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Democratic Socialism On The Ballot In Wisconsin Dem Gov. Primary; Moderate And Progressives Face Off In WI Gov., MN Sen Dem Primaries; Trump Stitched Planes In Elaborate Ruse Because Of Iran Threat; Trump Signs Order To Change Child Vaccine Recommendations. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 11, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Competing visions collide in the last major test of the Democratic Party's direction before November.

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

Today, Americans in six states are hitting the polls in key primaries across the country. There are high-profile House, Senate, and gubernatorial races in South Carolina, in Vermont, Alabama, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The biggest story today is out of the Badger State, where Democratic socialism is on the ballot.

That is Wisconsin, where State Assemblywoman and Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong's upstart campaign has rattled establishment Democrats in the Purple State. They have united around Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the closing weeks of this race, arguing the socialist brand will lose in November against likely Republican nominee Tom Tiffany. Here's their closing argument.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CROWLEY, (D) WISCONSIN GOV. CANDIDATE: Every decision that I've made is about making sure that life is better for working families. We need a governor who doesn't just talk about problems. We need someone who's going to solve them, and that's what I've done my entire career.

FRANCESCA HONG, (D) WISCONSIN GOV. CANDIDATE: And right now, as governor, what I'm most serious about are the issues that voters are telling me they want solutions for, for permanent affordability, to tax the ultra-rich, to make sure we're getting corruption like he is out of politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to get straight to Madison, Wisconsin. Jeff Zeleny, you were there. What are you hearing from voters as they go and cast their ballots?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, we are outside a polling place in Madison, keeping our distance from voters, but we can see through this glass here. There has been a steady stream of voters really all morning long for the first five hours or so of voting here. We're not quite at halftime yet for all of the votes that can still be counted.

But the distinction between the two candidates, the two leading candidates, Francesca Hong, making that argument for big change that now is the time to do something big and bold. David Crowley is arguing to do something wiser, a bit more centrist, and the governor here, Tony Evers, has been echoing that. He's been urging these undecided voters to cast their votes for David Crowley to take a look at what is possible in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin as a state is not Madison, but even here in Liberal Madison, we have talked to so many voters who are worried about going too far. But others are saying, look, this argument about electability simply is a fig leaf, and they believe that voters should support the change that they believe in.

But Dana, another dynamic playing out here is this wild race. A few weeks ago, the frontrunners were different. There were -- the lieutenant governor in Wisconsin here, Sara Rodriguez, had to drop out in mid-July because of some campaign finance reasons. Mandela Barnes, a former lieutenant governor, also dropped out. However, their names were still on the ballots that were sent in to mail in these ballots.

So, we talked to one voter this morning about the confusion of all of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: Are you glad you voted in person on Election Day as opposed to mailing in your ballot like a month or so ago, since the race has changed so much?

PETER GUNDER, WISCONSIN VOTER: I am. And as I observed just a few minutes ago when I voted, there are names on there of candidates that withdrew from the race. So, I am glad I voted in person. My view is a centrist or more centrist candidate can reach out more broadly. I don't think polarity at its extreme is good for our country.

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ZELENY: So, the bottom line, as the votes come in this evening after the polls close here at 8 pm, Dana, it will not just be the votes for Hong and David Crowley who will be close an eye on. It will also be the other votes that already came in by mail. And if this is a close race, that could also determine the outcome here. So again, as people are casting their ballots as the lunch rush starts to begin here, all eyes are on Wisconsin for just this direction of the Democratic Party and specifically what the party would like to be going forward. Dana?

BASH: Sure is. Jeff, thank you so much. Always great to have you out in the field on days like this and all the days. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters who have been out and talking to voters. Now they are in the studio. Dave Weigel, I'm going to start with you. How do you see today playing out based on the conversations that you've been having?

DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Jeff did a very good job describing that chaotic primary, because what you saw in Wisconsin, and I think Democratic moods changed on this after the Michigan primary is a lot of flirting with the most progressive candidate in the race by Democratic voters. Francesca Hong, I think, would have been a serious contender eight years ago. The party has changed. It's gotten a lot more skeptical of its leadership.

But the Democratic leaders who have won elections in the state recently, saying, let's come back to earth and vote for somebody who we say is more electable. The problem with David Crowley is that he ran a bad campaign, dropped out of the race, was resurrected by Evers and by labor. Convincing people to go for him is harder than convincing them to go for Haley Stevens, who they knew and who had been running a real campaign --

BASH: In Michigan.

WEIGEL: In Michigan. And in Minnesota, it's a little bit different, harder to cram it into the box. But the same thing is happening, where you have a more center left Democrat saying, you might feel more passionately about the progressive Bernie Sanders endorsed candidate, but she's tied up in the fraud scandal. And in both cases, they're just trying to tell Democrats, stay away from your gut feeling. Think about how Republicans are going to attack these candidates.

Because one thing I saw in Wisconsin when I was there for the debate, during the debate when they had a chance to go after Hong, Democrats did not want to. It's hard for them to tell their own voters this thing that maybe you tweeted in 2020. If they tweeted it as a candidate, trust us, it'll be bad for Republicans. These Democrats have watched Republicans win with Trump twice. They don't quite believe that.

BASH: So, one person who is saying that out loud is the sitting governor Tony Evers, who is has endorsed a series of more moderate, or at least supported more moderate Democrats for the role that he currently has. Listen to what he said last week when he was talking to reporters at a state fair.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. TONY EVERS (D-WI): I think she's in a tough fight. She has spent her entire campaign dealing with, not with the issues, but what's on the Twitter, and I just find that that's not a good way to beat Tom Tiffany. It's going to be tough. I mean, do I think that it's possible she can win? But I think she's at a real disadvantage.

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BASH: And you saw him campaigning there with David Crowley. JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yeah. And there was some discussion of whether or not, if Francesca Hong would win, would Governor Evers come out in full force? Obviously, we saw back in Michigan a full coalescing around the Democratic ticket after the winning. So, I think people are expecting Wisconsin to be the same.

I'll just go back to this question of electability because establishment Democrats have been saying time and time again that we have the more electable candidate come November. But a question I think a lot of voters have heard, and a through line in my conversations with Democratic officials, is that if you cannot clear the field as an establishment candidate when you have Chuck Schumer and you have all these other establishment leaders behind you.

You cannot clear a field. How do you make the argument that your candidate is more electable come November? How do you convince people? And I think you're seeing this surge of kind of the insurgent candidates show that establishment Democrats are no longer able to really convince voters that their candidate, who is more moderate, who may not have a crazy tweet about that they hate Thanksgiving or they may not like fireworks, may not have those things is more electable come November, and that is a problem for establishment democrats.

BASH: And I think that's true. Obviously, the question is, and the argument that Tony Evers and so many others are making is, the electorate is quite different in November than it is in the Democratic Party. But I want to get back to the Francesca Hong campaign because it really is telling the kind of campaign she is, if you look at the fundraising in this race.

Tom Tiffany, the Republican, obviously he's the person who the Democratic candidate will run against in the fall. He's raised 13.2 million, David Crowley 4 million, Sara Rodriguez and Mandela Barnes both have dropped out, but Sara Rodriguez had raised a million, Mandela Barnes 741. By the way, this is ad spending, not raised. This is money they're spending on ads, just to be correct myself.

[12:10:00]

But this is the point I'm making. Look at Francesca Hong, she's $447,000, and so it pales in comparison. And the reason is, she doesn't need it because the support that she is getting is organic and is a different kind of support, which is where the energy is in Wisconsin right now in the Democratic Party.

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yeah, in the primary. And I think her comparatively low fundraising numbers is a feature, not a bug. That is a function of her argument that you don't want money in politics, that you can do this through an organic campaign. I will say that viewers in, people who are watching TV in Wisconsin have probably seen attack ads on Francesca Hong that say she's too liberal for Wisconsin and talk about how she's, you know, she's going to stand up to Trump. Ads that appear to be coming from Republicans who are trying to boost her campaign, she's not running those ads.

BASH: Yeah, yeah. And that is -- that is not unique to this cycle, this race, or this -- or the Republican Party. Let's quickly talk about Minnesota. You mentioned that, and this is the Democratic primary to see who will be the nominee to fill Amy Klobuchar seats, and she's running for governor. Angie Craig is the more establishment to keep on the same page, and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan is more liberal.

If you look at some of the endorsements, it reads like so many of these other splits in the Democratic primaries that we've seen. Just looking down at Peggy Flanagan, she's got the who's who of the most vocal and outspoken progressives. Obviously, it's Minnesota. So, one of the debating points is, in addition to questions of fraud, is ICE. Watch that.

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REP. ANGIE CRAIG (D-MN): Lieutenant governor, throughout the course of her entire campaign has sat on the bleachers, complaining about the one vote I took in eight years. Where are her solutions to comprehensive immigration reform in this country?

LT. GOV. PEGGY FLANAGAN, (D) MINNESOTA SENATE CANDIDATE: Well, I think the timing of this is what's really important. Congresswoman Craig stood by this vote for 14 months during the height of Operation Metro Surge, after Renee Good was killed, after Alex Pretti was killed, she stood by her vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And this is Tina Smith's seat, not Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor, but she's -- this is not her seat. Go ahead.

WEIGEL: Yes, that has been a defining issue in the race. Craig did walk back her vote for the -- which and Ruben Gallego other Democrats who voted for it, would tell you that Trump did not need that to do Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. But even in that race, Craig, when I talked to her last week, was -- I was asking about Democrats want to shake things up. She said, why should I go in and shake things up. I went in and I took the Democratic gavel in the A.G. committee when people were against me.

Nobody wants to be the party insider. I'd also watch her race, her open -- her open seat in Congress because that went for Trump -- sorry, went for Harris by six points. She flipped it as a swing seat. That's when we're seeing the same progressive fight show up, where Democrats are arguing. We don't need to be as centrist as Angie Craig was in the suburbs of Saint Paul. So, Craig is having to define herself differently than a center-left Democrat would have a couple cycles ago as an outsider.

BASH: All right, everybody, stand by. Coming up, a decoy in the sky and a commander in chief in a catering truck. We have on the Clinton distant operation to protect President Trump from an Iranian threat. Plus, a major shakeup to childhood vaccines in America. Who's really calling the shots? HHS Secretary RFK Jr., the president himself, or the scientists who work there?

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BASH: A decoy Air Force One, a secret flight, and a president hidden in a catering truck. I know it does sound like a spy thriller, but CNN confirmed Washington Post reporting on a very real, extraordinary presidential security operation triggered by a potential Iranian threat. It all happened on July 8th. President Trump is seen here boarding an older Air Force One from Turkey. But a U.S. official confirms to CNN that minutes later, the president and several close aides were whisked away in this airport catering truck that you see there, with the spotlight.

Now, it brought them to a smaller military jet seen in the distance in these photos, which would ultimately fly President Trump to the U.K. While the White House staff, most of them, and reporters who are tasked with covering the president, remained on the plane that was deemed unsafe for the president.

Now, after landing, we don't know how President Trump got back onto the plane he was supposed to be on, but he was seen coming down the stairs right there just before 11 pm. Now, when he got to the bottom, he greeted U.S. service members on the tarmac in England, and then he got back on another plane, the much scrutinized Qatari gifted Air Force One to head back to Washington.

It was on that flight, reporters who had no idea, of course, that President Trump wasn't on their plane on the first leg of the trip, asked why they were told to close their window shades upon takeoff.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were you aware of any credible threat by Iran against Air Force One?

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Well, I have a threat all the time. I'm number one on their list before you. But if I go, you go, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But was there a specific threat today?

TRUMP: So perhaps, perhaps someday you want to change professions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And Tamara Keith, you covered the White House for 12 years, including a very important stint as head of the White House Correspondents' Association. You have intimate knowledge of what the protocols and the rules are supposed to be, not just with the press, but with the president and where he goes.

KEITH: Yeah. And let's just say that on 9/11, when America was under threat, the press pool was with the president. They moved the president to undisclosed locations, and they kept members of the press, not the entire pool, but they kept members of the press with the president as he moved to an undisclosed location.

The reason for that is continuity of government, is being able to have independent witnesses who know where the president is and know that the president is safe, who can ultimately report that out and share it with the American people. I was involved when President Biden made a secret trip to Ukraine. I was president of the White House Correspondents' Association.

The White House came to me. We had to go into a secure room. It wasn't allowed to take my phone or my watch to discuss the details of that trip to negotiate how many reporters would be with the president on a secret train into Kyiv. And I had that information for 10 days, and kept it secret from absolutely everyone. We were able to build that.

BASH: And you were the only one.

KEITH: And I wasn't the only one. We were able to build that pool. We were able to have journalists with the president, documenting him on that train, on that trip, so that the American people would know how he got there and what he did. Some of this information has to stay secret, right?

But once the president is out of danger, the secret trip is revealed. The details of the trip are revealed. Certainly not what happened in this case, which is the White House attempting to keep it a secret to the extent of even, you know, subpoenaing the phone records of New York Times reporters who got close to the story.

BASH: Well, I think that one of the -- everything you said was really important. But I think one of the things I really want to underscore is this isn't about the press whining about not being -- this is about the continuity of government. If God forbid something happens, knowing what happens from an independent source, and yes, this was different from even what happened with you in Ukraine?

I was covering George W. Bush during the first sort of iteration of that kind of trip when he went to Iraq for the first time. I was in Crawford. I was left behind. I wasn't part of the press pool. I had no idea. They were giving us fake Thanksgiving menus of what the president was eating, which he wasn't eating, and it was annoying, but at least there was a press pool with him.

This was different because perhaps the threat happened sort of mid trip. There were ways, though, for them to do it to at least bring some of the press corps, and that is really -- is really the key. Jasmine, you also cover the White House -- you currently cover the White House full time. What are you hearing from your sources?

WRIGHT: Well, he's been peppering people with questions all morning, both White House, DOD, Secret Service, and we're not hearing much more than what is already out there. I mean, this is a story in which the White House is going through great lengths. I think we can tell through all this reporting to keep it under wraps and not actually address it. Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, was on Fox News last night after the story broke. They did not ask her about it. We have not heard anything about it. There is no briefing scheduled either at the White House or the DOD, so there is a vacuum of information.

I mean, one of the things that we've been talking about with my colleagues at Notus is what level of threat was it to remove the president from the plane and have it not come out for a month other than reporting, at what level, right?

BASH: That's extraordinary.

WRIGHT: What level of a threat does Iran still possess, and do they actually still possess the threat in which people were scared of? I mean, there are so many questions that we as reporters have, but certainly the American people have about what level of danger was the president and how credible was this threat? When did they get this threat, and has this threat been diminished? And that's just one set of questions that we have in this whole really profoundly amazing and very good reporting.

WEIGEL: Yes. This White House loves going around the press, though, doesn't it? As somebody who ends up covering campaigns more the White House, though, you can tell compared to previous the White Houses. They didn't -- they did not -- previous presidents did not use their own social media to break news over the white -- over the head of the press corps.

WRIGHT: This is the most transparent White House.

WEIGEL: He's accessible, but yeah.

BASH: Speaking of, what do President Trump's changes to child vaccines mean in real life for parents. And will it affect Republicans come November? That's next.

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BASH: President Trump's latest executive order seeks to take away the power to make childhood vaccine recommendations from the scientists who advise the CDC. Instead, President Trump is substituting what he calls his own common sense and knowledge. He wants to reduce the number of immunizations for children and also separate the MMR vaccine, MMR is measles, mumps, and rubella, into three different shots.

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TRUMP: Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today. In those times, people were much healthy, and of course, the high rates of autism, now observed did not exist. I've seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child's body, and bad things happen. In fact, they've said how safe it seems to be, but I've heard when you put them together, they can be explosive.

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BASH: That's not only not proven, it has been disproven in more than 40 studies, concluding no link between autism and vaccines.