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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Refuses Another Debate as Harris Challenges Him; Trump and Harris Return to Trail in Post-Debate Sprint; MAGA Feud Erupts as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Loomer Trade Barbs. "NewsNight" Talks About Harris-Trump Presidential Debate 2024. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired September 12, 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, the sequel gets shelved. Donald Trump declares he's done debating.
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: There will be no third debate.
PHILLIP: As Kamala Harris dares him to dance once more.
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We owe it to the voters to have another debate.
PHILLIP: Plus, back on the trail the candidates open up their playbooks for the crucial sprint.
Also --
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): He's just greatly diminished.
PHILLIP: -- is there a double standard over the mental acuity of the former president?
And --
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I have concerns about her rhetoric and her hateful tone.
PHILLIP: A family feud erupts inside MAGA over who's more racist, more of a conspiracist and more damaging to the brand.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Racist poison.
PHILLIP: Live at the table, Van Jones, Madison Gessiotto, Bomani Jones and Ryan Girdusky. 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, refusing a rematch, Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris returning to the campaign trail tonight after their very first and possibly only debate hitting the key states of Arizona and North Carolina. And despite Trump saying that he'd face his opponents anytime, anyplace, it does appear that that is no longer the case.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Two nights ago, Donald Trump and I had our first debate. And I believe we owe it to the voters to have another debate.
TRUMP: As everyone saw two nights ago, we had a monumental victory over Comrade Kamala Harris in the presidential debate.
She immediately called for a second debate, which means that she was like a prizefighter that lost a fight.
So, because we've done two debates and because they were successful, there will be no third debate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: There will be no third debate. I'm not sure I follow the logic of what he's saying there, but at least a lot of his supporters think that he lost the debate, so much so that one sort of pro-Trump MAGA pastor says, when I say witchcraft, I am talking about what happened tonight, occult, empowered deception, manipulation, and domination. He's talking about Harris' preferred (ph) --
VAN JONES, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They got a full Harry Potter explanation. That's a bad whooping.
PHILLIP: And that's a Trump thing, but he thinks Trump lost.
BOMANI JONES, HOST, THE RIGHT TIME WITH BOMANI JONES: Yes. I mean, look, I give this to Trump. That's a pretty smooth spin. Only losers ask for rematches, which, by the way, is correct. In boxing, it's typically not the person that won that's like, yes, I'd love to do this again. It's nobody the loser. That's a Jedi mind trick that could work on a lot of people if you didn't happen to watch the debate, right? He took an L. It happens. I don't know how much it matters in the grand scheme of things, but if I were him, I would definitely be saying, why would I want more of that?
PHILLIP: And don't get me wrong, I don't think Kamala Harris and her team really want that second debate either. I mean, they're saying that because they know Trump doesn't want one.
V. JONES: If they had another debate, Trump would do better because he couldn't do any worse. And so I agree with you, it's probably not a good idea for her to do it, but I --
MADISON GESIOTTO, FORMER RNC NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON: You can always do worse. V. JONES: Oh, I --
GESIOTTO: You can always do worse.
RYAN GIRDUSKY, FOUNDER, 1776 PROJECT PAC: He beat Joe Biden the last time.
PHILLIP: That is true.
GIRDUSKY: Well, I think that, I think honestly, if you look at the trajectory of Trump's debate performances in past debates, if you look at the CNN instapolls from 2016 and 2020, Trump improved in every single secondary and third debate against Clinton, the second debate against Joe Biden, and obviously the first debate with Joe Biden, although that was more really Joe Biden than it was anything else.
I think a second debate wouldn't hurt him, actually, considering he usually gets a lot of that out the first time. His first debate with Hillary was not good. His first debate with Biden was horrendous. But he improved substantially at every single debate. And he pretty much pulled it --
GESIOTTO: You know, I think at this point, I really think that she has so much more to gain from another debate than he does. I mean, he's the most defined candidate, arguably, in history. And when you look at her performance, yes, she did very well, but at the same time, I think she had a lot of missed opportunities and time that she spent defining this most defined man instead of talking about what matters to people in these swing states and really giving them a reason to jump that fence and vote for her.
[22:05:09]
A lot of independents, a lot of people on the fence that are more focused on the economy that are more focused on immigration, I think, she could have expanded policy-wise a little bit more there and won those votes, and I don't think she did that on Monday, or Tuesday.
GIRDUSKY: I think that, stylistically, she won but I would like Kamala to do a second interview before she does a second debate, since she is the least vetted candidate, she has never got a vote and she has been, one interview where she had a vice president with her in history, there's never been a candidate who's less vetted than Kamala Harris.
PHILLIP: She's also the vice president of the United States.
GIRDUSKY: Well, you wouldn't know that from her debate performance where she pretended that she barely knew anything that the Biden administration was doing and wasn't responsible for any of it.
V. JONES: Well, she was too busy whooping your boy all over the stage to get to those things.
Here's what I think. Kamala Harris did something that no politician has done ever. She didn't just beat him. She humiliated him. She humiliated him. He has been the Pac Man of American politics. He has eaten up, gobbled up politicians, spit them out, went through 16 Republican governors and senators like it was nothing. And even when he does badly, he usually has something he can point to. She whooped him so badly that I think he's literally afraid to come back.
And so now, I agree the last 20 minutes, she could have stopped with the elder abuse at that point and then turn more to her program, I wish that she had, but she's got plenty of time now. And now the funk is off. I think she's going to do a bunch of interviews. I wanted to do interviews. I agree with you. She needs to get her program defined. But she first had to demonstrate this is a woman who can deal with any man, Putin, Donald Trump, or anybody else, and she established that.
GIRDUSKY: She is the worst polling Democrat against Donald Trump in history on national polls. No one is performing worse than her. No one's performing worse than her among blacks, among Hispanics, the worst performing Democrat in modern history among those demographics, worst performing polling-wise among Jews. She is losing key factions of the Democratic base. Muslim voters, she's at under -- she's at 52 percent in the latest CARE poll among black Muslims. She is not doing well.
V. JONES: And we're still neck-and-neck.
B. JONES: But let me ask this question. What makes you so sure she's going to define this platform even further? Because what seems to be clear on all sides, and this is nobody thinks the details matter, right? Trump certainly doesn't think the details matter. Details ain't really his bag. That's not what he's going for. There's been plenty of opportunity for her to spell things out with far more detail. And I think they've drawn the conclusion ultimately for who, for what? Let him crash out. Like they put them on T.V., I'm just like, watch this. I can make this old man lose his mind. And she did it in this.
So, what does it matter what the details are? I think to your point, it matters to a degree, there are people that have things that they want to hear. But I think the strategy and the conclusion that seems to have been drawn is, if we just keep giving him open shots, he's going to miss them all, and we're just going to keep letting him shoot.
GESIOTTO: But if you look at fracking in Pennsylvania, you look at Israel-Palestinian people issue in Michigan, you look at so many of these specific issues that I think affect a certain demographic within the most important swing states that ultimately this election will come down to, and those are the people she has to win, and I'm not convinced that she's winning them right now.
V. JONES: I'd love for her to talk more about fracking for a couple reasons, and I'm glad we have time to talk about this stuff. Kamala Harris needs fracking. She needs fracking. The idea that she's got -- they spent four years, they did nothing to stop fracking, the idea she would stop it now is literally ludicrous.
Why does she need it? Fracking is giving us a geopolitical weapon against Putin. The reason that we've been able to hold the European coalition together is because when Putin said, if you back Ukraine, I'm going to cut gas off to Europe. I'm going to freeze Europeans in their beds. The United States said, no, you're not. You know why? We are now the biggest exporter of natural gas in the world. We sent a liquid natural gas to Ukraine and where did it come from? It came from fracking in Pennsylvania. So, Pennsylvania fracking is key to our geopolitical strategy.
So, if you ever want to have a conversation, I don't trust her, she's going to do -- first of all, for four years, she didn't do anything against fracking. Why? The entire Democratic Party shut up about fracking. Why? Not for this election, but because that's how we're going to beat Putin.
GIRDUSKY: Right. Okay, but at 60 years old, which is about what she is, she had a transformational life experience, apparently, where in 1,000 days, she has changed from a Bernie Sanders Democrat to a pro- choice Bush Democrat. She has abandoned almost every position, not just on fracking, on reparations for the slaves. She was gung ho for a multi-trillion dollar policy, never mentions that she's completely against it, obviously, the transgender illegal aliens in prison, which she did sit there and say that she was for. She was against ICE. She was for open borders, defund the police.
GESIOTTO: But, I mean, on fracking specifically, do you believe that she has really convinced these voters in Pennsylvania? I was just in Pennsylvania.
PHILLIP: This is to Bomani's point. I mean, do the details matter? And if they do, it should play into Trump's hands. But it seems like Trump is not even capable of working on that terrain, even if it might be advantageous to him.
[22:10:04]
GESIOTTO: Well, I feel like he's made his point on the issue of immigration, on the economy. When you look at the polling coming out of the debate on Tuesday, 2 percent more people, you know, no longer trust Kamala Harris on the economy. And those 2 percent of people now trust Donald Trump more in states where that is polling is a high issue or the top issue. I do think that's something that they should be concerned about from her campaign front.
The economy, I think, is a very weak issue for her, especially as they continue to tie her to the Biden administration and the way people view him on the economy, which is pretty low.
V. JONES: I mean, you guys get really upset about Kamala changing her mind. Kamala changed her mind.
GESIOTT: But it's not about her changing her mind.
V. JONES: I'm speaking. You guys get all upset about her changing her mind. When Donald Trump has flip-flopped, even in the past couple weeks, on abortion, which is a key issue for your coalition. J.D. Vance used to call Trump a Hitler, and he changed. So, here's what happens in politics. People do change. Let me tell you, it's not just Kamala Harris that's moved. Our whole party was on some weird pogo stick in 2020. We had all kind of ideas that turned out to be bad ideas.
GIRDUSKY: It's called Black Lives Matter.
GESIOTTO: And she's yet to be able to explain why she shifted.
GIRDUSKY: That was the pogo stick. It was equity --
PHILLIP: Actually, what I was going to note was --
B. JONES: You put a whole lot of things together that sound like the same thing. No, they're not the same thing.
PHILLIP: Van Jones sitting here at this table with his history of environmental issues, defending fracking, is not something I had on my bingo card, speaking of people changing or things changing.
V. JONES: Yes. But here's what's good, because we can actually have real conversations here. Early on in my career, we thought we were going to be able to get all the way to our clean energy goals with no fossil fuels. It turned out that wasn't true. It turned out you're actually going to have to have a more robust mix. The entire party came to that conclusion four years ago.
So, people keep pointing back to ideas that I had and others had that turned out to be non-workable ideas. But in practice, in California and other places, the party has matured. It's not just Kamala Harris.
PHILLIP: It would not hurt Vice President Harris to explain that, right? Like I think that's the other thing, is that people do change their minds, but there is a need to explain how she got there.
GIRDUSKY: And it was a thousand days. She changed her mind on a dozen issues in a thousand days.
GESIOTTO: And even if you change your mind in one day, you have to be able to go forward and explain why you changed your mind and how you got to that point. She has not been able to do that.
B. JONES: Is the answer that --
GESIOTTO: He ended it in a great way. She has not done that.
B. JONES: Is the answer that we're in a general election not good enough? Like the move to the center for a general election is not something that's rare. This happens all the time. You have it in your party.
GESIOTTO: Right. People have to actually buy it to vote for her in that important state. And when you have over a hundred thousand people working in that industry that need to buy it, she needs to give them a better explanation, or else you and I both know she won't buy it, they won't buy it. V. JONES: Look, Josh Shapiro moved on the issue. Biden moved on the issue. Kamala moved on the issue. The whole party has moved on the issue. We haven't said a word about fracking for four years for a reason. So, you guys like to talk about it, but I don't think that there's any evidence that the Democratic Party is an anti-fracking party. And so -- but this is the only thing you guys have.
(CROSSTALKS)
GIRDUSKY: You're literally saying, I am anti-fracking.
V. JONES: Four years ago. But the reason you guys want to talk about this is because your candidate is so deficient.
GIRDUSKY: He's polling better than he's ever polled his entire life.
V. JONES: Your candidate is so deficient. He humiliated himself on the --
GESIOTTO: Not on fracking.
V. JONES: Well, you guys talk --
GIRDUSKY: Four years ago, you're --
GESIOTTO: Not on the economy and not on immigration.
V. JONES: And we're neck-and-neck with somebody who just got the nomination six weeks ago, and I'm not worried about it at all.
Let me tell you something. You guys are so interested in trying to talk about details. Trump has none, flip flops. He is a flip-flop.
GIRDUSKY: So, the answer is that (INAUDIBLE) of details either.
V. JONES: No. What I'm saying is we're neck-and-neck you guys have more -- the deficiencies that you're trying to talk about us having, you've got in spades. Why don't you -- now, I already told you, I've been more transparent on my party than most Democrats.
Now, what about your party? Let's hear you talk about the deficiencies for your party.
GESIOTTO: Well, I'd be happy to talk about it because there's a huge one that I'm talking to people about almost every single day when it comes to operatives in the swing states. People are very concerned about the ground game. We saw a huge shift from the RNC when Trump took over, you know, with Lara Trump and others in the RNC, Michael Whatley, they came in, they shifted the strategy on what's going to go on with the ground game. They relied heavily now on outside groups, which has not been done before, and I'm hearing that it's a ghost town in a lot of swing states when it comes to that door to door and it comes to those operations, and that's very concerning.
PHILLIP: We're going to be back with a lot more. Everyone stick around for us. But coming up next, a MAGA family feud, it's erupting publicly between members of Donald Trump's entourage. But there are some serious questions now about what is behind this war between Marjorie Taylor Greene and a far right conspiracy theorist. We've got a special guest who's going to join us in our fifth seat to discuss it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:15:00]
PHILLIP: There's a MAGA civil war erupting tonight that's raising questions about the extremists who are in Donald Trump's inner circle. Let me set this up for you. Far right activist Laura Loomer, she posted a racist message about Kamala Harris saying, quote, if the vice president wins, the White House will smell like curry.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is no stranger to divisive rhetoric, she called it out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GREENE: Her rhetoric and her tone does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match most Republicans I know. And I am completely denouncing it, I'm over it, and I would encourage anyone else that matches her statements to stop.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, the two have been back and forth about this all day, but here's the thing. Loomer is now apparently part of Trump's entourage. In fact, Trump brought her with him to the 9/11 events in New York yesterday, even though she is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.
[22:20:08]
Joining us in our fifth seat is John Feal, founder of the Feal Good Foundation. He was a 9/11 responder and has been a dogged advocate for the 9/11 community and for veterans. John, good to see you.
Your thoughts on Laura Loomer suddenly being in Trump's inner circle and the idea of bringing her to 9/11 events. That's a choice.
JOHN FEAL, FOUNDER, FEAL GOOD FOUNDATION: On the surface, she's silly, but underneath all of that, she's just an attention seeking, self-absorbed, me, me, me, but her rhetoric is going to get someone hurt. Her rhetoric might get someone killed.
V. JONES: Why do you think?
FEAL: And --
V. JONES: Why do you say that?
FEAL: Just from her tweets, just on her podcasts, just things that come out of her mouth. She's ugly on the inside. She's an empty vessel. She's cancerous. And it seems that Donald Trump attaches to people like that.
You know, two things happened at the historic event like 9/11, advocacy and conspiracy theories. I chose the advocacy.
PHILLIP: Yes.
FEAL: And Laura Loomer is hurting inside. She needs help. She's miserable. She's sad and she wants to share that with as many people as she can. But for Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has said some outrageous things over the years, that's like Jeffrey Dahmer calling out John Wayne Casey, you know? So --
PHILLIP: It is -- I mean, that's part of the surprising nature of it. I mean, and, look, I believe in giving people credit where it's due. She's right to call it out. She's right to say it in that way, but it is weird that it's coming from her.
V. JONES: Well --
PHILLIP: They used to be friends, apparently. They were friends. She was a supporter of Laura Loomer's at one point, and they've since had a falling out.
V. JONES: Yes, I mean, it seems kind of personal, maybe more personal and petty than principled on her part, but you know what? I'll take any help I can get against a white nationalist, I'll take any help I can get against someone who has been such a horrific attacker of Muslims and everyone else, and that's who Laura Loomer is.
And some people might say, why are you even, quote/unquote, platforming Laura Loomer? Why are you talking about her at all? All you're doing is making her bigger and stronger. And that's the problem with people like this. When Laura Loomer walked off the plane with Donald Trump, everybody who's a political professional literally gasped and gagged, were like, what the heck? But you realize most Americans don't know who she is. They don't know the nasty thing that she said. She's a true hatemonger. And for Donald Trump to be with a hatemonger, I think it hurt his debate performance. I think hanging around somebody that crazy hurt his debate performance.
PHILLIP: So, it's funny that you would say that, because CNN's reporting about Laura Loomer, it's exactly to that point. It's not just that she's unhinged online. She's been hanging around Trump. She's been calling him. She has a cell phone and a lot of people around him, according to CNN's reporting, believe that she is the source of a lot of these unhinged attacks on Kamala Harris, on her race, conspiracy theories, the dogs and cats of it all. So, he's hanging out with her because she is a conspiracy theorist.
GIRDUSKY: Right. I don't follow Laura Loomer's stuff. I don't really know. And I spoke to a lot of normies and I asked them if they knew who she was. None of them did. And I just --
GESIOTTO: It's bad?
GIRDUSKY: I just find -- yes, I find the rhetoric -- she said it was a joke. I don't really understand where the punch line came in that joke, and yes. So, a person who says those things should not be around the inner circle as possibly the most powerful man in the world. I would say though, my concern is not so strong since we've had four decades of Democratic politicians sitting there and bringing Al Sharpton into the White House.
V. JONES: There's no comparison.
GIRDUSKY: No, it's not. It's not --
V. JONES: There's no comparison.
GIRDUSKY: No, you're right. Al Sharpton's responsible for responsible for a Jew to die in a riot in Crown Heights. That's 100 percent true.
V. JONES: Hold on a second.
GIRDUSKY: That he called Hymietown (INAUDIBLE).
PHILLIP: He didn't say Hymietown was not safe. What are you even talking about?
GESIOTTO: There's no excuse for her to be on that plane.
PHILLIP: Hang on one second. Yes.
GESIOTTO: There's no excuse for her to be around the president.
PHILLIP: I just wanted to say just real quick. Donald Trump is running to be president of the United States.
GIRDUSKY: Right.
PHILLIP: And on his plane is a woman who believes 9/11 is -- there was a conspiracy behind it. She is actively right now spreading racist lies. And rather than just saying that's terrible, reprehensible, he shouldn't be doing that, you're going to bring up Al Sharpton?
GIRDUSKY: No, I think it is terrible. I said, I don't agree with what she said. I don't think it was a funny joke. It was a joke.
PHILLIP: And also why isn't it that --
GIRDUSKY: But why is one person's rhetoric on one party a major thing and this one who was invited to the White House is not?
B. JONES: I would make the point that the reason one is a major thing in 2024 is that it's happening in 2024.
GIRDUSKY: Okay, but Al Sharpton was invited to the White House every single time.
B. JONES: But what you're talking about and your examples about him go back to when I was in elementary school. Like it's an obvious and clear idea, you know what I mean?
[22:25:01]
GIRDUSKY: He's on a network thing today, though. He's on television today.
GESIOTTO: It's completely inexcusable.
V. JONES: You should be ashamed of yourself.
GIRDUSKY: For what reason?
GESIOTTO: It's completely inexcusable that she's on that plane. It's inexcusable that she's anywhere near the president. It's a failure. I think at the top with leadership around him, I think people should be fired over it. I'm talking to a lot of Republicans who are saying that there may be a preexisting --
PHILLIP: What about Donald Trump? He is the person.
GESIOTTO: I think it's wrong from top to bottom, but especially the people around him who are allowing this to happen. I hear some of them encouraging it. I hear there's a preexisting relationship between Loomer and potentially Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller. I mean, and all that it's doing is hurting the president's campaign on top of everything. The people out there who are suffering in this country that need relief economically, that we want to see, you know, the president get across the finish line, may not have that opportunity because we're distracted and talking about Looney Tunes like this that continue to surround themselves around the campaign.
PHILLIP: John, looks like he wants to say something.
FEAL: You know, I sit here and I watch Republicans and Democrats cherry-pick what they want to say to make their points. Donald Trump's not running for president. He's running to stay out of jail. I don't care what anybody says. The man's not capable of a solid thought. And for him, I'm not going to say what I want to say. Listen, I had to shake his hand in 2019 when he signed my bill. I don't like him. I don't like him. I don't think he cares about the American people, even in the debate or anything he's done at his rallies. He doesn't talk about the issues that Americans face, the table talk, what we're going through, how we pay our utilities, how we put food on our table.
GESIOTTO: But I do think he cares about that. I know the president. And we can respectfully disagree.
FEAL: Yes, absolutely.
GESIOTTO: But I've been around the president, I've known him for ten years since before he ran for president and I do believe he really does care.
Now he, we may not all agree on his policies, we may not all agree on how we feel about him. But I'm telling you, as the person at the table that does know him, I respectfully disagree with that.
B. JONES: This is what's tricky, though, to me in this discussion about, like, Laura Loomer is on his plane, Trump, why would you do that? It's you have two teenagers, they get in trouble, and both of their parents are saying you're hanging out with the wrong people, when reality is they're both the wrong people, right? Like you always assume it's somebody else's kid, that's the wrong people.
In both of these cases, if she's not the person on the plane with him saying crazy things, it'll be somebody else on the plane with him saying crazy things.
GESIOTTO: But we don't want anybody on the plane with him saying crazy things.
B. JONES: Right. But if you're rolling wrong with Trump -- well, if you're rolling with Trump, the person saying crazy things is going to be him, right? Like this is the voice that I think --
FEAL: But before that, it was Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert.
B. JONES: Right, it's always going to be somebody that's there with him, so we could point out that voice, but the issue is him.
GESIOTTO: But I think this is extreme in terms of her versus some of the other people that we disagree.
PHILLIP: Let me ask you a question, John. What is the impact? You talked about the conspiracies, the two paths, it's either you become an activist or you go into conspiracy land. What has the impact of the conspiracies been on people like you who survived 9/11, who the people that you know maybe were killed or maimed or, you know, all of that, what is the impact been?
FEAL: You know, if anything's sacred in this country, it should be 9/11. There are so many people who haven't healed. So many people still have an open wound. So many people still haven't gotten justice. And it's an insult to those that have to fight for their lives now who are sick and dying. This Saturday, I'll add 317 names to my wall on Long Island. This is continuing.
So, while we fight and we try to see another day, there's over 30,000 people right now with a 9/11 certified cancer. There's 132,000 people being treated for their illnesses. So, to see this kind of rhetoric, it's insulting to the family members, those who lost a loved one, those who are still sick. It's pathetic, it's comical, but it hurts. We're forgetting that we're human beings. Shift the titles, Republican, Democrat, black, white, tall, short, skinny, fat, it doesn't matter. We're all human beings, and the true spirit of the human being is to give every of yourself. And when you got to spew crap, bullshit, on 9/11 to be noticed, you're not a good person. You're not a good human being. The true spirit is to give every of yourself.
We should be 9/12. 9/11 happened. It was devastating. It was the most horrific. Everybody keeps saying anniversary. It's a stock reminder of that horrific day. It's not an anniversary. It's a remembrance. But 9/12, everybody came together. Nobody cared what your skin color was. Nobody cared what your religion was. We all came together and here we are talking about a woman who needs to be medicated in the hospital and she's flying around when the man wants to be a president. Give me a break. Come on.
PHILLIP: Look, it's your point is so well taken that when you use conspiracies to get attention, that's really reprehensible, especially in light of the things that people like you went through.
FEAL: There's no substance to anything that comes out of her mouth. Listen, I fit her pretty good on Twitter. I hit a lot of people on Twitter. I don't hold back. I'm holding back right now because I'm on CNN. But my rhetoric can get really, really raunchy.
[22:30:00]
V. JONES: Commercial break.
PHILLIP: John Feal, thank you very much. Thank you for everything that you do. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Everyone else, stand by for us. Coming up next, many questioned the mental fitness of President Biden, but after last week's debate, should voters ask the same question of Donald Trump? Is there a double standard at play here? We're going to discuss it. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Is there a double standard over the mental acuity of Donald Trump? After months of hitting President Biden's fitness, Trump is now under scrutiny for his rambling at rallies and at that debate that we'd all just witnessed this week.
[22:35:00]
We compared his debate answers back in 2016 to the ones that he gave this week after the very first question on the issue of immigration that is right there in his wheelhouse. This week, as you'll see, he veers off topic several times. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (R): Well, first of all, she wants to give amnesty, which is a disaster and very unfair to all of the people that are waiting on line for many, many years. We need strong borders.
First, let me respond to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. They're coming in illegally. Drugs are pouring in through the border. We have no country if we have no border.
People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. The single biggest problem is heroin that pours across our southern borders, just pouring and destroying their youth.
And what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject, what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country.
Now, I want to build the wall. We need the wall. The Border Patrol, ICE, they all want the wall. We stop the drugs. We shore up the border. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there.
And once the border is secured, at a later date, we'll make a determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out. If she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success, we'll end up being Venezuela on steroids.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: That's really fascinating, honestly. First of all, I'd forgotten about bad hombres, but that was an iconic moment from that debate. But it -- I mean, look, everybody ages, there's no stopping it, but you can definitely see such a clear difference. I mean, immigration is the issue for Donald Trump. It's been that way for almost a decade now. But there was a weird clarity in 2016 that it was completely absent this week.
RYAN GIRDUSKY, FOUNDER, 1776 PROJECT PAC: I think that what Kamala Harris did very effectively was to sit there and get under her skin. So, every question started with him defending some comments she made, whether it be about his rally sizes or his wealth that he had when his father passed away.
And that threw him off tremendously. There is signs of aging, as there is with everybody, but I don't think it is clearly not at the level that Joe Biden was during his debate where he said he defeated Medicaid. I mean, that's just, it's not even close to the same exact comparison.
BOMANI JONES, PODCAST HOST "THE RIGHT TIME WITH BOMANI JONES: But to me, the problem is, if you watched what he said in 2016, I was like, wow, this sounds a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs too. Like, it's not like the first thing that he's given you is so reasonable that you come back around and like, wow, now he's talking about cats.
He sounded ridiculous in the first clip, just like he sounded ridiculous in the second clip, just a different brand of ridiculous in the second one. And that's what makes it so difficult to evaluate him vis-a-vis any other reasonable human being that will be running for office.
Because what we're talking about as a feature is not a bug. The baseline is so wild in the first place that when he says something wild in the second place, you're like, you know, it's not really terribly different. You know this.
GIRDUSKY: I think part of Trump's ability not to be judged like every other politician, much to the chagrin of journalists and democratic politicians, is the fact that he was a celebrity for a long time. And celebrities, they just, they can sit there and say things that are a little outweighed. Just when you say, okay, it's fine, whatever.
PHILLIP: But also, I mean, it just doesn't make sense. I mean, that's the problem. I mean, he has a case to make on immigration presumptively, but he didn't make it.
V. JONES: I mean, look. I mean, I'm not going to lie. when you mentioned Biden saying, you know, we finally beat Medicare or whatever, and that was disqualifying in the eyes of a lot of people and understandably so, because this person wants to be president of the United States.
And if the pressure or late at night or you had a sniffles is going to have you be that off track, our party said, not acceptable. We love you, but not acceptable. You've got somebody who apparently is so easily manipulated that someone can just say, your crowd sizes are small, supposed to be talking about America. They forget that they're supposed to be talking about their own issues.
MADISSON GESIOTTO, FORMER RNC NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON: I think there were numerous missed opportunities, not just on immigration, but on various issues throughout that debate in which he could have made the case. And I think the polling shows people do agree with a lot of his policies on these issues. And I don't think he made that case.
However, again, going back to what I said earlier, he is the most defined, the most well-known person. And so, it's a question of would that have really taken these voters that are independents, that aren't sure who they're going to go for and push them over the edge? I don't know if that would have. But I do think it was a missed opportunity, and he should have taken advantage of it.
V. JONES: I'm making a slightly different point. You're making the point that Kamala Harris wasted her time defining him, and she should have been doing something else.
GESIOTTO: You know, I'm saying he wasted his time not focusing on these issues.
JONES: Sure, but I think it goes to the commander-in-chief test. That's what I'm saying, is that he was able -- he just couldn't do his job up there because somebody was messing with his mind.
[22:40:00]
UNKNOWN: Right.
V. JONES: Do you think that Putin --
GESIOTTO: I don't think he's not doing his job because he's decided to converse on something he breaks up.
V. JONES: His job that night was to --
PHILLIP: I think this is a really important point that Van is making. It was -- it was like "Child's Play", you know? She talked about his crowd size. She talked about every possible thing, go, the world leaders don't like you. Every possible thing that could get under his skin at every single time.
GIRDUSKY: Yeah, it worked.
PHILLIP: He just picked it up and was like, I'm going to talk about this now.
GIRDUSKY: He took the bait every time and it was a complete disaster.
GESIOTTO: That's something he's done for years.
PHILLIP: You are -- you want to be President of the United States, and world leaders like Putin, who's a master manipulator, is looking at that performance, the takeaway would be that it's very easy to manipulate someone like that.
GIRDUSKY: Absolutely. That would be the takeaway from people who sit there and hate Donald Trump. I think that people who are voters, one, he's made the case for it for a decade about the border wall, for instance, or reducing immigration, so much so now that Kamala Harris is campaigning on the border wall. That's how many voters he's won over on the issue.
And then the second point is that he was, to voters' minds, they look at Putin and say, well, he didn't invade Ukraine while Trump was president. So therefore, his craziness, or what people perceive as being unreliable or they don't know what he's going to do next, that, in a lot of minds, a lot of voters says, well, that's good for us, because our enemies don't want to invade.
GESIOTTO: And he invaded during the three past administrations besides Trump under the Obama administration, this administration, and George W. Bush administration.
B. JONES: I think the point on the double standard though is I think people are more uncomfortable when they believe their leader is unhinged versus believing their leader is senile. Right or wrong, they're open.
GESIOTTO: But the world was a peaceful place with this unhinged leader.
PHILLIP: I'll leave you with this. A Pew Research poll on mental sharpness describes Trump - 58 percent in July said that he was mentally sharp. That's 52 percent now, so it's on its way down. We'll see where it goes after this debate.
Everyone hang tight. Coming up next, a provocative question -- are algorithms going to ultimately decide this election? We've got another special guest who will join us in our fifth seat to discuss that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:46:30] DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: What's your most viewed video?
NESSA E., @right.always.wins: Born in Iran, raised in Iran, but more patriot than those who vote blue with the Trump flag in my office.
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITEDS STATES AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (D): You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Okay, those videos you just saw, they're from Gen Z, content creators on TikTok. That's a platform that's attracted more than 170 million users in the United States, and it serves as a way for young users to keep up with politics, apparently.
Joining us now in our fifth seat is CNN's senior correspondent, Donie O'Sullivan, who spoke with some of these creators who are creating content on the left and on the right. What is this content about?
O'SULLIVAN: Well, you kind of get the sense of it there. You know, I mean, it's the memes, it's the dances. If it's in the Trump world, like a lot of it this week is what you see on the rest of social media, stuff about saving imaginary cats and dogs that are being picked up by Haitians in Ohio.
And if it's on the left, it's people leading in a lot to J.D. Vance and pieces of furniture. So, I mean, it's a lot of, you know, we can pretend that Gen Z is doing something totally different and something that we can't figure, get our heads around, but really, it's a lot of what we're seeing on the other platforms.
I think one thing which, you know, we do talk about it in terms of when we talk about conspiracy theories. We often think of, you know, our crazy uncle, crazy aunt, former president who might be engaging in conspiracy theories.
But -- and I think there was this, there was this idea for a while. in the early days of social media that young people, Gen Z, millennials, whatever, might be immune in some ways, that, you know, they'd be more savvy.
GESIOTTO: Blame the Gen Zs, don't blame the millennials.
O'SULLIVAN: More savvy, more -- absolutely, absolutely not. I mean, there is as much misinformation on a platform like TikTok as there is anywhere else.
PHILLIP: I mean, maybe even more. I mean, you could argue it's more.
O'SULLIVAN: Yes, and the scary thing from when we were doing that piece where we were with a Harris fan and a Trump fan, their algorithms, of course, are serving up totally different realities.
V. JONES: Different worlds. O'SULLIVAN: Exactly.
PHILLIP: Yeah. And Van, you -- a couple weeks ago after the DNC, you were talking about Harris' kind of vibe shift with the Gen Z-ers. And then also at the DNC convention, they basically brought in a whole army of creators and gave them special access. And I mean, they are really cultivating this content.
V. JONES: Well, look, I mean, what Twitter was for Donald Trump which was, people forget, you know, that was a completely new use of communications technology when Donald Trump was basically this Twitter candidate.
TikTok really has become that in some ways for Kamala Harris. When she first burst onto the scene, she was kind of like this, you know, underestimated vice president that nobody really heard from, and suddenly she's everywhere.
It's Brat Summer, it's -- and all that stuff actually helped to create this energy, this kind of vibe around her. So, she used TikTok really well. At the same time, I think a lot of people are terrified of TikTok because you just said 144 million Americans are on that. That's like half the country.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
V. JONES: And it's run by China and it seems really weird and scary.
PHILLIP: Well, okay, so just to throw a little chaos into the mix here. Some of it is also just hard to define. I mean, here's what's been going around today on TikTok as it relates to Trump and this immigration issue.
[22:50:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
UNKNOWN: They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, eat the cat. Eat the cat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'SULLIVAN: Oh, the discourse.
PHILLIP: No sense whatsoever.
GESIOTTO: This has been stuck in my head all day long. I don't even use TikTok, and I saw this video on Twitter. It's honestly quite intriguing to watch, like this big shift in people using this politically.
PHILLIP: I mean, I don't even know who made this.
GIRDUSKY: There was -- there was the guy from the Young Turks Kid I think, made the video, like, made, like, the clip.
V. JONES: But now everybody's doing it, and also --
GESIOTTO: Well, not everyone happens. Well, I mean, and also, there's some people in the lesbian community say that it's kind of like an anthem for them because of eating the -- anyways, there's a lot happening. There's a lot happening.
B. JONES: We are all talking about TikTok as this theoretical realm that we just don't. And I admit, I don't know too much about it either. Their algorithm feels more like a black box than just about anybody else's does.
And anybody that's had to do stuff that involves your work going on TikTok, you drop it in, and you just hope the algorithm picks it up in a way that you don't hear people talk about being the case with other platforms. And it does make it wonky. It does make it a little bit scary, as you say. And it does ultimately, when I look at it, just feel really stupid.
GESIOTTO: And we've all aged ourselves a bit at the table tonight.
PHILLIP: We have. I got to get Donie on his new "Whole Story" coming this Sunday, but it's about --it's interesting about former Bernie Bros who have been lured into Trump land via conspiracies.
O'SULLIVAN: Yeah, basically it's the kind of Bernie Bros who've gone to the far right. And I think about eight percent of Bernie Sanders supporters from the Democratic primary in 2020 are now Trump supporters. Now, obviously people have all different reasons. There's --
V. JONES: Wait, what was that?
O'SULLIVAN: About eight percent -- eight.
PHILLIP: That's not a huge percentage, but.
O'SULLIVAN: Hard number to say for an Irish person.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
O'SULLIVAN: The number comes after seven. But -- and you mentioned the creators at the DNC were actually hanging out in "The Whole Story" on Sunday with Hassan Piker, who is one of the biggest Twitch streamers, video game streaming platform -- for people who don't know what Twitch is, but it is where a lot of political discussion is happening. It's where a lot of Gen Z is getting their political discussion.
And what we're focusing on in this documentary, this hour on Sunday, is we're really looking at disillusioned, young, white American men who spend most of their waking hours online and who believe that America has left them behind. And it's everybody's fault, but theirs.
PHILLIP: And the -- there's such an interesting crossover ideologically now with people in conspiracy land that's happening all over the place. Watch Donie's hour Sunday night at --
O'SULLIVAN: Eight -- I think 8 P.M. Eastern. Let's say that.
PHILLIP: -- 8 P.M. Eastern with Anderson Cooper.
O'SULLIVAN: Oh, there we go.
PHILLIP: Right here on CNN. Oh look, we have a slate for it. All right, thank you, Donie. Everyone else, stay with me. Coming up next, the panel will give us their nightcaps, including Eminem, Taylor Swift, and Trust Fund Babies.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:57:32]
PHILLIP: We're back and it's time for the News Night Cap. You each have, of course, 30 seconds to say your piece. Van, you're up.
V. JONES: I just want to point out that, you know, in Ivy League schools there's always this debate, oh these affirmative action picks, these DEI picks. Nobody ever says anything about the legacy admins, the kind of trust fund babies who show up there. You just saw what happens when a DEI pick, Kamala Harris, goes up against a trust fund baby.
She whooped his butt, and that's what often happens. Nobody challenges the credentials of somebody who gets there because their daddy got them there, but that's what happens. And the so-called DEI picks often are the superior candidates.
PHILLIP: All right, starting with the fire. All right, Madison.
GESIOTTO: Political differences should not be the end of friendships. We're seeing people come back together once again with Brittany Mahomes and Taylor Swift, both on very different sides of the political aisle and maintaining a very close friendship as we see in the picture. So, go girls.
PHILLIP: Okay. I'm actually surprised that you believe that that's real because a lot of people don't.
GESIOTTO: They're friends. They're really friends.
B. JONES: I'm actually going to say thank you to Donald Trump because that man said no more debates and that's the best news I've ever heard. Who knows how long? It reminds me to my -- I'm the present thing at this point.
You undecided voter, what the hell else can you not decide? Like I need to know the other things that leave your brain scrambling and you can't figure out, because you am not figuring out who to vote for by now, baby. You ain't going to figure this out no time. I
PHILLIP: I don't think undecided is the right word. I think it's just like, they don't want to commit to anybody. They're not undecided. GIRDUSKY: They enjoy their phones being called over and over again.
PHILLIP: I guess so. If they live in a swing state, if they don't, then it's something totally different.
GIRDUSKY: Yeah, as a geriatric millennial that grew up with really important VMAs, or Britney Spears' "I'm a Slave 4 U" with a snake around her neck, and Eminem with a hundred clones behind him and Lady Gaga was covered in blood, it used to be a really important cultural impact that broke scenarios. The VMAs happened last night. No one paid attention. They don't make news because pop culture's mid, it's corporate, it's generic, and no one really cares.
PHILLIP: The geriatric millennial just dropped some slang right there. But you know what, that is a very good take. I like it.
GIRDUSKY: Thank you.
PHILLIP: I think that's correct. I think it's correct. I mean --
B. JONES: LL Cool J brought it though.
GIRDUSKY: Yeah, but he's --
B. JONES: Hey, look, man, you need to take what you can get and say thank you. And give me a little war show.
PHILLIP: The fact that we have to wait for LL Cool J to bring the drama at the VMAs, there's -- the most I saw was that Tyler didn't want to hold her award and she tried to hand it to somebody and they wouldn't take it -- yeah.
[23:00:00]
GIRDUSKY: It's geriatric, it's mid, and no one cares anymore.
PHILLIP: What does mid mean?
GIRDUSKY: It's just like bland, it's not anything interesting.
B. JONES: You can find better than mid, but it'll get the job done. It won't make your head hurt.
GIRDUSKY: Yeah, I'm waiting for something nice and explicit.
PHILLIP: I'm waiting for something dramatic to happen, too. Everyone, thank you very much. I guess maybe we have drama in our politics, we don't need it at the VMAs. A quick programming note though for you guys.
Tomorrow night, the comedians of CNN's new original series, "Have I Got News for You", will join me right here at the table. Trust me, you don't want to miss that. Thank you for watching "NewsNight State of the Race". "Laura Coates Live" -- it starts right now.
