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Trump To Focus On 2020 Election Claims In Prime-Time Speech; Key GOP Holdouts Signal They Aren't Ready To Support Trump's A.G. Pick; Blanche's A.G. Nomination Hinges On Two GOP Senators; Trump Praised Companies On Social Media Day's After Buying Their Stock. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 16, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: The next election is under 16 weeks from now. The president is still obsessed with the one he lost nearly six years ago.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

The U.S. is at war with Iran. Americans are really struggling with rising costs. There is a deadly flood in Texas. Tonight, President Trump will use a rare presidential prime-time address to talk to the American people about, quote, free and fair elections. In other words, it seems he wants to rehash his unfounded claim that he won the 2020 election. He did not.

Sources tell, my colleague Kevin Liptak that the president plans to talk about what he claims is new information on foreign efforts to influence U.S. elections. He's also expected to talk about alleged vulnerabilities in voting machines. But with hours to go until his speech, sources say White House aides are still debating what he should say and what evidence he should or can cite.

I want to talk to somebody who's done extensive reporting on President Trump in general, specifically his obsession with election lies. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the co-author of the blockbuster book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump. Maggie, what are you hearing about where the president is right now about what he'll say in the speech tonight?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: So, Dana, as you said, it is very much still being worked out, according to multiple people who we have spoken with, and that is because there is a distinction between what President Trump would like to say about the election systems and their safety, and what some advisors think he is able to back up with whatever it is that he is going to either point to or hand out or make publicly available.

The backdrop for all of this, Dana, is this transparency task force that has been working to declassify a number of documents. We do expect that there are going to be some related to elections. We don't believe it is going to be only 2020, but we won't know any of it until we see it. However, one of the themes of our book, Jonathan Swan's and my book, is how much Trump has invested in the idea that he won the 2020 election, that people around him believe that he now believes this because he has said it so many times, even though back then he would acknowledge to some people that he had lost.

And this idea that you have to say that you believe he won the 2020 election or not say Joe Biden did was key as a loyalty test during the transition. Again, as we write about and describe these pretty incredible scenes where who won the 2020 election and where were you on January 6 or January 7 and what did you think of what happened were critical tests. So, all of that is a backdrop for what we might see tonight.

BASH: Yeah. I mean that loyalty test is still playing out. It happened literally yesterday with Jay Clayton, who's the nominee to be his next Director of National Intelligence. You could see the visible frustration on the faces and in the voices of Democrats who want to get to yes with him but couldn't really get him there on that basic question.

Maggie, so you talk about this alleged new evidence that we have reporting on and you do as well that he -- that he says he wants to put forward. It is 2020, and by the way, we should say, as we have said many, many times. If there was evidence that he won the 2020 election, or that there were votes that he didn't have, they weren't able to produce it in courts of law across the country and state and federal court.

HABERMAN: Correct.

BASH: So, you know, we'll see what happens later. But I think the other question that I am looking at is what he says and does about this coming election. As I said, it's you know, not even 16 weeks away and there is so much concern based on what he and his administration, specifically the Justice Department is already trying to do to, you know, figure out ways to potentially undermine the election. Never mind the so-called SAVE America Act, which he is obsessed with and doesn't have the votes for.

HABERMAN: Right. Well, to your point, Jonathan and I write in the book about how advisors wished he had seemed more afraid about losing the midterms. It was really not much of his mind share, but there is a difference between whether he wants to focus on the midterms in a traditional way that any other U.S. president would, which is to talk about voters' concerns. You know, we obviously saw Joe Biden had his own problems with that.

[12:05:00]

President Trump wants to show that he really did win the 2020 election, despite all evidence of the contrary, to your point, and nothing that has emerged otherwise. His advisors, some of them, not everybody, but some in his government want to use it to try to tighten controls over who votes and how they can vote. And so, that is the backdrop that you are seeing ahead of the midterms.

At minimum, if there is going into, Dana, this sense that elections in the country just simply can't be trusted, which is something that the president has said over and over again, you know, unless it's a -- it's an election that a Republican wins, in which case he has generally said it's OK. That is hugely destabilizing and has major potential consequences for the fall.

BASH: Maggie, I feel like whatever is happening behind the scenes right now and likely will up until the moment, the teleprompter starts to roll tonight is going to be in maybe one or two of the chapters that you and Jonathan are going to write in your next book because it is fascinating. And thanks for giving us --

HABERMAN: No, next book, but thank you.

BASH: All right. All right, wink, wink. Maggie, you're the best. Thanks for jumping on with us. I know you're going to get to the White House briefing soon.

HABERMANL Thanks Dana.

BASH: OK. And I'm joined here by a group of terrific reporters. Zolan, I'm going to start with you. You also cover the White House. What are you hearing and what is your sense of where the president might head tonight?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST & WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, he -- the president has said, and he said earlier this week that there would be this focus on voting machines. We've heard we have reporting that he could try to talk about alleged foreign interference in the election, and hanging over this is the fact that throughout his time in the second administration, he has still been fixated on the 2020 election that he lost as well.

Maggie also describes sort of the backdrop here. I do think it's worth the reminder that this speech you could -- you could almost see as the manifestation of how this administration was designed, with loyalty at the center of it. There hasn't been much room for dissent when it comes to the president. There hasn't been much room for dissent. He has basically brought people in who will be measured based off of how they can enact and turn his impulses into a prime-time speech or policy, rather than push back and say, maybe this isn't a good idea because of the politics or the legal ramification.

The politics of this moment are also fascinating as well. I remember a couple of months ago when the Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said that the president would be traveling every week to talk about the economy, tax cuts, things that actually speak to people's daily lives. I know that there are Republicans, maybe quietly, that are saying, man, I wish this prime-time speech was about one of those things.

BASH: Well, as you're talking, I was just told that mortgage rates just hit the highest level in a year, so that totally speaks to what you're saying. Brian, I'm glad to have you here because this is a political issue and this is an issue for the people you cover in the press.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL ANALYST: Yeah. People are talking about this speech tonight, like we talk about the explosive diarrhea cases all across the country. That it's gross, that it's ugly, that it's bad, that it shouldn't be going on, that it should be stopped, but the speech is going forward. So, the major networks in this country have a really tough decision to make tonight about how to cover the speech, whether to show it live, whether to interrupt if the lies become so serious.

I think we should start from the premise that most Americans disapprove of Trump and don't believe his election lies. And so, it's an environment that is -- that is not, you know, positive for him, and yet, he has used his government to threaten networks, especially the broadcast networks, ABC and NBC. There are open, active investigations into those networks.

So these broadcasters are, I mean, honestly, right now, Dana, there are hours long meetings going on at ABC, at NBC, at CBS, about what to do tonight. And none of the networks, not CNN, none of the networks have commented on how they're going to handle the speech. I even have two sources at Fox News who have told me there's lots of folks at Fox that wish this speech wasn't going on, partly because it's bad politics for Trump, partly because it's bad for business. Remember, Fox News had to pay out three quarters of a billion dollars over election lies.

So, we're talking about election lies in 2026, and most Americans don't want to hear that. And if the networks interrupt prime-time tonight and, you know, interrupt sitcoms and documentaries to run this speech, then there could be some blowback about that because most Americans don't want to hear it.

BASH: Well, yeah. And just to put a finer point on it, the networks ABC, CBS, and I guess Fox, the broadcast network, not Fox News, the cable channel.

STELTER: Yeah.

[12:10:00]

BASH: They have a different kind of lineup and a different purpose, and which is like entertainment and prime-time.

STELTER: Right, right.

BASH: And what you were just referring to with the FCC, they have to deal with the jurisdiction of the FCC in a way that, frankly, we and other cable networks do not.

STELTER: The cable networks do not. And because we're all on CNN, Fox, MSN now, we're all on air at 9 pm already talking about Trump. So, it's a different calculation about what this network does tonight and others. But we all remember in 2020, as those election lies led us to the point where there was an insurrection. There were times where networks broke away and chose not to show the lies as they were happening.

I think this moment is different because the White House is promising news, and it may be very newsworthy tonight. I'm told that CBS may go a middle route where they're not going to air it live necessarily, but they're going to break in and show what happens and contextualize it and fact check it and that makes a lot of sense to me. And I think the factcheckers are going to be very busy tonight.

BASH: Yeah, that's an understatement. The vice president was on Capitol Hill pushing another very important thing that people care about, which is the budget of the United States and how it relates to another one of the president's priorities. Manu Raju got a chance to ask him about this speech. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A lot of Republicans here want him to focus on the 2026 midterms and not to relitigate his claims over the 2020 elections. Would you encourage him to steer clear of those unfounded claims that he is actually the true victor of the 2020 elections?

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I love these questions, the unfounded claims. You're basically assuming an answer in the very question that you ask. Manu, what I'd say is, we can do a lot. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Abby, an answer.

ABBY LIVINGSTON, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Well, Manu's hit on something that I'm hearing too. And I talked to a Republican who's in a swing state and he called this speech an albatross. That interest rates are still high, costs are still high, Iran is still a stalemate. And he said, there isn't a Republican in a targeted seat in America who wants him to talk about 2020, and there are more targeted seats because he's doing things like talking about 2020.

This is just a topic that the public doesn't want to revisit, whether the Democrats wanted to enforce consequences or whether he's creating a slush fund. And so, this is something that seems to be very much about Trump and not about the broader GOP.

STELTER: It's almost psychological, not for the president, not just for the president and his own ego, but also for Americans. When you say 2020, all I think about is COVID, right? It's the year that we've all tried to forget. Nobody ever wants to hear the number 2020 ever again.

BASH: Unless it's our vision, which hasn't happened.

(CROSSTALK)

STELTER: But Dana, you know, it's like, people don't want to even -- by the way, even Trump voters often don't want to revisit.

BASH: It's a really good point. I want to get back to one of the things that I was talking about with Maggie, and that is what happened yesterday in the confirmation hearing of Jay Clayton to be the next Director of National Intelligence. Just watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): You will commit. You will not interfere with or comment inappropriately on U.S. elections?

JAY CLAYTON, NOMINEE FOR DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Senator, you outlined the role correctly. I said --

WARNER: You're doing an absolutely terrible job on election integrity. What did that mean?

CLAYTON: That meant that the audit trail that we have available for our elections in a number of places is not the kind of audit trail that you would expect.

SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA): If the White House chief of staff or the president asks you to travel somewhere across the United States and oversee the execution of a domestic search warrant on a sensitive election facility, will you do it? Is that appropriate for the Director of National Intelligence?

CLAYTON: That's a hypothetical.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KANNO-YOUNGS: The loyalty test is still alive and well, right? I mean, Maggie talked about this, in the transition, basically, you had different national security and intelligence officials that the administration was going to bring in, and they were put to this question, something as simple as who do you think won the 2020 election? That as we know President Trump did lose. That's the reality. And even now, I think it's worth saying there was some enthusiasm around Jay Clayton, right?

He comes from the Southern District of New York, really has kind of bipartisan. That office has bipartisan support. There were also people excited that you would have a pivot from a Bill Pulte, who is seen as sort of enabling and encouraging investigating these grievance-filled politics, to someone like Jay Clayton. But even he apparently knows that when faced with that question, that can be a defining factor of whether or not you are actually brought into this administration.

BASH: We're going to have to sneak in a quick break. But before we do, I just want to put up something as a reminder in the Wayback Machine, not only -- not 2020 --

STELTER: Yeah, please don't say it.

BASH: -- 2021. This is CNN report about U.S. intelligence saying that Russia used Trump allies to influence the 2020 election with the goal of denigrating Biden. So, let's just keep that in mind as we listen to what the president says, alleges about potential foreign interference in the past and potentially going forward. Coming up, you're going to hear from two Republicans who will likely determine whether Todd Blanche becomes the next official attorney general.

[12:15:00]

Plus, more than one hundred House Democrats voted to block aid to Israel, up from just 37 on a similar measure two years ago. I'll speak to a top Democratic strategist about that and the issues she is pushing with the candidates she hopes to win this election season.

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[12:20:00]

BASH: President Trump's pick for Attorney General Todd Blanche can't afford to lose a single Republican vote on the Judiciary Committee. Today, two Republicans told CNN, they're not there yet, and won't be unless Blanche convinces them the so-called anti-weaponization fund is 100 percent dead and buried.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I think what I confirmed is that the weaponization fund is still can be revived, and so this idea that it's somehow gone is just not true.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I'm a sort of a work product kind of guy. I need a work product that convinces me that the 1776 fund is dead. I'd like to get to yes, but there are very specific measurable work products, not a wink and a nod and a handshake, but definable, ratified, executed agreements that will make me feel comfortable that this turkey of an idea is dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back now, including our own favorite Texan, Abby Livingston. Abby, you speak Cornyn. You understand more than most kind of what's going through his head. What is your sense based on the questions that he was asking and the comments like that this morning?

LIVINGSTON: So, Cornyn, I think one of the important things to remember is before he was a senator, he was a law enforcement guy. He was a state attorney general and a supreme court justice in the state. So, I think he takes these things very seriously and enjoys being on judiciary, but he's also just not a burn the house down kind of guy. And it would very much surprise me if he goes against this nomination just by watching him historically.

But the thing about this that I -- Blanche may get through by the skin of his teeth, but I think last week we watched both parties just absolutely go into a volcanic explosion over the main Senate race, and I was taken aback by this. And I reached out to a Democrat, and I'm like, what is going on here? And the way this person characterized it is the Senate majority is now as important as a presidential campaign because of confirmations.

And so, Donald Trump has never governed except for two weeks in January 2021 without a Senate majority. So even if Blanche gets through now, these confirmations could get a lot harder, even if the Senate majority doesn't flip and his numbers just weakened in the Republican Party.

BASH: That's a really, really interesting point. The other issue -- so we talked about the anti-weaponization fund. The other big issue are Epstein and the Epstein survivors and how the DOJ, Blanche in particular, handled, and he even admitted yesterday mishandled in some ways the Epstein files. Thom Tillis spoke about that moments ago. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TILLIS: Mr. Blanche said very quickly yesterday that he would meet with the victims, the Epstein victims today, if it could be arranged. I expect that meeting to occur before I'm willing to vote out of this committee. And I'm trying to get to yes, but this is a very important part of getting to yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And if you didn't sort of get that with the context, this is day two of Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing, and among the witnesses are victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

KANNO-YOUNGS: That's right. That's right. And this example of also the handling of the Epstein investigation. When you hear the senators' questions, I think what they're getting at is, can you -- you are the president's former personal lawyer, right? Are you going to prioritize justice? Are you going to prioritize actually leading the Justice Department and the responsibility that comes with that, or will you prioritize defending the president, including on an issue that is -- that has proven to be toxic, and the president has proven that he wants to distance himself from, right.

You heard so many of those questions yesterday, including that moment where Todd Blanche seemed to almost have a faux pas where he responded to one question and said, you know, I'm the personal attorney of the president, a former personal attorney, right. That's going to rattle some of these senators who are looking to see that he's going to prioritize the Justice Department investigating in a balanced way and handling something as sensitive as the Epstein case and not just prioritizing protecting president of the United States.

BASH: Rattling is one thing, breaking them off from their party is a whole different.

STELTER: Yeah. To me the memorable sound bite is the, I'm his lawyer, and then the correction. That's what most people will remember, if anything, from the confirmation hearings. And yet, yes, it always comes back to that exact same place. We always end up in that same place, if anybody's actually going to break or not.

BASH: All right, everybody standby. Coming up, why some social media posts by President Trump are being called an ethics disaster by someone who used to work for his administration. Stay with us.

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[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Now to a CNN exclusive. An investigation found that President Trump promoted companies on his Truth Social account just days after he bought stock in those companies. The companies include Nvidia, Boeing, and Apple. CNN investigative reporter Isabelle Chapman joins me now. Isabelle, what did you learn?

ISABELLE CHAPMAN, CNN INVESTIGATES REPORTER : So, my colleague Casey Tolan and I took a look at all of President Trump's stock trades in all of his Truth Social posts from last year. And we found dozens of examples where Trump's money managers purchased stock for him, and within a week he posted a complimentary Truth Social post about the same companies. Sometimes it was their executives or their products. There were also several times he announced government actions that could benefit the companies he had just invested in.

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