Meet the Press NOW — July 31

Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Gabe Gutierrez in Washington, where we're following major developments, both foreign and domestic. We're tracking the fallout after one of Hamas's most senior leaders was assassinated overnight in Tehran just hours after Israel took out a top commander in the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah with a strike in Lebanon. Iran is valuing retaliation for the Hamas leader's death on its home soil for the raising fears of escalation in the region.

We'll have much more on that story coming up, but we begin with the latest developments in a transformed race for president. This afternoon, former President Trump wrapped up a contentious and at times heated conversation at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference in Chicago. Mr. Trump was asked whether he believed Vice President Harris is a DEI candidate, as some of his allies have said.

In answering the question, he made baseless accusations questioning her racial identity. She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?

She has always identified as a black, but she was a black college. I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went, she became a black person. Just be clear, sir. Do you believe that she?

The former president also attacked one of the journalists asking questions as well as the vice president for initially failing the bar exam. He also defended the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th and accused the Biden Justice Department of going after him because he was a political opponent. A Harris aide told NBC News that comments were, quote, absolute disaster for Donald Trump. This is who he is.

And White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described it as, quote, insulting. Trump's comments came after Harris held a rally in battleground Georgia last night before an electrified crowd of more than 10,000, according to her campaign. On stage, Harris challenging Trump directly. So he won't debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me.

When there's stuff he does be playing weird. Well, Donald, you'll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because as the same goes, if you've got something to say. The fired up crowd also at one point broke out at the loud chance of wok him up. The vice president is now just days away from picking a running mate.

The campaign planning a rapid fire series of rallies across the seven most important battleground states with her VP pick starting Tuesday in Philadelphia. It's bringing some of my NBC News colleagues, Dasha Burns, is on the ground in Pennsylvania ahead of former President Trump's rally later tonight. Steve Bernanke is at the big board for more on the battleground implications of the vice president's upcoming campaign swing and our chief political analyst, Chuck Todd, is here with me on set. Now, Chuck, I want to start with you.

Your initial reaction to this NABJ conference. Do you think Donald Trump was trying to go in there to get a rise out of this group and perhaps appeal to his base? Well, that certainly has always, it's his default, right? This is his default mode.

You know, you have default settings on any sort of these sort of electronic. This is his default setting. And I do think that his instinct was, hey, I'm going to get into, I want to get into it here. I'm going to see if I can create some tension in the room.

And I think he thought, I don't know where he got this idea. And I think he thought somehow that he could play her mixed identity, somehow that he could do this. And, you know, I've heard from a whole bunch of people, as this was going on, particularly Republicans, who said, why is Donald Trump trying to help Democrats with get out the vote for the Democrats? Exactly.

The Biden campaign just astonishingly. They had to be loving this in a way. I mean, they were already tweeting out their war. You did the 40s, they were the Biden campaign.

I don't know. I don't know. I'm having to catch myself all week doing that. Yes.

The Harris campaign. They were posting on social media videos almost immediately. Well, you know, my initial reaction to this is, I think, Chris Ross, they don't see two people that are running this campaign that have brought as much discipline as possible around Donald Trump. There's only so much you can do as long as you can sort of keep him away from unscripted moments.

You know, I think the likelihood of a one-on-one debate between Trump and Harris, just dramatically, if you could watch it as a stock market, you would sell right now because the likelihood of them, there is no good that will come out of a one-on-one debate with Donald Trump. He has never handled being questioned by African-American women well, it has always gone off the rails like it did today. And Chuck, just really quickly. You guesstimate how many times in the past eight, nine years since Donald Trump came into the political arena that we keep saying, oh, this is too far.

He's gone too far. The racial identity question today would have torpedoed any other politician. This doesn't even seem like one of those moments because we're so close to it now. Yes, I take your point on that.

But I think what you really have here is it just, you know, this, it is a reminder, he's always been his own worst enemy. He's always been, you know, he talks himself into problems where if he literally said less, if he just no showed today, that doesn't happen. If he just, you know, he doesn't know how to admit a mistake, he doesn't, if he did, he had a second term. If he did, you know, the problem is we could sit here and say, but if only he would do that, it doesn't matter.

That's not who he is. This is who he is. So he was saying out there just about Trump's going to Trump. And that's what we saw today.

This was in some ways vintage Trump. He can't help himself. And in this case, this is why I've, I have some skepticism whether the country's ready to elect Kamala Harris, but the idea that this would make him disassemble was always what I thought was a potential here, that he could essentially lose the race against her. And it's more like this, where he's losing.

Well, I want to bring you Dasha Burns, who is live for us in Pennsylvania right now, where in just a couple of hours, there's going to be a rally for Donald Trump, you know, we see the crowd behind you, Dasha. How is the campaign feeling about these comments that he made about Harris's heritage this afternoon? On defense, the Trump War Room Twitter account is meeting supportive tweets from, from their allies and also tweeting, saying, this goes to show that fake news journalists don't care about inflation. They don't care about border security.

They don't care about improving our schools, et cetera. They just care about, quote, getting Trump. So they're on defense. We're out to comment, for comment from the campaign, officially.

We're waiting to see what the former president says on truth social, but they are leaning into this was a kind of environment that he went into, and this is how the former president shows to handle it. So the former president's campaign, how do they feel about Kamala Harris getting all this media attention over the last couple of days, the media ecosystem has just been dominated by headlines about her? Is this a position the Trump campaign is used to? Okay.

You and I both know very well that the former president does not like it when he's not at the center of attention. And who knows perhaps what he just did at the conference there was a way to get the headline to focus on him again, for better or for worse, right? But this has been the real recalibration, the change in the dynamic that they've had to deal with. A new opponent who has a different background, who has a different relationship with the democratic base and potentially with some of those voters that are still undecided and they're having to pivot and shift strategy in real time here.

And I think we're watching that play out right now, Dave. Dr. Burns, live for us in Pennsylvania, Dr. Thank you.

I want to bring in Steve Cornak. Now, Steve, Vice President Harris and a running mate to be, I should say, are making seven stops next week in each of the top battleground states. So what does that tell you about the path the Harris campaign sees to get to the White House? Yeah.

So a couple of ways to look at this. We say seven. We've been saying there's six core battlegrounds. They say North Carolina is right in there.

North Carolina is a little different from these other battleground states. And this way, all of the other battleground states went Biden in 2020. North Carolina was still a Trump state in 2020, but basically looking at it this way, where things had been before Harris got in the race before she switched in for Joe Biden. The Biden campaign was looking at an extremely narrow path.

I'm just going to show you again, you see Harris's name, but when Biden was the likely democratic nominee, the Biden folks were basically saying this was going to be. They're wall. They're fortress. Those three big 10 states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, it would just get them to 270 because the problem was Biden was struggling in particular with non-white voters, with Hispanic voters.

He'd been lagging by a pretty big margin, what Democrats typically get with black voters. And so these more diverse sort of Sunbelt states here, the polling was the worst for Biden there relative to these states. Now with Harris is the likely nominee here for the Democrats, the question is, does that start to change? Can she do something in these Sunbelt states that would allow her not to have to win all three of the states up here?

So I mean, take a look right now. Trump, you know, if Trump were to sweep all of these, right, again, he'd be at 268. He would just need one of these states up here in the big 10 country. But what if, you know, what if Harris was able to pick off?

Here's an example. The polling is suggesting right now, Harris is doing better with Hispanic voters. There's a growing Hispanic population in Georgia. Margin there was 12,000 for Biden last time around.

What if Harris was able to get Georgia? Well, now she's at 286 in this scenario and now let's, you know, if she were to lose Michigan, she could afford it. So she can open up more, every one of these Sunbelt states, if she's able to win any of them, when she does, if she does, it takes the pressure off these states here in the Midwest. And Democrats see with Harris the growth potential for their coalition in this election, relative to Biden, the growth they see a lot of it is with non-white voters, both with support levels and enthusiasm levels.

If that's something that plays out, and that is a big if right now, we're talking if right now, but if that's something that plays out, it will, you'll see it much more clearly in a Georgia, in a Carolina, in an Arizona, in a Nevada, then you will in a state like Wisconsin, about 90% white, you know, the states up here are older, whiter populations. So can she move that battleground around? Can she open up to the South and not have to rely on big 10 country? You know, see, a lot of the conversation right now over the VP pick is how that might change the electoral map.

You know, walk us through that, if you can, you know, Arizona versus Pennsylvania governor, Shapiro versus Senator Mark Kelly, or even Governor Walz might help in the Midwest. What are the calculations that the Harris campaign is making right now with regards to those vice presidential picks? Yeah, you know, it's really interesting because, you know, it's resetting this right here. It's interesting because you really hear it all the time, hey, put this candidate on the ticket, get this, it doesn't really happen that much, but the presidential nominees actually go for that strategy.

But again, resetting the battleground here, let's say Harris were to pick a Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 19 electoral votes. It is by electoral votes, the largest of any of these battleground states. And right away, that would put Harris at 245 and again, it just opens up all sorts of possibilities for her. We showed you.

She could win. She got Pennsylvania and she could just get Michigan and Wisconsin. There's 270. But if you got Pennsylvania in your pocket and you could say pick off Georgia, look, now she's within 10.

Now, Arizona would get her there. You see, that's the Pennsylvania, because it's so big in terms of electoral votes, you get Pennsylvania. You can lose both of these other big 10 states if you're getting Georgia, Arizona. It doesn't work the other way.

If you don't get Pennsylvania, let's say Trump would get Pennsylvania, I'll reset this. If Trump were to get Pennsylvania and Harris got, let's say, Wisconsin instead, CC short. Or if she were to get, reset this, if she were to get Michigan, she's short. So Pennsylvania of these big 10 states is particularly important.

The multi-talented Steve Cornaki, Steve, I understand your off to Olympics coverage now. So thank you for joining us. We really do appreciate it. And now that we have Chuck, with us, Chuck, what we just talked about with Steve, how surprised are you that the electoral map just blew up right now for the Harris campaign, just before President Biden dropped out.

I remember the campaign was talking about, oh, we could do well in North Carolina and people are just kind of rolling your eyes. Now, there's all this optimism. Well, sure. But we're at generic Democratic numbers now.

What Harris has done, and I get there's a whole bunch of enthusiasm in it, and sort of right now, you know, when you're starving, every cracker tastes like a ritz. And I think right now, Democrats are in that mode with Kamala Harris. It's like, oh, my God, finally we have somebody who can put two sentences together, who can say the word abortion. And it feels strong.

What she has done is proven she has raised the floor to generic Democratic levels. And when you do that, then it puts all seven of those states in play. I do think when it comes to the running main thing, you shouldn't think about it by state. You need to think about it by constituent secret.

And the question is whether, look, one of the reasons why Trump was overperforming in the South and why Biden still had a shot in the North is that inflation has been, the Sun Belt has been hit harder by inflation. Why? Because people were moving there. People were, you know, real estate has gone up higher in the Sun Belt cities than they have in the Northern city.

So that is why Biden hadn't been sort of wiped out yet up North, but he was sort of playing from behind. I still think that's going to be a challenge for her. Her place on the ticket motivates African-American voters, which in theory puts Georgia and North Carolina within striking distance. But to me, the only way you put it, you can actually win those states.

If she, there are two, two people on her shortlist that have a military background, Tim Wallace and Mark Kelly. Georgia and North Carolina in particular has a lot of military veterans in it. It does as well. So does Georgia.

And the border and military and military background, I think, naturally sort of fit together. That is why I think, well, if you play the one state strategy with Pennsylvania, I don't know where Josh Shapiro helps you anywhere else or with any other constituency group where Kelly and Wall's, because of their military background, suddenly, I think, because if you start to look at the numbers in North Carolina, you can't win without some portion of the white vote. That's a military veteran vote. And that's why I think both Kelly and Wall's are also on the shortlist.

Chuck Todd, so you think this is a sugar, you're in the sugar? You're in the sugar. I can't. But that doesn't mean it's going to fall.

Right. What I'm saying is it's raised the floor. Democratic vote back. And now Donald Trump's doing her a solid here by helping her even more with an online vote.

Chuck Todd, our chief of political violence. So good to have you. Thank you, Chuck. And what much more on the political fallout from foreign President Trump's comments today, coming up.

Plus, crisis in the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's warning to Iran as Tehran vows retaliation over the killing of top Hamas official of a top Hamas official on its soil. While the very latest from Israel and the Pentagon coming up next, we're watching the press now. Welcome back to U.S. And the entire Middle East are on edge after two senior militant leaders, both backed by Iran and part of its so-called axis of resistance, were killed in the span of 24 hours, raising alarm bells of a widening war in the Middle East.

Early this morning, Ishmael Hania, the political leader of Hamas, was killed while in Tehran according to statements from Iran and Hamas, both are blaming Israel for the attack and valuing retaliation. Israel has yet to comment on the strike, but in a televised address, a defiant Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has dealt a quote, crushing blow to Iranian proxy groups while warning of challenging days ahead. And he's saying Israel is prepared for any scenario. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said today that the U.S.

was not aware of or involved in the Nia's death. The Hamas leader was also a key player in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, and his death could significantly complicate or derail negotiations to stop the fighting and ensure the release of any remaining hostages in Gaza. The White House spoke to reporters this afternoon, addressing concerns of a spiraling conflict in the region. These reports over the last 24, 48 hours certainly don't help with the temperature going down.

I'm not going to be Pollyannish about it. We're obviously concerned about escalation. There's no signs that an escalation is imminent, but I also said that we want you very, very closely. Joining me now is the ref santress in Tel Aviv, and according to QV, is that the Pentagon ref?

What more do we know about this strike that took out Hania? And what does this mean for Hamas's leadership amid the war? Well, Gabe, as you said, Israeli officials from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down are simply refusing to give any detail about this strike, not saying whether Israel was responsible, not denying whether Israel was responsible. Now that is in line with Israeli policy.

They often say nothing about these high-stakes covert operations that take place overseas. So a lot of what we know is coming from Iranian state media. They say 1.45 AM Tehran time and Israeli missile hit the residents of Ismail Hania, the political chief of Hamas, killing him, killing one of his bodyguards, just a couple of hours after he was meeting with Iran's supreme leader, another avowed enemy of Israel. In terms of Hamas's leadership, Israel said in the days after October 7th that it would hunt down the top leaders of Hamas.

They have killed Ismail Hania, the political chief. They have killed his deputy. They appear to have killed the head of Hamas's military wing, Mohammad Dif, in a strike in Gaza earlier this month. And so that basically leaves Yakhyasin War, the Gaza chief, the mastermind of the October 7th attack, who is still at large.

He is believed to be in the tunnels underneath Gaza. And it is worth saying, Gabe, that while Hania was one of the chief negotiators, the U.S. and Israel have consistently said that it is Sinwar, who is the key decision maker for Hamas right now. And as we mentioned, this of course puts those ceasefire talks in jeopardy.

How are the people in Israel, inside Israel, and in particularly hostage families? How are they reacting to all this? So Gabe, we spoke earlier to the grandson of one of the oldest hostages still being held in Gaza. A.B.

4-year-old Oded Lishitz. He has been held hostage for 299 days now. His grandson told us that he is deeply, deeply concerned that that killing in Iran could derail these hostage negotiations. He says he is appealing to the United States, to Qatar, to Egypt, to try to keep these negotiations on track.

I think the brutal reality here is it is going to be very difficult for Israel and Hamas to indirectly re-engage in negotiations given the scale of the loss on the Hamas side. And we heard from the Prime Minister of Qatar, who's been the key mediator in these talks, basically throwing up his hands in frustration and saying, how are we expected to mediate when one side of the negotiating table is killing the other? Gabe. Thank you.

I want to turn out, according to QB and Courtney, what are you hearing from officials in the Pentagon about these latest strikes in both Beirut and Tehran? The White House has been saying that, you know, it believes that a wider war is avoidable. Are Pentagon officials saying the same thing? They are actually.

We're getting a pretty consistent message. So on the striking Beirut officials are a little bit more open about the fact that they were aware of this. They saw it as a direct retaliation for the attack in Golan Heights over the weekend that killed a dozen children. The strike, however, in or whatever it was that ended up killing in Tehran, we aren't getting a whole lot of detail.

I know that Roth mentioned what Hamas and what Iran are saying happened there, but US officials here cannot actually tell us exactly how they believe he was killed. They really don't have that level of detail, but on the idea of a larger escalation based off of this, the concern here is based off of the idea that if you look at now, who may be interested in going after Israel in the coming days and weeks, they could be attacked from all fronts with the exception of the Mediterranean. So from Lebanon, from Hezbollah, from the north, they could take strikes from Iran coming from the east going west towards Israel, and they could even take strikes from the Houthis, from the south down in Yemen and from the Red Sea area. So the concern here is that this, as opposed to what happened in April, this could be a larger attack.

Now, in addition to that, or a larger retaliation or response, in addition to that, there's a very real concern that the fact that this strike occurred inside Tehran against a leader, a political leader of Hamas could be a major point of embarrassment for Iran. And for that reason, whatever the retaliation is, it could be more escalatory. Now, of course, here in the Pentagon, US officials and frankly throughout Washington, DC officials within the Biden administration are urging calm and hoping that this doesn't escalate, but there's a very real possibility here, Dave. And Courtney, look, nothing happens in a vacuum.

We're obviously in an election year. And if Vice President Harris were to win in November, they're still not going to know about her as a commander-in-chief. So I know you've been doing some reporting on this. Take us inside that reporting.

What are national security officials saying about her foreign policy chops? So it's been a very long project that we spend. We spoke to about three dozen officials who either work with or currently or have worked with her in the past in the national security and foreign policy space. And the reality, it's very difficult to distinguish or discern any foreign policy or national security policy that Vice President Kamala Harris has that's different than President Biden's.

Now, her detractors would say, well, that's evidence that she doesn't have her own policy at all. Her supporters would say, look, she's the vice president. Her role is to support the commander-in-chief. And that may be what she's been doing for these past three-plus years now.

We have asked, though, about any potential differences, there is some belief that she may show a little bit more empathy when it comes to things like gaza, humanitarian concerns specifically with women and children. But when you look at her public comments, Gabe, that's simply not really reflected. Her tone and her emphasis is a little bit different, but the overall policy and message really tracks with President Biden. And we've also been able to learn a little bit more about what she is, how she sort of acts in some of these meetings.

Everything from the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the beginning of the war in Ukraine, October 7, the many national security issues that have come up since then. And we have heard that she really behaves sort of like a prosecutor. She has pointed and directed questions, but again, they all tend to ultimately fall in the same policy as President Biden. According to the CUBE, live for us at the Pentagon, thank you for your reporting.

And let me now bring in Belal Saap, former senior advisor at the Defense Department for the Middle East region. He's currently the head of U.S. Middle East Practice at trends and research, trends research and advisory. Thank you so much for joining us.

Now, put together. What do these developments mean for the region? Are the prospects of a regional war greater today than in the past nine months? That's a pleasure of you.

Look, I think the past few weeks, months, even all point to really striking paradox in the region, which is that we're inching closer to an all-out war between Israel and what we call the Iran-led access, even though I still believe that it is an unlikely war, because neither side wants it. So the million-dollar question is, why would Israel conduct such attacks which cannot be viewed but provocative and inflamed in the situation, largely because the Israelis believe that the Iranians are largely deterred from launching an all-white war against them, same way as the Iranians believe that the Israelis are deterred from launching an all-out war against them. So it's a very tricky balance. Obviously, there's all sorts of room for miscalculation and accidents, which you saw lately with the attack by Hezbollah in much of the shumps.

It's a tip for that that it continues where edging closer to a war, but I still, in my mind at least, believe that such an all-out war is unlikely because neither side wants it. I'd also surprise that Israel may have taken out that they haven't confirmed that Israel would take out Hamas's political leader at the same time that the ceasefire negotiations are underway. Doesn't that undermine? Does that make any sense?

Well, on the one hand, it doesn't, frankly, because, you know, if your goal, frankly, all goes back to what the goal of the Israelis is. I think they've made it very clear that their goal is total victory, no matter how we define it. And total victory means you decapitate the leadership of Hamas. You go after its military capacity, do everything you can to crush the organization.

You heard Israeli kind of surveying that now saying that this was a crushing blow. I beg to differ. I don't think it really hurts Hamas as much because it's my honey, it really doesn't call the shots in Gaza. You know that it's, yes, and why it was calling the shots.

This was a guy who was actually involved in the negotiations with the Israelis through the cut-away process. So at the end of the day, you have to decide what is your ultimate objective here? Is it to really reach a ceasefire? Is it to decimate Hamas?

You can't do both at the same time. To that point though, what you were just describing with Hania dead, do we know who would fill that leadership position? Who would be the next senior negotiator? Or does it really matter if you mentioned Senor is calling the shots?

No, no, really. I don't think it matters. I'm sure they will find someone else to replace him in a political, you know, negotiator or whether he's based in outside of Gaza or in Gaza. It doesn't matter.

The guy who really has influence over this entire process is Yaisanwar. He seems to have sort of mellowed a little bit in terms of the maximum demands that he has before. But now with this kind of attack, I mean, just to the logical assumption is that this is going to significantly disrupt and delay in the negotiations. So do these strikes in Beirut and Tehran change the administration's calculus or strategy when it comes to the Middle East as the focus become less on Gaza now and more on Iran?

Well, possibly. But look at the end of the day, and this is my personal point of view, you had an Israeli Prime Minister who is responsible for all these reckless policies in the Middle East right now, not lowering the temperature, not going for a ceasefire, all those things for narrow political reasons. He came to Washington and had a standing ovation. So we're actually not doing really a service to our own foreign policy and our own objectives in the Middle East right now.

We have yet to communicate some pretty significant and clear red lines to these Israeli Prime Minister in terms of the limits of our support for any continuation of the attacks that he's waging. So yes, we're going to shift our attention to preventing a large-scale confrontation. Yes, that's exactly what we did several weeks ago, if you recall, of any Iranians and Israelis engaged in a tit-for-tat. But you heard Secretary Blinken, and we're still going to be focused on trying to achieve a ceasefire, except that with these two latest attacks, I mean, we're far away from that process.

Certainly, but I'll stop. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your expertise. And up next, we'll dive deeper into the state of the 2024 campaign and fears of a widening conflict in the Middle East with Democratic Senator and Intelligence Committee member Michael Bennett.

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October ends May 20th, 2026, price is subject to change. Visit NBCNews.com slash XFINITY for full offer terms and details. And welcome back. As we mentioned, the White House is grappling with escalating tensions in the Middle East following the death of two militant leaders linked to Iran.

And as the White House tries to walk the region back from the brink, national security communications advisor John Kirby said the administration has not had any direct or indirect conversations with Iran in the aftermath of those strikes. And joining me now is the Democratic Senator from Colorado, Michael Bennett. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. I want to get your reaction to the recent events in the Middle East that we've been talking about.

How concerned are you that the death of the Hamas leader, not only escalates tensions in the region, but also effectively puts an end to those ceasefire negotiations? I'm deeply concerned about it. I think we all should be deeply concerned about it. There's a moment at which the escalations begin to feel like what is now just possible, which is a wider war in the Middle East could become inevitable.

And we have to try not to allow that to happen. I think the Biden administration is obviously deeply involved in peace negotiations here. And I think they have to continue to try to push, even when the domestic politics of the opposing parties in the Middle East seem to be, at the moment, at least perpetually pushing them apart. In the end, I think the only hope here is for two states that are living side by side, we're a long way from that happening, obviously.

But I think that the United States has a role to play here to try to keep this from becoming an even greater regional conflagration. And I'm glad that Biden folks are trying to do that. Senator, just last week you met with some American hostage families. What do you tell them now?

Well, what they said to me was that they were desperate for the hostages to come home, that they wanted to have a settlement that would allow the hostages to come home. I think that's still true today. We need to be pushing for that. Senator, if Democrats win the White House in November, what's your sense of Vice President Harris' foreign policy chops?

We were just talking about that in the previous segment. What do you make of her foreign policy resume in essence? I think, look, we were members together on the intelligence committee here in the Senate. I think she's got good foreign policy chops, and I think the Biden administration has a record of leadership, especially with respect to the mobilization of the European nations and nations all around the world in the fight against Putin that Ukraine has led.

Ukraine's fight is not just a fight for Ukraine, it's a fight for democracy. Joe Biden has been a huge part of that, and I think Kamala Harris would step right into those shoes as opposed to the recklessness of Donald Trump when he was president and the downright insanity of JD Vance when it comes to his isolationist positions. Kamala Harris will be picking up a much more conventional and, I'd say, normal approach to our foreign policy than the one that Trump and Vance would be espoused. And Senator, I want to talk a little bit more about domestic politics.

You were one of the first Democrats to express concern about keeping President Biden on the ticket. Are you surprised that the level of enthusiasm you've seen so far for the VP is it sustainable? Well I think it's incredible, and I think it's wonderful, and I think Joe Biden's decision that he made is an incredibly patriotic one that put the country ahead of Joe Biden. Now our job is to make sure the next four months count.

The question you ask about whether it's sustainable is whether we're going to show up every single day between now and election day and make sure we elected Democratic ticket in the White House, the Senate, and the House. I believe now that the change has been made, we have the chance to do it, but it's not going to happen by itself. There's nothing about it that's self-executing. We're going to have to go knock on doors and get people out and make sure they understand the stakes.

But when you see a former president of the United States do what this president did in Chicago, if people didn't have a reason to work to make sure that we win this election and to fight to make sure that you win this election, you now understand what the consequences really are. We're going to get the work done. Senator, you mentioned the impact on some down ballot races. Specifically, what races do you think Vice President Harris will help Democrats?

I think she already has. You know, Mike, the concern I articulated early on about President Biden's continued presence on the ticket was that I thought we could get wiped out in the House and the Senate. Even today, I would say, our odds of winning the House are vastly improved from where they were before the Vice President took up the mantle. And I think our odds in the Senate today are much higher than they were before.

And part of that is the generational difference that the Vice President represents. The huge part of it, I think, is the excitement about young people all over Colorado, all over this country, who feel like they now have a reason to go vote. I think they had a reason to vote before, but that's not as important. Now, they feel like they have a reason to vote, and we got to make sure everybody does vote.

And Senator, the campaign says that she'll be out in battle on states with her VP pick. Next week, you told NBC last week, you love Mark Kelly. So do you still think that he's the best choice among the remaining contenders? Well, I still love Mark Kelly.

I don't think I said he was the best choice, but I said I love Mark Kelly and I think that she is going to make an excellent choice, and she doesn't need me to interfere with that decision. With regards to Mark Kelly, the Trump campaign has gone all in, attacking her record on the border just yesterday in that rally in Atlanta. The Vice President came out very aggressively trying to counter that narrative. Would Mark Kelly mitigate that?

Oh, I think he could help a lot on that issue. He understands the border, you know, he's from, obviously from Arizona, he's from a border state. But listen, the reality is the Republicans walked away from this immigration bill because Donald Trump wanted to keep it as a campaign issue. That's no secret to everybody.

What is less well understood is that's not the first time I was part of the gang of eight. He's now 10 years ago, four Republicans and four Democrats who wrote the last comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate with 68 votes. And who killed it? The Freedom Caucus in the House killed it because they don't actually want to solve the issue.

They just want to campaign on the issue. Whether it was eight years ago, 10 years ago, or when we were negotiating over Ukraine and the reality is the country needs to deal with this and we need to deal with it the way we did it in the gang of eight bills, securing the border, a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million people, the DREAM Act and the visa bills that are so important to our agriculture sector, you know, and I think that we can do it. You know, this is something that with the right leadership in Washington, we can do. Senator will have to leave it there.

Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado. Thank you so much for your time. And after the break, inside the fight for Latino voters, you know, Rust Belt state that could decide who wins the White House this fall. You're watching me depressed now.

Welcome back. As we've said in just a couple hours that pre-programmed, he's underway in Pennsylvania, where former President Donald Trump will be back for his first rally there since the assassination attempt earlier this month. Both the Trump and Harris campaigns are looking to court voters in the state's so-called Latino belt. County is where the Latino population is at or above the state average.

There are more than 600,000 eligible Latino voters in the Keystone state, more than enough to tip the scales or either candidate, and this is George Solis has more. In, with Jordy Latino writing Pennsylvania, brothers and barbers, Samuel and David Dailacruz, say the talk of the town is politics. It's been exciting. It's been such an unexpected change.

What do you care more about the election now? I do. I do. We first met the duo, both of Dominican descent before former President Trump survived an assassination attempt and picked JD Vance as his running mate, and Harris rose to the top of the ticket.

Both voters remain firmly undecided, but newly energized. She has direction, and I think it's even a playing field for the two candidates. Is she going to advance the country? Is it possible that she takes it maybe in a vote?

We don't know yet. A teen-year-old Jamel Garcia, a student at the brothers barbershop, says he'll vote for the first time. And how are you feeling about possibly voting for either one of these candidates? In my opinion, kind of nervous.

According to an Eagles US, one out of every five Hispanics will vote in their first presidential election this year. Ready, since it's in Pennsylvania's so-called Latino belt, cities and small towns, won democratic strongholds, nestled in northeastern Pennsylvania. In this region, Latino communities make up 9% of the state's overall population. Does it feel like both campaigns are trying to earn your vote?

Definitely. Biden won Pennsylvania by around 80,000 votes in 2020. That year, more than 610,000 Latinos were eligible to vote in the state. While Mr.

Biden won running by about 46 points in 2020, the city shifted 15 points to the right since 2016. Limited recent polling shows Harris performing better than Biden versus Trump among Latino voters. In 2020, what did you vote for and why? Biden.

Fairly, though that's Theresa, explained last month when we visited, she's switching to Trump in 2024, frustrated by the rising cost of living and running a business and writing. Biden's endorsement of Harris, only pushing her further away. She now volunteers at the recently opened Trump campaign office. It's just I don't trust her.

Why? Because her background? I don't trust her. Decisions is being muddy.

Tonya Melendez thinks putting Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on the Democratic ticket this year would make a difference. Does she need Josh Shapiro to secure the White House? I think she does. People who are not very invested in the election will tend to follow somebody they trust.

Melendez moved from Puerto Rico with her family when she was 14. She'll vote Harris in November. The beefies visit here leaving a lasting impact. The fact that she came down in the middle of the city to talk to people at the community college, for me, was the most positive thing.

It's an issue. Reading restaurant owners, Caesar Lopez also recalls Harris's trip, but hasn't been swayed yet. I think everybody's waiting for the next debate. Let's see what happens.

With less than 100 days to the election, Reading's residents are paying attention, feel the weight of the decision ahead. Think about what you want for your country, what you want for the kids. I want them to be able to say, wow, things are different now than they were for mom and dad. And I'm so happy that we're in this country.

And we thanks, George, for that report. NBC's exclusive interview with Senator JD Vance with the Republican VP nominee had to say about his rocky rollout as Trump's running mate. The panel's next. They're watching Need to Press Now.

Welcome back. Let's get right to our panel. Jeff Mason, White House Correspondent for Reuters. Simone Sanderson, former Senior Advisor to Vice President Harris and co-hosts of the weekend on MSNBC in Lance Rover, Republican strategist and former spokesman for Doug Bergen's presidential campaign.

Thank you all so much for joining us. Look, today, I want to start with Simone. Oh, no. That's right.

That was Jeff at the table. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no.

No, no, no. No, no, no. That was a great meeting in front of those reporters at the NABJ conference. Look, first of all, I think that there's two things.

There's a process of how we came together right and how maybe the organization and ABJ should have handled things just as opposed with what we ended up seeing and what we now know to be true. That's right. There was a controversy. There was controversy.

There was some people that said they shouldn't have given Donald Trump a platform. There was some talk about that. I remember an ABJ, the membership did not was not a way or that they had issued invitation to Donald Trump this year, even though they have issued invitations, literally since I've been alive, and ABJ has to press it in Canada. So there's that piece.

But there's also the piece. I was thinking that I'm glad people are saying this. In the afternoon, he's got to be played over and over again on cable television, on local news. And I think the best thing that ever happened in Donald Trump was him being deplatformed, if you will.

The folks deciding that rightfully, I mean, he was using language that was inside and violence, my personal opinion. So he was a move from the social media sites, relegated to his own social media site with only a fraction of the following that he had on Twitter, if you will. Folks aren't covering his rallies, we're not covering the things that he says, because he says so many of the same inflammatory things all the time, we become desensitized. Therefore, the electorate, in my opinion, that's where this Trump, they have music comes from.

They're seeing Donald Trump. It's I think the best thing that could have happened going forward is that Donald Trump has asked serious questions by serious journalists, and at least two other people on that side today, fit that bill. And yeah, Rachel Scott, who goes to her? Who goes to Rachel Scott?

Who literally has an interview on her back? Jeff, I want to turn to you. Look, I was speaking with a couple of Biden advisors, and they seemed, besides calling this repulsive. This is what they want in the sense that now, they've been putting on a set of media clips of this.

They've for a long time said, that voters need to see Donald Trump for who he is. How much do you expect the conversation or the interview of this afternoon? How's it gonna play for the remaining days of the campaign? Oh, I think it'll be all over.

Social media will be all over the airwaves. It'll be in people's stories. I think that you're exactly right, David. This is the contrast that they've been wanting to make for months.

All the focus has been for so long on President Biden's age, and they believe unfairly. Now that that is removed because he's no longer a candidate, and you've got Kamala Harris really rocking it with her party, and rocking it in terms of fundraising, in terms of energy, and then you put the former president out there, and he says things like that, and the contrast is just, you don't even have to talk about the contrast. It makes itself. But will it matter?

The contrast wasn't always there. Yes, but I think that's a fair question. And will it reach voters? Do voters care?

Does anybody looking at this say, oh, I'm so upset Donald Trump said this. His base does not care. Let's think about who it matters with. So black voters, certainly.

And the former president has made inroads with black men. That is something that the Harris campaign is certainly aware of. And everything that motivates or doesn't motivate independent voters, I mean, when people who are on the line thinking about, oh, is this somebody I want to vote for, or is this not? When you get some comments like that, that can move it out there.

Lance, did the former president, nobody was doing it. When he signed up for this campaign, should they have agreed to this interview? Of course, nobody was doing it. I mean, look, he is exactly where he wants to be right now.

What are we talking about in this discussion? What is leading cable news right now? He wants to be in the center of attention and being talked about. And I do give him props for showing up.

And I will remind you, to your point about whether it will matter or not, that one of the successes that he has had, unlike other people, is that he has no problem in the audacity to show up to things like this and to campaign in communities that are not traditional for Republicans is a reason he has had success in the past. And will it change things? I mean, we're having a big discussion about it here today. I'm not sure it will.

Certainly not affecting his voters. Right. Let me just say this point about voters and regular people. This is why I think people seeing Donald Trump unfettered is very important.

When I'm out there talking to folks across the country, sometimes when you say that Donald Trump said X, Y, Z, they say that. He did not say that. I don't believe that. He was joking.

He didn't mean it like that, which is why seeing Donald Trump, if we did not have him saying folks could put bleach into their system to get rid of coronavirus in front of everyone to see, people would literally believe that some of us were making it up. So they still don't believe that. I get questions about that. So I just really think that seeing Donald Trump is very important for voters so they can make a decision and hear him in his own words.

And they heard him today. He sounded a little unhing and slightly racist. Lance, has the Trump campaign done enough over the last couple of days to switch up its playbook? Or is it still running the same playbook that it was against President Biden?

And will it be effective in voting? Well, I think first off, Kamala Harris has provided a pulse bump to the Democrats. I think that's pretty obvious. And I think that will continue.

She's going to choose a vice presidential nominee, and she's going to go through the DNC. Then after that, her record and what she has supported, whether it's eliminating the health care systems we know in this country, banning fracking, overseeing the border, all of those issues are going to come to the forefront. And that is really at the end of the day what voters are looking at and going to be making decisions of who they want to lead this country. She was the number two to Joe Biden.

That is the playbook they've been talking about. I suspect they will continue doing that because it is an effective argument whether she want to argue about her being the borders are or not. She was effectively over the border in this country. And they are going to use that to great effect.

I have to laugh. There's tape of me many places. There's the root causes of migration. But no one heard me until, I think, just literally.

Jeff, meanwhile, let's turn to Senator Diddy Vance, Trump's VP pick. He is dismissing his rocky start. I want to put a quote from what he told our own Henry Gomez. He said, Vance said, the price of entry of being on the national ticket and giving me an opportunity to govern is you have to take the shots and so I sort of expected it.

But in the same interview, he still doubled down on those childless Democrat comments. Is he getting in his own way? And how awkward is it to see former President Trump trying to defend him, but not really. That's not usually positioned, Mr.

Trump, it wants to be or is. I can pretty much guarantee you without having spoken to the former president that that's not the place he wants to be in terms of spending his time now and spending interview questions or whatever on defending his VP choice. Also, this is someone who, having covered him for four years, I know, will go back and question his decisions. I mean, the reporting shows that he's doing that right now with Vance.

Can Vance get a second try? Sure. I mean, there will be quotes in Vice President Harris's background that are going to come up. These ones from Senator Vance are coming up.

It doesn't define everything. But it's a rocky start for sure. And Jeff, very quickly, you've been to so many of President Biden's rallies. How did the rally last night in Atlanta?

How did that? What did you make of it? We've all been talking about energy. I mean, the energy is just completely different.

And that's what the Democrats need. All right. Jeff Mason. It's so much.

Thank you so much for joining us here on the panel. We really appreciate it. And we're here at the end of the hour. I'm Jake Gutierrez and we're more.

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