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Inside Politics

Trump Promoted More Than 20 Companies On Truth Social Days After Buying Stock In Those Firms; Wave Of Democratic Candidates Look To Flip House; 100 Plus House Democrats Vote To Block Israel Aid In Major Shift; MI Primary Pits Progressives Vs Moderates In Key Senate Race; VP Vance Defends Iran War In Spirited Joe Rogan Interview; Vance Claims Epstein "Clearly Has Connections" To Israel Intelligence. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired July 16, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

ISABELLE CHAPMAN, CNN INVESTIGATES REPORTER: -- 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 action that could benefit the companies he had just invested in.

Last year, for example, he purchased between $250,000 and $500,000 of stock in Intel. Just a few days later, Trump announced the U.S. government would take on a 10 percent equity stake in Intel. Another example that stood out to us, you might remember this controversial Sydney Sweeney ad for American Eagle.

Last summer, Trump purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 in the company, and a few days later he praised the ad. He called it the hottest and said the jeans are flying off the shelves.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: And what does the White House say about all this?

CHAPMAN: You know, the White House says that Trump's money is managed by a third party, that he has no control over any stock trades, and that he has never used his office for financial gain. But historically, presidents have put these kinds of assets in a blind trust, meaning they can't see what their holdings are. Trump's money, however, is in a trust with his son Don Jr. as a trustee.

BASH: That's interesting. And what do experts about all this say about what you learned?

CHAPMAN: Yes. So, you know, this has raised conflict of interest concerns from ethics watchdogs about whether Trump was using his megaphone to boost his investments. One expert I spoke to from the Cato Institute, who actually worked in the first Trump administration during his first term, he went so far as to call this an ethics disaster.

BASH: Isabelle, thank you so much for this important reporting. I appreciate it.

And coming up, I'll speak with the top Democratic strategist about the candidates and issues she believes could deliver a House Democratic majority.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:36:22]

BASH: We have spent a lot of time here on Inside Politics talking about a wave of progressive Democratic Socialists winning in deep blue seats. But those candidates are not going to decide control of the House of Representatives. These candidates trying to flip Republican seats will.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bernie Sanders, AOC, Montana's unions, all backing smokejumper Sam Forstag for Congress.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cognetti runs as an independent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beats both parties.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, beat that corrupt old boys club.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hunting down brutal terrorists. Protecting what makes this country great is why I'm running now. Because the politicians who created this mess are not going to be the ones who fix it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not flashy, but I'm honest. I guess they'll just have to trust me on that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: D.C. is a dumpster fire. We're going to put it out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And there's another thing those House candidates have in common. They're all getting help from veteran Democratic strategist Lis Smith, who joins me now. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming in.

So if you look at the candidates you're looking -- you're working with, and that's just some of them. It's a lot.

LIS SMITH, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes, and I just want to clarify it's through a group advising the bench.

BASH: Yes.

SMITH: Yes.

BASH: So understanding that, they -- just even the ones that we showed, they do represent different sides of the sort of where the Democratic Party is fractured. A more charitable way to say it is different parts of the big tent. Medicare for All, Israel, they come down on different sides of that.

So my question for you is, what do you think is the most important common thread for the winning issue or issues for these Democratic challengers this election?

SMITH: Yes, and I think what's interesting actually is that none of them really align fully on the left or fully on the center, and they're more heterodox as we like to call it, and we can get more into that. But I think the recipe for success for them is these are all outsiders, and we know we are very much in an insurgent, outsider, anti-establishment environment, and so that benefits them.

But key to them is they are respected members of their communities. They are people who live, breathe, do all the same thing as everyone else in their communities, live the same struggles, and understand that. They also have deep records of service.

You know, you look at Cait Conley. She was served in Special Forces. Jamie Ager --

BASH: He's running in New York -- right here in New York --

SMITH: Yes.

BASH: -- against Michael Miller.

SMITH: Bob Brooks was a firefighter. Jamie Ager, farmer and small businessman, who came and was inspired to run after Hurricane Helene and when he saw the pain that his community was in. So these are people who are really rooted in the experiences, struggles of their communities.

And let me just say, it's a very different model from a few years ago when Democrats, looking for candidates, would say, who can raise the most money? Who has the most traditional background? Who's been a D.A.? Who's a lawyer? And now we're starting to think outside the box, and we've seen this cycle.

Not all outsiders are good, but I think if we can find the right ones, like that group of people you mentioned, Democrats will be able to tap into a lot of the anger people have right now.

BASH: Yes, I mean, I'm sitting here thinking about going into way, way back machine, when the Iraq War was raging, and the Democrats looked for veterans. And a lot of them successfully 00 veterans of the Iraq War, who successfully won, because that was kind of in the zeitgeist, and that was what was making people very concerned, and they wanted that kind of representation.

Tell -- talk about the term that you just used, because I think a lot of people watching are going to know what you mean by that.

SMITH: A heterodox?

BASH: Yes.

[12:40:07]

SMITH: Oh, I just mean that, you know, sometimes we think people fall only on the left --

BASH: Yes.

SMITH: -- or only on the center, only on the right. But if you look at a candidate like Sam Forstag, for instance, in Montana, yes, he's endorsed by Bernie Sanders and AOC, but he doesn't go out there talking about Medicare for All, or the Green New Deal. Someone like Bob Brooks is endorsed by, you know, the Blue Dog Caucus and the House of Representatives, which is conservative Democrats, and by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

And so I think what it shows is that we should not have top-down litmus tests for candidates. Someone like Jamie Ager, who's in a rural community, is going to have different views on environmental regulations than, you know, someone who lives in a city. Just as someone in -- like Sam Forstag is going to have different views on guns than someone who lives in a city.

BASH: What a concept.

SMITH: Yes.

BASH: A candidate who best represents the community that their -- that they want to represent. I want to ask you about what happened yesterday in the House. Over 100 Democrats voted for a resolution to block aid to Israel, and it includes a lot of staunch Israel supporters, historically.

Nancy Pelosi, who is very open about her disdain for Benjamin Netanyahu, Pat Ryan, Jake Auchincloss. Two years ago, 37 House Democrats voted for a similar measure. As you talk to Democratic candidates, what are the discussions behind the scenes on how to navigate this issue, which has become a litmus test in the Democratic primary system?

SMITH: Yes, it has become a Democratic litmus test, I think, on the sort of elite level. But when you look at voters, I think the Democrats who sort of broke, and even the pro-Israel Democrats, or traditionally pro-Israel Democrats who broke and said, you know, no more offensive weapon funding for Israel, are really reflecting what they're hearing from voters.

The consensus among Democratic voters has shifted wildly in recent years, largely due to what they see as the overreach from the Netanyahu government. And Benjamin Netanyahu has irreparably poisoned the U.S.-Israel relationship. I'm not saying it can't be put together back again, but I do think that that is a problem.

And I think that's what you see, is that a lot of Democrats are saying, we were OK with Israel responding after October 7th. We were OK with them taking on Hamas. We were not OK with them starving kids in Gaza. And we do not believe that more of our tax dollars that should be spent here should be going over to fund Netanyahu's wars. BASH: Yes, I mean, that's exactly right. There's -- it's a very complicated issue, and a lot of information that's not necessarily trickling down. I mean, there was just a U.N. report that said that Palestinian leaders in some ways were responsible for the starvation. It's all bad.

SMITH: Oh, yes, it is all bad.

BASH: It is all bad. And it is a huge issue. Can I ask you about Michigan --

SMITH: Yes.

BASH: -- and about the Senate race? Because you worked for and with Mallory McMorrow for a very long time, since she first kind of burst onto the national scene in the state legislature. She was running and dropped out of the Democratic primary, which is going to take place in a couple of weeks. What do you think that tells you or tells us about where the Democratic primary electorate is in the most purple of states?

SMITH: Well, it's complicated. You know, she started out this race and I think ends this race with a great national profile, tons of grassroots support. You know, she had more grassroots donors than both of her opponents, Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed, and was able to generate a lot of attention.

But this is the reality. She started out as a long shot. She was a state senator rather than, you know, a member of Congress, someone who would run statewide like Abdul El-Sayed. So she had a steeper hill to climb. As the race shook out, it ended up being into two lanes.

Progressive lane that Abdul El-Sayed was sort of always naturally going to own as someone who, you know, had embraced defund the police, et cetera, I don't know how you get to the left of that, right? And so the competition really was more over the mainstream lane.

And not to get too much in the technicality of all this stuff, but Haley Stevens and her allies put $10 million on TV before Mallory could even get up on air. They've now spent $60 million --

BASH: Wow.

SMITH: -- on Haley Stevens' behalf, which is pretty much unheard of. And all the talent, all the energy in the world, it's really, really hard to overcome that. However, my fear now, though, is that we're sort of left now with an imperfect choice.

It's an imperfect choice like we were left with in Maine, between sort of a stale establishment candidate, someone who is not really offering anything new, saying sort of a defender of the status quo, and someone on the left who's offering, you know, very toxic and oftentimes dangerous positions, things that people don't embrace like defund the police.

[12:45:02] And I really do think for Democrats to succeed going forward, there's got to be a third path. You know, a Democratic Party that can call out corruption in Washington and offer up big ideas that get to the main problems people are facing, build more housing and make it cheaper, give people a health care option without throwing out the health care plans they like.

Let's finally get a sane immigration policy on the books. And until we start offering up those ideas and stop just reflexively being anti- Trump, I think that it's going to be hard to bring more people into our party.

BASH: Lis, it's great to talk to you. I really appreciate it. Hope to see you soon.

SMITH: Great. Thank you.

BASH: OK. And up next, remember this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The works that I'm going to take the credit. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD. You better be careful, JD.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Well, Vice President Vance gets candid about the failed negotiations in a sit-down with one of the administration's most vocal critics on the war, Joe Rogan. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:50:10]

BASH: President Trump joked that Vice President JD Vance would be on the hook if the highly touted Memorandum of Understanding with Iran failed. A month later, that deal is dead. So it was a timely moment for the Vice President to sit down with one of the right's most vocal critics of the war with Iran, Joe Rogan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE ROGAN, HOST, THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE: If it was your call, would you have done exactly the same thing?

JD VANCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, what did the President said publicly that JD was less enthusiastic about it --

ROGAN: Yes.

VANCE: -- I think was the exact phrase that he used.

ROGAN: So what is going on with Iran where it seems like the President keeps saying that a deal has been reached, negotiations have been successful, and then it all falls apart -- VANCE: Yes.

ROGAN: -- and we start bombing them again?

VANCE: Yes, so how long do we have here?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Three hours, it turns out. My panel is back now, and I'm not kidding. It was almost --

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes.

BASH: -- three hours long --

STELTER: Yes.

BASH: -- this discussion. You know, but it's very telling that the Vice President wanted to go on Joe Rogan for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the discussion about Iran, because the President was joking about Vance being on the hook for it. But once we get to that point of really running in 2028, he will be.

STELTER: Yes. Yes, and Rogan and many of Rogan's friends and that kind of MAGA podcaster or MAGA adjacent podcaster class, very skeptical about the war, has many of the questions Rogan asked. And I think it was smart and compelling of Vance to go on and address that and go into that forum and take those questions and even accurately quote Trump saying that, you know, Vance was less enthusiastic.

BASH: Yes, yes, because he obviously was.

STELTER: We learned last year that -- or actually we learned from Maggie and Jonathan's book --

BASH: Yes.

STELTER: -- that Vance wanted to go on Rogan and talk about the Epstein files. And that idea didn't happen at the time. So I think it is generally very wise for Vance. He thinks about 2028 to be on that show. That is the platform he belongs on in this moment in time.

BASH: Well, he got his chance --

STELTER: Yes.

BASH: -- because he did talk about the Epstein files and he blamed Pam Bondi, who was no longer there as attorney general for the way it was handled or mishandled. Then he really went deep in conspiracy theories with Joe Rogan. Let's watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANCE: And look, one of the OG Epstein conspiracy theorists --

ROGAN: Most people think he was Mossad. VANCE: Yes, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country --

ROGAN: Or both.

VANCE: -- or both. You know, look, was he -- he clearly had connections to the upper -- the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK, record scratch. First, he says he's a conspiracy theorist. OK, he's owning that. But he's the Vice President of the United States of America saying about Jeffrey Epstein, he clearly had connections to the upper highest levels of American intelligence and also the highest levels of Israeli intelligence. I'd like to know more about that, sir.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, absolutely. Would be very curious to see evidence, you know, backing that up.

BASH: Exactly.

KANNO-YOUNGS: And it does mean something to have the Vice President, even on like a long form podcast that tends to dip into conspiracy theories, lending this weight to it. I will also say it's interesting that the Vice President, you know, did blame Pam Bondi and say that it was a communication issue --

STELTER: Yes.

KANNO-YOUNGS: -- for the handling of the Epstein case. But the reason that expectations were raised among the Trump base was because people that would join the Trump administration went on podcasts and entertained some of these theories around the Epstein case. So by the Vice President also going and talking about this, all it's going to do is once again raise expectations among Trump supporters and many others to say, well, wait a minute, it's the Justice Department. Is the administration hiding something here?

This is what -- this is how they dug a hole for themselves last time. And it's just interesting that in the same conversation, he would blame Bondi for raising expectations here and then do the same thing that she and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino did to raise those expectations.

STELTER: But maybe since there's no way to get out of the hole, maybe he's right just to own it and lean in to this.

BASH: But OK.

STELTER: A 9 to 10 issue. Most Americans are conspiracy theorists about this also.

BASH: Fine. But he's not like a podcaster sitting in his basement. He's the Vice President of the United States. STELTER: Yes.

BASH: If you believe that, maybe you've seen evidence. Show us the goods, because otherwise it's just a conspiracy theory.

There's one other thing that I want to play, and that is a conversation that JD Vance had with Joe Rogan, who is a big UFC guy. I think supposedly a big reason why the President and Dana White and this whole thing happened on the President's 80th birthday at the White House --

STELTER: Yes.

BASH: -- about that horrible Michelle Obama comment from one of the fighters saying that she looked like a man. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:55:13]

VANCE: All of my comms people, the thing they were most worried about was they're going to ask you about Michelle Obama being called a man. What are you going to say about it? And I was like, what an amped up fighter told a joke after a fight, said something after a fight. And that's actually national news.

I'm still surprised. I've been in politics now for three or four years. I'm still shocked, the shit that people get really fired up about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROGAN: Well, I kind of understand it because it's at the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Exactly. Joe Rogan sat the White House where she served for eight years.

ABBY LIVINGSTON, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Yes, I mean, and this is a conversation between two men. And, I mean, it's enormously -- as a woman, it's just I cringe watching that. But even if he's setting up distance between some of these controversies or somewhat endorsing them or blowing them off, he's still the Vice President of the United States under Donald Trump. And so everything that happens with him, if he decides to run for president, he is going to have some ownership of it, even if he's subtly putting distance up between some of these instances.

BASH: Thank you all for a great discussion and important reporting.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)