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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Trump Gives Address on Elections After Years of False Claims; Trump Casts Blame on China for Election Data Compromise. Todd Blanche Meets Epstein Survivors After Republicans' Ultimatum; Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller Addresses the Alleged Rise of Violent Left-Wing Extremists. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 16, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight, breaking news, a presidential primetime address the White House says will shock you, a focus on a familiar topic.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: For many years, I've called for a bold, swift, and decisive action to protect the integrity of America's elections.
SIDNER: Plus, a key senator says Todd Blanche will get his support to be attorney general only after he meets with Epstein survivors.
SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I'm trying to get to yes, but this is a very important part of getting to yes.
SIDNER: And the New Mexico attorney general blasts the DOJ claiming they are stonewalling his Epstein investigation.
Also, Marco Rubio sounding the alarm warning allies of a blind spot when it comes to left wing terrorism.
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: The very idea that far left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy.
SIDNER: But what about violence on the right?
Live at the table, Geoff Duncan, Xochitl Hinojosa, Jason Rantz, Mark LoPresti, and Brian Tyler Cohen.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIDNER: All right. Good evening to you. I'm Sara Sidner in New York.
Tonight, the White House told U.S. Trump's primetime speech was going to, quote, shock us all. For nearly six years, the president has made false claims after false claim about the 2020 election. Ultimately, he always claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. And tonight, he is making another claim, now saying he has more information to back his thesis.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system, and that is to make that system secure, one where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible.
Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard. Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All right. So, we've got a note for you that none of the declassified information suggests any past election, including the one in 2020 that Trump lost, were affected by any foreign interference or fraud.
Now, CNN has reviewed the documents Trump referred to, and they largely discuss vulnerabilities that have been known for quite some time, years really, or are reflected in that 2021 U.S. Intel Community assessment. A source tells CNN that after analysis, the Intel Community decided to either incorporate the information in that 2021 minority report or assessed, based on verbiage in the documents themselves, were not concrete enough to view as consequential enough.
Temidayo Aganga-Williams and Robert Ray are joining us at the table.
Before we open it up to the table here, we're going to invite you, of course, at home to join the debate with us. Head to cnn.com/abby and weigh in. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show. We're looking forward to hearing from you after today's speech from the president.
All right let me open this up first. Geoff, I'm going to start with you. Was there anything shocking in the speech? The president promised to shock the nation with new information. What did you take away?
LT. GOV. GEOFF DUNCAN (R-GA): Well, three takeaways. Nothing shocking, right? I was actually hoping there was. You know, I kind of got baited into wanting to see what new information that was out there, and, obviously, we didn't really hear anything new. The only thing missing was Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani not sitting on his flanks. The three things I learned was that there's -- elections are vulnerable, China hates us, and the voting machines could be attacked by cyber attacks. Those are the three things that I took away from the speech. I think we knew those going into it.
[22:05:00]
SIDNER: All right. Did anyone else --
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I was shocked.
SIDNER: You were shocked.
HINOJOSA: Donald Trump is laying the groundwork for this election, and I think that is what should be disturbing to everyone. Part of the reason why he gave this sort of speech is similar to the tactic that he used in 2020 that Jack Smith actually prosecuted him for, or had charges against him, which was that he was told by his advisers over and over that fraud was not a thing in the 2020 election, and the 2020 election was actually safe and secure.
And we had known for quite some time that there were attempts by the Chinese and the Russians, and yet Donald Trump tried as much as he could in certain states to ensure that -- and to sow doubt in our 2020 election so that they would not certify the results in the election. And now he is laying that groundwork so that he can take some sort of action, whether it be the National Guard, whether it be ICE, whatever it is, ahead of the election in 2026, and I think that is the takeaway and should be shocking to everybody.
JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RED RADIO HOST: You don't think s- you know, the average American might find it shocking that China is said to have hacked into our systems and got a lot of voter information? I would suggest that that --
HINOJOSA: He said it in a press release at DOJ --
RANTZ: I'm asking you if the American public, who I don't think are talking about this or even knew about any of this. I think that's a little bit of a failure on the part of the administration, current and past, to put that information out there. But also I think the media hasn't really focused that much on this particular aspect.
HINOJOSA: They actually have. And, actually, Marco Rubio and the Intelligence Committee and others have done that. And if we had a president who actually cared about it in 2020, he would have raised the alarm about China and Russia and others trying to interfere in our election.
RANTZ: Well, his argument was that he wasn't getting the information --
HINOJOSA: Well, maybe he should read the presidential daily briefing. That's the problem. He does not read intelligence briefings.
RANTZ: Sorry, but part of the speech was about how that wasn't actually being given to him, and not just to the president, which you can argue, and I think that there's some fairness here of not every bit of intel is going to get to the president. That's normal. However, if you do have DNI at the time, John Ratcliffe, not getting information, getting access to the information, that is meaningful. And some of the emails that have been released, we haven't seen all of them yet, I've seen a couple of them, suggesting that they were massaging points so that they would keep certain information from the president. I do think that that matters.
Now, in the end, it could mean --
HINOJOSA: Donald Trump was trying to overturn an election. There is a reason why --
RANTZ: Well, no, China was trying to get involved here, and the very people -- I'm sorry, but the very people --
HINOJOSA: Donald Trump was charged with attempting to try to overturn an election.
RANTZ: Donald Trump did not make any argument tonight about that election being overturned as a direct result of any of this. Every Democrat who told us what was going to be in this speech, they're all wrong. All their talking points completely fell apart. And so now they're coming out and they're saying that there was nothing here at all, everything that was said tonight is total nonsense. But you're pointing out it's not actually total nonsense. Some of this is known. And yet they're the ones saying that.
TEMIDAYO AGANGA-WILLIAMS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: But if I could add, I think a big distinction you have to draw is between election interference and election influence, right?
RANTZ: That's true.
AGANGA-WILLIAMS: Interference is about actually changing votes. The Jan. 6 Committee talked exactly about this. There was not interference. And Donald Trump today did not allege there was interference.
RANTZ: Correct.
AGANGA-WILLIAMS: The election results were appropriate. Joe Biden won fair and square.
Election influence is done all the time. It's done in every election. That's not remarkable. Is it important for our governments to be aware of it, take action to protect our elections even from influence? That's correct. But to your point --
RANTZ: From hacks.
AGANGA-WILLIAMS: Yes, but that's not what the president alleged tonight.
RANTZ: He talked specifically about that.
AGANGA-WILLIAMS: He did not allege that our elections were hacked in a way that impacted the result.
And to your point, I think it's ironic that the president here is focused about election integrity, where the person that has been the biggest threat to attacking our election integrity, the security and the comfort we have in our elections, and trying to overturn the votes of American citizens is the president.
He is the one who is taking action through challenging court decisions, to undermining Department of Justice, to undermining Congressional action, and leading to a violent insurrection that led to deaths. That is an actual threat, and I think it's ironic that he now would suggest that he could play the role of defender of election integrity with the past that he has.
SIDNER: Let me move on to something he said that some people may find shocking about a DHS review. Let's play the sound bite of the president talking about how vulnerable he believes the elections are. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Finally, to reveal just how vulnerable our elections continue to be, we are releasing the results of a stunning investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. According to the DHS review, state voter rolls, and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections. Since Democrat states refuse to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that.
Yet even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:10:00]
SIDNER: Xochitl, did you -- have you heard those numbers before? I think a lot of Americans may not have heard a number like that.
HINOJOSA: They -- the administration continues to try to have these numbers about non-citizen voting. They've tried to say it around the SAVE Act, and this has been a thing that they have orchestrated in some sense.
One, I think, major point here is that if there is voter fraud that is happening all across this country, why isn't the Department of Justice prosecuting it? Donald Trump had the White House for four years. If there was voter fraud that happened after the 2016 election, I worked at the Justice Department, I do not recall them, I mean, I have not seen press releases of them prosecuting voter fraud. Todd Blanche does whatever the president wants, and so did Pam Bondi, still have not seen that.
In my home state of Texas, show me the proof. Has Ken Paxton actually prosecuted, you know, instances of voter fraud? They claim there's all this voter fraud, but where are the prosecutions is my question.
RANTZ: You know I love you, so I'm going to say this gently. That was brilliant sleight of hand, because that's not what the clip was about. It was about getting registered. Now, we agree that that should not happen --
HINOJOSA: But they did say it's voter fraud. At least they're saying it's leading to voter fraud.
RANTZ: To register as someone who is ineligible to vote is wrong. We all agree with that. Calling that out, I think, is important, and giving those numbers.
And this is not just coming from this White House. I mean, Oregon last year admitted that they had done exactly the same thing because the systems that they had in place was not properly mitigating those issues. We should be calling this out. We should get to a point where that is zero.
I don't believe that there's been massive voter fraud that has changed any election. I also don't believe the idea that nothing can be done to strengthen the security of our elections. And I think this makes that point. We should all -- this part should be apolitical. We should be on the same page here. We don't want people to become eligible to vote when they're not allowed to vote, period.
HINOJOSA: So, can I ask why does Donald Trump want all of these voter rolls? What is he doing with them?
RANTZ: Well, because we just found out what he's doing with them.
HINOJOSA: But what exactly -- so now what is he going to do?
RANTZ: We found over 200,000.
HINOJOSA: So, what is he going to do here?
RANTZ: You purge them from the list so we ensure that they never have the opportunity to vote. Again, that is --
HINOJOSA: And how do we know, and how do we know that Americans are not being purged? He cannot -- Donald Trump's administration cannot guarantee us that Americans will not be purged from the voter files -- from the files.
RANTZ: Well, you guys can't guarantee us that people who are in this country illegally are --
HINOJOSA: States are working --
RANTZ: You're saying they're working, and I agree with you, right? I think they are working to do this.
HINOJOSA: To ensure that we have safe elections.
RANTZ: But you are pretending that this is not an issue at all and I reject that.
ROBERT RAY, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR AND INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: I recognize that this is going to be very, very difficult. If anybody thought it was going to be easy, they're dreaming to imagine how this will be able to be constructed around a bipartisan approach to this. I mean, that's the only way election reform ever gets done is if both parties have buy-in. Otherwise, it's just perceived as one party trying to beat up on the other, and vice versa, depending on who's in power.
Now, the criticism all along, though, I think, in fairness, has been, wait a minute, you know, Donald Trump is claiming election interference and possibly fraud that would potentially have affected the outcome of an election, and the criticism on the other side has always been, well, look, you don't have any evidence to show that. I think, you know, all of this has, at least in my experience, has been it is very difficult to find evidence. This is not easy to do.
But if we're talking about, you know, 200,000 people who are registered who shouldn't be registered, that's a large number. It's not astronomical when you think about the total number of people who vote in an election, that even in, under those circumstances, it's hard to see how that would really have any effect on its own about an outcome.
RANTZ: Norm Coleman might like that question.
SIDNER: All right. Hold on a second. Let --
RAY: But I think it -- but I still think, you know, you got to start someplace. And if the beef has always been, you're not showing us any evidence, I think, you know, it is now time, I think, if we're going to take action with regard to these things, to be able to provide evidence to try to back up what the vulnerabilities are.
And also to be able to say more than just, well, it's subject to being vulnerable, if we do actually have evidence of the systems being hacked for the purpose of systematic collection of information that potentially could interfere through foreign influence in an election.
I mean, we've been talking about that since 2016, but we really haven't, you know, zeroed in on it. And the only way to zero in on it is with evidence on the one hand, and then also potentially reform that is not the kind of reform that runs the risk of overreaching to the point of excluding otherwise eligible voters to vote. And I'm not saying it's easy, but we're capable of doing that.
SIDNER: I do want to give some context to this 278,000 number, because we've done some reporting on this over time on this claim that non-citizen voter rolls are quite high.
[22:15:02]
And what we found is that the data matching program that Trump cited is known to present an inflated number, and the reason for the inflated number is of suspected non-citizens, is in part because naturalized citizens are often flagged wrongly as non-citizens. Those who have been naturalized who were not born in the country, you know, have taken the test and gone through the whole thing, and they are citizens, are sometimes flagged as non-citizens. And then, of course, over time these things are looked at. If there's something flagged, you've got secretaries of state whose responsibility it is to go look at some of these irregularities.
A- and so far, I think one of the things that a lot of people will look at when they hear all these different numbers, and they sound enormous, and they sound bad, is where is the evidence that's strong enough that someone is arrested, as you put it? And if it isn't affecting the actual election, then why are we blowing this up every single time, and only blowing it up over a one single election, which was the 2020 election?
I haven't heard him complain about when he won in 2016, and we certainly did not hear him complain about election, huge election fraud in 2024. Because if there was huge election fraud, it may have gone against him.
RANTZ: He is pushing the Save America Act despite having won both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote. So, I do -- you know, that's an important piece.
SIDNER: I understand. But you don't hear him disputing his own wins. You only hear him disputing his loss. And that's why a lot of Americans look at this and go, it's partisan, no matter which side you're on, right, you choose, you pick a side. Yes?
RAY: That's right.
SIDNER: All right. Coming up next, we'll continue our discussion about the president's speech. There's plenty more in that speech.
Plus, a key senator told Todd Blanche he had to meet with Epstein survivors in order to get his approval to be attorney general. That meeting actually happened tonight. We'll discuss how the survivors and Todd Blanche say it went.
Those stories and more ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:20:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election-related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign.
Results of the U.S. midterm elections, and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself, separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government's strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president. They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot, when actually your president has done a great job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All right, that was part of the president's speech tonight.
Joining us at the table, Mark LoPresti and Brian Tyler Cohen. They are here along with our fascinating crew who's been at it already today. Let's start with you, Brian. When you hear the president talking about the breach that he says that China's made, talking about 220 million Americans whose information was potentially hacked, that China has personal information, voter roll information, you think what?
BRIAN TYLER COHEN, AUTHOR, THE DAY AFTER, HOW TO WIELD POWER IN A POST-TRUMP WORLD: I think that these sound like reheated conspiracy theories that we've been hearing for years and years. The reality is Donald Trump is looking for any thin predicate to be able to claim election fraud so that he can exercise what he thinks are some grandiose presidential powers so that he can do the thing that he's claiming to want to avoid, which is actually interfere in the next election. Because the only number really that's new here is his sinking approval ratings.
SIDNER: Let me ask you, Marc, about the idea that this speech was very much about voter fraud and interference in elections, although there was not a claim that it had changed the outcome of elections, which I think is kind of the first time he's talked about this without saying that I won 2020. But, obviously, the inference is, well, this is happening, and it makes you think that maybe it could.
So, is this about the SAVE America Act? The president has been hammering, trying to get Republicans to come together, they don't have the numbers in the Senate, but trying to get them to pass it, and this was one of the messages he was sending to the country and to -- really to the senators.
MARC LOPRESTI, CEO AND SENIOR MARKET STRATEGIST, MARKET REBELLION: I don't think the president left any gray area or area for interpretation. This was about get SAVE passed. That was the last thing he said.
But let me just say -- address some of what you said, Brian. It is a different era now than it was in '18 or in '20, just massively different. I sit on the advisory board of two quantum cybersecurity companies. I know something about this. A.I. and the threat of hacking using modern A.I. technology has made all of our systems, both public and private, more vulnerable than they have ever been.
We know, it's been proven both by our own intelligence agencies as well as the private sector, that China has been data farming, harvesting data, both public and private, from the United States, from U.S. citizens, data they cannot even access yet until their cyber techniques enable them to do so. It is a different threat today than it was in 2020 and 2018, and that's part of why the president was so forward-looking.
We didn't hear the moaning and complaining and kvetching, if you will, to use a very New York term, about what happened in the past. This was raising alarms about what could happen in the future. The threat is different. The threat is very real.
HINOJOSA: Yes. But he also had an enemy in this speech, and he does this in every speech.
[22:25:02]
And instead of actually saying, listen, I am going to put more resources at the FBI to ensure that we prevent those attacks, instead he tries to find an enemy in everything and wants to sort of sow sort of doubt and fear in the election.
And I would say I completely agree with you. I think the entire national security --
LOPRESTI: Did we get that on camera, by the way?
HINOJOSA: The entire national security apparatus must take seriously this election as they have in previous elections. Donald Trump has not given the FBI the funding in order to do that. If anything, he has taken away that funding and putting it -- put it towards immigration enforcement. FBI agents are doing immigration enforcement. They should not be doing that. They should be keeping our country safe.
And so I agree with you, but the money and the resources are not part of that.
LOPRESTI: The immigration enforcement is part of keeping this country safe. If you talk to the families of murder victims of illegal aliens that poured over the border under the Biden administration, like that is completely --
HINOJOSA: I would say that the vast majority of people that they're deporting in this country are not violent criminals, they are people who have families, and he is stripping away TPS status and legal status from families. People are getting shot on the streets. So, I would actually say I would be all for that if he were removing the very violent people. But he's not just doing that. He's removing families too.
DUNCAN: And I heard a different speech. I heard a speech that was looking in the rear view mirror, that was taking us back to 2017, that was taking us back to 2018, that was taking us back to 2019, 2020. I didn't hear any suggestions as to how he would fix the problems going forward or who he's going to task to take on these very serious cyber threats with A.I. and all the increasing pressure points that are going to be put on elections and businesses and whatnot as we try to live through the future.
But I think it's important to understand this. There is a million miles between proof of proving vulnerabilities and proving proofs of fraud. There's a million-mile gap between that.
LOPRESTI: They're two separate issues though.
DUNCAN: But he's trying to blur the two. I think that's the biggest --
LOPRESTI: They're separate but they're related. And, look, is he still salty about what happened in the past?
DUNCAN: Vulnerabilities and fraud are not related. LOPRESTI: Yes, he is. But it's not just all talk, by the way. I challenge that. We've had two executive orders that have directed public/private partnerships to advance investments in quantum cybersecurity, hundreds of millions of dollars, investment dollars, by the way, that, like the country's investment in intel, will return hundreds of millions of dollars back to the United States Treasury, not giveaways, not grants as we've seen in the past. This administration is taking the threat seriously.
Did he talk about it enough tonight? Could've done a little bit more, but they are taking it seriously.
RANTZ: Just very quickly, the context is also really important on your A.I. being used in this way. I mean, we're having a national conversation about data centers right now.
LOPRESTI: Yes, we are.
RANTZ: And there are a lot of blue states and blue cities that are saying, we want to put a moratorium on building them in their areas.
LOPRESTI: New York included.
RANTZ: They're going to be built somewhere, and they could be built in China.
LOPRESTI: That's right.
RANTZ: China wants to build them. And that is an increasingly, I would say, you know, national security concern that all of us have to have.
LOPRESTI: That's right.
COHEN: I think you would have more credibility to what you said if Trump himself had any credibility on this issue. He has been crying fraud with zero credibility for years. There were over 60 cases. He lost all of them. He still contends to this day that he was the victim of some widespread fraud.
LOPRESTI: I just said that I agree he's still salty. But talking about fraud and cyber vulnerabilities are separate but related issues.
DUNCAN: I think salty is too soft of a word. I've been the target of those lies, of those conspiracy theories. We've had death threats at our house. We've had state troopers wrapped around our house.
LOPRESTI: Completely unacceptable.
DUNCAN: We've had kids picked on at school.
So, those are not just softness. That's not just a personality trait. Those are lies, and he continues to lie, and he continues to try to create smoke around something that's not really there. And that's the reality. And this is a serious problem in America. Donald Trump is lying to America every time he talks about the 2020 election. Republicans are sick and tired of it. You poll Republicans that are on the ballot right now if they wanted Donald Trump to hold this speech tonight, I almost guess to a person they would've said no. They want him talking about gas prices. They want him talking about an end to the war in Iran. They want him to talk about inflation, grocery prices. They want to talk about issues that they care about, not something that didn't really happen and he's got too much pride to say, hey, I got it wrong.
COHEN: Well, that's the thing, though. He can't talk about those things because he's failing on all of those issues. And so all he has left --
LOPRESTI: Well, that's not true. I mean --
COHEN: It is true. He promised that he would --
LOPRESTI: You didn't read any of the numbers that came out this week.
COHEN: He promised that he would lower --
LOPRESTI: The PPI, the CPI, consumer retail sales, the economy --
COHEN: Inflation is still 30 percent higher than when Joe Biden left office.
RANTZ: Inflation is at the largest decrease that we've seen since COVID.
COHEN: What is inflation right now?
LOPRESTI: That's exactly correct.
RANTZ: It is too high. It's much lower than what it was because of policies that have been --
COHEN: Inflation is higher. Inflation is higher than when public enemy number one Joe Biden --
(CROSSTALKS)
COHEN: Inflation was at 3 percent when Biden left office. It's at 4 percent right now.
(CROSSTALKS)
HINOJOSA: Actually, I think Donald Trump understands that the, the war has a direct correlation to this economy. And I think that whenever he started saying that he was going to wind down the war, all of those things were welcome news for the Americans. As you said, they don't want to be in this war. But instead, we are at a war again with Iran, and what is happening is costs are going up again.
[22:30:04]
And while -- so I do welcome the relief for families --
LOPRESTI: That's not what the CPI said or the PPI said this week.
HINOJOSA: Because just a month ago, he was getting out of this war. And now he's not. He's escalated it.
LOPRESTI: Well, Iran is escalated. They were responding to their escalation.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, hold on. We're going to stop here because we have a lot more to talk about. And this is one of the big things that happened today that's worth noting.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche says his meeting today with Epstein survivors wasn't all cordial, as you might imagine, but he pledged to meet with them again. What the survivors are saying and what this means for Blanche's nomination as he vies to become the next attorney general. Those stories and more ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIDNER: Survivors of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are deeply frustrated after meeting today with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who's trying to shore up support for his nomination as the nation's top prosecutor. Blanche cannot afford to lose a single Republican vote in the Judiciary Committee.
But right now, two are currently holding out, including Senator Thom Tillis, who gave Blanche an ultimatum. He will vote for him only if he meets with survivors of Epstein.
That crucial face-to-face actually happened just hours later. But neither side came away fully satisfied with that conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANI BENSKY, EPSTEIN SURVIVOR: It wasn't substantive, it was not productive. It just felt like, okay, well, we have a half hour area grievances. Great, I met with survivors.
It's like, that's not what we're asking for, we are asking for investigations. We have been like, it's so exhausting to keep saying the same things. Like America doesn't want to hear the same things over and over again.
We just want action and we're not getting any action. And it's just after a day where you feel like maybe there was a small glimmer of hope. And now we've ticked the box and we're moving on.
(END VIDEO CLIP) SIDNER: In a statement, Blanche said it, quote, "wasn't all cordial because they want something I don't think I can give them, which is some form of justice. And I want to be able to give justice in the form of prosecutions." He added, "maybe we could do a prosecution at some point. I don't know."
I'm starting with you, Brian, because I see your head tilting. This has been excruciating for survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and their families as they've kind of gone through this and been in some ways dragged through the mud as these releases came out.
Names were not redacted. It's been a bit of a mess, to say the least. This meeting, though, has happened. And Thom Tillis had said, if you meet with them, you'll have my vote.
So that leaves one person. What do you make of what's happened here?
BRIAN TYLER COHEN, AUTHOR, "THE DAY AFTER: HOW TO WIELD POWER IN A POST-TRUMP WORLD": I mean, I make that John Cornyn, well, look, first of all, Thom Tillis should recognize that having Todd Blanche perform some perfunctory step just to basically check a box actually shows more contempt for the process than if he had just not met with them at all.
But really, all this is, the whole time, has just been for show. Todd Blanche pretending that he's going to offer any semblance of justice is for show. He is Donald Trump's former personal criminal defense attorney, he acts as his current criminal defense attorney.
And the reality is that he is there because Trump knows he can trust him. And Trump himself is listed in these files thousands upon thousands of times. And so he wants to elevate into that position somebody that he knows is going to protect him because that's Trump's only priority here.
JASON RANTZ, SEATTLE RED RADIO HOST, AND AUTHOR, "WHAT'S KILLING AMERICA": What crime did Trump commit as it relates directly to Epstein? Because you're mentioning that he's in the files with the implication, of course, that a crime was committed. And yet for four years under the previous President, they didn't charge him with anything because there's actually no evidence to suggest that he committed --
Well, that's the thing.
TYLER COHEN: I have seen a lot of the files.
RANTZ: Are you arguing that he's committed a crime?
GEOFF DUNCAN (R), FORMER GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, AND FORMER GEORGIA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: I asked you a question. Did you know?
RANTZ: No, I'm responding to your request.
DUNCAN: I want to see.
RANTZ: I've seen the files that have been released.
TYLER COHEN: You've seen the other three million files.
RANTZ: Not every single one.
TYLER COHEN: Do you think that maybe you're suggesting that a crime was committed? I'm not suggesting that I was not.
I'm suggesting that we should probably see the other half of the files that haven't been released.
RANTZ: A position you only magically started to take in the last two years, not one during the Biden administration. How did the Merrick Garland.
TYLER COHEN: So let me explain that.
RANTZ: How did I meet --
TYLER COHEN: While Joe Biden was in office. He prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell and she's serving a 20 year prison sentence. So let me ask you, why did Todd Blanche meet with Ghislaine Maxwell and move her from the prison that she was in in Florida to the low security prison in Texas?
RANTZ: Who should be charged next?
TYLER COHEN: I'll tell you what, once we see the files, I can let you know.
RANTZ: Of the files that you've seen so far.
TYLER COHEN: Why are you defending suppressing 3 million files?
RANTZ: You're only interested in this because you know that you can use this to try to go after the President?
TYLER COHEN: Why are you protecting pedophiles?
RANTZ: You guys didn't care about this for four years for a reason. And then the second that anyone calls out the hypocrisy, you say you're defending pedophiles.
HINOJOSA: No, you are not.
TYLER COHEN: Why are you not demanding the release of these files? Who do you have to protect?
RANTZ: Brian, of the files that have been released so far, who should be charged? Based on anyone yet?
HINOJOSA: Here is what I'll say.
RANTZ: I'm asking that question. Have you seen anything in this particular?
TYLER COHEN: So has the Trump administration released any files?
RANTZ: Of the files that you've seen, I'm simply asking.
TYLER COHEN: And I'm going to answer.
RANTZ: Have you seen any evidence of a crime yet? Or is the argument that, well, we haven't seen all the files, so the additional files might have some crime there?
[22:40:01]
TYLER COHEN: That's usually how it works.
RANTZ: Okay, so, but you're saying to this point that there has not been, so I guess my main point here is that --
TYLER COHEN: Well, I don't know because we've also had co-conspirator information redacted and not to mention victim information exposed.
RANTZ: But is your argument that Merrick Garland and his DOJ, they saw evidence and they chose not to pursue?
TYLER COHEN: They prosecuted --
HINIJOSA: -- Merrick Garland, DOJ, so why don't you allow me to answer this question?
For any investigation, the U.S. Attorney's Office handles it. They believe that in the Trump administration that Jeffrey Epstein got a deal that he shouldn't have had. Right?
That is being investigated, I believe Congress is investigating it. I don't know if DOJ is looking at it.
The issue with the survivors right now is that any time that there is new evidence, they should be getting that over to the FBI. They do not feel confident that the FBI is looking into it.
When I was at the Justice Department, this issue was not raised for us from the Epstein survivors. And if it was raised and actually if it was raised in one of 12 congressional hearings that Merrick Garland had, he would have absolutely met with these survivors.
I will say the time that this whole thing was politicized was when Donald Trump felt that there were Democrats on some sort of Epstein list. He was not looking for justice. What he wanted is he wanted to embarrass them.
RANTZ: And I agree.
HINOJOSA: And he wanted to release that. And so did Pam Bondi, because Pam Bondi needed to do whatever he wanted.
RANTZ: I totally agree with that.
HINOJOSA: She had never seen that list. RANTZ: Pam Bondi screwed this up from the beginning, and it was
disgusting.
HINOJOSA: And when she saw that list, it was unfortunate, but Donald Trump was all over it. There is the politics of this, and there is the investigation piece of it.
RANTZ: Sure. And my point is, folks were not calling for the release of the document.
HINOJOSA: When there's new information, the FBI has the responsibility to look into it, whether or not they make charges. I'm -- that is up to the FBI, whether they have that evidence.
But the survivors do not feel that they are being listened to by the FBI. And in that meeting, when they asked why was Ghislaine Maxwell put in a low security prison?
Todd Blanche did not want to answer that question.
RANTZ: And I will talk about open investigations with Todd Blanche.
HINOJOSA: He can't talk about that. But don't you find it is very odd and it is unprecedented for a deputy attorney general to go meet with any sort of defendant at a jail and what you wanted from Ghislaine Maxwell was he wanted Ghislaine Maxwell to say something to ensure that Donald Trump was innocent.
And that is why he ended up putting her in a low security prison.
SIDNER: We've got to end this conversation.
LOPRESTI: We all agree the worst job in the world would be Donald Trump's attorney general.
HINOJOSA: Yes.
SIDNER: It'd be rough. It has been rough. Well, we've seen what happened with the prior attorney general.
So we'll see what happens with Todd Blanche if he is able to cross the line with one Republican sort of in the balance right now.
All right, up next, stark warnings from Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller on the threat of far left terror. The question is, are they also looking at right wing violence? We'll discuss this ahead.
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[22:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SIDNER: Tonight, the Trump administration is urging diplomats from around the world to defend their civilizations against the scourge of far-left terrorism. In remarks delivered to representatives of more than 60 countries, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Adviser Stephen Miller painted a very dark picture.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR POLICY: Left- wing political terrorism seeks as its ultimate end the overthrow of our system and form of government.
MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: They can call themselves anti- capitalist or anti-imperialist or communist or anarchist or Marxist, but the fundamental character is always the same.
MILLER: If the left is allowed to use the real or actual threat of violence to destabilize our institutions, then those institutions cannot and will not succeed. This is a fatal cancer to civilization.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All right, Geoff, I want to start with you. You have been the subject of political attacks. I know that your family has faced some of the same, which is extremely scary and really should not happen in this country. We are talking about political attacks here.
When you hear this from the Trump administration, what are your first thoughts? Because we have seen numbers sort of rising of left-wing attacks, right?
DUNCAN: Yes, the lens I look through is left wing and right wing is all through the lens of extremism, in my opinion. And extremism is the ultimate kryptonite to democracy, whether it's far-left or far-right.
I think it's troubling when anybody, whether it's Rubio and Stephen Miller or others, just speaking about one side of the equation. I think it's important, especially in positions of leadership, to speak about the problem in totality.
And that's really what we're seeing. And it's not just violence. It's the rhetoric that leads to the violence. It's the organized plan, it's the dissemination on social media. It's the creating the stir that then, you know, then the right situation pops up and boom, there's a flashpoint.
SIDNER: I do want to just take a quick look at CSIS, which is a nonpartisan group who tracks attacks, political attacks, left-wing versus right-wing. Let's just look at this graph here.
The red is right-wing, the blue is left-wing, and you see it kind of being pretty even in the 90s and early 2000s.
[22:50:06]
And then you see some breakaways there, as you get closer and closer to 2025 and then 2025 has shown a lot more left wing terrorist attacks, five for just one right-wing attack. But there have been a lot of both.
I'm curious, Brian, when you consider this and what it means to the country, obviously the shooting and killing of Charlie Kirk in front of a crowd of people, it did shock the nation, whether you liked his politics or not. And there's a lot of blame game going on. But when you see this, what are your thoughts?
TYLER COHEN: I mean, look, especially as it relates to Charlie Kirk, this is a political commentator, obviously hits home. I think for anybody sitting at this table, seeing political violence, especially against folks in this sphere, in the political commentary sphere, is worrisome.
But look, the fish rots from the head. To have Stephen Miller out there say that he's accusing the left of tearing down our institutions in the name of violence, when this is a guy who is a senior advisor to the president who incited an insurrection just a few years ago, where a mob of his supporters sought to hang his own Vice President and assassinate Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, the irony shouldn't be lost on anybody.
And yet this is the message being sent down. So these people can try and kind of gaslight the country by shoving this stuff into the zeitgeist. But it isn't going to change reality.
LOPRESTI: I don't think that's a fair characterization. What part about because we keep going back to the past and obviously what happened on January 6th, terrible and unacceptable.
We have an organization now that has more than quadrupled in membership at the numbers that I last looked, that is advancing a campaign of the complete destabilization of the government, the abolishment of the office of the presidency, the abolishment of the Senate, that is endorsed by a Democratic leaders here in New York, Mayor Mamdani, by way of example, that is concerning.
And I'm really glad that we're being --
TYLER COHEN: Are you talking about the DSA?
LOPRESTI: I am. I'm not saying there are terrorist groups. I don't go there. But there is a rise.
TYLER COHEN: We have a DSA mayor right now whose crime right now is filling 175,000 potholes and just today announcing a task force to help tenants who have been the subject of, you know, wrongful action by their landlords.
LOPRESTI: I'm not calling him a terrorist. I'm not calling the DSA a terrorist. I'm simply pointing out we have an unprecedented rise in this country that should be concerning to Democrats and Republicans whose stated purpose is the complete a deconstruction of our way of government.
TYLER: Wait a minute.
LOPRESTI: That's extremism to me. That's extremism.
HINOJOSA: So you're not having to do a terrorism now. TYLER COHEN: So you're worried about some fringe, like, paragraph.
You're worried about a fringe paragraph on a website when the sitting President of the United States incited an insurrection to kill members of Congress and to have his own Vice President hanged. This is the leader of your party.
LOPRESTI: I'm fully aware of his office and his party affiliation.
TYLER COHEN: So how can you point to somebody who has incited that kind of violence, who has posted on social media a picture of Joe Biden hogtied on the back of a truck, whose own son laughed and got a Halloween costume about Paul Pelosi being bludgeoned by a hammer?
LOPRESTI: Am I supporting any of that? We're taking the conversation and just trying to go off the exit.
TYLER COHEN: But to point to DSA.
RANTZ: January 6th rioters over and over again.
LOPRESTI: Did we not just say earlier, I believe you said, Geoff, that the rhetoric leads, unfortunately, to extremist acts on both sides. And that rhetoric is dangerous.
DUNCAN: And that's important to understand. If we show up to this question that you ask, and we want to solve the problem. We have to look through both lenses.
LOPRESTI: 100 percent.
DUNCAN: Both extremes are guilty as charged. Both extremes find a moment in time, an event that happens that they rally around for negative purposes and create pain.
LOPRESTI: I agree.
HINOJOSA: But the way you solve this is through deterrence. And if there is anyone on both sides who are -- there are threats or if they're committing crimes of any that I would want to see a federal government, regardless if it's a Democrat or Republican administration, prosecute them.
And I would not want to see any President pardon them, regardless of their political affiliation. And I think we just all need to agree on that moving forward and hold our political leadership accountable so that doesn't happen again. And we actually have deterrence in this.
DUNCAN: I would agree.
LOPRESTI: I second that motion.
TYLER COHEN: I would agree with that.
SIDNER: We've got agreeance and we're going to stop it there because we don't always have that.
Next, panelists react to your feedback from cnn.com/abby.
But first, a quick programming note. From their clothing and corgis to their priceless jewels and castles. Why are some Americans so enthralled with the royal family? We left them, remember?
[22:55:01]
The CNN flashdoc "Royal Fever - Why America Can't Quit the Crown?" Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern on CNN or on the CNN app.
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SIDNER: All right. Now it's your turn. Viewer feedback from cnn.com/abby. Here is the first line in it to the president.
Clearly, this person's writing "Fix the economy, stop the war and stay present. This is 2026, period."
[23:00:07]
The next one. "There is just as much rhetoric and violence on the right as the left. The biggest problem is nobody is talking to each other," except here at this table.
RANTZ: Talking to each other.
SIDNER: Everyone, thank you so much for being here.
And by the way, Brian Tyler Cohen's new book, "The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World," is out. He is also the bestselling author of "Shameless." That is also, I understand it, in bookstores, correct?
TYLER COHEN: Correct.
SIDNER: All right. Thank you so much for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
