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Now that's the Hyundai Advantage. Conditions apply offer includes 1% loyalty rate reduction for qualifying customers. Visit HyundaiCanada.com or your local dealer for details. If It's Tuesday, Former President Trump going on offense, on the trail while on defense in the quarter, holding a campaign rally this afternoon and once again railing at the Department of Justice and the charges against him.
And voters are voting right now in Ohio in a special election that could have a major impact on the fight over abortion rights. And it'll tell us a lot about what's motivating voters ahead of November, plus monumental tasks. President Biden heads out west to sell his legislative successes to a still skeptical public and aims to make a grand statement at the Grand Canyon this hour. Foreign.
Press Now I'm Garrett Hagen for Chris Welker. On a day in which Donald Trump's political aspirations and legal perils are both front and center today, the former president and current GOP front runner was back on the campaign trail in New Hampshire at an event for veterans touting his past record as president, criticizing the Biden administration and continuing to attack the Department of Justice, calling the legal cases against him politically motivated. Listen to this. But these incredible numbers are the primary reason that Crooked Joe Biden has weaponized law enforcement.
He has weapon. He's done something that nobody thought. They talked about it, but nobody ever did it. Never to this extent.
How can my corrupt political opponent, Crooked Joe Biden, put me on trial during an election campaign that I'm winning by a lot, but forcing me nevertheless to spend time and money away from the campaign trail in order to fight bogus made up accusations and charges. That's what they're doing. I'm sorry I won't be able to go to Iowa today. I won't be able to go to New Hampshire today because I'm sitting in a courtroom.
On Trump also insisted that he will talk about the election interference case even as his lawyers and federal prosecutors continue to clash over a protective order over exactly what he can share and say publicly about the case. Trump's attorneys are seeking a more narrow limit and arguing that the Justice Department's proposal would violate Trump's First Amendment rights. The changes proposed by Trump's legal team would include allowing the former president to disclose publicly recordings and transcripts of testimony from witnesses in the case. The government had sought to keep that information private, calling it sensitive material.
The judge presiding over the case plans to hold a hearing on the proposals by the end of this week. Meanwhile, NBC News has confirmed that the D.C. federal grand jury that returned an indictment against Trump just last week met again today, suggesting that Special counsel Jack Smith's investigation is continuing. NBC's Von Hilliard is on the ground for us in New Hampshire Day, covering the Trump campaign.
And in a few minutes, we'll be joined by more on the legal front by two NBC legal analysts, former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade and criminal defense attorney Danny Savales. So, Vaughn, I'll start with you. Donald Trump back on the trail today, his first proper rally since the indictment.
What did you hear from him today? I understand this was very much the defiant Donald Trump on the trail. Right. Gary, I was texting you just before we went on air here, and I know that you, over the course of the last 10 months, you and I have often traded off events of Donald Trump's that we've gone to.
And from my experience, Gary, I think this is the most defiant that I've ever heard. The former president in the last eight years I've covered him, defiance in a way which he has set down the stakes. There's a lot of talk over the last 18 months that Donald Trump was perhaps softening his 2020 election. Fraudulent claim talk.
Right. That he was going to give a more forward looking message for the Republican electorate. Today, he repeatedly came back to the idea that the 2021 election was rigged and stolen, propagating the election claims that led to the very indictments that he was charged with last week here for Donald Trump. He made the case, I won't let you listen to him.
That around the idea of the protective order that he would openly defy it because they would not silence him. Take a listen. They take away rights of First Amendment, now they sue because. So now I have one of these lunatic reporters back there saying, sir, would like to talk to you about your case or I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to talk about it.
Somehow that's that good for votes. Do you agree when we say I can't talk, I'd love to, I will talk about it, I will then not take it away. My First Amendment. It's a defiance not only of the reality of the 2020 election, but for Donald Trump, it's also a defiance of the US justice system, saying that he would talk despite whatever protective order is laid down.
But also, Garrett, it was a defiance of the prosecut who are bringing the charges and seeing the charges against him, saying that when he gets back into office that he would put forward a special counsel to go after these very individuals. I want you to hear though, from a few of the voters who I talked to right before he took the stage. Because for Donald Trump, so much of this, the importance of it is winning over the court of public opinion. Take a listen.
You know what that is? That's Nazi Germany, Hitler. You can't silence your political opponents because you don't agree with them. You can't lock them up because you don't agree with them.
This country is falling quickly. Merrick Gallon should be impeached. Mayor should be impeached. Joe Biden should be in prison for his bribes.
You people don't even cover Joe Biden's media stuff. Absolutely should be able to talk about it. Yeah, if he wants me to protect them, I'm going to go in there, I'm going to let them know that I'll do it. He shouldn't be bashing the prosecutor and the judge.
He should lay off that part. But if he wants to talk about what is the evidence, he shouldn't be. He should lose a free speech figure that Donald Trump told this crowd during his remarks just a few moments ago that this is the most passionate he has ever seen, his base of support, and frankly, I don't think Donald Trump is wrong. As you heard from those folks there, they believe that Donald Trump is a martyr and is being unfairly prosecuted and frankly, should be in the White House.
And for Donald Trump, it is about mobilizing those very people in the months ahead, not just to win a political race and Republican nomination and get back in the White House, but for Donald Trump, it's about controlling at least the reality the great segments of the American population believes in. Vaughn I think, you know, the rest of Donald Trump's Republican rivals had this theory that the doj, these investigations would somehow hamper him in the primary, that would help them catch up. That clearly hasn't happened. Now, I think the Biden campaign, a lot of Democrats, think that surely the doj, these investigations will hamper him in the general election and that will help Joe Biden.
Does the Trump campaign have a particular view about this? How are they looking at, you know, pac, the primary idea that these things might be fuel in the base now but could become dead weight for them later on? Trump's campaign has been very clear, Garrett, that Donald Trump believed that he in 2020 received more votes than any Republican nominee for president in those key battleground states because he was able to expand the base and turn out more voters who had not previously been engaged in American politics. And that was true.
He received more votes by millions in 2020 versus 2016. Of course, the difficulty for that was that Joe Biden also seems to see more votes than Hillary Clinton did. But they believe that if they're able to convince a few percentage points of independence to come back over to their side while holding on to that sturdy base of support and perhaps a less inspired Democratic base of support around Joe Biden, they believe that in those key battleground states, if you just look at Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, 42,000 votes separated Biden and Trump in those three states, that that is enough. So as long as he is able to hold on to this base of support, which right now, primary polling suggests that he is, then they believe that they will be in a good position despite any criminal trials that he is withstanding.
At that same time, they believe that he, at least politically, is in a position to be in this fight next year. We'll see. You know, Bonsa Jerry Avid our text J. I asked you another question that we've talked about before because it came up in the sound that you played as well.
The idea that Donald Trump is somehow, you know, too bogged down by his legal calendar to get out of campaign. How much does your reporting indicate that that's true? And how much of that is him being the front runner and it being August and him not wanting to be out there doing this kind of thing, you know, on the trail in your hatch on a Tuesday afternoon every week. Right.
Trump actually spoke to it up on stage and he brought up the crowd and he go to them. When he said that he's not gonna be able to go to Iowa and New Hampshire because he's gonna be in a courtroom on B.S. he's the direct, explicit when he was up there on stage. But for Donald Trump, it is a reality that he will likely face on the general election Right now if he has a successful Iowa caucus, Hampshire primary is able to wrap up this Republican primary.
It looks like most of these motions he's not gonna actually have to appear for in the courtroom. But this would be much more the general election conversation than it is Republican primary one. All right, Von Hilary Forssen, Winnip, N.H. vaughn, thank you for your reporting.
Let's bring in the lawyers now, because no segment about Donald Trump in 2023 is complete without the political and illegal. Danny, I'll start with you. If you had the hardest legal job in the country right now we're trying to defend Donald Trump in court, what would you be making of the things he's saying on the campaign trail, and how much harder does that make the job? Yeah.
First, there are two truths about representing Donald Trump. The first is that you do not want him talking on social media or in any context about his case. And point number two is he's going to do it anyway. At this point, if you're going to represent Donald Trump, you know, that's part of the deal.
You know, that's what representing him is all about. So whereas many attorneys will have a hard line of, I will never represent someone who goes out there and damages their case by talking. You just can't do that. If you're representing Donald Trump, you know that's part of the deal.
And realize that as a representative, you have to pivot your defenses as he says things that are damaging to his defense. And with each speech, he potentially closes off different avenues of that defense. This is something you always have to think about when defending a client. It simply won't stay off social media, won't stop talking.
Frankly, it's not as uncommon as you might think. Frankly, these kinds of bad decisions that defendants make are why they need criminal defense attorneys in the first place. So Donald Trump is just the most famous, the most well known of the longest line of criminal defendants who make Bad decisions. And that's what criminal defense attorneys really do.
We're in the business of bad decisions. So to that end, how much does their proposal around the protective order, trying to narrow the scope of what he can and can't talk about, even matter the odds are he's gonna talk about what he wants to talk about. Is the point here to delay rather than try to win that argument in front of a judge? Yes.
I mean, obviously, their overall strategy is to delay because if this gets to the inauguration, then the case goes away to the extent it's still pretrial. But look, I'm even a minority here, but I do have some sympathy for Trump's lawyers here. They haven't seen discovery yet, and I know the government is saying, look, we're not talking about stuff that's already public, but at this point, the defense doesn't know exactly what's in discovery, and they know that if nothing else, if they don't know what's in discovery, then they need to be very careful with any protective order and limit it as much as they can. In other words, I guess, narrow its scope as much as they can, knowing that their clients gonna go and say goofy things that could land him back in court, make a mistake about it.
The defense knows that the government is watching Donald Trump like a hawk on social media and his speeches, and if he steps out of line, they're going to be in court. So if you're defense counsel, you want to make the protective order as narrow as you can to head off as many problems as you can. The bottom line, you're going to have problems. But that's defense counsel's rule.
Minimize risk. That's another big part of what we do, is to try to minimize risk. Barbara. Danny raises two points that I think are worthwhile here.
Number one, the idea that Donald Trump team doesn't know what's in discovery, it seems kind of like a little disingenuous to me. We had months of Hearings of the January 6th Committee. January 6th. The 2020 election has been litigated in public for the two and a half years since it happened.
If you're the government, the lawyers here, if you're the prosecution team, how important are these protective order requests really, given the fact that Donald Trump already knows, at least to some degree, who are the witnesses against them and broadly speaking, what they're probably going to say? I think a protected murder in this situation is critically important for the government. Discovery is not a license to give up defendant information. The public of preparing his defense There is likely grand jury testimony in here, which the law protection disclosure.
There may be recorded conversations, interviews. And if Donald Trump is able to disseminate that into the public domain, you can bet that those witnesses are going to be the target of threats and harassment. And it could even have a chilling effect on the testimony at trial. The government has an obligation to protect those witnesses.
The protective order does not prevent Donald Trump from defending himself publicly. It only prevents. All right, Barbara, hold on a second. Mara, I'm going to give our folks in the control room a chance to try to diagnose what's going on with your microphone here.
And I'm going to try to ask another question to Danny here to give them an opportunity to do that. So, Danny, we reported yesterday that Bernie Carrick was in talking to the prosecutors here in the Jack Smith investigation, not in front of the grand jury, just the prosecutors about Rudy Giuliani's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. I'm curious how you think this is the kind of thing that might be pursued or not by the special counsel if they pursue charges there, does it bog them down in the Trump case? I'm thinking about the superseding item that came out in the documents case and the idea that every time you add a defendant or every time you expand the scope of this, you slow down kind of the big case that you're really trying to push.
Yeah, I would be surprised if you never see a super proceeding indictment in this case because think about it, they've already concluded that there are other co conspirators. They're just not named in this indictment. The documents case, by example, there were two defendants and then they added a new third defendant, the documents case, the investigation was more recent. There you have more developing information.
This is the mark of the excuse of the DC Case has been investigated for several years now. And I would think that if the government wanted to indict folks like Rudy Giuliani and they do supersede the indictment, then they won't be doing that in a couple weeks after the original indictment. Maybe I'm way off here, but I think that was a very deliberate strategy to streamline this case, as I think you were implying. I think you're right.
They're keeping other name defendants out of case. If you add five additional named defendants, that's five additional motions to sever, motions for discovery, motions to dismiss. And Jack Smith, by naming exactly one defendant and other unnamed unindicted co conspirators, clearly is making this case as simple as he can to move it along to a speedy trial. Keep in mind, Jacksonville is a man of few words.
And of those few words at his conference that you're seeing right there, he mentioned the words speedy trial. So in a speech that probably contained a couple hundred words, a speedy trial found its way in there. That's Jack Smack Smith's mission. This indictment shows that.
As for Bernie Kerrick, very interesting character because on the one hand, he seems to be very supportive of the trope team. But on the other hand, if you read the January 6th committee's report, this is someone who has apparently evidence that there was no there. There was no problem with the voting machines, as presumably reportedly Giuliani's chief investigator, he apparently concluded that there wasn't anything really wrong with these machines that eventually became the companies became accused of putting their thumb on the scale of the election. Pardoned by Trump once for that loyalty went so far.
Barbara, since I think we have you back there, I would like you to pick up on that. If we were on Jack Smith's text chain here, what's the debate like inside the special counsel team about this sort of speed versus, you know, how wide you cast the net, or to the point that Dan was raising earlier, are you gonna haul the Trump team in the court every time he says something that violates the protective order, or do you look around and say, look, we gotta pick our battles because time is of the essence here. How are they weighing those things? Yeah, I think you have to be very strategic here.
Just because you can file a motion to bring him in doesn't mean you should. You have to keep your eye on the ball and not lose sight of the forest for the trees. And so I think they're gonna give him a lot of leeway about what he says. They could move to get a gag order.
They haven't done that yet. If he's gagged, then what is the remedy? It's usually progressive discipline. First a warning, then maybe a fine, and then finally revocation of release.
Who's gonna want to lock up somebody who is on the campaign trail for president? So it's a very difficult situation for the prosec. They're going to give him a long leash and continue to keep their eye on the ball and move this case forward. And then to Danny's point about the six uninded co conspirators, I think they wait until this trial is over.
There's no reason they can't wait. The statute of limitations is five years for these crimes. And so I think they keep their eye on the ball. Get Donald Trump convicted is the strategy.
And then maybe some of those people decide to cooperate. That's great. And then even if they don't, you can indict them after this case is over and try them either together or separately. And if I know anything about Donald Trump from my time covering is he's going to test that leash and see exactly what he can get away with from the DOJ team.
Barbara, Danny, thank you both for your expertise on this. And coming up next, if it's Tuesday, voters are voting in Ohio in a special election that's become a proxy battle for the fight over abortion rights. We are on the ground in the Buckeye State. Plus, with just two weeks ago until the first Republican primary debate, Mike Pence is the latest candidate to make the stage.
We'll tell you what we know about who else is in and who still got some work to do. You're watching me depressed now. Welcome back. And as we like to say around here, if it's Tuesday, somebody is voting somewhere.
And today one of those somewheres is in Ohio where abortion is indirectly on the ballot. Ohioans are voting on a ballot initiative. About ballot initiatives. It's a measure that would, among other things, increase the threshold to amend the state constitution there to 60% rather than with a civil majority that raised threshold reply to an initiative on the upcoming November ballot that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution.
You may remember a similar amendment passed last year in Kansas, but with just 59% of the vote, making that 60 a pretty important target. Some top Ohio Republicans say today's initiative isn't solely about making it harder for abortion referendum to pass. Here's Ohio Republican Lt. Governor John Husted, my colleague, Alec Town, I think that it's a combination of events that many Ohioans, particularly people have to fund.
The opposition campaigns are tired of out of state interest trying to come in and amend our Constitution. And that convergence of events of both the Dobbs decision and a growing frustration over this on a variety of issues, on livestock standards, on drug legalization, on all of those kinds of things, we still think those should be placed into the Constitution. But at the same time, Ohio's Secretary of State and Republican Senate candidate Frank LaRose said today's vote is, quote, 100% about keeping a radical pro abortion amendment out of our Constitution. While Ohio hasn't held a statewide August special election in 100 years, early vote data for today appears to be double the early vote turnout from last May's primary election.
That featured highly contested races for governor and for Senate. Abortion was a key driver in last November's midterm election and today could perhaps give us a small clue of just so much how much electoral juice this issue still has. The aforementioned Ali Vitali is on the ground for us in Columbus, Ohio. And so, Ally, we can set aside all the spin, right?
Today's vote is about abortion. The vote's not on abortion. It's about abortion. So what are you hearing from folks on the ground there?
And are Republicans in the states sweating the results already? Well, I haven't heard from anyone who is outright optimistic. In fact, the Secretary of state, Franklin Rose, we were just talking about who has drawn the direct line between today's constitutional amendment rule vote and the amendment vote that comes up in the fall about abortion. He canceled the press availability here today because there were about a half a dozen protesters who were really loud.
You have to assume it's because he didn't want to face the press against the backdrop of nearly 700,000 people already voting as of yesterday. You made the point that that is far and away much more than we've seen even in usually scheduled elections like primary elections last year. It does show that there is a momentum on the ground. What direction that momentum goes we have yet to see.
But I was even just catching up with some voters who were leaving this polling place behind me and said to them, hey, are you guys folks that typically vote in special elections like these? They said no. The media attention and the issues at State are what are putting them here today on a random Tuesday in the, in the dog days of summer, August. And Republicans here in the state both are concerned about the strategy and also not supportive of the way that their party are doing it.
Yes, some are the majority within the state legislature, but not all of them. Here's one that vote against it and it's skeptical that it's going to work the way the party wants it to. Watch. What's the lesson for your party if come Tuesday night or Wednesday morning the ballot initiative fails?
Maybe we should spend more time thinking through things before taking a step. Maybe less red meat for the base. More. There is a way to provide the red meat and do things in a thoughtful way.
And I'm afraid this was rushed a little bit because we had to make a certain deadline to be able to get it done. Maybe more thoughtfulness. I mean, that does not sound like a Republican who thinks this is going to end well. And frankly, those are the conversations.
That's the tone of the conversations that I usually have with Republicans who won't say that publicly in Washington, but they're concerned about if their party is out of step with the national mood on this issue. Because frankly, the lesson of the post Dobbs era is they are. Yeah, Big dog Dakota Car energy. You know, look, we obviously, we always hate trying to, you know, take a special election and project it out further beyond what it is.
Right. Each of these special elections are special for a reason. But what do you think the results that we'll get at some point today or tomorrow will tell us about the energy level around the abortion issue for November? And beyond that, look, we're still in this period of testing something that has been previously untested.
Kansas was a great example of this. The 2022 midterms are the next example of it. And now here we have yet another plot point in how much motivation and energizing factor is abortion. The further out you get from the Supreme Court overturning the Roe vs.
Wade precedent. I think that that's something this idea of being post Roe, that in my 10 years covering reproductive access, we were always working towards what post Roe would look like. We're now squarely here, Republicans and Democrats are keenly aware of that. And Democrats are the only ones who are finding upside to it at the ballot.
And we've seen Republicans, you and I, spend time in Congress on the campaign trail. Republicans are not itching to talk about this issue, but Democrats certainly are. And this might be another proof point as to why. All right, Oliver Talley, thank you for being on all over this.
I suspect we'll be talking about it more tomorrow. And for more on the political ramifications of all this, I'm joined now by Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist and NBC News political analyst, and Noah Rotten, senior writer for the National Review. Noah is in the room with me, so you get the first dibs on this. So unlike what we saw in Kansas.
So this is an anti abortion referendum here, but as Ally and I were discussing, some of the proponents of it don't really want to say what it's about. I mean, first of all, I do agree with the stipulation that this is about abortion. And what does the way in which this issue is even being discussed tell you about where the energy is on it? I'm frankly rather confused by the reading of the subtext as a proxy for a subsequent vote on abortion.
It's about abortion. The question itself is about amending the Constitution, which has a low threshold. A civil majority threshold is a elementary civic education Would suggest that maybe we should make that a little bit higher. If I were inclined not to test the waters on abortion, I would emphasize the civic nature of this referendum.
Republicans seem desperate to take the temperature of the electorate at the state level on the national level on abortion. They've done so several opportunities and they've gotten the same consistent answer. It seems as though there's something of a contest, especially on the presidential level, to test whether or not there should be a national federal standard or to leave it to the states where you say, oh, I just leave it at the states. I have my personal preferences, I have more moral convictions, but this should be a state level issue.
The states are not participating in that conversation room. They're sending even dark red states, Ohio. They're sending a very clear message to Republicans that that answer is not going to be the one they want. Which leads you to conclude that maybe the presidential level is going to decide based on sort of a back this campaign that a federal standard is necessary.
Is that going to be a winning issue? It doesn't suggest that there will be, but at least there will be a uniform line that Republicans can get behind. Right now they're at odds with each other. Putting my Congress hat on for a second hearing, a federal standard seems just almost impossible to ever get through both chambers.
But that's a story for another time. Eugene, the idea of a 60% referendum question, I know points about, you know, Constitution should potentially have a higher bar. It seems kind of anti small d Democratic to say, look, a majority, a significant majority of voters might agree on this issue, but we're going to tell them no, that's not how this is going to go. What do you make of the idea of a referendum on this issue and the fact that Republicans are calling for.
What does that say about the potency of the effort to protect reproductive rights in this way? Look, in a vacuum, you could argue that, you know, you should need 60% to change the constitution. In a vacuum. This is not in a vacuum.
This is a referendum. It was rushed through in order to make it harder for the referendum that's on the ballot in November to pass, because it looks like it's going to pass. I mean, the polls both show that 57 or so percent of Ohioans said that they would vote in favor of enshrining abortion rights in the Ohio state constitution. So it's so transparent what Republicans are doing here that I think it offends sensibilities even of people who might, you know, might be otherwise willing to accept some sort of restrictions on abortion or gotten under people's skin and bothers people that this is being done in such a transparent way.
No, I feel like abortion issue always tends to politically cut against the party that seems to be overreaching on it. Right. The party who seems sort of the most extreme on this. How do Republicans who have won the most recent political fight on this, in the sense that the Dobbs decision kind of gave them what they said they wanted, get to a place where their language can match what the country seems to say they want?
That's a very good question because it's hard to tell what the country does seem to want. I think the issue does cut against the party that appears to be going against what was the status quo or the status quo ante reforming party, which is actually usually the case when it comes to health care, health care related issues. When it comes to the actual issue, up or down referendum on abortion, six weeks, 15 weeks, what have you. The issue cuts against Republicans.
It is complicated in the 2022 elections because so much of this issue was clouded by individual candidates who also backed the 2020 election conspiracies. That was also the case in a Wisconsin, I believe, the Supreme Court election late last year that many computers had turned on the issue of abortion. But the candidate himself was tainted by his association with the 2020 metrics. It's very difficult to cut these two and analyze them separately.
I do think, however, the referendum issues tend to suggest that Republicans should be leaning into a status quo. That is, polls suggest Americans prefer, which is no restrictions or legal to the first trimester, 15 weeks, 14 weeks afterwards, restrictions. That's safer ground for them. There's an internal conversation going on within the go whether that's a moral position, which is a political matter.
Eugene, if we had the 2024 election today, I'm of the view that we basically be talking about a referendum on Donald Trump again, just given the way that he's dominated the coverage so much across the last six months of our political life. But abortion has to be the number one issue, right? Number issues that is animating voters in this race right now. Do you think that's the case or is the economic issue faded in such a way that abortion still remains that issue, or am I misreading that?
Well, I think it depends on what voters are talking about. I think certainly for a lot of the Democratic coalition, especially young voters, I think abortion is a really important issue. And I think it drives people out to the polls. It drives people to vote.
And that's why Democratic officials and candidates keep talking about it because it is a motivating factor. I think there are other voters from the economy. Inflation might be overriding issues. A lot of people are going to think about different things, but I think a very important issue for some important Democratic voters who need to show up for the party to do.
Well, Ron DeSantis, I think, agrees with my theory here a little bit about the way this election is shaping every now and I play some of you until my colleague Josh Burns about the state of the Republican primary field right now. Listen, if the election is a referendum on Joe Biden's policies and the failures that we've seen and we are presenting a positive vision for the future, we will win the presidency and we will have a chance to turn the country around. If, on the other hand, the election is not about January 20, 2025, but January 6, 2021, or what document was left by the toilet at Mar a Lago, if it's a referendum on that, we are going to lose. Donald Trump looks at this politically in the short term, right?
He wants to win the primary right now. That's what he's focused on. But should the Republican Party be thinking more about what Ron DeSantis is saying here and the idea that sort of the Trump grievance machine might work in a primary but struggles in a general election? I mean, certainly, yes, that would be an instinct towards self preservation that we have not seen so far from the Republican electorate.
There does seem to be an element of chef or even cathartic crisis that Republican voters get from elevating Donald Trump and sticking to the people who say that they shouldn't. If Republican candidates believe that they cannot win this nomination without ratifying his 2020 grievances, fundamentally arguing that he's the incumbent, they're gonna lose anyway, right? There was no pathway for them. So the Republican candidates like Ron DeSantis and others who were testing out this message, maybe it's too early in the primary, maybe wanted to hit it later so that it hits harder, I actually don't think that's true.
But at root, there's a, there's a distinction here between trying to ingratiate yourself with the Republican electorate and trying to convince them that you are the candidate who can actually deliver for them. And that has to begin with saying, donald Trump lost. He lost fair and square. All his, all his efforts in the courts to try to prove his, his assertions here were flawed and failed.
It's a deprogramming effort that has to begin now because it's not going to take hold over the course of a week or even month. Right. The long way to hard is to put that provision structure in place. Eugene.
It seems like a good place to be. That would be the debate. We now have eight Republicans who we believe are qualified for this debate, a few others on the outside looking in. Mike Pence is the most recent to make the stage.
Our graphic has Donald Trump. We don't think he's coming. The debates matter in some cycles more than they do in others as this kind of moves to center stage in the next two weeks. How much do you see this debate, whether Trump goes or not, mattering in this cycle?
Well, I think it's a big moment for Brendan Sanders, big moment for Mike Pence, for those candidates. Each of them, the cycle probably is going to want to look up here and sound like the alternative to Donald Trump, like the person that Republicans want to rally around to try to win the next election. And so it's a very important moment for them. We don't know if Trump was going to be there.
I kind of doubt that he will for DeSantis in particular. You know, DeSantis is at a rough period. He's just today I just fired his campaign manager and got a new one. So I guess it's yet another reset.
His poll numbers have just gone in the wrong direction. And so of course there is time left. But you need to start going in the right direction at some point in order to win the nomination. So I think it's a particularly big moment for him.
Some high level politics here. A summer process stories is not going to make you the president, Eugene. Thank you both for your analysis. We got to leave it there.
Coming up, President Biden is on the road in Arizona pitching a grand plan out of White Houses, hoping the president's historic designation in that swing state may help Democrats in November. You're watching Meet the President. Welcome back. President Biden is in Arizona right now making an historic move to preserve sacred native land.
Biden formally announced today that over 1500 miles of land adjacent to the Grand Canyon will now have a national monument designation. This move, which Arizona tribes have been pushing for over the course of multiple administrations, will protect the area from development and from uranium mining. Today's announcement is President Biden's fifth monument designation of his presidency. And he described it as a step to prioritize promises made to native communities and to preserve history.
Listen, I made a commitment as president to prioritize respect for the tribal sovereignty and self determination to honor the solid promises the United States made to tribal nations to fulfill federal trust and treaty obligations. I pledge to keep using all that available authority to protect sacred tribal lands. The president is also out west to tout climate achievements in his inflation reduction act of voters as we come up on the one year anniversary of this passage, Emmy Cuz White House correspond, Mike Mulling has more from Arizona. Hey there guy.
Well, you know as well as anyone from your perch on Capitol Hill just how at times painful the process was for Democrats of trying to get the inflation Reduction act, what was first called the build back better bill over the finish line to the president's death. Next week is the one year anniversary of that. And so today with such a beautiful location as here, as well as the grand tanning president kicking off an effort to try to communicate to these skeptical Americans what that legislation does is the most significant as the White House puts investment in tackling the climate crisis. When you combine it with the bipartisan infrastructure law in this country's history put us on a track to meet some of those targets that were set at the Paris climate summit.
So this is going to be a weak long after I'm part of the president. And it's really notable that it's starting here in Arizona because one of the things the president also did say was signed a new designation for a national monument that was really pushed for for years by tribal community here, tribal communities here and in Arizona, that tribal community maybe represents 5, 6% of the electorate. Well, when we're talking about a swing state like Arizona where the margin of victory for President Biden here three years ago was just 11,000 votes, that means all the difference. Also, we're noting who else was here, Garrett, not just the Democrat turned independent who has to make the decision about whether she's gonna seek a second term, another term next year, but also the president singling out one of the children of John McCain, a former senator here.
We know, as President Biden put it, how close they were during their time in the Senate together, even though Joe Biden ran against him in 2008, attack dog as running mate when he was running on a ticket with Sarah Palin. The president noting in his remarks that for all their disagreements, for all their differences, they were able to get along well and he always appreciated McCain's optimism for the future. It's notable coming on a day which we're hearing from the former president's potential likely opponent next year. And we know of course the clashes that John McCain had with Donald Trump as well.
So a official event here on the part of the president. But one certainly a few the politics and one we'll see a lot in the coming weeks here. Garrett. All right, Mike Benning, what I think is the most interesting swing state of 2024.
Thank you. And up next, high alert for high temperatures. We've got a look at a first of its kind tool for health providers to help protect vulnerable populations from dangerous heat. You're watching.
MEET THE welcome back. Nearly 60 million Americans are under high healer today as this summer's extreme heat wave continues in the Southwest. The National Weather Service warned the temperatures will remain at dangerous levels from Arizona through Texas and out towards Florida. And as temperatures stay high, certain concerns about heat health risks from the heat.
MC News senior medical correspondent Dr. John Torres has a look at a new key alert system meant to help doctors deal with the dangerous health impacts of heat on the most vulnerable community. Much so this is essentially showing us how climate change is affecting the heat in the country. Exactly.
Based in Princeton, New Jersey, Climate Central is a climate science and communications nonprofit seeking to save lives. This summer they just rolled out a first of its kind heat alert system. Andrew Pershing is one of the lead developers. We're able to use our system to generate alerts to tell clinics around the country when they're encountering heat that's likely to be dangerous and allow them to put in place the plans they have to help keep their patients safe.
According to the National Weather Service, extreme heat is the deadliest natural hazard in the U.S. children, adults over 65 and those without health insurance are the most vulnerable. Who are you focusing on? It's really the clinics that are working with the underserved communities because those are the people who are much more vulnerable, who aren't necessarily gonna have air conditioning, who aren't necessarily gonna have somebody looking out for them.
I got a first hand look at the new system. This is our heat messages. But then if I zoom in here on heat messages for clinics, these are all of the places that we could be sending the messages right now. And that's most of the country.
It's mostly country. So what this is saying is that these places are above their 90th percentile, which is that locally specific temperature where conditions start to be dangerous. A typical heat alert message won't look something like the a personalized email to a health provider warning them of extreme temperatures relative to the clinic's geography. The message also includes links to a new toolkit developed in partnership with Harvard and Americares, providing free information on how to keep their Patients safe.
So not just that it's going to be warm, but here's what you can do. Here's the things you need to look out for. Exactly. There are currently 17 clinics in seven states enrolled in the pilot program.
And Climate Central plans to expand its reach to benefit hundreds of clinics across the country. I think our clinicians are very much kind of under the gun in a lot of places, especially in places like Houston that have just been so perpetually hot for so long. This summer, Texas leaves the US in uninsured residents with almost 1 in 5 people without health insurance. The San Jose Clinic in midtown Houston caters to a large uninsured population with most patients at or below 250% of the federal poverty level.
It is also one of the first clinics to try the new alert system. Dr. Adlia Ibit is the chief clinical officer. So here's the clinician.
I really strive for health equity and I think we can't have that conversation right when we talk about climate equity. And there's a huge burden, especially in our patient population with regards to occupational hazards and being put on elements day in, day out. Just be able to earn a living. Oscar Ramirez is a construction worker and spends most of his days under the scorching Texas sun.
Suffering from hypertension, he says he finds himself fainting during extremely hot days. But thanks to heat alerts, Oscar's physician knows when to reach out and is able to advise him on how to manage extreme temperatures using the free online toolkit, also available in Spanish. To have someone who's actually sitting there behind the scenes, you know, forecasting and giving us the alerts and giving us the advice, alleviates a huge burden so we can focus on patient care. There'll be at the very least 80 people finding other emergency room, hopefully and ultimately saving lives.
MCU Senior medical correspondent Dr. John Torres joins me now with more of this reporting. So, John, what's the main output here? Right.
What is the advice once you get the data here about how dangerous this is? And so the questions are, there's two important parts. One is the data to tell you that heat is coming. There's something you need to do about it.
But the second part, which is the important part of the toolkit, working with Harvard, Sea Change, with Americares, they actually give health information. Here's what you need to do and reason that's important is because the vast majority of clinic health staff saying, yeah, we know he's coming, but we're not exactly sure what to do here, especially with our vulnerable. And this helps him, gives him not just information that it's happening, but what you can do to help protect those most vulnerable people. Does this building a structure too for employers and that kind of thing?
You know, look, even in Texas it's hot all the time. But if you have a system like this and a structure is like, all right, this is triggered. My company is U xyz, we need you today. It's system ties.
So it's giving a lot of information. They can take information and run with it, hopefully do something like that. And this is just a pilot project. They're hoping to expand it much more beyond this.
And they're also hoping to move into other areas. Looking at hurricanes, wildfires, floods, those types of things basically make it kind of a central, here's how climate's affecting you, here's what you need to do immediately to make sure people stay safe. And then let's work on the bigger problems as time goes on. As time goes on.
Thank you for reporting on this. And still ahead, why the US Is now leaning towards calling unrest in Niger a formal coup. We'll talk to Courtney qb who just returned from witnessing the chaos firsthand. You're watching the PRESS now.
Welcome back. Turning now to crisis in Niger where despite US Efforts, any attempt to restore democratic order in the West African country looking bleak, the US State Department dispatched Victoria Newland, the department's acting number two, to Niger to convey Washington's grave concerns about the attempted to takeover. Nuland described her two hour meeting with Niger's new self declared Minister of Defense as quote, extremely frank and at times difficult. She also conveyed to the junta what's at stake, including hundreds of millions of dollars in US Assistance.
While in Niger, Nuland had hoped to meet with the democratically elected President Mohammed Bazoum, who she described as under virtual house arrest. But that request wasn't granted. The Biden administration now faces the difficult choice of whether or not it will formally declare the situation in Jerichu as the window for diplomacy seemingly grows smaller and smaller. Joining now is Pentagon correspondent Courtney Kubi who was recently in Niger.
And Courtney, we're glad you're back. Your reporting was incredible. Give us, given these recent events, obviously in light of the deputy secretary's trip, just how close is the administration to declaring this situation a coup? And why does that language matter here?
It's not just semantics. Yeah, that's right. So we've been asking that question multiple times a day since July 26th when all of this started in the Emmy when president was taken into custody under House arrest by his own presidential security guards. But the US officials been speaking with still say they are no closer to actually declaring this a coup.
But it's important to point out that U.S. officials and U.S. military officials, we've been speaking within the region back here in D.C. do acknowledge that everything that they are seeing on the ground in Niger really does meet the definition, the legal definition of a coup.
But the US has resumed to actually declare that because of what it means, it immediately triggers some U.S. laws. And why that's important to people of Niger is it will halt US military training of the Nigerian military and it will hold hundreds of millions of dollars in USA that would go to Niger. Now the person, a General Barmu who met with Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Newman in the Emmy yesterday is the general who has worked very closely with the US military in Niger for years.
He had the Nigerian special operations forces. We were actually with his troops in Wallam two days before this coup broke out, which is a remote part of Niger with the US military trains and Nigerians. I have spoken with a number of US officials who say many people in the Nigerian military, specifically in the special forces do not want that training relationship to end. The US military, many of them feel the same way.
So that's really the reticence to declare this a coup here in the US spirit. It's a very fine line to walk. This block of West African nations, basically Nigerians neighbors have threatened military intervention if the President isn't returned to power or wasn't returned to power, I guess by Sunday now or a couple days past that deadline. Are we seeing any signs of that kind of intervention come together or was that just an empty threat?
It's not an empty threat. There is a very real possibility that something happened. There's two things that have to happen. First, those, those neighboring nations are supposed to all meet on Thursday and discuss the way forward, whether that would include any kind of military intervention.
But you know, these neighboring countries, many of them do not have a really robust military to start with. So the idea that they would be able to sort of coalesce together and amass enough of a military force to actually intervene in a meaningful way in Niger that wouldn't be able to happen immediately. That would take a little bit of lead time for them to get together. We're told, according to U.S.
officials, that not all of the members of equas as regional nations, they're not all on board with the idea of a military intervention. So it's very possible. It's extremely concerning for what it would mean for the region if there would be a military intervention in Niger. But at this point it's not in the immediate future, Garrett, a military invention against an army that, oops, was just being trained by the United States.
So talk to me a little bit about that part of this too, right? I mean, State Department has ordered partial evacuation, but what is the status of U.S. armed forces in Nigeria right now? So the majority of them are still on lockdown.
They've been that way since this coup started several weeks ago. There is a little bit of military they're still making, having phone calls, they're still working in some ways there. There's still a little bit of intelligence gathering that's going on there. But for the most part they have been locked down on the basis now the training mission has already halted for now.
It's not ended, but it is on pause right now while the US Sort of determines what's going to be the way forward here. But you know, I will say early on in the first, maybe three or four days after, after president was taken hostage in his own residence, US Military officials who we spoke with were hopeful that this was a sort of local issue. So General Ciani, who is the right now the self proclaimed leader of the country, the hope was this was a beef between him, President Bazou and that would end soon. And at this point, Garrett, it doesn't look like this is going to end anytime soon.
No, it does not. Courtney qb, thank you for your excellent reporting on this issue. Like I said, we're very glad to have you back. Courtney and her producer Marcia Gaines have been much more undrapped in Nigeria as this coup unfolded in a powerful backstory segment coming up on Hallie Jackson now.
That's up next year on NBC News. Now you're not going to want to miss that. And thank you for being with us this hour. NBC News NOW coverage continues with Erin Gilchrist in for Hallie Jackson right now.
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