have a number of firearms.
PHILLIP: I mean, it's largely, what, schools? I mean --
MCLAUGHLIN: Schools, parks, I mean, large --
WILLIAMS: It's 31 plus this year in schools alone.
MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, but I guess that this is -- PHILLIP: So, I don't think that that's an indictment on gun free zones.
[22:10:01]
I think that's -- people are not -- they're not getting the guns from the schools. They're bringing the guns into schools.
MCLAUGHLIN: Of course, but I would like somebody who is a responsible gun owner, like Montel was, to have a firearm and not be sitting ducks where these kids and these adults in parks and other public places --
ROGINSKY: But we had this in Uvalde. I'm sorry, we had people in Uvalde with guns and guess what happened? They ran from the gunfire.
MCLAUGHLIN: But they ran away, but that's a failure of law enforcement.
ROGINSKY: Introducing more guns into this equation is not going to save anybody's life.
LANZA: Let's be clear. It was a law enforcement school resource officer that stopped the shooting today with a gun.
ROGINSKY: Okay, but wait a second. Correct. After this kid already opened fire and killed four people and ruined so many lives (ph).
SIMMONS: But that's a trained officer and a trained officer makes a lot of sense. The question is, the thing you're raising is, should we be training or equipping teachers to have guns in the classroom when something like this breaks out? And that seems like it's a little bit too far. We asked a lot of the teachers already. Do we want them to not be scared of guns?
PHILLIP: Let me just -- you know, we're in the middle of a presidential election obviously, and the question is, what's the response from the two leaders here who are vying for the presidency? I want to play Harris first and then I'll play Trump. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies. And it's just outrageous that every day in our country, in the United States of America, that parents have to send their children to school worried about whether or not their child will come home alive. It's senseless. It is -- we've got to stop it. And we have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all. You know, it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And here was Donald Trump responding to a question about this just in the last hour.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: We had this terrible shooting in Georgia.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Right.
HANNITY: Our prayers are with our friends in Georgia. And I've been doing town halls and interviews in public with you for all these years, since you got into the political arena. And I told this audience, never before have restrictions been so tight. What is going on?
TRUMP: Well, it's a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we're going to make it better. We've got to heal our world. We've got all these wars.
Viktor Orban made a statement, they said, bring Trump back and we won't have any problems.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: I mean, it's hard to know, especially, you know, Trump didn't seem to even acknowledge what had actually happened in Georgia. I'm really -- I'm surprised that would be a sufficient response for, really, anybody, even if you believe that the answer to what happened in Georgia today is not necessarily to address those.
LANZA: He put out a statement.
MCLAUGHLIN: He did put out a statement.
LANZA: We could read the statement, which is pretty extensive. It talks about this, but then that was just comment on a T.V. show, right?
PHILLIP: Are you -- is the argument here that I should go off of what his staffer wrote on a piece of paper as opposed to what he says?
MCLAUGHLIN: He said it was a sick world and --
LANZA: He's accountable for his campaign, right? I mean, first of all, what do you want him to say? He put out a statement, just like everybody else, saying, hey, this is a problem, it's a sick world. He went on T.V.
PHILLIP: I mean, look, the bar is not -- this is the presidency of the United States. The bar is not on the floor, condolences to the families, an expression of sadness about what happened today. What is going on?
WILLIAMS: I did a show, Military Makeover, where we literally made over the home of Ms. Dixon, who was the wife of the gym teacher who jumped up and tried to protect those kids down in Parkland. And I remember looking in her eyes, but then I went back to the school later on and looked into the eyes of those kids, do you realize that now we're going to have an entire population that's going to suffer from PTSD for the next 15 years? First off, what we need to make sure we're doing, you said you went by your school to make sure it's at least secure, how did that gun get in that school? There was a student who sat beside him before he opened fire. He had the gun in the classroom. How did that get through the front door?
Now, I never thought I would ever say that we need to have metal detectors at every single school in America, but let's start putting that to money, metal detectors at every single school. Prayers, and my heart goes out, doesn't do a thing for these families right now who are suffering tonight, nothing.
PHILLIP: All right. Everyone, stick around for us.
Coming up next, we have some more breaking news tonight. Liz Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris. She's calling Trump too much of a danger to America, this as we learn that some Republicans are secretly hoping that he loses.
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[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: Breaking tonight, Liz Cheney is with her, Vice President Kamala Harris, that is. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FMR. REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): And as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: What makes that notable is that she's actually saying she's going to do something else. So many Republicans have come out and said, I don't like Trump, I won't vote for Trump, but I'm going to write in John Doe, Ronald Reagan, whatever, I mean, this is a choice that's available to them.
SIMMONS: Yes. And this is the governing coalition that Kamala Harris is in the middle of building, right?
[22:20:00]
It stretches from AOC and Bernie Sanders all the way on the left, to Liz Cheney on the right. And believe me, I'm sure Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney, they get together, they have very little that they agree on, except for the fact they agree this democracy ought to function and we ought to have a leader who is an honest and trustworthy person who will stand by it.
PHILLIP: I do wonder sometimes, I actually was a little surprised to not see her at the DNC. SIMMONS: Yes.
PHILLIP: Right?
SIMMONS: I expected her to speak right next to Adam. But you can get a different day.
PHILLIP: Yes.
SIMMONS: So, I'm the mediator strategist here. So, you don't want to do it all at the convention, you still have some more cards to play in the weeks after, and that's why this is important.
ROGINSKY: And there's more attention being paid now. I mean, she would have gotten lost at the DNC, but now she's got her own media cycle, obviously, for herself.
LANZA: I mean, she got lost in the shooting as well.
ROGINSKY: Well, yes.
PHILLIP: But she did -- I mean, look, I think that she's making a point to do this. Because, I mean, she used to -- this was, you know, an event that I think most people would not have known she was doing or heard that she said. So, she wanted to make it known.
SIMMONS: She was in North Carolina.
PHILLIP: Right, in a swing statement.
LANZA: It's good for the Duke newspaper. They're the ones who wrote the story.
ROGINSKY: I will just say she probably does agree with Kamala Harris on a lot more than we think, right? She agrees in a robust foreign policy, so does Kamala Harris. She agrees that -- yes, she agrees that you shouldn't be Putin's patsy, so does Kamala Harris. I mean, everything that Liz Cheney stands for from -- I wouldn't say everything, actually most things Kamala Harris don't agree with, but on the important things, the preservation of democracy, the fact that you have a peaceful transfer of power. All of those things are things that both Republicans and Democrats used to believe back in the day, no longer.
MCLAUGHLIN: I got to jump in here. Okay, I'm old enough to remember when the Democrats were constantly saying that the Cheneys were war criminals, they were fascists, and now it's suddenly --
PHILLIP: Now it's the Republicans calling the Cheneys war criminals.
MCLAUGHLIN: When we talk about the preservation of democracy and the preservation of the Constitution, Kamala Harris has advocated for expanding the court. She's talked about a new (ph) filibuster in order to pass the Green New Deal. Those are things that are not expanding or preserving democracy in any way. Socialist price controls, by no means, are conservative. I mean -- SIMMONS: You mean the socialist price controls that Republican attorneys general defend in states across the country?
MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, and I would never defend that. I mean, I don't know which attorneys general you're talking about --
SIMMONS: But it's social. 40 states around the country have these price controls that happen in emergencies.
MCLAUGHLIN: When Nixon did this decades ago, he was --
LANZA: In emergencies, the failure of the Biden-Harris policy. That's what the emergency is.
ROGINSKY: Well, look where the Cheneys come from, right? They come from the same robust foreign policy wing that Dick Cheney espoused when he worked, obviously, in the Nixon and Ford administrations, when he worked with Ronald Reagan, when he served with Ronald Reagan, when he was in Congress, and then Liz Cheney then takes on.
What does Donald Trump do? He takes that entire mindset and throws it in the garbage, right? You have people being arrested today.
LANZA: What's the impact of Cheney's endorsement?
ROGINSKY: What is the impact of Cheney? I think it gives permission --
PHILLIP: Yes.
(CROSSTALKS)
ROGINSKY: Permission, yes.
WILLIAMS: Especially the fact that we are talking about it on a day like today. You know, you have a news cycle where we have this shooting at a school, and now all of a sudden Liz Cheney just kind of comes out, and I think she just kind of took over the news cycle. Because I think for a lot of Republicans out there who need to have an excuse to vote for Kamala, we just got it.
LANZA: Well, I would say this, you know, if you look at the data, which is, you know, what we do here, you know, if you look at the support that Donald Trump has consolidated among the Republicans, it's higher today than what it was in 2020 and 2016 in the general election. So, you have to really ask, what is the impact of Liz Cheney? So, it's not going to be impact with Republicans. Maybe it's impact with independents. But you also got to think, where's that going to play? Is it going to play in Pennsylvania? If Joe Biden can't move the needle for Harris in Pennsylvania, Liz Cheney's not going to move the needle.
And where was Harris today? She was in New Hampshire, which is a blue state. Why is she in New Hampshire? My guess is we're going to see polls in the next week that show that she's so liberal that even, you know, modern New Hampshire is sort of rejecting away and moving from this. PHILLIP: Well, another thing about New Hampshire is that it's also close to Maine, where there's a congressional district electoral vote that is up for grabs there.
One thing I want to throw out here, this is interesting reporting from our friend, Jonathan Martin, at Politico. If Republicans want to win, they need Trump to lose big. And he's writing that based on his conversations with a lot of high level Republicans who he says are telling him they believe that the best thing for Republicans is a Kamala Harris presidency, maybe Republican control of Congress, and maybe that's a formula for the end of Trumpism.
SIMMONS: Yes, maybe. So, I spent my entire adult life campaigning against Republicans. And for a long time, I believed some Republicans were in bed with the defense industry. Some Republicans were in bed with Wall Street. Some Republicans were in bed with some other industry that I thought was onerous. These guys are just in bed with themselves, right? The Trumpers are just taking care of the Trumpers, Donald Trump himself and his family.
And so now I think what Jonathan Martin is getting to is we got to move past the cult of Trump and get back to a Republican Party that's based on some sort of values that the rest of us can argue about.
[22:25:06]
I want to have conversations that are about like, you know, taxes and defense policy.
PHILLIP: But will a Trump loss really -- I mean, Montel, I mean, do you think a Trump loss would actually mean the end of Trumpism or just the beginning of a new era?
WILLIAMS: The beginning of a new era, a new era of hate. Look, he's unleashed the hound. Hate is part of our society now. It's open. It's there. And I think there are those who are going to be angry if he loses and fester the hate even more. So, I think it's just the beginning of a new era of hate.
SIMMONS: But he's not going away either. Does anybody else here think he's going away?
LANZA: Here's what I would say, and I think he actually wins in November, but if he were not to win in November, I think he runs again.
SIMMONS: Yes. I think he's exactly right.
ROGINSKY: I agree with that. But let me ask you a question for the Republicans on this panel. What do you guys believe in that he believes in? If you're pro-life, for example --
LANZA: I'm very happy with his first term.
ROGINSKY: Well, are you? Because let me ask you this --
MCLAUGHLIN: Immigration, economy --
ROGINSKY: Immigration, economy --
MCLAUGHLIN: Immigration is double what it was.
ROGINSKY: But wait a second. Stop, stop, stop. Look, everything that you guys believe is a governing principle, right, or you used to believe as a governing principle, a robust foreign policy, low taxes, low -- smaller deficit. All of these things are things that he has exploded. The deficit exploded under him. The robust foreign policies --
LANZA: Taxes were low under him.
SIMMONS: Anti-Russia.
ROGINSKY: Anti-Russia. Taxes were not low under him for the middle class. They were low for the really richest among us, but not for everybody else.
PHILLIP: If Donald Trump were to lose now, run again, I mean, what would he be like, 84? Like would you be comfortable with that?
LANZY: No.
SIMMONS: Same age as Biden.
LANZA: And you defended the age. You said age is not a big deal. I agree with you.
MCLAUGHLIN: Can we revisit the foreign policy piece really quick, because everyone seems to have amnesia, the fact that we were not at war under Donald Trump. Ukraine has been invaded by Putin. Who you all said was, Trump was a bootlicker of his, clearly not. The Middle East, October 7th, would not have happened if Donald Trump were president. The South China Sea, it was not having the hostilities it is. The Filipino sailors are actually getting injured. There are ships that are actively getting injured. We have a 25 percent military recruitment deficit. There are major problems with foreign policy front.
And for everyone to sit around and pretend under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that this is daisies and roses is absolute -- I'm sorry, it's a joke.
ROGINSKY: You're right.
WILLIAMS: The military recruitment issue was -- it was huge under Donald Trump.
MCLAUGHLIN: It's 2021 it really, really started.
WILLIAMS: It really started in, I think 2019, '18, '19.
MCLAUGHLIN: We've got different data.
WILLIAMS: We've got different data.
ROGINSKY: Wait, let me go back to Ukraine for a second. Do you really believe that Donald Trump is the reason this war started? If Donald Trump were president, he would have given Ukraine on a silver platter and probably pulled us out of NATO, which would have allowed Putin to go into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland. I mean, give me a break.
All right, guys, we're going to, we're going to hit the pause button on that one for now. But coming up next, we're going to fact check Donald Trump's town hall that just happened in Pennsylvania tonight.
Plus, we're learning a little bit more about the rules that will be in place for next week's debate between Trump and Harris. We'll tell you what they are. Stand by.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:32:36]
PHILLIP: Fox tonight held what was billed as a town hall in Pennsylvania, but of course, it sounded a lot like a Trump rally. CNN's Daniel Dale is joining us now for a fact-check. So, Daniel, let's start with this claim about Iran and terror. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (R): Iran was broke. They didn't have the money for Hamas and for Hezbollah. They didn't have the money for anybody. We went four years without any blow-ups. We had no World Trade Center blow-up. We had no radical Islamic terror. We had no radical Islamic terror.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: What say you, Daniel?
DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: I say there are two claims there and they're both false. So, first, this claim that Iran did not have money for Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups during his presidency.
That's wrong as his own administration acknowledged in 2020. Iran continued funding these terror groups throughout his presidency, although it did reduce funding, experts say, when it came under sanctions pressure from Trump.
And then the second claim that we had no radical Islamic terror is also wrong. There were terror attacks by Islamic extremists under Trump. There was one that Trump repeatedly lamented during his presidency. It was the attack that killed eight people on the West Side Highway in New York. DOJ alleged it was carried out in support of ISIS.
And then of course, there was a 2019 attack by an extremist member of the Saudi military on a U.S. military facility that killed three U.S. Navy sailors. DOJ alleged that was carried out by Ajihadas, who was a long-time associate of an al-Qaeda group.
PHILLIP: And Trump also said this about the CNN interview with Kamala Harris and her running mate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you watch that interview, she had notes. That means she knew the questions and she had notes. She kept looking down, up, and nobody wants to cover it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Give us the fact-check, Daniel.
DALE: Nobody wants to cover it because it did not happen. Vice President Harris did not have notes in her interview with Dana Bash. You can look at images, photos, videos from that interview if you're skeptical.
There is nothing on the table right in front of her. All that's there are Dana Bash's notes. You'll notice those pieces of paper facing Dana Bash, not Vice President Harris. And of course, Vice President Harris was not given the questions in advance.
PHILLIP: All right, Daniel Dale, thank you very much.
DALE: Thank you.
PHILLIP: Back at the table here, you know, that being what it is, maybe just a window into Trump's mind, which if you've covered him, it's nothing new.
[22:35:00]
What we are learning tonight is about the debate -- the Harris campaign. They're saying it's on, they've agreed to the rules, most notably that the mics will be muted. That's actually a big win for Trump. And you can probably see why tonight because I don't think his staff really want him spinning when he has the opportunity to.
WILLIAMS: She's going to get him to spin. He won't be able to stop that in any way, shape, or form. This is a prosecutor. This is a woman who is -- he's going to meet his match when he steps on that stage. I'm going to have fun that night. I'm going to crack up because he doesn't know what he's in for.
She's literally going to want to punch him in ways and he's not going to be able to keep his mouth shut. Even if the mics are silent, you're going to still hear -- in the background.
PHILLIP: So interestingly, you mentioned her being a prosecutor. Here's what the Harris campaign said in a letter. "Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President. We suspect this is the primary reason for the campaign's insistence on muted microphones." I was surprised to see them. right out that she'll be fundamentally disadvantaged.
ROGINSKY: Well, they're trying to lower expectations, right? Which is the job of anybody who's doing debate prep is to make sure that their expectations are lowered so that you end up doing better.
LANZA: But here's the interesting part is -- is Kamala could have had the mics on had she just agreed to two more debates?
You know because that's what the Trump campaign said. It's like, hey, listen, you want the mics on? Let's negotiate. Trump's like, I'm a negotiator. You want the mics? Let's put more debates. What did she say? No.
She doesn't want to debate. She doesn't want to hold press conferences. She doesn't want to defend her Biden record, and she doesn't want to defend her flip-flops, and she doesn't want to show her lack of vision going forward.
So, whether it's, you know, whether it's the debate performance, you know, I mean, people have underestimated Trump in the debates. I have. I've seen him walk away. He usually loses a couple points after every debate, but it's always some type of image.
I think he hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 debate. He certainly destroyed Joe Biden. I mean, Joe Biden basically destroyed himself, actually. So, I think he's going to do really well in the debate because this time what he has that he didn't have the last couple of times is he has a comparative record against his, against hers.
And it's clear, the issues that the American voters care about, immigration, inflation, they trust President Trump over Joe Biden, over Harris. So, when we're having that conversation, that's a healthy space for Trump to have a conversation.
ROGINSKY: I'd be more comfortable, if I were you, if Trump could articulate what you just did the way you just did. But he's not going to be able to do that, right? He's going to be Donald Trump. He's going to go off on tangents. He's going to start talking about how ABC somehow gave to Kamala Harris this note secretly. He'll go off on his crazy tangents.
LANZA: Let's be clear about ABC. They have a horrible history of giving, you know, debate questions. Donald Brazile, an ABC employee, gave debate questions to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Did that not occur? It did. So, it's not like ABC has a clear vision.
SIMMONS: I think your facts are fuzzy.
PHILLIP: Yeah, think there's some things about it.
SIMMONS: I think your facts are fuzzy here.
PHILLIP: I mean -- but here's the thing.
LANZA: But I don't think Dana Bash gave Harris the question. PHILLIP: This debate is going to be moderated by two news pros, okay?
It's working the refs on the Trump campaign's part to try to say that it's fundamentally unfair, when at this point now, it's fundamentally the same rules they agreed to for the last debate.
MCLAUGHLIN: Julie and I don't always agree, but we definitely agree on this, that I think the Kamala Harris campaign is definitely lowering those expectations. But as well, I mean you all remember from 2020, the debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.
She used the moment often when she would say, you're interrupting me or I'm speaking. And she kind of made that a moment for herself and she really wants that again. So, I think that that's a lot of what this tussle was about, was she was trying to reclaim those possible moments for herself, kin of already map out what she's going to say and what her moments might be.
MONTEL: To portray strength, that's what it is. She is going to make direct comments to the commentators and you'll see Trump go, wait, wait. He's going to try to jump in, jump in, jump in. She's going to make comments directly at them that's going to make him lose his mind. He's not going to figure out. I think a little direct.
SIMMONS: I think we need to have a little caution, all right? Donald Trump's not going to be yelling, you know, I ordered the code red.
LANZA: She's going to win is what he just said.
SIMMONS: He's not going to be in a pool of tears. I mean, I think she'll do very well in the debate, but I think that Donald Trump has had a couple of debates at the presidential level over the last four or five years than she has. She's only had one with Mike Pence. This will be her first time back on the stage, so I think we've got to give her a little space to impress us here.
LANZA: Let's lower the bar.
PHILLIP: There's a hells' spin happening at the table here. Everyone, hang on. By the way, follow CNN for complete coverage and exclusive analysis before and after the debate next week. The ABC News presidential debate simulcast will be right here on CNN this Tuesday at 9 P.M. Eastern time. I'll be there. I hope to see you there too.
Coming up next, Elon Musk is backtracking. He has deleted this tweet promoting an interview with a podcaster who says, Winston Churchill was the, quote, "chief villain of World War II". We're going to discuss that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:44:28]
PHILLIP: Tucker Carlson, who by the way spoke at the RNC and will soon do an event with J.D. Vance, the vice-presidential nominee on the Republican side, he platformed a guest who said that Winston Churchill, not Hitler, was the chief villain of World War II. Carlson describes this guest, podcaster Darrell Cooper, as, quote,
"the best and most honest popular historian in the United States". So, just so you can hear it for yourself, here is part of what Cooper had to say.
[22:45:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DARRYL COOPER, "MARTYRMADE PODCAST HOST: I told him, maybe trying to provoke him a little bit, that I thought Churchill was the chief villain of the second world war. Now, he didn't kill the most people. He didn't commit the most atrocities. The next thought that comes into their head is that, oh, you're saying Churchill was the chief villain, therefore his enemies, you know.
Adolf Hitler and so forth were the protagonists, right? They're the good guys if you think he's a villain. That's not the case. That's not what I'm saying. You know, Germany, look, they put themselves into a position and Adolf Hitler is chiefly responsible for this, but his whole regime is responsible for it.
That when they went into the East in 1941, they launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners and so forth that they were going to have to handle. They went in with no plan for that. And they just threw these people into camps and millions of people ended up dead there a month or two after Barbarossa was launched.
And they're writing back to the high command in Berlin saying, we can't feed these people. We don't have the food to feed these people. And one of them actually says, rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn't it be more humane to just finish them off quickly now?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: So, as you might have noticed, what was missing from that conversation? How about the fact that six million Jews were targeted and murdered? And despite that, people like Elon Musk appeared to be enamored.
Initially, he called the conversation, quote, "very interesting, worth watching". That tweet has now been deleted. Conservative radio host Eric Erickson said Carlson is giving an outlet to a Nazi apologist.
Liz Cheney called him a pro-Nazi propaganda and said that no serious person would support or endorse this garbage. And yet there is Tucker Carlson, RNC speaker apparently, sitting there just nodding along as someone says, well, why don't you just, you know, exterminate them, you know, rather than try to feed them. I mean, this is absurd.
SIMMONS: It is absurd. Here's the reality of what's happening. America is becoming a different place. America is becoming a place where women, where people of color, where the LGBTQ Americans all have a chance to participate. Tucker Carlson is part of the resistance to the America that we have
been becoming. And he associates with people like this because they, too, are part of a resistance to a world that is not built upon the kind of politics that Hitler and -- Hitler had six years ago and the way he behaved to kill people.
PHILLIP: I mean --
SIMMONS: So, I think this is the thing that we have to wrestle with when we're talking about people like Carlson. They are not in league with an America that we have spent 70 years trying to build.
PHILLIP: I guess, you know, and Bryan, I'm curious what you think about this. If this is the kind of person that Tucker is sitting across from and saying, this guy is so smart, so interesting, you should listen to him, nodding along. Wouldn't that give you pause about everything else? I mean, this is a massive gap.
And no, no. I'm just curious because, like, it almost seems like Tucker's doing all this stuff, and yet, J.D. Vance, the guy who's on the Republican ticket, he's at an event with him, September 21st, they're charging people $200 a ticket to see him live sit down next to Tucker Carlson and have a conversation about what? What could possibly be worth having a conversation about?
LANZA: With Tucker or with this --
PHILLIP: With Tucker.
LANZA: I mean, listen, I mean.
PHILLIP: With Tucker, after this.
LANZA: Tucker has his platform. I mean, I'm not a big fan of his platform. I never really watched his show or even his current platform, but he has a platform that's, you know, probably larger than CNN's platform. So, he wants to be provocative, he wants to be stupid, he's entitled to be all those things with his platform.
I would never put somebody who says -- who says that Hitler's not the worst person, you know, in modern time, he clearly found somebody who's willing to say that Churchill is. By the way, that's contrary to what most Republicans believe. But you know, it's -- yeah, I've always had issues with Ann Coulter. She was a provocateur. I thought that, ultimately, it hurt the party.
I look at Tucker, the same person, he's a provocateur, it hurts the party. When you have these provocateurs in the media, they're not in an elected position, but in the media, I think their whole goal is to be provocative and they say stupid things all the time.
PHILLIP: And he is being held up by the Republican Party. He spoke on the RNC stage, he sat in the box with Trump. I was there, I saw it.
LANZA: Yeah, I was there.
PHILLIP: It was just a few feet away from me.
ROGINSKY: As somebody whose father was actually born as a Soviet Jew fleeing the Nazis and can talk to you about the Einsatzgruppen, which were very much planned following the German army in to exterminate Jews, so this wasn't like, oh my goodness, what do we do with all these refugees we don't know? No, they were planned to go in and be exterminated.
Let me say this, Tucker Carlson, who actually, I know well from my days at Fox, can say whatever he wants. Free country, free speech. It is the choice of the Trump family to put him in the family box.
[22:50:01]
It is the choice of J.D. Vance to appear with him. He doesn't have to do that. Tucker Carlson can go ahead. Elon Musk wants to platform him. I guess it's Elon Musk's decision to do that.
But you don't have to do that as a political candidate and as a political party to endorse somebody who platforms this guy by appearing with him at events, by putting him in the family box with your children at the Republican National Convention when you're the Republican nominee.
And yet I have not heard either J.D. Vance or Donald Trump repudiate Tucker Carlson and what he believes, which I think is the point.
PHILLIP: It is a dangerous drift that is happening.
MCLAUGHLIN: Can I add one thing to the Elon Musk piece of this? Well, first of all, what that guest said, the humane solution, it's the final solution to exterminate an entire race of people, and there's no place, especially right now, when Jew hatred and crimes against Jewish people are at an all-time high in this country, or at least a modern era high in this country. I want to address the Elon Musk piece. He put interesting, he constantly does that on a lot. I don't know what the context was here. I don't know if he watched it.
ROGINSKY: Platform Tucker and his --
MCLAUGHLIN: Okay, if I can finish, I think that this is -- we don't know what happened there. We do know he deleted it, which I think is important. And the other piece of this, I know you're laughing, but I think that this is a point that a lot of people across the world will make.
MONTEL: I'm laughing about Elon Musk because Elon himself has said, he tweets after he's done an edible.
MCLAUGHLIN: Okay.
MONTEL: So clearly, he needs to sell to humans.
MCLAUGHLIN: Did you guys see the other tweet where that guest talked about the appeal to reason that Hitler made in 1940. He called it a peaceful appeal to reason. It was --the community notes added context saying that this is a gross mischaracterization. There was no call for peace by Hitler. He had already started killing Jews.
He had already invaded multiple treaties with Britain, France, and other countries. And Elon Musk, he did say -- community notes again for the win because it added context and it showed that this was total mistruth. So, I just, I think that's an important piece to add because no one here is seeking to address that.
SIMMONS: There are too many people in MAGA who are espousing things and the president, President Trump, who are espousing things that have an eerie echo of a previous era.
PHILLIP: And there is a weird affinity for this kind of ideology. That is what is really disturbing about this to me.
LANZA: And what ideology is that?
MONTEL: Absolutely. I just think that for Elon Musk to have put it up and then taken it back down, he recognized it was one of those nights when he shouldn't have done that.
PHILLIP: Yeah, and maybe say a little bit more than, well, community notes for the win. I mean, there's something more that can be said, especially for the guy who's running the platform, where all of this, frankly, is being posted. Everyone, stay with us, we've got more. Coming up next -- the panel, they're here with their nightcaps.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: We're back now and it's time for the "NewsNightcap". You each have 30 seconds to say your piece. Julie, you're up.
ROGINSKY: Well, Trump media, my friends, is down 75 percent since its highs back in, I guess, when Trump was doing better in the election against Biden. And it's interesting that the stock is actually tracking Trump's ratings. So, I think for all the free marketers here, the market is actually following the election. And I think the free market is saying this guy's not going to do so well.
PHILLIP: All right, Bryan.
LANZA: I guess if we're speaking of highs or speaking of the politics of weed, we saw, you know, Donald Trump last week from President Trump do a tweet on the normalization or legalization of medical marijuana, which is going to have a huge impact in all 50 states. You saw another tweet sort of talk about legalization of marijuana. He's going to be probably putting out something more.
And so, the politics of it is there's a reason Donald Trump is moving in this direction. You see him openly courting young males under 35. I think he may have found a sweet spot where he has a target-rich environment, and it's shifting GOP politics.
We've never had a Republican president supportive of medical marijuana at the presidential level, and wouldn't be surprised if his administration even moves further along because it's chasing votes.
PHILLIP: Well, yeah, I mean, it's a reflection of just how popular those measures are across party lines.
MONTEL: Across party lines.
PHILLIP: Yeah. Jamal?
SIMMONS: Since you brought it up, I started the conversation talking about mental health in America and we need to make sure we focus in on that. We know that right now, still till today, we have 20 veterans taking their lives every day because of suicide. We know there are alternative treatments out there that are working.
Everything from ketamine treatments to medical marijuana for our veterans. We need to make sure that we have an honest discussion about what we're going to do when it comes to mental health, because if we don't do it now, remember, it's not just our veterans that are suffering from PTSD. We have now a student body, students from all over the country through these catastrophes.
And we also have a population of about 20 percent of our population is suffering from PTSD from COVID. We still people have suffering from PTSD right now and we're not even dealing with it. So, mental health needs being an issue addressed. I hope that they address it at the debates.
PHILLIP: And just to add to that, it's not just the treatments, but how to pay for it because paying for treatment is extremely expensive and prohibited for so many families. Tricia?
MCLAUGHLIN: Last week was the Abbey Gate third anniversary. A week from today is the 9-11, 23rd anniversary, of course, recognizing the sacrifice of our military members about how essential they are to our national security and freedom. In doing so, our leaders desperately need to recognize the grave situation when it comes to not only the 25 percent military deficit.
[23:00:00]
We have a massive munitions problem, major deficit, but also the decommissioning of naval and aircraft ships. It's a huge problem and America needs to wake up to it.
PHILLIP: All right, quick one, Jamal.
SIMMONS: Yeah, my last one is, listen, I think the debate's going to be very important for Kamala Harris and for the Democrats. They need to make sure not only what she does during the debate's going to matter, but what happens afterwards.
So, they need to make sure somebody's paying attention to taking those clips that happened in the debate, move them out, but also moving the candidate around so that she can follow through and make that debate.
PHILLIP: Something tells me they'll be doing just that. Everyone, thank you very much. And thank you for watching "NewsNight State of the Race". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
