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Trump Revives Tariff War Ahead of Midterms, Angering Some in GOP; Five Years Since Deadly Abbey Gate Attack; Harry and Meghan Flew Back to UK on Private Plane. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 26, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: More than a dozen Republicans are criticizing recent economic moves by President Trump as they attempt to navigate a revived tariff war and a plan to cut foreign beef tariffs. All of this with midterm elections now fewer than 10 weeks away.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: CNN White House reporter Adam Cancryn is with us now. And Adam, the president once again putting tariffs front and center. How's it being received?

ADAM CANCRYN, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Not well, in two words. Very few Republicans are excited to be in the midst of another trade war. This is something that they thought they were done with months ago, much less fighting with what should be one of our closest allies in Canada.

[15:35:00]

And it's a particular problem when you're talking about these upcoming congressional races in swing states that border Canada like Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire. Places where not only is there a lot of just kind of good feelings across the border, but also economically it matters in terms of trade and imports and exports and people working jobs across both borders.

And then that's on top of these, this beef imports action that the president did just within a few days of the Canadian trade war, which has enraged Republicans in other states across the Midwest and south. This idea of bringing more ground beef in that Republicans say ultimately will end up pushing American beef and cattle ranchers out. So two big problems that Republicans are very unhappy about.

SANCHEZ: The suspending of the beef tariffs, an effort to lower the price of ground beef given the affordability crisis. However, the tariffs on Canada ultimately likely to drive up the cost of goods that are imported.

CANCRYN: Yes, I mean, this is a perfect example of the cross currents that Republicans are dealing with ahead of the midterms here is the actions that the president is taking to try to lower these prices. Republicans absolutely hate. And at the same time, you're talking about reviving this trade war that from an affordability standpoint has really got people spooked. So really no good news for Republicans on either front, despite the kind of efforts going on there.

SANCHEZ: Adam Cancryn, thank you so much for the reporting. Appreciate it.

Let's discuss more with a host of "The Chuck ToddCast". Chuck Todd joins us now. Chuck, great to see you as always. Adam just mentioned two battleground states with key races that may determine control of the Senate.

You've got Maine and Michigan that do a lot of business with Canada. So how are these tariffs potentially going to play into the midterms?

CHUCK TODD, HOST, THE CHUCK TODDCAST: Well, it's not just them. I did my own analysis of this, of the of the larger Senate battleground, which is about 12 races. And that includes races that are sort of on the outer edge of competitive.

Kansas, South Dakota, New Hampshire, 11 of the 12 count Canada as either their number one or number two trading partner, OK. So this is across the board. I mean, you know, this is our neighbor to the north of more than half the states count Canada is that.

Then you layer on the anger that the beef industry has. Well, there's an entire Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota. They're all reach states for Democrats, but they're not out of the question.

So take Iowa, a state that has the beef issue and Canada's their number one trading partner. Right. It is a double whammy.

Ditto on a South Dakota. Ditto on a on a Nebraska. So look at what the president has done.

Never mind the Iran war itself. Right. Which is driving up fuel prices.

And who pays fuel prices sort of more acutely? Those that drive more. Who drives more?

Those that live in rural states. What states did I just talk about? Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota.

Right. So now you've got a triple whammy of Trump policies. These aren't, you know, these are his policies, his trade war with Canada, his decision on beef and his decision to go to war with Iran.

These aren't things you're going to be able to easily say, well, this is we're still trying to clean up after Biden. So, look, I think he has made -- I mean, there's a reason why over the last 48 hours you've seen more elected Republicans comfortably distancing themselves from certain policies. You had the Republican nominee in Wisconsin, a Trump endorsee say, hey, I don't like what he's done with beef.

You've got -- you already had the two Senate candidates in New Hampshire pull back on what they said he was doing with Canada. So you're going to start to see more Republicans feel like they have no choice if they want to speak to the independent swing voter to find some distance with the president.

KEILAR: Can you make any sense of his decision on beef here?

TODD: Well, it is an affordability thing. But, you know, did you catch his comment when somebody said, hey, you know, the American industry is hurting? And he goes, well, well, so are Argentinian ranchers.

And you're like, that's not very America first. Right.

There's this. I can't tell you it didn't enter my mind that if this wasn't about Argen -- you know, he didn't have a close political, political relationship with Argentina. Would we be in this situation?

But I understand the attempt to try to lower the cost of ground beef. Right. That's that is something that has been a scourge for them.

But the Canada trade war just seems incredibly ill timed.

SANCHEZ: I found it interesting as you were responding to that question about how they would justify some of these moves to voters. You repeated the line that we frequently heard from the Trump administration about cleaning up the mess in their eyes that President Biden made.

[15:40:27]

Even if it doesn't land with voters, President Trump is still trying to make that argument. He did so with Glenn Beck this morning. He said that he inherited a mess in so many ways.

I mean, how do you see Republicans finding a way to distance themselves from this president while he remains sort of the end all be all of that party?

TODD: Well, and this is the challenge that Republicans have. Right. I think back to a couple of midterms that I covered where the president was unpopular.

2006, George W. Bush. 2010, Barack Obama.

Both of those presidents were self-aware of their unpopularity. And they tried -- they at least tried to practice what I call do no harm politics. That's not Donald Trump, right?

You know, it is now. Look, I do think that Democrats ought to be careful here of getting too giddy about how things look.

The power of the president and is not dead yet, right? Darline Graham's the nominee in South Carolina because Donald Trump still has a little bit left on his fastball.

If he had nothing left on his fastball. If Darline Graham loss, I think you might have seen the floodgates open where Republicans all over the country would have said, oh, voters are giving us a permission slip to dump Trump.

But that is not what happened. And if you're sitting in one of these red leaning states, you do look at the ability that Trump had -- because you look at the -- he went to Myrtle Beach. That is where she won that race in Myrtle Beach. Without Trump showing up there and juicing the turnout, she doesn't win.

And there's plenty of Republicans -- if you're Mike Rounds and you're worried in October in South Dakota, you want Trump to come in. If you're Pete Ricketts in Nebraska, you may hate this.

You're the cattle industry maybe just, you know, really PO But you need him for base turnout. So this has always been the catch 22 for Republicans in that Trump has a group of voters that only he knows how to activate.

Other Republicans fail to activate them, but it could simultaneously turn off swing voters. So I don't want to sit here and say it's a full on mistake for Trump to make this about himself, because if he gets his people to show up, it can at least mitigate what is already going.

I mean, Democrats are favored. They're going to do well. The question is how well. Right.

And it all it is all going to be about how much of the MAGA voter shows up without Trump on the ballot, right. That's been the riddle before.

So, you know, I don't want to sit here and just presume that Trump's unpopularity will be similar to what we've seen with Obama. He does -- and if he engages and he did with her, it was the first time we'd seen him really engage in a race.

He still has some juice left.

KEILAR: We'll see how that turns out. Chuck, great to have you. Good to talk about beef with you, Chuck.

You see what I did?

TODD: It's what's for dinner, right?

KEILAR: It is a wonderful cut of beef. Chuck is.

TODD: Do we know where the beef is? Can I really show my age?

KEILAR: The beef is right here with Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd, thank you so much.

TODD: Where's the beef was once in a presidential debate. I'll leave that for some.

KEILAR: That's right. Where's the beef? It's right here in this combo.

All right, Chuck. Thank you. Still ahead. Yes, still ahead, this is an important anniversary today that we are going to focus on here. This is five years after the tragedy at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, where 13 U.S. service members lost their lives, as did dozens of Afghans. The Pentagon is now honoring a group of Marines who risked their lives. We'll have more when we come back.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Today marks five years since 13 U.S. service members and dozens of Afghans were killed in the Abbey Gate bombing attack in Afghanistan. On August 26, 2021, during the chaotic final days of the U.S. military withdrawal from the country, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near Abbey Gate at Kabul's airport. And that blast killed those 13 U.S. service members, which included 11 Marines, one soldier and one sailor, as well as about 160 Afghans who were trying to flee the Taliban takeover.

Military investigators concluded the bombing was carried out by an ISIS-K suicide bomber. We're joined now by Dan Lamothe, who's a Pentagon reporter at The Washington Post. And this is the fifth anniversary.

Just a reminder of what a difficult operation and outcome that happened that day.

DAN LAMOTHE, PENTAGON REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: That's exactly right. I mean, by its nature, any kind of evacuation operation is going to come with desperation. It's going to come with crowds.

It's going to come with outside threats. We saw all of that five years ago.

KEILAR: And there's a lot of criticism even now. This has become highly politicized. Understandably, there's been a lot of dissection about what happened, questioning of policy decisions on the parts of multiple administrations.

The president just weighed in on a True Social post saying that the catastrophe was a result of sleepy Joe Biden's totally botched withdrawal from the country. He talked about the sheer incompetence of Joe Biden. The Democrats, sort of typical for him, but kind of atypical for a president to politicize a tragedy maybe on this anniversary.

I do want to focus, though, on the families, because I know you talk to them a lot.

[15:50:00]

I wonder how do they see that disagreement and politicization?

LAMOTHE: Yes, this came up during the 2024 campaign a lot. And there was something of a split between the families. Many were very happy to see President Trump highlighting their families, highlighting the loss, highlighting the challenges that went with this evacuation. But there were others that stayed out of the limelight. There were some that were frustrated to kind of see their kids' names pulled into the election. So this brings up a lot of old feelings.

And this is going to be a difficult day for a lot of people.

KEILAR: Yes, a very difficult day. A spokesperson, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell, says a team that is reviewing the withdrawal is finding things that he says they didn't expect, like quote, highly relevant classified documents that he says should have been disclosed. He said that they were hidden in safes -- that's something he alleges. Could this review really uncover something new, some consequential detail about what led up to this and caused this?

LAMOTHE: I've been having a lot of conversations on this. And, I mean, this is far from the first, second, or even third investigation on this. So a lot of people are waiting to see what they turn up that might be new.

A lot of people thought we may see findings today, we haven't. So I think it's a real open-ended question whether or not we actually have anything new here.

Certainly the attention is welcomed by a lot of people, but this, you know, we keep going back to the well on this, and that's going to frustrate others.

KEILAR: Yes, and it gets seen through the prism of politics, maybe not necessarily just the truth-seeking one. I also want to highlight something, that you have some new reporting today. This is a different subject to talk about here, about General Randy George.

He was ousted, of course, as Army Chief of Staff earlier this year, and some reporting that also has to do with this helicopter flyby of Kid Rock's house. What did you learn here?

LAMOTHE: Yes, so for really, I think, months now, there's been a lot of questions about what exactly precipitated the top Army general getting fired relatively abruptly. And one of the things that came out of this story and this reporting is that there had been questions and discussions behind the scenes. One general officer, Chris LaNeve, telling General George that maybe it would be best if this investigation of this flyby didn't happen.

General George had some concerns with that, wanted to kind of see it play out according to usual, and then was abruptly fired a couple days later in April.

KEILAR: Yes, and it's hard to necessarily draw the link definitively. You don't in your reporting. But it's part of a bigger thing we're seeing, whether it's that Blue Angel flyby and whether there's disciplinary action, right?

This idea of do people in the military who are acting in a way that is subprofessional for what has traditionally been held for them, are they reprimanded for that? There appears to be a disagreement in multiple instances, not just this one.

LAMOTHE: Yes, I mean, there are occasions where somebody goes a bit too low in the wrong area and the military looks at it and says, hey, OK, there's an explanation that they can justify. What we're really seeing here that's different is a desire to not even have that discussion. And there is a lot of people concerned about that.

KEILAR: Dan, always great reporting. Thanks so much for being with us on this really important day. We appreciate it.

LAMOTHE: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still ahead, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are officially back in the U.K. What we're learning about their move to Britain, including their new living arrangements, next.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: The BBC says Prince Harry arrived back in the U.K. with his wife Meghan and their two children today.

SANCHEZ: Let's get the latest from CNN's Anna Stewart in London. Anna, how is the news of Harry and Meghan's return being received by the British public?

ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: I think it's going to be hard to really assess that until we see them in the flesh, maybe at a charity engagement in the coming weeks. There are plenty of fans, of course, who hope this is a good sign, it'll heal the Royal Rift. There are plenty of others who question why now, what's changed.

They left for a number of reasons. Tabloid intrusion, racism in British institutions, online abuse, complex family dynamics. Has any of that changed?

We have had very little confirmed today from Team Sussex. Of course, they kept their travel arrangements private, as you would expect, but the British media are all over it. They say they landed by private jet from California around lunchtime at Birmingham Airport.

Now, this is fueling speculation that they will live somewhere in that region, perhaps in the Cotswolds, a very affluent rural area that is beloved of celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, who I think recently sold a house there. The Beckhams, Kate Moss, they'd have some good neighbors. However, I do have some breaking news or pecking news for you all.

One line confirmed by Team Sussex. The family were not alone, they were joined by their dogs, Pula, I believe, and Mia.

Pula is a black lab, Mia is a beagle that was rescued. The less positive news, though, the chickens they got left behind. They are still in Montecito. I think we may have some video of these chickens. Don't have the names for them, although I think one was actually rescued from Ellen DeGeneres. I think that one's called Sicky or Plucky or who knows.

They will be looked after, though, in California, we are told. There will be no foul play there, you see. And that is all the news I have for you.

I hope we do get more information to come from Team Sussex.

KEILAR: That was my, I actually was going to say, but Anna, what about the chickens? And you're such a wonderful reporter, you knew. That was the question that was on everyone's minds.

SANCHEZ: Why didn't the chicken cross the pond?

KEILAR: Yes, why didn't the chicken cross the pond? Can't swim, can't swim, maybe didn't get a visa.

STEWART: The plucked chickens, guys.

SANCHEZ: Anna Stewart, thank you so much.

"THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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