Return to Transcripts main page
CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Axios Reports, Trump Says He's Close to Decision on Massive Attack on Iran; Trump Places New Condition on Signed Saudi Nuclear Deal. Trump Media's Truth Social to Sell Traders for Faster Post Access; GOP Election Official Pan Trump's Election Claims. Aired 10- 11p ET
Aired July 23, 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)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice over): Tonight --
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: A head for an eye.
PHILLIP: -- that's how the White House describes its Iran strategy as the war escalates, but the president's poll numbers are flashing red.
Plus --
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: If they don't join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off.
PHILLIP: -- Trump says the nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia now has strings attached. Sign the Abraham Accords or else.
Also --
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The evidence of fraud has been buried.
PHILLIP: -- GOP election officials pan the president's election claims and brush off threats of prison time.
And Republicans rebuff Trump's plan to sell early access to Truth Social posts and warn it'll give Democrats an edge in the midterms.
Live at the table, Chuck Rocha, Carla Sands, Peter Meijer, Congressman Ro Khanna, and Kmele Foster.
Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other, but here, they do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP (on camera): Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Tonight, a dramatic escalation could be right around the corner in Iran. President Trump tells Axios that he's considering a, quote, massive attack against Iran, one bigger than ever before, and he's close to making that decision now. He says Iran wants to negotiate, but Trump doesn't want to make a deal. He says, quote, they haven't received enough pain yet. However, The New York Times is also reporting tonight that Iran has rejected a ceasefire proposal from Trump, one that was presented to them by the Iraqi prime minister.
Now, sources tell CNN that U.S. intelligence agencies say the bombing that the U.S. is currently carrying out is unlikely to shift Iran's negotiating position. And according to Marco Rubio, Trump is done with a proportional response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Do you rule out striking civilian infrastructure?
RUBIO: I think, I saw -- you know, guys, I saw Araghchi, their foreign minister who the other day say, or something about their policy is an eye for eye. The president's policy is a head for an eye. I mean, honestly, that's what it's going to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It all comes as the House narrowly voted to limit Trump's war powers in Iran, but a similar measure was rejected in the Senate, and a new Fox News poll shows that Trump's and the party's support is waning. Trump is significantly underwater when it comes to his handling of his job, as well as inflation, the economy, Iran, even immigration.
With the midterms just over three months away, some are already sounding the alarm.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: The truth is there's not much good news for Republicans in this whole poll we did. You know, underwater on the economy, as you showed, underwater on affordability. Those two issues are front and center, for sure.
And everywhere you look, Republicans are down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And before we open it up to the table here, I want to invite you at home to join the debate. Head to cnn.com/abby. You can weigh in there. We'll get to some of your comments throughout the show.
Congressman Khanna, just for starters, when you hear the president talking tough as he has been, frankly, for the last several months in this conflict, and then also sending Iran a, you know, proposal for a ceasefire that they then summarily reject, what does it tell you about what the strategy is here?
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): There is no strategy. I'm for results. We just voted to again stop the war in Iran this morning in the House, but what has the president achieved? He's driven gas prices up. He's driven food prices up. The enriched uranium is still in Iran. They have a more extreme regime because the son isn't even saying what Khamenei did, which was, we won't develop nuclear weapons. The IRGC is stronger. They have more control over the Strait of Hormuz, and Americans are being killed, and the American people are saying, this is worse than just a moral crime. It's a blunder, and you promised to end foreign wars, and you're getting us into this mess. You're failing.
PHILLIP: Carla, I see you shaking your head.
CARLA SANDS, FOREIGN POLICY INITIATIVE CHAIR, AMERICA FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE: Yes, I shook my head because, you know, President Trump is doing what no American president did since Jimmy Carter. He's actually taken on this murderous regime, the mullah regime, the IRGC. These are revolutionary nuts, and they are killing their own people, and they've killed American soldiers throughout the world for decades.
President Trump is the first president to say, you know what, it may cost me politically, but I'm going to do the right thing.
[22:05:03]
He's done this in Venezuela. He's working on this in Cuba. He's working around the world to make the United States, the people, safer.
And there are people in Iran that want to have democracy, that have a plan. The NCRI are fighting to have democracy, clean elections, equality among the sexes and for the religions with freedom of religion and clean courts. So, there are people that want to fight back against this regime. As they get weaker, they get more of a chance.
So, I think this is a great opportunity for the Iranian people, but President Trump is going to have to drive these very bad actors into the Stone Age to change what's happening now.
PHILLIP: But are they? How much weaker are they really in this moment?
CHUCK ROCHA, SUBSTACK: THE ROCHA REVOLUTION: There's one thing that the congressman left out, and that is they also came to Congress this week and asked for $76 billion, a lot of money. And I'm not saying they need it or they don't need it. But what I do know is I've been running campaigns from California to New York, and right now the American public ain't where they were in World War I or World War II. Right now, they're all out of give a damns and they could give a damn about this war. What they do give a damn about is gas prices, meat prices, and not being able to afford things every day.
I think because of these things and because we're in a different place with not just three networks, folks are getting their own information and being fed things that they want or don't want. If you've got a Let's Go Brandon flag on your boat, you're with him. If you've got a Bernie Sanders tattoo, you're against him. But everybody in the middle right now, I'm telling you right now, is all out of give a damns about this war. KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE: But I think most Americans recognize that there is a very serious connection between the conflict in Iran and all of those pocketbook issues that you were referring to earlier. And I think that even among the president's base, a lot of the reason why he won is because he ran with a very particular kind of foreign policy, non-interventionist, we're not going to start stupid wars abroad. And I think it's possible for two things to be true at once, that the president was being bold, is willing to confront very bad, malevolent actors in the world, but he also went about it in a foolish and foolhardy way that seems to be pretty poorly calculated.
It isn't clear that there is an obvious good path forward here. If the president imagines that he can just carry out this conflict by dropping bombs from above without ever getting any boots on the ground and have -- make any meaningful progress, I think that seems to be a policy that's probably not going to yield results.
PHILLIP: So, Trump today, he said that any damages that Iran does to ships, cargo, or anything in the Strait of Hormuz would be paid for in Iranian money that the United States has in its possession. This is quite the contrast to what he was willing to do just a few months ago when he was willing to, you know, release sanctions on Iranian oil, potentially unfreeze hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, potentially create a fund for the Iranians. That was a pretty sweetheart deal for Iran. They didn't have to do a whole lot to get that, and they rejected it anyway.
Again, I'm coming back to the question of is there even a little bit of strategy here, or is it just a lot of random things being said day after day?
PETER MEIJER, CO-FOUNDER AND HEAD OF STRATEGY, THE NEW INDUSTRIAL CORPORATION: I think what comes across as randomness is actually iteration. The codillo politics, right, the plata o plomo, silver or lead. Do you want the bullet, or do you want the bribe?
ROCHA: Thank God you translated that.
MEIJER: You have two options. I'm here for it.
ROCHA: What? Okay, sorry.
MEIJER: I speak Portuguese better, but --
ROCHA: I didn't mean to interrupt. No, go ahead.
MEIJER: Yes, it's a different story. Like that is what defines a lot of the politics of this administration, and I think that is the absolute right approach in the Middle East. It works very well in Latin America. It doesn't translate so well to Europe.
But when it comes to these operations that we're seeing, you know, they are not going forward with the, you know, you're with us or against us, it's all or nothing, damn the consequences. It is, we're going to try this. Let's see the reaction. We're going to try this. Let's see the reaction. We didn't mention the fact the blockade is back on. We didn't mention the fact that those funds have not been released. There is still a sweetener. There's still a pot at the end of that rainbow if the Iranians so choose that.
If the regime says, you know what? We want to see ourselves as part of a productive Middle East. If they don't want to do that, CENTCOM is still there. We have not reduced our forces in the region.
PHILLIP: I mean, haven't we really put most of it on the table already at this point? We put the biggest thing we have, which is our military, on the table first. We did that. That was the first thing we did. Then we offered them a ton of money. That didn't work. It doesn't strike me that there's a whole lot left except what Trump also seems to be threatening, which is that maybe he might start to strike borderline civilian targets, like power plants or bridges or whatnot, which would be a line crossed for us.
So, I mean, do you think that there's really much more left for them to either threaten or to offer to the Iranians in this moment?
KHANNA: The problem is we're losing our leverage. And what's gnawing at Trump is that Barack Obama was far more effective, that Barack Obama actually got China and the E.U. and got a multilateral agreement that got 97 percent of enriched uranium out.
[22:10:09]
And it turns out being statesmanlike and being smart and strategic is better than bluster for America's national interest.
And now the president has made a mess of things, made a mess of the economy, but his ego will not permit him to go to Xi Jinping and the European leaders and have a multilateral solution to get us out of this mess and to help the American people.
PHILLIP: So, before you jump in --
MEIJER: I mean, the Iranians killed an order of magnitude more Americans under President Obama than they have under President Trump.
KHANNA: That's just not true. That's not actually true.
MEIJER: That is absolutely true. I was in Iraq and the EFPs that the Iranians were supplying to the Jaish al-Mahdi, Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, all of the Iranian-backed militias.
KHANNA: Obama didn't go to Dover Air Force Base and have to look at dead Americans coming in. Obama didn't preside over the Strait of Hormuz getting controlled.
MEIJER: I mean, he should have because they were my colleagues coming back from Iraq.
KHANNA: From Iraq, but not from the direct strike --
MEIJER: Who were killed by Iranian-backed groups.
KHANNA: -- by proxy groups. But those were being killed --
MEIJER: Yes, who were receiving their funding and receiving their weapons from Iran.
KHANNA: Those were being killed under the first Trump term as well, and you know that as well as I do.
Trump has created a disaster.
MEIJER: And killed under Biden too.
KHANNA: And what he has done is he engaged in the very regime change wars that he ran against, and he believes that he can attack the world --
MEIJER: There's no regime change, right? I think that is the crux of the Democratic criticism. We haven't changed the regime. It's not a regime change war.
KHANNA: But he tried, and he failed.
SANDS: And inflation, if I may, was much higher under President Biden. The economy was much worse under President Biden. He pushed so much money out. He just flooded the zone with so much money with the inflation reduction.
KHANNA: you know, we could re-litigate Biden, but the reality is President Trump ran on one issue.
SANDS: And then he was throwing the gold bars out from the EPA, just funding left wing causes to the tens of billions of dollars.
PHILLIP: Hold on. Okay. The gold bars thing is not quite what you're describing, but let me just read this.
SANDS: billions of dollars.
PHILLIP: Just to your comment about the economy, here's a, a viewer comment that says, the true war this president has to deal with is the war against the economy. And just to that point, this Fox News poll shows that 76 percent of Americans have a negative view of this economy. And now 54 percent of Americans say Democrats would do a better job than Republicans on the economy.
So, maybe, you know, at the height of inflation under Biden, for sure, the numbers were worse. But it's been interesting because I think voters right now, their sentiment about the economy is similar or if not the same or worse than it was under Biden.
And I think some of it has to do with the fact that they felt like they got out of the woods and now they're going in the wrong direction because of some of the decisions Trump has made.
FOSTER: Yes, absolutely. And I think it's, you know, adjudicating whether Obama or Trump has a better record on Iran at this point is a bit of a moot point. We are where we are in this very difficult, intractable situation. And I think that the president, the administration needs to take a very hard look in the mirror. They need to find allies on both sides of the aisle. It is very difficult, and I suspect was a difficult vote to cast when American service persons are being killed abroad by an adversarial regime, and one is voting against actual engagement with them.
I understand why someone might want to cast that vote. If the administration doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy for dealing with this, I think it can be very difficult to actually rally support for some sort of military engagement, but this is where we are right now. And figuring out how to get out of that entanglement is a --
ROCHA: There's a reason why -- sorry to interrupt. There's a reason why Joe Biden was blamed, because he was in charge at that point and things were high. Things cost too much. Well, now Republicans are in charge of every aspect of Congress. The reason I went on that tirade in the beginning of a war thing to talk about the economy was what you just said in that poll. This is what Americans really care about right now. If you ask them if they want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, they'll say no. But they say, right now, that's good and that's over there, but right here is where I'm hurting. It happened under Joe Biden, and now it's happening under Donald Trump, but even worse.
That's why the American public -- I ain't taking a side on either one of who did whatever, but I run campaigns every day, and these people are all fed up, all across America who work hard every day, who don't feel like nobody's listening to them.
PHILLIP: I think the danger here is that voters decide to just take the car keys away from the driver that they think is sending the car into the ditch.
KHANNA: Trump's done the impossible. He's given Democrats a lead on the economy. I don't think we've had that before.
PHILLIP: That is a rare thing in our politics.
MEIJER: The Democratic ballot advantage has started to erode in the last month.
PHILLIP: All right. We have to leave it there.
Next for us, we've got some new reporting tonight about what made the president ultimately change this newly signed nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Plus, bipartisan blowback against a plan to offer early access to Trump's Truth Social posts but for a pretty hefty fee.
We'll be right back.
[22:15:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Tonight, just a day after signing a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump says he has a new condition for this deal. The agreement is off if Saudi Arabia refuses to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.
After facing significant backlash over this deal, this morning Trump emphasized that there would be no enrichment, even though the deal could lead to Saudi Arabia enriching nuclear fuel for civilian reactors. And the deal is, quote, totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. That's what Trump says.
So, asked why that condition was not mentioned at yesterday's signing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt offered this explanation.
[22:20:04]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president is always the final dealmaker, as you know, and this is something that he has mentioned on numerous occasions going back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has stated plainly that he would not normalize relations with Israel unless there is a clear pathway toward a Palestinian state.
But this morning, Levitt couldn't be sure whether Trump and MBS had even spoken about this new arrangement.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEAVITT: The president just put out this statement a few hours ago. I don't believe he's had a call with MBS in the hours since. However, this is something that he has raised in previous conversations and has also said many times in the past.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Sources tell CNN that Trump's announcement caught the administration's nuclear negotiating team off guard.
I mean, really? Are you going to give me like a whole spiel about how this is like 4D chess or something?
MEIJER: No, I kind of like it though.
PHILLIP: It just seems like --
MEIJER: It's pressing every point of leverage. The ink may be dry.
PHILLIP: It's kind of embarrassing, Peter.
MEIJER: But you can still -- well, I think it is --
PHILLIP: I mean, can we make a deal or not that we stand by as a country? MEIJER: If we don't -- you know, the Chinese were waiting to swoop in and do this, and there's all sorts of relations between the Saudis, who are very strong allies, but they also have ties on the Chinese side of the house and with Pakistan. You know, everybody has their incentives.
I think it was important for us to sign this deal, you know, it was something that was on the table in the first administration, couldn't get there. The Biden administration put on some additional considerations, couldn't get there. I think, you know, October 7th made the Abraham Accords joining by Saudi Arabia more difficult. I think that's still a very worthy and important aspiration.
But the reality is, you know, if Trump feels like he walks away from a deal and he's like, you know, I could have gotten a little bit more, it doesn't stop him. And I don't know. I kind of like it.
PHILLIP: Here's the thing. This is Trump's own government, okay? It's not somebody else's government that's making this deal. It's Trump's own government that announces a deal and then the next day he pulls it back because maybe he wasn't aware of what was going on in his own government. Are you kidding?
SANDS: It's the art of the deal.
PHILLIP: I mean, come on.
KHANNA: Well, here is, I think, the question we have to ask genuinely. Is this president America first or is he Israel first? Because he's going to pull back a deal --
SANDS: Oh, come on.
KHANNA: Because he's going to pull back a deal first where we have had a non-proliferation policy and he's giving Saudi Arabia nuclear weapons while enrich -- well, he's allowing them to produce enriched uranium which we didn't do with UAE, and he's saying that he doesn't want Iran to have that. And then the condition is not go invest in Pennsylvania or go invest in Michigan. The condition is that he wants them to recognize Israel without him recognizing a Palestinian state. Like why does any American want that to be the condition?
PHILLIP: But to be fair, I mean, one of the reasons that Trump is frustrated by the coverage of this is because, for example, Fox News and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal questioned why the deal was being made absent a normalization agreement, which is something, as both outlets pointed out, Joe Biden had been seeking.
So, it's not just -- I think part of it is actually that the idea of the Saudis needing to give something in order to get this incredible concession from us is something that other administrations had wanted, including Biden.
KHANNA: But not at the expense of the Palestinians. The Saudi position is, okay, we'll recognize a state of Israel if you recognize a Palestinian state. FOSTER: I'm sorry. I'm not sure how I understand why this is at the expense of the Palestinians. If you could --
PHILLIP: Well, because I would say -- I mean, well, the Saudis are not going to normalize -- that's the whole thing, is that they are never going to normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinian issue is resolved, and that's always -- that's been their position for many, many years. It's their position now. And so --
KHANNA: It's the position of most of the Arab League.
PHILLIP: Right. So, I mean, that's the reason.
FOSTER: Yes. I think the thing that I would take into consideration here is that if the president of the United States is pursuing a deal like this, the hope is that you can make the Middle East a more stable place. And if you can strengthen relations between the Israelis and the Saudis, that will hopefully help towards that end.
And I would say this, I would go further. To the extent there's any hope for a resolution to the situation in Palestine, the Saudis and the Israelis being on better terms and working together collaboratively is something that might actually help to solidify an agreement that is better for the Palestinian people.
I think some of the characterization of various policy pursuits as putting Israel first, when, in fact, it would simply be better for the Middle East broadly if the Israelis and the Saudis had a stronger relationship and were working together in a meaningful sense. It seems obvious to me that that would be better for the Palestinian people because it would be worse for, say, Hamas, for example.
KHANNA: Well, Hamas is a terrorist group, but the Saudis don't feel it that way. Obviously, they don't want the --
[22:25:00]
FOSTER: It's one way that --
(CROSSTALKS)
KHANNA: You have an American president who is signing off and the Congress on the integration of our military with the Israeli military.
(CROSSTALKS)
KHANNA: You've got Section 219 and Section 214.
(CROSSTALKS)
KHANNA: If I could just finish, no, we don't have that with any ally. You have the American people who have been upset at our unconditional aid to Israel, who are upset that we supported Israel and what they did in Gaza who want us to be supporting --
FOSTER: And the president of the United States has applied a great deal of pressure recently.
KHANNA: And, by the way, this is Republicans and Democrats, both who have that view. And now you have the president of the United States saying to the Saudis, we're going to allow you to have nuclear energy, but the only condition is you've got to recognize the state of Israel without recognizing a new Palestinian state. It's just out of touch with what would bring peace in the Middle East or the American people, where they are on the issue.
MEIJER: I mean, speaking of peace in the Middle East, I mean, this is where -- you know, this is a term that hasn't come up a lot because we talked about it a little bit, and then it kind of faded out into the background, the Board of Peace.
SANDS: Yes.
MEIJER: The Board of Peace is starting to spin up. I wouldn't be surprised if part of this is, okay, you can't do the Abraham Accords. Commit more strongly to the U.S. Board of Peace.
FOSTER: So, why not ask for that?
MEIJER: And that's something where, by the way, former Secretary of State --
KHANNA: But what is the Board of Peace doing? Is there a Palestinian on the board of peace?
MEIJER: The former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, a month ago in the Financial Times, and this was not prompted by anything, came out and said, the U.S. Board of Peace is the best solution that we have seen in two decades to try to actually resolve this issue permanently.
You have the Abraham Accords on one side, but the Board of Peace is driving forward. It's not getting a lot of attention. It deserves to. It's critical.
PHILLIP: My more fundamental question about this is less whether or not actually, you know, Saudi's normalizing relations with Israel is a good thing or a bad thing. It's whether Trump even knows ultimately what he actually wants. Because based on the reporting, he only backtracked on that part of it because, you know, talkers on Fox and columnists on The Wall Street Journal were complaining about it. So, does he himself have a vision for what he wants this relationship to look like, or is he just reacting?
SANDS: No. I think he has a distinct vision. It's clear. He works with his team, and I think that there are events that have overtaken some of the plans. We can see it's, you know, Iran, this is a lot harder, I think, than --
PHILLIP: So, why announce a deal yesterday and then change it the next day?
SANDS: You're talking about the Saudis? PHILLIP: Yes.
SANDS: This is the art of the deal.
PHILLIP: That's what I'm talking about.
SANDS: No, he's working a deal.
PHILLIP: But what is the art of the deal here?
SANDS: So, in the Middle East they sign --
PHILLIP: You announce a deal then you renege on it in 24 hours?
SANDS: In the Middle East, after you sign the deal, the negotiations start. So, he's just preempting that.
PHILLIP: That is totally --
SANDS: Oh, it is absolutely true. That is how things work. It is very different than here in the United States when you're dealing with a deal.
PHILLIP: I think that's an oversimplification by a long shot. You know, when we say that we have signed a deal to allow nuclear development in another country, and that deal is signed, and there's a press conference and that whole thing, that's not the start of negotiations. We've already put out the terms.
SANDS: The idea is that they're going to cooperate with us on nuclear -- so they have nuclear power in Saudi. They're not going to be working with the Chinese --
PHILLIP: Were we going to tell them that, or was Trump just going to announce it on Truth Social?
SANDS: No the deal's the deal. But how is it looking? They're going to put it together, so it's the framework is done. But now that they're going to work out the details.
And deals will sometimes change with the changing facts on the ground.
PHILLIP: Okay. I mean, look I think that this is like Trump world upside down land.
SANDS: It's not that simple.
PHILLIP: That's not how deals, that's not how deals are done by presidents, period. It's really not. If you want, if you want to say that it's undone, they could've said that. You know, we'll sort out the details of this at some other time. They didn't say that.
FOSTER: They could've pursued a more pragmatic goal, like trying to get them to be a bigger part of the board of peace or take some other action, a step -- affirmative step in the direction of normalization of relations with Israel. They didn't do those things. And that's what seems so strange --
PHILLIP: They didn't even talk, apparently, according to Karoline Levitt, she couldn't even say if Trump had spoken to Netanyahu or MBS or any of the other parties involved, so a lot of questions about that.
ROCHA: The problem that the party has with this is we spent 28 minutes talking about the top two leading stories today. One is Iran, and one is MBS, I forgot all of his initials, over in Saudi Arabia, and nothing about what really folks are worried about every day.
And I know we'll get to that in a little bit, but this is a problem that the Republicans have in the midterms. I'm not saying this ain't news. That's why we're talking about it, but this ain't what American people right now are dealing with every day.
PHILLIP: All right. Up next for us, pay to play, buying access, just two of the comments from GOP senators pushing back on this plan to sell early access to President Trump's Truth Social posts. We'll tell you about it next.
[22:30:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, forget America first, it's Wall Street first. The Trump Media Company wants to sell faster access to the President's Truth Social posts, charging Wall Street traders and investment firms as much as $100,000 a month for the service. That's according to Reuters. Democrats call it another grift.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Trump announces a new contract, subscribers know where to invest. Trump shakes up the Fed, subscribers get to reposition before the rest of the market blinks.
[22:35:08]
SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): In old-fashioned securities law, that would be insider trading.
SEN. PETER WELCH (D-VT): Incredible corruption. Shameless. And Trump is just right out in the open. Terrible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Some Republicans are also slamming the idea. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana telling "The Hill," quote, "I think that's wrong. It's a form of buying access."
Maine Senator Susan Collins says, "That doesn't sound appropriate." And Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski says, "We don't really want to be that place where everything comes down to pay for play." Now, a reminder, Trump owns about 41 percent of shares in Trump Media and could rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription fees. A product called Truth API is set to roll out on August 1st.
And Chuck, I'm coming to you, but let me just put this poll up.
Question to voters. Which party is extremely or very tied to elite interests? 70 percent now say Republicans, 56 percent say Democrats.
CHUCK ROCHA, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SOLIDARITY STRATEGIES, FOUNDER, NUESTRO PAC, CO-HOST, "THE LATINO VOTE" PODCAST, AND SUBSTACK AUTHOR, "THE ROCHA REVOLUTION": Since we've moved on from Saudi Arabia, let me take the floor. And what I'd like to say about this is, I'm not saying he's a grifter. I'm not saying the President's stealing any money.
But I will say a fact, which is, his wealth has increased more than any single President in a year and a half in office than ever in the history of our country. I didn't say he was stealing any money. I'm just saying he's making a lot of money.
And if you all want to say to me that's because he's a brilliant businessman, I will direct your attention to all of his bankruptcies.
The only thing that I will say is, whether it's the President or a member of Congress, I know the congressman's with me on this, is you should not get rich when you're in a government job on my tax dollar.
CARLA SANDS, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, VINTAGE CAPITAL GROUP, FOREIGN POLICY INITIATIVE CHAIRMAN, AMERICA FIRST POLICY INSTITUTE, AND FORMER ECONOMIC POLICY ADVISER DURING THE FIRST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: And I will say this, he wouldn't even have Truth Social if the Democrats hadn't colluded with big tech and canceled him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, every single platform he was taken down and banned while he was the sitting U.S. President.
PHILLIP: Wait, Democrats colluded with social media companies when Trump was President?
SANDS: Yes, that's correct.
PHILLIP: Remember, he was in charge of the government at the time, just a reminder.
SANDS: Oh yes, but there was a whole hidden --
PHILLIP: Okay, so Democrats have all kinds of extraordinary powers. But look, let's get back to the central question here.
Trump is, the Trump company, this Truth Social company, questionable finances of that company, but let's put that aside for a second. They're saying, you pay us $100,000 a month, and we'll let you know first when Trump is about to tweet something that's going to move markets. How is that not insider trading? Carla, how is that not insider trading?
SANDS: I guess you're buying early notice. PHILLIP: Insider information, the non-public information from a government official?
SANDS: All I'm saying is it never would have happened if the Democrats hadn't funded him and tried to cancel him as a person.
PHILLIP: I'm asking you about the ethics of what they are trying to do.
SANDS: As long as it's legal, go for it.
PHILLIP: $100,000 a month, and then on top of that, the President, who is providing the non-public information, has a 41 percent ownership stake of the company that is profiting from the subscription fees.
SANDS: That he created because he was completely canceled.
PHILLIP: But answer the question, is that okay? Is that ethical?
SANDS: If it's legal, they should do it.
PHILIP: Okay, so you're good with it.
SANDS: He's a businessman.
PHILLIP: Okay, Congressman, is that insider trading?
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Certainly if someone were to trade on the information that they got, that would be a crime in insider trading. Here's the problem with this. It's not just all the Presidents corrupt. It's that they're two different Americas.
There's an America where people can't get a job, and they can't afford child care, and they can't afford health care, or they're working 40, 50 hour weeks, and they aren't being able to make ends meet. And then there's an America where you get to buy your way into access and to lists, and you get to go early on IPOs, and you get to make money through capital gains, and it works for a very few people.
SANDS: People like you.
KHANNA: Well, people in Silicon Valley. And the reality is this President said he was going to go after the elites, and he was going to be for the working class. And I'm not questioning his personal finances, I'm questioning his agenda.
Where are the manufacturing jobs? What has he done for the working class? What has he done for health care costs? What has he done for people who he promised were the left behind Americans he was going to fight for?
SANDS: And their salaries are going up higher and faster under President Trump than they did under Biden or Obama.
PHILLIP: Inflation has eclipsed wage growth for the last two months. KMELE FOSTER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, TANGLE, AND PODCAST HOST, "THE FIFTH COLUMN": I think it's impossible to ignore the stench of corruption, the fact that the President has made a tremendous amount of money, that his family are enriching themselves. All of that is very bad. I also think it's important for there to be some nuance and thoughtfulness when we're approaching these stories.
[22:40:00]
This enterprise API access for social media companies, that is often accompanied by some high-speed access to data. Usually this is to benefit high-frequency traders. Most of the President's Truth Social posts, if he's tweeting something consequential, we know about it almost right away, having a fraction of a second worth of information faster. I don't actually think that makes a huge difference here.
PHILLIP: Then why would anybody pay $100,000 for it?
FOSTER: You're paying $100,000 for a number of things. I don't know that anyone really cares that much about trans-social.
PHILLIP: No. Seriously, why would anyone pay $100,000 if they didn't think there was clear market benefit to knowing the information beforehand?
FOSTER: I'm not sure how many people have signed up for this service.
PHILLIP: Hold on, Kmele, because it doesn't exist yet. It's August 1st.
But we know that the President's tweets move markets. We know that there have been massive trades off of Trump's tweets announcing a ceasefire deal with Iran, announcing a blockade with Iran. That has already happened based on the public tweets, and who knows what information privately people knew.
The guy who's running the teleprompter is being investigated for potentially insider trading off of information on Trump's speeches. It's a real thing.
FOSTER: All of that is exceedingly bad.
PHILLIP: That's a real thing. People do care about corruption.
FOSTER: But the API access in particular, that specific dimension of the story actually doesn't seem nearly as interesting to me as the actual fact, the demonstrative fact, that they are enriching themselves in an unprecedented way.
KHANNA: Even putting aside the market manipulation, don't you think that every American citizen should just get information from a President at the same time?
FOSTER: I concur.
KHANNA: People shouldn't pay to get advance notice from the President. FOSTER: Get rid of your political pro-subscription.
PHILLIP: Here's a viewer comment. The wealth in this country is so concentrated that giving Wall Street an advantage is corruption at its finest. Where is Robin Hood when we need him?
It's a good question because I think the idea that there needs to be a Robin Hood is fueling candidates who are running against this type of public corruption, this type of pay-to-play, this type of, like, the system is working for just the rich and not for you.
PETER MEIJER (D), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE, MICHIGAN: So the question is, where's the Robin Hood? Somebody who steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I mean, that's the government right now. I mean, that is the whole purpose of our very progressive taxation system.
ROCHA: The funny thing is, that's how Trump got elected.
MEIJER: No, but that frustration is very real.
PHILLIP: Taxation is Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
MEIJER: No, I mean, ask about Robin Hood. And who's doing that redistributive policies right now?
Now, I would say, actually, giving to the poor is probably a misnomer. It's more giving to NGOs that are part of, again, an elite class of highly educated and very downwardly mobile folks. I mean, that is the most passionate part of our politics.
PHILLIP: That's not where most of our tax dollars go. You know that.
ROCHA: I'm saying with $6 million I'm going out right now.
MEIJER: $100 million going to, you know, things that could be either outright or arguably fraud.
ROCHA: The funny thing about that whole thing, I know we need to go with, as the political guy here, that's how Donald Trump got elected. Folks thought he was going to be that retribution, and he ended up not being, and now people are pissed.
PHILLIP: All right, you've got to be kidding me. That's what a text chain with laughing emojis responded to what Trump has been saying about elections. It's a bipartisan group of election officials reacting to the President's speech on election threats. We'll tell you what they said next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIP: Tonight, a coalition of 25 mostly Democratic-led states is filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA of illegally withholding billions of dollars of disaster relief and counterterrorism funds unless they adopt Trump's election demands.
The lawsuit argues that the administration is using federal money as leverage to force states to comply with Trump's election overhauls, despite no evidence of the widespread voter fraud that it claims to be addressing.
Now, under these new rules governing several DHS grant programs, states that don't fully adopt Trump's election changes stand to lose 20 percent of that funding, totaling more than $1 billion. These funds help states prepare for terror attacks, cybersecurity threats, and major disasters. DOJ is already suing 30 states, including some led by Republicans, to force them to turn over unredacted voter rolls for citizenship checks.
And it's worth noting that many of those lawsuits have already been thrown out by the courts, but I think that the broader issue of the conditioning of aid to states on politics is something that is a big theme for Trump.
Not that long ago, Democratic states had been alleging this, and the "A.P." reports that in the second term, Trump has denied a greater percentage of disaster requests than any President dating back to 1989. Those denials have not been evenly distributed among states.
Trump has approved 80 percent of the disaster requests from Republican governors, but only 60 percent from Democratic governors, according to an "A.P." analysis. Is this the new normal?
[22:49:51]
FOSTER: It may be the new normal for this administration, but it is an exceedingly bad look for the President. I think this is just really bad politics. If there is some sort of national disaster or tragedy, and one can even make a slightly reasonable argument that, hey, look at this, he denied us our money because we wouldn't play this game with him, that is going to look so bad for them in the very near future.
If you want to make election denial the raison d'etre of your administration, I suppose you can go ahead and do that.
You're going to lose elections. People are going to dislike you. But if you want to bind that to whether or not you're going to be giving out aid funds that are going to be used by the state in order to protect their citizens against natural disasters and other sorts of things, that just seems like the worst possible idea imaginable. I can't imagine defending that.
PHILLIP: It seems like a risky plan.
SANDS: But let's just say that President Trump and his administration want secure elections, and we know non-citizens are voting, we know that they're on the rolls, we know that there are states that even don't allow you to use voter I.D., don't get the money if they need it.
But I just think that he's using any lever he can because these states don't want to clean up their rolls, and they don't want to take the dead people out.
PHILLIP: I don't know. Get the votes and pass a bill.
KHANNA: The Republicans have the White House, the Republicans have the House, the Republicans have the Senate, the Republicans have the Supreme Court. And yet they're complaining that the elections are rigged. I mean, they obviously are winning.
I wish Democrats were more in charge. And it's somewhat personal for me, and the wildfires in California, and we still have not gotten money there for people to rebuild their homes.
You know, he used the FDR when he said that he wanted the New Deal. He compared the Depression to a natural disaster. And the reason he compared it to a natural disaster, he said Americans, of course, support natural disasters, and so they should support a New Deal on the Depression.
It was just assumed in this country that we support people after natural disasters. And I'll tell you something, the next Democratic President better be supporting red states and natural disasters, or I'll be the first person in Congress to criticize that person.
ROCHA: The ironic thing, 2.0, if I can build off the congressman, is that three of the four states that have put these lawsuits up pay the most money into these coffers, which are California, Illinois, New York. The fourth is Rhode Island, but give Rhode Island a break, they're a little bitty thing.
But the rest of them pay a lot of money into this, and they're being denied the money that they pay into it, which is cray-cray.
MEIJER: Well, they're getting back their state and local tax deductions, which the President shouldn't be sending to them. Salt is bad. It's bad for your heart. It should not be doing that. I love our New York Republicans. They're dead wrong on this issue.
But I think this is also part of that challenge. Part and parcel of having the federal government have so much more control is you're putting so many more levers in the hands of one party, of one individual. If we had less of a centralization of our government, if we had less of everything flowing up, you would have far more independents among the states to be able to pursue their policies. I'm making a subsidiarity argument.
PHILLIP: Other Presidents, Republican and Democrat, we didn't have this problem. Because there is such a thing as the corporate need. You pool the money together so that it doesn't matter where you are in this country, you get relief when you need it. MEIJER: Richard Ford.
PHILLIP: To me, this is not a concentration of power problem. This is a politicization of government problem, which is a completely different thing. And it's something that's pretty unique to Donald Trump.
MEIJER: I mean, it's not like LBJ was a sweetheart when it comes to leveraging power. I mean, this is politics, anything bad. I don't like it.
All right. Next for us, the panels are going to react to more of your feedback from cnn.com/abby, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: And now, some viewer feedback from cnn.com/abby.
First one. Maybe the reason no President has invaded Iran in 47 years is because they were smart enough not to. I mean --
FOSTER: I'm going to say, yes.
SANDS: Get to America and non-nuclear Iran. I'm with President Trump.
PHILLIP: Okay. All right. I mean -- are you going to defend his --
MEIJER: The can's been kicked down the road for 47 years because he didn't want to deal with the consequences. Continue to kick that to the point where there's a nuclear weapon poised at our allies in the Gulf as opposed to just ballistic missiles, which are dangerous and deadly enough. Is it intelligence or is it cowardice? That's my question.
PHILLIP: That's another way of putting it. Okay. The next comment. Truth social sell-off. One more way Donald Trump is profiting from the presidency. We talked a little bit about this. I mean, there's money involved here.
It'd be one thing if it was just Truth Social profiting, which would be bad enough. But Trump actually, he's directly financially being impacted by this.
FOSTER: I mean, yes. Look, I would say this. I am more concerned when I see the President of the United States selling his token and giving people access to him directly. I will meet with you in Mar-a-Lago if you buy my token.
That is open corruption in my estimation. I think there's at least a little bit of nuance that has to be acknowledged with the API access. That's all I'm saying. PHILLIP: All right. Number three. Okay. How high does the price of gasoline and other commodities have to be for all that support this administration, all that support this administration to say enough is enough? This is kind of in response to what you were saying about prices. This person is saying that it's expensive.
SANDS: People are really suffering. There's no question it's tough. I mean, we are a rich country. The median income is about $85,000 per capita per family.
[23:00:07]
We're a rich country, but the gas prices and the food prices, the inputs for farmers are really high.
PHILLIP: I'll just read this last one because it's related. I would like to know where these people buy groceries and pump gas. For them to say inflation is not high is ridiculous.
Our senior citizens are having to choose between buying food or paying for their medication.
All right everyone, we do have to leave it there. Thanks for watching "NewsNight." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
