Meet the Press NOW – July 6

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If it's Thursday, new reporting on secret back-channel talks with the Kremlin, new weapons for Ukraine, new Russian publications against the US, and new questions about the future of the war and the US's response. Plus, Trump's alleged co-conspirator, please, not guilty in federal court, as new details emerge in multiple criminal cases tied to the former president and the 2024 Republican front-runner. And the presidential battleground of Ohio is poised to become the latest abortion rights battleground. This activist moved one step closer to getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot in what could be a crucial political test for both parties ahead of 2024.

Hello, and welcome to Meet the Press Now on Brian Nobles in for Chuck Todd. And we begin today with some dramatic developments tied to the war in Ukraine and the US's involvement in the conflict. As President Biden prepares to meet with NATO leaders in Europe in just a few days, NBC has exclusive reporting that a group of former senior US national security officials have had secret talks with Russian officials, including Putin's top diplomat. According to a half a dozen people briefed on the discussions, the group huddled in April in an attempt to begin to lay the groundwork for negotiations to end the war.

A spokesman for the White House National Security Council declined to comment, and Russia's embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. Now, while Ukrainian officials would not comment on the specifics of the report, a Ukrainian official said that their position is unchanged, that the fate of Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine. Now, that development comes as Russia continues to face the fallout from last month's rebellion by Russian mercenaries in the Wagner Group, which led to the exile of the group's leader, Yevgeni Pragosian. Earlier today, NBC News was invited to a rare news conference held by the Belarusian President Alexander Luchenko.

He made the surprising announcement that Pragosian had returned to Russia. With regards to Yevgeni, Victoria, Vich, Pragosian, he is located in St. Petersburg. Where is he this morning?

He could have gone to Moscow, or maybe somewhere else. But he is not on the territory of Belarus. Now, Pragosian has not been seen publicly since the short-lived rebellion, and NBC News cannot confirm his whereabouts. Amid all of this, the Pentagon has released a new dramatic video of Russian fighter jets harassing American drones conducting operations against ISIS in Syria.

The Department of Defense has called it unsafe and unprofessional behavior by Russian military pilots. And that comes as the administration is expected to announce that it will be providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, a warhead ban by international treaty due to human rights concerns, though the US, Ukraine, and Russia are not signatories. Now, all of this plus renewed concern about the attack on Ukraine's nuclear power plant, now on President Biden and NATO's agenda when they convene it next week. It's a lot to talk about, and for more on all of this, I'm joined now by our team of reporters.

Keir Simmons is in mince, where he just attended that press conference with the Belarusian president, Luchenko. Josh Letterman wrote the story on the secret talks. He is in London. According to Cuba, he is at the Pentagon, and NBC's Kelly Kobaya is on the ground in key of care.

Let's start with you. What is the situation around Pragosian? Why is he back in Russia? If he is, in fact, back in Russia?

And what more did Lukashenko have to say about all of this? Around the picture is a little bit clearer. Just a little bit. What's going to happen?

What does it all mean? It's still really, really difficult to decipher. We got to that press conference. One of the few international news organizations invited to the president's presidential palace for that news conference.

Expect to be told about how you've got to be told that you remember the deal that was done to stand down the insurrection, that a Pragosian would be able to come here with his Wagner fighters. To be told that they haven't been able to agree on the Wagner fighters coming here by the president of Belarus. And that Pragosian is actually still in Russia. Alexander Lukashenko says that he's a free man in Russia.

He says that perhaps Pragosian and his Wagner fighters may never come here. As you can imagine, that was pretty difficult to understand. I tried to ask for some more detail. Take a listen.

We discuss with Genny Pragosian and with President Putin. I would send them to the hottest battle points. Go and redeem yourself. Get back here, Alexander.

At what happens? All right, President, I've reached a conclusion. People will be surprised and mystified that a man who, you say, could have caused a civil war in Russia is still in Russia. When we meet with Putin, we will discuss this topic.

But I'll give you my point of view. I'll share this point of view with Putin as well. In order to redeem himself and to redeem the misdeeds of PMC Wagner, I would send them to the hottest battle points. Go and redeem yourself.

Now, Pragosian himself, in an audio message, just suggested that he will be and his magnifiers will be winning more victories on the front line in Ukraine. But remember, President Putin was so furious he wasn't even able to say his name just over a week ago. And overnight, Ryan, Russian state television has been talking about Pragosian as a traitor, digging into his criminal history, showing pictures of a police raiders' home in St. Petersburg with piles of dollar bills with a private helicopter with fake passports.

So as well as Lukashenko appearing to distance himself in Pragosian, it does appear to be an attempt by the Russian immediately to discredit him. And that may be a clue as to where things go from here. But it is a mystery. It's been difficult to predict the last two weeks.

It still is. And it's also a question then. What does it mean for this deal that was struck between Putin, Lukashenko, and the Wagner group? What does that mean for all of that?

Well, it does make that question. And I think the only answer is we honestly don't know. I mean, clearly what President Putin has is that he needs to demonstrate that you just can't do this. You can't lead an insurrection bearing down on Moscow.

But on the other hand, he does need to hold the support, not just to the Wagner group, but also his fighters in Ukraine, the Russian military. I think that's some of the tension that will be going on behind the scenes. And we have seen President Putin out in public trying to present himself, reestablish himself, his power, and also as a man of the people in many, many kind of photo opportunities. So how does the Kremlin feel behind those Kremlin wars?

That is criminology. It's been difficult to decipher for decades. And I think it remains the case. We just have to wait and see how Progogion is treating me.

That's a fundamental thing. Well, we see him, how will he be treated, and where will he go from here? All right, Kierseman's glad we had you in the room, asking those tough questions. We appreciate that report.

Josh, let's turn to you now. What more do we know about these secret talks, exclusive reporting that you and your team broke? How will this result in, or how likely I should say, is it that it could result in a negotiated end to the war, or could it lead to talks between officials, between channels on an official level? Well, this could lead to peace talks, or it could do absolutely nothing at all, right?

It's just impossible to tell. But you don't get anywhere if you don't try. And that is part of what is behind this effort, is the fact that there are no fulsome negotiations between the US and Russian governments about any of the war that we know about, certainly none between the Ukrainian and Russian governments. And so these US officials are at least former officials, I should say, trying to keep open the channels of communication with the Russians, making sure that they are already putting forward some ideas that could address the most difficult to resolve issues in the war, like what happens to long Russian health territory in Ukraine, that the Ukrainians, even if they are successful and they're counter-offensive, may never actually be able to liberate.

And we know that while some of this has involved Russian academics, think tank types, and teds of research institutes, and at least one occasion, the top Russian diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, was involved holding a meeting for several hours in April, in New York, with former White House and State Department officials, all part of this effort to keep communication flowing with Moscow, even if the US government directly at this point is not able to have those peace negotiations. Yeah, and Josh, I am interested in Lavrov's role in all of this. Is he somebody that's considered to have Putin's ear? Was it significant that he was a part of this?

Well, everyone that we spoke to who is familiar with these talks emphasized the fact that there's one decision-maker in Russia. It's not Sergey Lavrov, it is President Vladimir Putin. That having been said, Lavrov is someone who has been around for a long time. He has been Foreign Minister for years, and so as much as anybody can be considered to have Putin's ear on foreign policy issue, Lavrov would certainly be within that small handful of people.

He is certainly someone who is considered to have some influence and at least knowledge of where the Russian approach to the war stands at any point in time. OK, great, important, Josh. We appreciate it. Let's go to you now, Courtney.

And we'll talk about these incidents between a US drone and a Russian jet. What more do we know about this? And how significant is this in terms of United States-Russian relations? So it's not unprecedented.

There certainly have been interactions between the US military and the Russian military over the skies in Syria. In fact, there have even been some cases where there have been interactions on the ground. We, at one point, actually, earlier this year, we heard from the commander, the Air Force General was in charge of all of the air forces in the central command area. He told us that there was a stretch in the spring where there was a nearly daily interaction between the US and Russian military in the skies.

Often cases, the Russian military was in one way or another, harassing the US military, who claimed that they were flying in areas where they were allowed to be operating without conflicting with the Russian military. Now, that being said, the reason that yesterday's incident was more notable than some of these past ones was just how potentially dangerous it was. So these Russian fighter jets dropped at one point parachute flares. Now, as they dropped them, the US military reaper drones, the MQ9s, had to take evasive measures in some cases.

You can see it in the video here so that they could avoid those flares actually striking the aircraft. There was also one case where at least one of the Russian fighter jets released its afterburner right in the nose of one of the US military drones obscuring its ability to see, and potentially, again, causing a potential, some sort of a collision or maybe even a crash. So that's why this really got the attention of US military officials last night. We got a statement from the US military calling these actions dangerous and calling on the Russian military not to continue these sorts of interactions in the air.

Now, I should say, you were just talking to Josh about his terrific reporting about these talks between the US and the Russians on the civilian side. The skies of Syria is one place where there actually has been a pretty consistent communication between the US and the Russians. It's particularly called the deconfliction line. And the US military is a kernel on one end, the Russian military is a kernel on the other.

And whenever there's the potential that they might be interacting in close quarters and the skies are even on the ground, they pick up the phone and they generally answer it. So that's been one place where the communication has not fallen through as we've seen in other areas. The fact that these sorts of incidents are still happening though with that deconfliction line is one of the reasons US military officials are really concerned about this, Ryan. Okay, Courtney, thank you for the update on that.

Let's go to you now, Kelly. You're on the ground in Ukraine, obviously. There were strikes today in Lviv. What is the situation like there today?

Yeah, well, the search is continuing tonight. We just had an update within the past hour or so from military and local officials there. And they said that a sixth person has died. They found a sixth person in the rubble of that destroyed apartment building.

From what we understand, and according to the Ukrainian military, about 10 ballistic missiles were fired from the Russian positions in the Black Sea in the very early morning hours, about one o'clock in the morning, the Ukrainians managed to intercept seven of them. But three hit, one of them, as you can see, hit an apartment building, a four story apartment building right in the city center. People were sleeping, a handful of people made it to a shelter, about five people, according to local officials there. And this is unusual, because Lviv is 300 miles from the front line.

It's a place where people go to escape missile strikes, sounds of war scenes like this. And it simply hasn't been hit in quite a long time. It's a pretty devastating hit for Lviv. President Zelensky is saying that there will be a very strong response to this.

You're hearing the type of language that we typically hear from the Ukrainians when a civilian site is hit, which happens quite often in that they are calling it yet another war crime. The Russian Ministry of Defense hasn't said anything specifically about this attack. They did say that they struck military targets within the past day or so, but didn't name a city and didn't provide any sort of photographic or satellite proof, Ryan. So in elsewhere, Kelly, there are concerns though about a very key power plant.

What are each side saying about the situation there? And is there any sign of de-escalation? Right, so this is the sort of war of words between Russia and Ukraine over the past several days in particular, Ukraine has been accusing Russia of mining to the roofs or putting explosives on the roofs of two of those power stations and also on a cooling pond at that power plant. The Russians have controlled that plant since March of last year.

The Russians have counter-claimed saying, no, it's actually the Ukraine interplanning some sort of attack here. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog on these sorts of things did get involved just in the past 24 hours. They said, look, we were there a couple of weeks ago. We didn't see any evidence of any sort of sabotage.

We need to get access again to verify that everything is safe here. Analysts basically agree that it would take a kind of clusemic type explosion at this power plant in order to cause some sort of meltdown or radioactive event, but still it's quite a concern for the IAEA. They want to get access on site, not clear when or where that will happen. We did get an update tonight, in a sense, from the head of military intelligence for Ukraine.

He told Reuters in a long interview that actually the threat has subsided a bit. He didn't go into detail, but he did say the threat is always sort of there from the Russians because they control the plant. Ryan. Okay, Kelly Kobayev, live and key.

We appreciate it. Thank you so much, Kelly. And then coming up, Trump lashing out at special counsel Jack Smith, as his alleged co-conspirator appears in court amid new legal developments in the classified documents case and the January 6th investigation. The latest is next.

Plus, on the road again, President Biden tells his economic agenda in South Carolina as questions swirl over that cocaine incident back at the White House. You're watching Meet the Press now. Welcome back. We turn now to several new developments in the many legal problems facing the Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump.

Earlier today, his personal aid and alleged co-conspirator, Walt Nada, appeared in federal court Miami for his arraignment, not depleted, not guilty to all six charges against him, which ranged from conspiracy to obstructing justice to withholding and concealing documents and lying to investigators. Meanwhile, we have new developments in the special counsel's other criminal investigation tied to Mr. Trump around his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A spokesperson for the Arizona Secretary of State's office confirmed to NBC News that they'd been subpoenaed related to the Trump campaign's attempts to reverse Biden's victory in the state.

And the former Arizona Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers told CNN he was interviewed by the FBI for four hours about the efforts to overturn the election as well. I'm hesitant to talk about any subpoenas, et cetera, but I have an interview by the FBI. They seem to have a good grasp on all the testimony that I'd given and all of the interviews that I had given that were very aware of the January 6th committee testimony that I gave. There may have been something that I said that was of interest, but I don't remember anything standing out that had not been mentioned before.

Trump lashed out at special counsel Jack Smith yesterday on his social media platform, saying that Smith looks like, quote, a crackhead. Joining me now on set as NBC's Garrett, hey, who's been following the story for us. So let's first talk about Walt Nada. He's been arraigned, this was three weeks after his alleged co-conspirator, Donald Trump was arraigned.

And he now finally has local counsel. Which was an issue at one point. What do we know about her and what are the next steps in the case? Sasha to Dunne is the name.

She's not someone who'd popped up on our radar previously. She doesn't have a lot of kind of high profile federal trial experience. She's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades defense lawyer down in South Florida. She's right for the Florida State House in 2018.

You know, she's a Republican. But beyond that, there's not much to say about her, except she does practice pretty regularly in Fort Pierce, where we expect this trial will move forward with Judge Alien Cannon sitting there. Still no date for when it'll move forward. The original plan obviously was August.

The government's asked to push that back until December. If you were a betting person, I would consider taking me over on this. Nobody involved has the security clearances they need yet either, so it could be a while. And the Trump legal strategy is often to delay, delay, delay as much as possible.

So that's obviously one of the many legal problems the former president is dealing with. I'm interested in your take on this, the fact that the Special Counsel is now looking into what happened in Arizona. There's been talk that even, the governor there was pressure, similarly to what happened to the governor in Georgia. We spent a lot of energy focused on Georgia, but is this a significant development that Arizona's now part of this conversation?

I think it is, and I think it's a good reminder that we should just think differently about this case in general. I think the shorthand, at least here in Washington, has been that the Special Counsel has two cases, right? The documents and the January 6 case. But when you see the people that the Special Counsel has interviewed in states like Georgia and Arizona and Michigan and these other places and the spake electors part of the puzzle here, it's clear that what they're investigating at least, that it may not be what they charge, is much broader than that.

It's this sort of fulsome effort to overturn the election that goes back much farther and extends much wider than what happened here in DC in just the days leading up to January 6th. And so I think this focus, at least as we're learning about it now in Arizona is very interesting. Whether it tells us anything about the time and whether they're closer or further away, given kind of the broader scope. And I think what a lot of people understood as recently as a few weeks ago is an open question.

But it's definitely interesting and I think it should definitely concern anybody who was involved in that broader plot that the Special Counsel is not stopping at the Potomac River. Yeah, it's pulling out so similar to the Select Committee's investigation, which we thought at that time, was just about the violence on that day and became a much broader look into the effort to overturn the election as well. Give us a view from inside the Trump campaign. You talk to that team every single day, they're certainly putting out a brave face acting, like this is actually politically beneficial for the president, he's raised a bunch of money over the past cycle.

Is that the same feeling behind closed doors or are they starting to feel like the walls are closing in? Look, by and large, they're pretty happy with where they are right now. I don't think there's any question that the indictments so far have served Donald Trump's short term aims. And that's how he's always operated.

He is a creature of short term, kind of survive and advanced success. Right now they've been able to raise a ton of money, $35 million across the PAC and the campaign, which is gonna lead all comers in the Republican field. And they've been effectively block out the sun politically, no other candidates getting any coverage of any note right now, other than Donald Trump, good or bad. That's the way he likes it.

And if you're the front runner, the functional incumbent within the Republican party, that's a position you wanna be in. I will say that the feeling within Trump's orbit has always been that Georgia was the case that kind of made them more nervous. It's something that's much easier to understand, certainly than a New York case. It's something that has much higher stakes than a classified documents case potentially.

And it's outside of his control in the sense that even if he were elected president again, he cannot pardon himself in the state of Georgia. So that's the one that has always been kind of the most concerning to the Trump campaign, or to Donald Trump in those close to him, which are sort of two separate entities and how we should think about this. But by and large, they're perfectly happy with where they are right now. They have the right enemies, which in some cases is exactly what you want, especially in a Republican primary.

We won't get into the former president calling the prosecutor that's looking into his case a crack head. That's probably for the. I mean, I'm not even sure even you'd be able to. It's funny to tell.

Karen, thank you so much. You appreciate it. Turning now to from Donald Trump's White House to his arrival, President Joe Biden. Biden has arrived back at the White House after remarks in South Carolina this afternoon, touting Bidenomics as he looks to make the economy a key part of his 2024 campaign.

But it comes as the White House has been dogged by questions around the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing. Sources say the dime-sized baggy was discovered at the highly trafficked West Executive entrance, not the West Wing lobby, as we were previously told. That's pretty big difference. Sources also tell NBC News the investigation is expected to be wrapped by Monday, much sooner than previously reported.

And officials caution it is unlikely they'll be able to determine the person responsible. Joining me now with more on this is NBC News White House correspondent Mike Memley. Mike, you know that building, as well as anybody who covers the White House, and give us a little bit of context about this updated location and why they had it wrong in the first place. And I would have to imagine in the fever swamp of the right-wing internet that this is just gonna become more fodder for conspiracy theories.

Why can't they seem to get this story straight? Well, there was some confusion, as I was talking to White House staffers at various levels yesterday, about where the consensus seemed to be narrowing on what entrance it was. There's the West Wing entrance that we were talking about on the main level yesterday, which is the one that frankly often our networks have cameras trained on full-time. I walk by it dozens of times a week, as we're walking to and from our camera locations.

That's also the one we're most familiar with. You're seeing it on the screen now, as far as an arrival point for congressional leaders, other typical visitors over the course of a typical White House day. What's significant about this new location is specifically the proximity to a very important and secure location, the White House situation room. One of the sources I was talking to yesterday was confused about why the cubby location, the place where people might be asked to leave their phones, other person belongings was being associated with the main floor, because it is the proximity of the situation room which requires people to leave those belongings behind.

So as we're talking to our sources though, they indicate that there is to the same access to this entrance as there is the main level to the West Wing tours that a staffer might give. Again, they're continuing to suggest that this is the most likely scenario was that an individual who came for a White House tour rather than official business or some other purpose is what's at issue here. The other thing that's notable, I think, is the timing of a potential resolution of this investigation. I think yesterday we were probably in expectations management especially by the Secret Service.

Now they've already been able to have a number of conversations, looked through a lot of the data that would be available to them and they feel more confident in accelerating that timeline. Okay, so let's now talk about what the president was up to today. He was in South Carolina. He's selling bi-nobics.

The question is, is anyone buying, he seemed like six months ago, the economy would not be an issue that this White House would want to run a reelection campaign on? Seems like that's changing, Mike. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, the White House has always been confronting this gap between the popularity of the initiatives, the laws the president has signed, infrastructure chips, the Inflation Reduction Act, with the president's own approval ratings.

The projects are more popular than the president who's ushering them into law. And that's really what's behind the bi-nobics. They want to better connect, not just these specific initiatives, but the positive economic data, especially as inflation begins to taper off, they want the president to get credit for it, especially as Republicans are now showing up at some of these events and tallying some of these funding announcements as if they voted for it. You see the White House more aggressively pushing back on the Republicans who aren't doing so.

So there's always a risk that the economy will again turn south, but in the White House's view, the bigger risk was that the president doesn't get credit when things go well, whereas if things do turn south, they know they're going to get the blame. It's that difference between the hard economic data and just the way people feel, which is a very difficult quotient to try and understand. That will be the challenge for them in this upcoming campaign for sure. Mike Mumbly from the White House, thank you for that reporting.

And up next, the abortion rights fight heats up in the battleground of Ohio, where abortion act rights activists just cleared a key hurdle in their efforts to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall. You're watching Meet the Press Now. Welcome back, abortion access. It was a key issue for voters in the last election, and Democrats are betting it will be just as important in the next one in 2024.

But the issue could also get a key test among voters in a critical battleground state this year. Abortion access advocates in Ohio submitted more than 700,000 signatures yesterday in an effort to get a measure on the ballot in November that if passed, would enshrine the right to an abortion into the state's constitution. The signatures collected are nearly twice the amount that the state requires of the groups pushing the measure. That would be insurance against duplicates and errors as officials review the signatures before it officially makes it on the ballot.

I'm joined now by Jesse Ballmer, a reporter for the USA Today's Ohio Bureau who's covering this right closely. Jesse, I appreciate you being here. Now that they've done the hard work, they've gotten the 700,000 signatures, they've been filed. Have they succeeded in getting us on the ballot, or are there more steps that they need to cross?

And when will we find out if this measure is actually gonna be before the voters in November? Yeah, so right now it's a bit of a waiting game. They have until July 25th, where the local board of election officials are gonna be checking these signatures, making sure people are registered to vote, making sure addresses are right, and they can read the signatures. At that point, we should know whether this is on the ballot in November, and if that's the case, Ohio would be the only state in the nation looking at the abortion rights issue this year.

And does the number of preliminary signatures suggest anything about what kind of support this ballot initiative may have with the voters? Yeah, I think proponents were pretty satisfied with the number they were shooting for over 700,000 signatures. But usually there are a decent number of signatures that are tossed because of areas, errors, and so you always wanna go for a little more than you think you should in Ohio. Yeah, so talk us through how this measure would change abortion access and just how the law would affect everyday people in Ohio.

Yeah, so right now an Ohio abortion is legal up through 21 weeks and six days. That's because of a court order that a local judge put in place, but there was a period of time about 82 days, which Ohio had been on doctors performing abortions after fetal cardiac activity was detected, so that's about six weeks into pregnancy. So there was a period of time where abortion was greatly restricted in Ohio and then it was kind of reinstated because of the court order. And proponents of this measure are saying they need protections in a state constitution to prevent this kind of volatility.

And so what it mean that abortion access would revert back to pre-row, a pre-row situation or would it revert back to the 20-week period? Where would the line fall? Yeah, so the language and the measure says viability which would be determined by a doctor and would be, you know, when the predus could survive outside without, you know, a lot of extra care. Okay, and so what have you heard from both supporters and opponents of this measure as they wait to see if this will be put to the voters in November?

Yeah, supporters are optimistic. They feel like this is a good time to go. There was some discussion about waiting till 2024, which is when several other states in Florida is looking at 2024, but they felt like they needed to go sooner rather than later in Ohio. Opponents say that this measure is too extreme.

It goes too far for voters in Ohio, which is a kind of Midwestern state that Ohio is more conservative than its neighbors, like Michigan which passed the measure last year and that this is just not in line with the values of the state. And I'm interested in the kind of broader impacts that that could have on 2024. We've seen similar measures like this in more conservative states where abortion rights supporters have had more success. What's your general sense of the kind of impact the results of this vote could have moving into 2024 where Ohio, as it always is, is gonna be such an important presidential battleground?

Yeah, I think if the measure passes, there's also a possibility that a marijuana legalization measure will be on the ballot this year as well. If Democrats see those measures passing, that kind of sets them up for 2024. It's also possible that we'll have a measure about a $15 minimum wage, which is really in line with a Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who will be up for reelection in 2024. So I think he sees that as an issue that could be beneficial to have on the ballot as well.

Ohio, always at the center of the national conversation. This issue, even in an off-year election, we're talking about Ohio, which we'll see as this ballot measure makes its way through. The process, Jesse Palmer, thank you for your great reporting, we appreciate you being on. And then after the break, Republicans lose if Trump wins.

That's a message a powerful conservative political network is sending to early state GOP voters in a new multi-million dollar push to take on Trump, what it means for the race for the White House. The panel is next, we're watching the president. Welcome back. Turning now to the 2024 presidential race where we're starting to see more and more ads from Trump arrivals looking to put a dent in his lead over the Republican field.

Fresh off of raising $70 million for political races this cycle, the political networks, Americans for Prosperity Action is not with two ads hitting Trump on electability, arguing that if he's the nominee, Republicans across the board will lose. Take a listen. That of making Biden answer for his reckless progressive agenda, Trump makes the debate about indictments, personal grievances, and the election, he lost. Sure, he did some good things as president, but the reality is Republicans lose if Trump is our nominee.

With Donald Trump, Republicans lost the House, lost the White House and the Senate. And we've lost our chance to capitalize on Biden's devastating record. If Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, we could lose everything. Well, additionally, a super PAC backing Mike Pence is attacking his former boss on foreign policy.

America doesn't stand with thugs and dictators. We confront them, or at least we used to. There can be no room in the leadership of the Republican Party, for apologists, for Putin. There can only be room for champions of freedom.

Joining me now to talk about this on set is Danielle Diaz, a congressional reporter for political, Democratic, pollster, and NBC News political analyst Cornell Belcher and Jim Garrity, senior political correspondent for the National Review. So Danielle, I watch these ads and it reminds me as if I'm watching something from maybe the early 2000s, the late 90s, I mean, that's seemingly how you might win a Republican primary back then. We're way past. This is a different time, isn't it?

Is this going to resonate with Republican voters? Well, I do want to say you bring a little too far back for me to remember, Ryan. But yeah, well, millennial, millennial. But look, we've covered elections before you and I have.

And this is interesting because the last election we just covered 2020, we didn't see this divisiveness in the Republican Party. We saw a candidate like Donald Trump, who was the clearly. Now we're seeing his former vice president campaign against him on almost every issue. And he says, of course, January 6 was the pivotal moment for him.

He still defends his decision to not overturn the election, which is what Donald Trump wanted. But we're also seeing this co-group pumping millions of dollars into this race, a surprise because they're also saying they're going to support a candidate in this primary. So they haven't done before. And so that money is going to be consequential as we watch this primary play out.

And it's going to be incredibly, as I said earlier, very, very divisive. He's at, of course, a major, major key to try to win over voters in this post-pandemic. Yeah, Jim, I'm interested in your thoughts about this pen strategy because he was such a defender of the Trump policies when he was his vice president, didn't really make a break until well after January 6. Now he's attacking some of these policies that he was a part of.

Is it strangest thing going that direction? Well, you know, a mob trying to kill you. It can really change your perspective on things. Talk a while though.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the message of any of these ads. I do think the timing is odd. I don't mean which decade. I mean, it's mid-summer.

It's the Fourth of July weekend. I don't know who's paying that much attention to politics right now. The Republican debate is in August towards the end of the month. And maybe at that point, I think people might be tuning in a little more receptive to messages like this.

I don't know if necessarily any of these ads are a form of panic, but I do kind of feel like, if you're Pence, you've jumped into the race. Everybody knows you're in it, and you're at what? 5%, 6% a whole bunch of polls. You have not made a splash.

It is Trump. It is to Santa's quite a bit behind him. And then everybody else is in single digits. So I don't think it's not panic time.

But that little bit of concern that, as Yogi barriers to say, it gets later out there earlier than you think. To your point on the debates, Pence said an interesting thing on the trail this weekend that he debated Donald Trump plenty of times without the cameras on. It didn't seem like he won too many such debates judging by their policy decisions. I mean, do you think that has any impact on the debate itself?

I suppose if at some point Mike Pence says back when we were just you and me in the Oval Office, you said you wanted to rescind the second and that sort of, like maybe something like that would make a splash. But again, it's tough to be when you're vice president, it's very tough to look bigger and stronger and more influential than the guy whose job is just president. So, Cornell, you're the pollster here. You're the one that gets into these numbers and kind of getting back to this point I was making before about what it was like to run as a Republican maybe 10 years ago versus what it's like now.

Are these kind of messages resonating with Republican primary voters? Well, I think let's take them apart and take them on one by one. I get the Pence ad because actually, I don't say it as a foreign policy at all. It is about strength and leadership.

And one of the key characteristics, especially on the Republican side, and they want their leaders as a strong leader, and that Donald Trump has shown in space that he's sort of the tough guy. He's their tribal warrior. So the Pence ad to me is really, I think you're going to see this continue unfolded, really going to come after him on leadership and try to make him out, not to be in fact, a very strong leader. I think it's a long shot, but it's probably one of the best he's got.

On the super PAC side, I think it is very interesting because we typically say in campaigns, if you're arguing process, you're losing. And this is very much a process argument that is sort of appealing to the rationale of primary voters. As someone who's worked in primaries a lot, trying to appeal to the rationale as opposed to the emotional part of a primary voter, it's tough and it's also problematic from this standpoint. Is this ideal that Donald Trump doesn't beat Joe Biden?

You've seen our NBC numbers. Most Republicans think that Donald Trump actually did beat Joe Biden. So they don't believe that argument. So I think it's a tough argument for them to carry.

Yeah, and then just from a pollster's perspective too. At what point are we going to get too far for someone to get out of this hole that they've dug as it relates to the margin between Donald Trump and the rest of the game? You might be too far. You might be too far.

Because if you look at his margin right now, he's actually a larger margin now than he was in 2016 when he won, and look at his record hall that he just still can't. You look at the money that's super PAC's brilliant, but Donald Trump has raised a record amount of money after being indicted. So his money's grown and his support in the primary electorate has grown after being indicted. So Daniel, let's take back to this point that you made about January 6th and the impact it's going to have on the race.

This is what a voter confronting Mike Pence over his actions on January 6th has happened and I would take a listen. If it wasn't for your vote, we would not have Joe Biden in the White House. That was a constitutional right that you had to send those votes back to the states. The states conduct our election.

We never wanted Washington, DC, our election. Constitution force no authority. Vice President or anyone else to reject votes or return votes to the states. Evermen number four should never be done in the future.

Sorry, man, but that's actually what the Constitution says. President Trump is wrong about my vote that they didn't steal. Caught in the background, there's a congressional reporter. I can't ignore Randy Fincher.

I'm very seem to be gulping. He's listening to that exchange. But to Cornell's point that when we're talking about this, it's almost like we're dealing with a different set of facts when it comes to Republican primary voters and it was displayed there, right? Yeah, and I was there on January 6th.

Ryan's office is all still very fresh. In my mind, as I witnessed, a Republican base who Pence is trying to win over, still bring up what happened that day and say that the election should be overturned and Joe Biden shouldn't have been president. And I think, you know, Pence, that was a very, as we all remember, a moment for Pence where he defended his decision and also broke from Trump, whether it took a while, of course, and that this was, of course, toward the end before years that they were both in office. But he still has to defend his decision to not do that and he's going to have to continue to defend to voters who believe, as Coriel said, that the election shouldn't have been won by Joe Biden.

This is not the end of that. And, you know, Jim, I don't know if we're ever gonna stop being surprised by Donald Trump, but he found a way to surprise us yet again when he said on his truth social app over the weekend that the special counsel investigating him, Jack Smith, looks like a crackhead. And then he accused Joe Biden of having cocaine. The kind of the weird path that he took from the cocaine discovered at the White House to get to the point that the special prosecutor is a crackhead is still kind of a head scratcher, but there's no penalty for him with Republican primary voters.

It seems when it comes to making outlandish claims like this. No, there's a penalty amongst general election voters. I will say that when you look at Joe Biden and the way he is 80 years old, the voice that kind of wanders, the shuffling of his feet and all that stuff, my first thought is cocaine. He looks like he's, you know, really upped up on stuff.

Yeah, that's all they're talking about. Really, really that one. I'm just watching that clip of Mike Pence earlier. You know, look, he's gonna get this kind of question from now until whatever his campaign ends.

I do think nothing else he has perfected the facial expression of you poor poor woman. I hope you get the mental health and health. Because all he can do, he basically said you're wrong at the end. But that woman has the same number of votes in the primary process as he does.

Right. Right. So speaking of head scratching things, I want to play for you this video of Donald Trump, supporting LGBTQ rights, that the Ron DeSantis team posted over the weekend. Take a listen to this.

I think, you know, identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageant. I think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning saying the opposite. We believe in protecting the rights of our girls and the rights of women athletes to be able to participate with fairness and with integrity. There's of course, the scientists responding to this video that they posted, but Cornell, this video again, gets back to kind of the psyche of the Republican primary voter.

A lot of us probably watch that video and were like, could not believe that a candidate for president posted something like this. But does it work with primary voters in the Republican party? We will see. I mean, let's first call out there for what it was.

It was brazenly homophobic. And I'm just shocked at how brazenly homophobic homophobic it was. And it's not okay. It's not okay for us to mainstream this.

It's yet to be seen. I think that this idea that Donald Trump is somehow to the left on cultural issues, I think it's yet to be seen. I think it's an interesting play. I don't know how successful it would be, but I get from a campaign tactic to try to attack him to the right of Donald Trump on cultural issues.

We'll see how it plays. Yeah, yeah, it's Jim's point. It may be okay in the primary, but kill you in the general. Yes.

Danielle Diaz, part of Belcher, Jim Garrity, great conversation. We appreciate you being here. And still become Director of Secretary Janet Yellen lands in China and the Biden administration's latest bid to ease tensions with Beijing. What's at stake next?

You're watching the press now. Then welcome back. For the second time in as many months the top Biden administration official is in China in order to improve relations between the two countries. Earlier today, Treasurer Secretary Janet Yellen touched down in Beijing for the start of a four day trip.

It comes less than a month after the Secretary of State Tony Blinken met with China's President Xi Jinping. Bonnie Lin is a Senior Fellow for Asian Security and the Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And she joins me now to talk about this. So what should we take from Janet Yellen's trip there?

And what was her main objective? Thank you, Ryan. It's great to join you. So when you talk about Secretary Yellen's trip to China, I think there are three main objectives, aligned with what we've been seeing from high level visits from the Biden administration, including Secretary Blinken's trip.

One of the main goals is for the United States to deepen an increased frequency of communication with China. Of course, for Secretary Yellen, there's also the very specific goal of remaining engaged with China on trade and investment. And of course, part of her trip is also to communicate to the Chinese that the United States does not see containment with China or decoupling with China. And she kind of talked about her goals on a tweet that she posted as she arrived there today.

And it's a quote, We seek a healthy economic competition that benefits American workers and firms and to collaborate on global challenges. We will take action to protect our national security when needed. And this trip presents an opportunity to communicate and avoid miscommunication or misunderstanding. Bonnie, is that easier said than done?

Definitely easier said than done. And I would also know that she said most of those points earlier this year during April speech. And I would point out that during the April speech, the two goals that she highlighted of a healthy economic relationship with China and dealing with urgent global issues were the number two and number three. The top issue that she highlighted was that the United States will secure our national security interests first at even at economic cost.

So she obviously didn't emphasize that. We're going to China, but we do have to understand that her goal to help stabilize the economic relationship with China is nested under the overall goal of the top goal that the United States still needs to secure our national interests, as well as those of our allies and partners. It may be a bit of a surprise for some of us to see the Treasury Secretary as a primary diplomatic official dealing with relations with another country, but is this not uncommon? You know, what role does the Treasury Secretary play in negotiations like these?

Well, I would say that all of our secretaries have a key role in diplomacy, particularly for China, a country that's very focused on what it sees as a weak in economic development. China's very keen on making progress on economic front. To at least make sure from the Chinese perspective that the United States is not, for example, going to implement new restrictions on technology trade with China, that when we look forward, that the United States is not trying to decouple with China. So from China's perspective, it's very important that Secretary Allen is there.

Well, let's talk a little bit more about that, because China did announce this new round of restrictions on materials that the US uses to make semiconductors. This of course, after the Congress passed this a multi-billion dollar plan to try and invest in this kind of production in the United States. Is this just posturing on China's part, or is this something that could be a little bit more serious? So China's restrictions, particularly on two rare earth materials, helium and germanium, which was announced just hours before Secretary Allen's trip.

I think they are significant, but I would also note that China has a pretty strong cold on a range of rare earth metals, not just these two. And these two shows in to specifically target what China views as problematic US and Western restrictions on critical components for in semiconductor industry. So I would view what's happening right now as China is getting a warning shot. China hasn't fully escalated, but it's still relatively significant in terms of China taking action.

And just quickly to end here, we'll see what's playing out in Ukraine. Is that situation in any way serve as a cautionary tale to President Xi as he considers the situation with Taiwan? So your answer is yes, but I would also call you to say that China is learning from Russian mistakes and if China were to take action against Taiwan, they would try to avoid the mistakes that Russia did. Okay, terrific insight, Bonnie Lynn.

Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. And thank you for being with us this hour.

I'll be back tomorrow for another edition of Meet the Press Now. But our NBC News now coverage continues with Hallie Jackson right now. It's here, the fort is a big deal. Not yet.

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