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Polls on Nancy Mace in South Carolina; Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) is Interviewed about Graham, Ukraine and Iran; Blanche to Face Tough Confirmation Hearing; Dr. Nirav Shah is Interviewed about his Maine Senate Race; Michael Yip is Interviewed about the U.C. San Diego Using Robots for Surgery. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 13, 2026 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:08]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the race very much on to replace Lindsey Graham in South Carolina since the senator passed away over the weekend. What happens is the governor will appoint a temporary replacement, and there will also be a primary in a few weeks to get a nominee who will run for the seat in November. Lindsey Graham was up for re-election there. It is possible the person that the governor appoints also runs in that primary. That's one of the things we'll discuss here.

With us now, CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten.

We have a picture of Nancy Mace up here.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: The, I guess, retiring --

ENTEN: The retiring.

BERMAN: Congresswoman from South Carolina. She is one of the people said to be considering entering the race. What are the prediction markets saying about the chances of that?

ENTEN: Yes, I would say Nancy Mace is probably the biggest name, at least to a national audience, considering running in this special primary. And you know what, at this point, I don't see the math there for Nancy Mace.

Look, early returns are saying the math isn't there. A chance to win the South Carolina special GOP primary? This prediction market odds Kalshi. You could see it right here. The lieutenant governor at a 40 percent chance in the early stakes. And, of course, this is still early. Then you got Ralph Norman, who's, of course, the congressman, 32 percent. Russell Fry, 17 percent. You got Lynch there at seven percent. And Nancy Mace all the way down here at four percent. So, despite being well known nationally, at this point anyway, the people who were putting their money where their mouths are, don't give Nancy Mace much of a chance to win that nomination.

BERMAN: I think people who watch cable news might be surprised by this. They see Nancy Mace on -- talking a lot or on the Sunday shows, on the networks. So, she did run for governor, right?

ENTEN: Yes. OK. So, why is Nancy Mace's chances so low? Why is it only at four percent chance at this point? Is because we've just done this. We've just put Nancy Mace in front of a Republican primary electorate in the great state of South Carolina. And how'd she do? She did quite poorly. That's how she did. In fact, she faded at the end of that campaign.

Take a look here, 2026. This was what governor -- a gubernatorial primary. Nancy Mace, statewide she just got 12 percent of the vote. She came in fifth place. In fifth place for the primary. And even in her home county of Charleston, what she got, she got 15 percent. She only came in third place in her home county. That is why Nancy Mace's chances are so low is because we just did this back in June.

It put Nancy Mace in front of a Republican primary electorate. And you know what she did? She did bad. That's what she did. She did poorly. So, no wonder that the prediction markets, at this point, have the lieutenant governor out in front, in large part because she came in second in that primary, a primary that Nancy Mace came in, again, fifth in.

BERMAN: All right. And when we're talking about the odds here, we're looking at the chances in the primary, right?

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: What has historically been a good way to win an election to fill a seat?

ENTEN: You know what, if you're talking -- Johnny was explaining the sort of the rules of the game at the beginning of this segment, right? You're going to have somebody who is appointed to that seat, and then you will get -- potentially run in the primary. That's the way you win the nomination. If, in fact, you are appointed to the seat, take a look at this, appointed senators in the next election since 1980, won their party's nomination. If they ran, 26 of 28 times. So, let's just say that lieutenant governor gets that appointment, which at this point she is probably the most likely choice, she would very much be in the catbird seat in order to win the nomination and then go on to be the senator. The last Democrat to win a Senate race in South Carolina, I believe, was Fritz Hollings back in 1998. So, Republicans have a pretty good track record in South Carolina.

BERMAN: Yes, there's sort of two races going on. The first one is to get the governor's appointment.

ENTEN: Appointment. Right.

BERMAN: And the second one might be the primary.

ENTEN: Correct. Get the appointment, then you win the nomination if you decide to run.

BERMAN: Then, of course, there's an election in November, but Democrats don't usually win there.

ENTEN: Not since 1998, no.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, joining us right now is Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington. He is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

[08:35:00]

Congressman, thank you for being here.

You and Lindsey Graham, you did not see eye to eye on much, but on Ukraine you very much did. Is his death a loss for Ukraine? What kind of impact do you think it has on foreign affairs?

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Yes, it's clearly a loss for Ukraine, primarily because Lindsey Graham was a Republican who both strongly supported Ukraine and had Donald Trump's ear, at least to some extent. He was able to speak to him about that. And Trump, of course, has been very inconsistent on Ukraine. So, yes, it's clearly a loss to Ukraine. And it's just shocking. I served with Lindsey in the House. Totally unexpected. And just a very shocking development.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

One thing that he long advocated for, it was -- it was the focus of many a phone call and conversation I had with him, and he's done for more than a year, was this push for this huge Russia sanctions bill, slapping crippling tariffs on countries that work -- that would import Russian oil, natural gas, uranium. The top Democrat on Senate Foreign Relations, Jeanne Shaheen, put it this way, "there can be no more fitting memorial to Lindsey, his legacy or the causes he fought for, than to pass this legislation and realize his long-held dream of an independent and secure Ukraine."

I do -- I have seen, though, that John Thune, at one point, said that he believed that the bill did need to originate in the House. Do you think that this actually gets through now? I mean, it has been quite the bumpy road for this sanctions bill.

SMITH: Yes. Well, it's hard. I mean, I think it's a really good idea because it would put the kind of pressure on Russia that would be necessary to weaken their ability to continue to wage the war in Ukraine. It could potentially pressure them enough to actually come to the peace table and stop the war. So, it's really important.

On the other hand, it does create problems, not just for Russia, but for other countries with the secondary sanctions, the different layers, you know, people trying to access energy. And so, it points up the second big issue here that's needed is to develop less dependency on Russia just in general, in Europe and elsewhere, develop other sources of energy, natural gas, whatever, so they're not as dependent upon Russia.

But, yes, I support this. I think it would be a great way to put pressure on Russia and get us closer to ending this war that has -- that has gone on for a very, very long time now.

BOLDUAN: The question does really remain, and you hear this from Republicans all the time, which is, why pass it and put it forward if you don't really get assurances from Donald Trump that he -- that he would support it, because that has been -- that has come and gone. I mean, Lindsey Graham has said, and Richard Blumenthal have said multiple times that they've gotten the green light, only for that to fall by the wayside. So, it -- does it -- do you get a sense that it's different now?

SMITH: Well, I don't know if it's different now or not, but Congress should speak. Will Trump follow through on it? We don't know. But the point is, we can put pressure on him to do the right thing, to try to make it more likely that he does.

You're right, no guarantee. President Trump is, as I said, incredibly inconsistent in his support for Ukraine and also frequently flirts with Putin and Russia in ways that remain hard to explain. But Congress should do our job. We should make it clear where we stand and at least put pressure in the right direction.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you something about Iran, especially specifically the fight over the Strait of Hormuz right now. President Trump was -- just spoke with Fox News. I want to play something that he said this morning about the Strait.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So we're just going to hit them very hard. And we're going to -- we're going to keep the Strait and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the Strait. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the Strait. And we should be reimbursed for that. When we do that, we're going to be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy. They're on our side. And we can't be expected to do that for nothing. Unlike we had for many years. You know --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Becoming the guardian of the Strait. He said he's going to take control of -- "we are taking control of the Strait of Hormuz," in another part of this interview. If that -- if you take that seriously, what do you -- what does that move now mean?

SMITH: I do not take that seriously because there is no way the United States of America is going to be able to take total control of the Strait of Hormuz. And the fact that the president continues to be so delusional on that point is a major, major problem in getting to a reasonable outcome here.

Look, we can certainly help ships get through the Strait. We've done that. Been doing that for quite a while. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But given Iran's proximity to the Strait and their ability to just generate at least enough missiles and drones to threaten it, the president is just not living in reality when he says that we're going to somehow take over the Strait like we, I don't know, like we take over the Erie Canal or something. We're not going to have that level of control. So, the president's not dealing in reality, which is a major, major problem here.

We're not going to be able to control it. The question is, what sort of pressure can we put on Iran to get them to stop doing what they're doing?

[08:40:02]

The military pressure clearly hasn't worked. And the big point here is the diplomacy has been so half-assed in the way they've done this. I mean, Witkoff and Kushner, first of all, are completely unqualified to negotiate this deal. And second of all, they're doing ten different other things as well. The single most important issue, which is stopping the war with Iran, opening up the Strait of Hormuz, and we have part-time, not even well trained diplomats who have been put in charge of it. The president bounces all over the place. It is time to get serious about diplomacy.

Another thing we could do is actually work with the rest of the nations in the world to get their leverage as well instead of constantly belittling them and fighting them. Diplomacy has got to get better. It's the only way out of this.

BOLDUAN: There's no indication that Donald Trump is changing the negotiating team at this point. There's no indication of that.

With that in mind, are you to a place then that you would have to accept, and are prepared to say so, that the way negotiations are going, that wherever this ends, it somehow ends with Iran maintaining some level of control over the Strait of Hormuz going forward that it did not have before this war?

SMITH: Well, I think that's baked in, even if you got a better, better diplomacy team. I mean that's one of the many great mistakes of starting this war is it opened up the possibility for Iran to control the Strait of Hormuz. Not control it necessarily, but at least to put pressure on it, because prior to this, Iran was afraid of doing this for how the international community might react. But once the war started, there was an existential threat in the regime. They felt like, OK, we can do it.

Yes, look, Iran is going to have some say in the Strait of Hormuz. And I, you know, there's just no way out of that right now. We have to put it in the best position where it's at least open. And the best way to do it is, you know, Trump has already talked about releasing some of the money that Iran has so that Iran doesn't necessarily control it, but they get a certain amount of money to open it up. Yes, Iran's got greater control over the strait now than they had before this war started. There's no easy way to change that.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Adam Smith, thank you for coming in today.

John.

BERMAN: On Wednesday, what could be the hearing of the summer, the president's pick to be a full-time confirmed attorney general, Todd Blanche, faces the Senate Judiciary Committee. Even some Republicans have said it is hard to say whether Blanche can make it through.

With us now, Elie Honig, CNN's senior legal analyst and former U.S. assistant attorney -- sorry, former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

And when you say it correctly, Elie, that matters because you worked with Todd Blanche in the Southern District. You've known Todd Blanche for years. How have your views on him evolved over time, especially regarding what will now be this possible confirmation?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, John, I've known Todd Blanche for 20 some years, you're right, since we worked together at the Southern District of New York. My views on him have evolved 180 degrees, completely turned around. I was a friend and colleague of Todd Blanche's. I believed in him and supported him. I supported him publicly when he was under attack for defending Donald Trump in the criminal cases.

However, in the year and a half since he's been the deputy A.G., and now the acting A.G., I think Todd has let go of many of the core values that we were taught at DOJ. I think he has presided over the weaponization and politicization of DOJ, and I expect him to be asked about that at his hearing. He also has mishandled various issues that have come before him, from his mishandling of the Epstein files, to his creation of that $1.776 billion slush fund. So, Todd Blanche is going to have some very difficult questions to answer on Wednesday. And as you said, it remains very much an open question whether he gets through that Senate Judiciary Committee or not.

BERMAN: You know how to ask a good question in a courtroom, Elie. If you were asking the questions, what's one or two? What are one or two pointed questions you would put to Todd Blanche in that hearing?

HONIG: Well, so I would certainly demand specific answers about the aforementioned specific missteps, the slush fund, the Epstein matter, his face-to-face interview with Ghislaine Maxwell. But I think, John, the biggest overarching question is, how do you view the Justice Department with respect to the president? Should the Justice Department, in its exercise of prosecutorial powers, be independent of the president, or should it take orders from the president? And I don't know how Todd Blanche will answer that question, because he has answered it in squarely contradictory ways when he's been asked that question in various media interviews.

BERMAN: Yes.

HONIG: At times he says, correctly, that DOJ has a long tradition of independence, and I will uphold that tradition. But at other times he says, no, we are there to serve the president.

BERMAN: Yes.

HONIG: And if the president tells us to go after somebody, it's a good thing if we do that. So, he needs to be pinned down on what his view is on that core issue.

[08:45:03]

BERMAN: Can I ask you a question now tangentially related to Todd Blanche? It has to do with Michael Cohen, who was the key witness in the New York case against Donald Trump, for which Todd Blanche worked for the president at that point. I just got a press release saying, Michael Cohen, the controversial former personal attorney and longtime fixer to the president, is going to hold a press conference today about his new gig.

And we also had the news over the weekend, Maggie Haberman reports that, "Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump," Michael Cohen and Donald Trump, "had a brief yet significant conversation at the president's private members-only golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, breaking a yearslong estrangement marked by legal disputes and public acrimony." That's an understated there. They obviously were at each other's throats.

And Michael Cohen helped cause this trial. So, there may be a rapprochement. Michael Cohen also very critical now, all of a sudden, of the New York case against Donald Trump. What might all this mean from a legal standpoint in an appeal?

HONIG: Well, John, there actually was a moment when Todd Blanche was cross-examining Michael Cohen at that hush money hearing. You know, there's an expression that defense lawyers often use at trial when you call a witness like Michael Cohen. You will hear defense lawyers say, if you lie down with dogs you get fleas.

Now, the reason why every prosecutor before Alvin Bragg, to look at that hush money case, passed on it, and that includes the Southern District of New York during the Biden administration, that includes Alvin Braggs' Democratic predecessor as Manhattan D.A. The reason they all passed on, declined to charge Donald Trump in the hush money case is because Michael Cohen would be the star witness. Michael Cohen, by that point, was already a convicted perjurer, had committed various forms of economic fraud. Nonetheless, Alvin Bragg threw his lot in with Michael Cohen. People who wanted to see Donald Trump go down suddenly applauded Michael Cohen. They said, wow, he's now this truth teller. Turns out Michael Cohen now says he was pressured and coerced by prosecutors.

So, I don't know what -- anyone who ever believed in Michael Cohen or believed he's a truth teller has it coming. And now Donald Trump's appeal is still pending. It's taken two years. It's not Trump's fault the courts are taking forever. And I expect this to be added to the mix. Although I do think the appeal may well succeed for other legal issues. But the fact that Michael Cohen has now come full circle and is trying to reunite with Donald Trump should surprise nobody.

BERMAN: A new chapter in the Michael Cohen soap opera begins today. Elie Honig, great to see you. Thank you very much.

So, firefighters getting some unexpected help from a new recruit. That's a goat.

Plus, Barbie can be anything, even a stamp. But already many are asking, what about Ken?

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[08:51:33]

BERMAN: All right, this morning, at least eight candidates have announced bids to be the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. This after Graham Platner ended his campaign there. A convention will make the choice on July 25th.

With me now is one of the announced candidates, former Maine CDC director and former Maine gubernatorial candidate, Nirav Shah.

Dr. Shah, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

A convention after a candidate drops out. It's something I've never covered. I don't know how you run for it. What's your plan specifically to convince these 600 people to pick you?

DR. NIRAV SHAH (D), MAINE SENATE CANDIDATE: Well, John, first, thanks for having me on.

You know, as the old Proverb says, "may you live in interesting times." And we certainly do.

Our plan is to do and harness the energy that we created in the gubernatorial campaign and now transfer that over to the Senate campaign. And the gubernatorial campaign, even though I didn't ultimately prevail, I ended election night with the highest number of first choice votes, which is indicative of the enthusiasm for the campaign across the state. Big, small, interior and on the coast.

Now what we really have to do is focus those efforts on the about 600 or so delegates. What we are really working on right now is helping folks who are supporters of our campaign, make sure they know how to participate and become delegates so that they, too, can have a hand in choosing the next nominee.

There is a lot at stake. We've made a lot of progress. Just this past weekend, I had two big town halls and we collected the requisite number of signatures in order to qualify for the ballot. So, we are all gas, no brakes.

BERMAN: And you're getting a call of support maybe right there as we speak in this very interview.

Dr. Shah, you mentioned the gubernatorial primary and you said -- you know, you mentioned coming in first place in the initial count. And you mentioned that like a good thing. I've actually heard other Maine Democrats argue that's a bad thing in

the sense that, yes, you were first before the ranked choice went into effect. But when ranked choice went into effect, you were a distant second to Hannah Pingree. We put that up. That's the -- that's, you know, when the first choice results were counted, you were in first place. But by second choice, you were a deep second place, which they say indicates that you're not a good coalition candidate, that you're not someone that people could gather around because not enough people had you as their second or third choice. What's your response to that?

SHAH: We don't see it that way. You know what the data show is that we had broad and intense support across the state of Maine. On election night, we had secured the highest number of first choice votes across the state in both congressional districts, the southern first district and the more rural northern second district. We won 211 out of Maine's roughly 460 towns, and we won folks in every single demographic. And again, by win I mean secured the highest number of first choice votes.

This is critical, John, because the way in which Senator Collins has been able to win for 30 years is not just because she secures Republican votes, she is successful in peeling off every single election, a certain percentage of Democrats, who cross over and vote for her. What we need is a candidate with broad as well as intense support. And that's what that first place metric really demonstrates. This is -- these are folks who had enthusiasm, and that's going to be the enthusiasm we need to keep our base unified and defeat Senator Collins come the fall.

[08:55:05]

BERMAN: There's a lot of outside opinions about what's happening in Maine right now. And all kinds of national Democrats have endorsed or weighed in there. You've received some incoming from Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, who criticized you for your time where you worked in Illinois in public health. I don't want to relitigate this. You talked about it extensively with my friend Brianna Keilar. And people should go look at that interview because it was a really interesting back and forth there. But my question now is, is how much should people listen to people from outside the state, whether it be Bernie Sanders, whether it be national Democrats? What do you think?

SHAH: My view, and I think the view of Mainers uniformly is that we've got this. Mainers know me. They know the other candidates. They know me from showing up every single day during the height of the pandemic, hundreds of times talking about what was going on, sharing what the latest data were, taking the toughest questions. That's the sort of special relationship that I have with Mainers. And that's why a lot of this out of state commentary doesn't really resonate here.

Mainers can know, for example, that some of the concerns that others have raised have been fully vetted, including by my former boss, Maine Governor Janet Mills, as well as President Biden's administration, which hired me to be the number two official at the U.S. CDC. That's one reason why a lot of this outside commentary doesn't really go so far because Mainers have gotten to know me and they've seen a lot -- they've seen me in action. BERMAN: Nirav Shah, we appreciate you being with us this morning.

Thank you.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: A groundbreaking first in the world of medicine. Surgical teams with U.C. San Diego used humanoid robots to perform surgeries on live patients, pigs, for the first time. One surgery was led by a humanoid robot assisted by a surgeon. The second surgery was completed by two humanoid robots. The robots were moving gallbladders in pigs. The tests, considered a success, with the procedures and results just published in the journal "Nature." The hope being that someday this would move then these studies to human trials and beyond.

Joining me right now is Michael Yip. He's a professor of electrical and computer engineering at U.C. San Diego. His team developed the humanoid surgery platform used in this study.

Thanks for being here.

I've heard, I think one of the surgeons, one of the doctors involved, say that the proof of concept here absolutely worked. What did this prove?

MICHAEL YIP, PH.D, PROFESSOR, ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING, U.C. SAN DIEGO: Yes, it proved that the new state of like humanoid robots and robots in general, they have true value now to actually be brought into a health setting and actually be a conduit for achieving surgeries that you normally cannot actually perform, whether it's in remote environments or in places that actually do not have enough doctors to perform these surgeries.

BOLDUAN: So, that's the -- that's the hope in where this could really be quite useful. How far from being ready to actually deploy these robots in real hospital settings do you think that you could be?

YIP: Yes. You know, I think that we're actually much closer than people think. I believe in a few years, when we're looking at the state of humanoid technology, we're probably a few years away from seeing these humanoids showing up, even in operating rooms, maybe not having their hands actually deep in a patient's body, but really assisting the surgical staff in both holding and transferring materials, cleaning up, performing kind of those assistive tasks that would really help round out the surgical team.

BOLDUAN: Michael, robotics have been used in O.R.s for years. I mean, since I was a child. I mean, how different is this? What's different about this from the robotics used in surgical settings already?

YIP: Yes. So, when we talk to doctors about this, one thing that they tell us is that, you know, it's very different working with a piece of equipment, which is all the robots in the past, and working with one that actually is the same embodiment as, you know, a human being. So, it becomes this really interesting, like, human robot teaming aspect. And then the flexibility of a humanoid robot really cannot be understated, right? You can deploy it in settings that are existing, that have infrastructure for humans. They can pick up surgical tools. That's what we worked on, how to kind of interact with existing tools, interact with existing infrastructure and kind of bring it into that environment kind of in the least amount of friction possible. And that's really what everybody's really excited about.

BOLDUAN: Yes, that's quite a change.

[08:59:52]

I guess maybe what's most surprising that came from this study and the success or maybe after this -- these two surgeries, like, where do you focus your attention next in terms of fine-tuning performance and getting, I don't know, getting people really comfortable with the concept of doing this on a