Meet the Press NOW – March 13

Imagine yourself in Ottawa, surrounded by thousands of vibrant tulips and discovering your new favorite microbrew before cycling along scenic by paths and wandering through a museum and all. Adventure awaits in Ottawa, from oh to ah! Plan your getaway at Ottawa2arism.ca If it's Wednesday, a congressional crackdown on TikTok has lawmakers overwhelmingly passed legislation to ban the app unless its Chinese owner sells it, TikTok intensifying its lobbying campaign and the fight now goes to the Senate. Plus, a judge drops three of the 13 criminal counts against former President Trump in the Georgia election interference case and the decision over whether the district attorney will be disqualified from the case now looms.

And game-set rematch voters react as President Biden and former President Trump officially clinched enough delegates to win their party nominations. It sets up a long, knockdown, drag-out fight for the White House. Welcome to Meet the Press. Now, I'm Yamiche Alcindor in Washington, where lawmakers in Congress today voted overwhelmingly to advance a bill that would ban the popular app TikTok unless it cuts ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

The House passed it with widespread support from both sides of the aisle and the vote comes after a classified House briefing yesterday. U.S. intelligence officials worried the Chinese government could use the app to influence millions of users and access their personal data still. Some notable lawmakers, including the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, voted against the legislation.

He cited first amendment concerns. Also voting against the bill, two of the most diametrically opposed lawmakers you can find, far-right firebrand, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the leader of the House Regressives, Permilla Jayapal. Take a listen. I believe that this bill can cause future problems.

It's opening Pandora's box, and I'm opposed to this bill. I voted no because I think there are real problems with it. I think constitutionally it's a problem. And I think the process of Southland doesn't work.

As you can see, the debate over banning TikTok cuts across some unique ideological lines. The bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer put out a vague statement that was non-committal about taking up the bill. The debate over TikTok isn't just a policy one, though.

It's also a political one. Take a look at these numbers. In the U.S. alone, an estimated 148 million people use the app.

In our latest NBC News poll, 22% of all voters say they use it at least once a day. And when you look at voters between the ages of 18 and 34, that number nearly doubles. Those voters, of course, will be a key constituency come November. President Biden's reelection campaign continues to be active on TikTok.

Despite the president vowing to sign the House bill if it gets to his desk. As president, Donald Trump tried to force the sale of TikTok, but now he says he opposes the ban. Meanwhile, Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, one of the bill's lead sponsors, had this message for his colleagues, who are concerned that a TikTok ban could hurt them at the ballot box. I get that members of Congress always want to get reelected, and I've bemoaned the fact that the constant focus on getting reelected often takes precedence over just doing our job and doing the right thing, but here the national security concerns became too big to ignore.

I don't think courting the clicks of 17-year-olds should take precedence over allowing our foremost foreign adversary to dominate what is increasingly becoming the primary news source for Americans under the age of 30. Joining me now is Sahel Kapoor on Capitol Hill, and with me on set is NBC News Justice reporter, Ryan Soho. As we noted at the top, it was so interesting to see how lawmakers voted. You saw, of course, those unique alliances.

What are the key takeaways from the vote on TikTok today? And what are some of the other loadable lawmakers who voted against this? Yeah, that's right. I mean, a few things here.

It was a vote of 352. That's an extraordinarily big vote in the House. You don't see that every day, and the coalition of supporters is very, very unusual. Among the supporters are a bunch of far-right Republicans teaming up with Nancy Pelosi, and most of the leadership members of both parties.

You don't see that every day among the 65 opponents. The bulk of them, 50 of them, were Democrats. A lot of them were progressives and swab members, probably no surprise, because they tend to have the closest connections to young voters. There was also some opposition from libertarian-minded Republicans, like Tom Massey, as well as some Trump loyalists like Matt Gaetz and Nancy Mase ended up voting against it.

Also, Joe Biden allies, like Jim Clyburn, a very prominent supporter of the president, who said there are Chinese companies in his district, and he told me he doesn't want to single out one of those companies. Now, there's also an interesting split within the Democratic leadership that is unusual. Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, as well as Pete Aguilar, the conference chair voted for this bill. But Catherine Clarke, the minority, voted against it.

I asked her office why. And let's show the statement that she sent. In response, I have security concerns about data, sorry, serious concerns about data security, but she goes on to say she's the post-republicans, fast-tracking the bill, while they actively obstruct Ukraine aid. Overall, I mean, she shows that the recent security briefings on the issue of TikTok have had a real impact on lawmakers, one of them told me, that the more they learn about TikTok, the more frightening it becomes, given that this company has such a tantalizing trove of data on more than 150 million Americans that the Chinese government, under Chinese law, could gain access to if it wants to.

And so, I mean, I have the bears repeating. 352 to 65. We just don't see that in the house. But of course, now this would move to the Senate.

How are senators feeling about this bill? Could it pass the Senate? Mixed feelings. I mean, the Senate is a famously sluggish body.

I talked to a lot of senators in recent days about how they feel here. There are some who do support this bill, who say they would vote for it. If it does come up, there are others who say they don't want it to be as narrow. They want it amended so that it doesn't, you know, quite single out of TikTok the way it does.

So that would be a broader bill about foreign controlled companies, not necessarily just social, not necessarily just social media apps. Yet, others, some Democrats that we talked to say they want this to be part of a broader bill that regulates tech as well as maybe looks at 230 of the Communications Act. There's just a whole host of opinions on the Senate. You know, senators have high opinions on themselves.

They don't like to take house products and simply pass them as is. There's also not as much urgency to do this immediately. So there's also the inertia question that repeatedly comes up with the Senate. Maria Cantwell, who's the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, just put out a statement a few moments ago saying that she takes this issue seriously.

She's going to be talking to Senate and house colleagues to find a path forward that is constitutional and protects civil liberties. That's another concern here. Finally, there is the political undertone that you alluded to. I mean, Dick Durbin, the number two Democrat, did mention to us that it may not be the best thing for the president's reelection if you get the whole bunch of young voters angry at him.

Well, as we talk about the fate of this bill, we also have to talk, of course, about former president Trump. At one point, he was trying to get TikTok's owner to sell it, but now he has done a complete 180. He now opposes being it. Could that sway any voters?

Could that even paint this bill altogether? Yeah, it's in a broke reversal from former president Trump. It might have an impact if he really leans in and works it. Right now, it doesn't seem to me that many Republicans feel that he's committed when Trump leans into something and gets Republicans all fired up about it.

He's very good at getting members of his party to fall in line. In this case, his beef here seems to be that he thinks banning TikTok would help Facebook and he's still mad at Mark Zuckerberg for getting banned from Facebook after January 6. And there's always the possibility that some Republicans were genuinely worried about the national security concerns with TikTok. Believe that that ends up being more important than advancing a personal feud of former president Trump.

Well, thank you so much. I want to, of course, now turn to you, Ryan. Of course, there's this news that the Congress held an annual worldwide threat hearing this week. I want to play some of the sound from the FBI director.

Now, they said we want you to put out videos that make Americans fight with each other, or spread conspiracy theories and get them at each other's throat. ByteDance doesn't have a Chinese court and fight the Communist Party. They would have to do it. That's my understanding.

And I would just add that that kind of influence operation, or the different kinds of influence operations you're describing are extraordinarily difficult to detect, which is part of what makes the national security concerns represented by TikTok so significant. Those are pretty strong words from the FBI director. So what else are intel officials saying and how concerned are they about the security threats that TikTok opposed? Yeah, I think both in that briefing there as well as in this briefing that was sort of held with the House members as they were discussing this bill.

They really drove home that message. And it is very rarely rare, as you said, that you get such a bipartisan vote, especially on a really expedited basis. And it's hard to say that, you know, that briefing that they had on this matter didn't probably influence the votes there. It seems like this is a very big concern for the government.

It's not something that you see on government phones, for example. You know, it was sort of a big deal in the binding campaign, which is, of course, not part of the government. But when they joined TikTok, because that was sort of a pretty broad departure given that security concerns more broadly that the US government has had with us for a while. It's an enormous amount of data on individuals that are sitting in the hands of this company.

I mean, that's true for every social media company. But, I mean, TikTok really goes into what your interests are and how much time you spend on each of those videos, how long it takes you to swipe something. The algorithm is really extremely powerful there. And you link that up with the underlying data about names, phone numbers, even contacts that can sync up with your phone.

That could be a potential danger, because then you can create a network and see, okay, who are all the individuals in this person's phone, for example. So there's just a ton of data that they could gather through that app. That is very exploitable, potentially by the Chinese government. I mean, the key word in all that you said, which is a lot, because it's somewhat scary when you think about all the data is exploitable.

There's so many concerns that this could impact the 2024 elections, the broader US politics. Even American culture, just overall, talk about that. Yeah, I mean, they can really aim this at individuals and see what can really, you know, we saw this in 2016 with the Russian efforts to interfere with the election, to try to create those divides and hype up those divides in American culture. So it would basically boost Trump, right?

That was one of the ways that they went about this, is sort of exploiting those divides in American culture that already exist. So that's something that you can see a foreign government doing here. With that enormous amount of data, sort of more easily accessible, it's something that national security officials really have a big concern about. I also want to ask you about this idea that you're seeing some really notable Democrats voting against this, citing those first amendment concerns.

So how likely if at all that we might see this band end up in court fighting back in that regard? I mean, it's really tricky because when you talk about, there's a lot of companies that have overseas ownership. So this is a really tricky issue and there are sort of first amendment concerns here, I think, overall. I think this bill is going to have a little bit of a challenge.

It could end up in court whether or not this actually goes forward. Yeah, well, thank you so much Ryan for sharing this all, and for giving us all the information. We'll speak to a member of the House China Select Committee in a moment, but turning to the other top story in politics today, there are new developments tied to one of the multiple legal cases facing the presumptive Republican nominee, that being of course Donald Trump, today a judge dismissed several counts in the sweeping Georgia election interference case facing Donald Trump. The judge got McAfee ruled that the charges brought by the Fulton County District Attorney, lacked specific detail.

That's the same judge was considering whether or not to throw out Fannie Willis off the case entirely over a private romantic relationship she had with the top prosecutor. His ruling is expected any day now. Meanwhile, the DA's office now has to decide if they're going to refile these charges among the counts dismissed. One related to Donald Trump's infamous phone call to Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Waffensberger.

In January of 2021, in that phone call, then President Trump pressured Waffensberger to quote, find enough votes to overturn the election results. Even with today's developments, the former president is still facing a heard 88 criminal crowns across four criminal cases. Dale Cohen is with us now. He's a former assistant assistant, assistant assistant attorney in Fulton County.

Thank you so much for being here. Good to be here. Thank you so much. So why?

Yes. So there's a lot to talk about. Why did the judge dismiss these specific charges? And do you think prosecutors will refile them?

I think it's a definite maybe that they may refile them. Judge McAfee is very measured. He's very bright. He has looked and listens to both sides.

And in his view, there wasn't enough. There wasn't specific enough in these counts that he dismissed. Now the fact that he dismissed them doesn't mean a lot. In itself, because the DA's office still has the ability to go back to a grand jury, redo the various terms that they didn't, weren't specific enough, and come back and say, grand jurors, please return an indictment.

And quite frankly, the grand jury, if it's brought back to them, would obviously re-indite or indict again, because we used to say both when I was in the state attorney's office in Miami, at the DA's office in Atlanta, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, except maybe in Miami, it'd be a quarantic sandwich. Either way, they would indict anyone that the DA's office, or in that case, in Miami, the state attorney's office brought them. So that in itself doesn't bother me. It doesn't concern me.

But even if they don't, even if they don't re-indite, the president, the ex-president, and all the people charged, they're still facing numerous charges against them, and that should not make much of a difference, except perhaps to the potential jurors who may say, wait a minute, is this really criminal, or is this political, or is this both? And why did the judge dismiss it? And why are we here? They may not have any difference at all.

We're going to have to wait, so this case is taking on a life of its own, and it will continue to take on a life of its own, regardless of what Judge McAfee does regarding fine-and-goes, and they think what he does. It definitely has taken on a life of its own, and you bring up key questions that a juror might ask, and I want to read to you part of what the judge wrote when he wrote. He said, as written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes would fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission. They do not give the defendants enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently.

So with that in mind, with the judge's own words in mind, what additional details do you think prosecutors need to provide if they want to re-file this case? I think they need a reach into their bag of detail, and they need to provide small details that show that former President Trump and the other people indicted actually committed a crime, in this instance, not just the allegation that they did, but giving a little more specific, I'll never pronounce that word, being a little more specific in regard to what they are charging him with doing or not doing. Yeah, I also want to ask you, does this decision give us any insight into whether the judge might disqualify the DA from this case? I wish it did.

I think Judge McAfee, whatever he does, will be measured. He will bring out whatever he believes would be. The right thing to do, and more importantly, follow the law. He's been incredible.

If he watched him in these various hearings, he has been so measured, and so fair, that whatever he does will both surprise me and not surprise me, but will not surprise me that he will do what he believes the law says he should do and what he should do. Well, thank you so much. Excuse me, Fox, but fair and balanced. Well, thank you so much for providing all that insight, Darrell Cohen.

Thank you. And coming up, my one-on-one interview with a Democratic lawmaker who has helped shut up our today's TikTok bill through the House, plus violence and unrest in Haiti, the US military now sending a team of Marines to protect the US embassy as the chaos there intensifies. You're watching Meet the Press Now. It's more now than ever.

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Welcome back. Turning back to the debate over banning TikTok. Let me now bring in Congressman Jake Ockencloss. He's a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the China Select Committee.

He's also a co-sponsor of the bill that overwhelmingly passed the House today. Thank you so much for being here, Congressman. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me on.

So I want to play for you some of the sound from colleagues who voted against the bill. Take a listen. I am concerned about people's data. I'm concerned in many ways about the China Communist Party.

But if you're going to say that the platform is being used for propaganda, give specifics. We have yet to receive one piece of public evidence that actually shows that somehow China is actually negatively using our data that has not been proven. So, Congressman, you heard your colleagues say they want more specific evidence. So what evidence do you have that China is using TikTok in nefarious ways, specifically?

I co-sponsored this legislation with the Chinese National Security Angular as my secondary concern, not my primary concern. I talked about my concerns with Xi Jinping's use of data, particularly geolocation data and contactless data. But actually, the primary driver for me was not USA versus China. It was families versus the greed of big tech because social media corporations are profiting by keeping our kids hooked on screen time.

That screen time is eating into family time. It is deteriorating the mental health of our youth. It is undermining our civic discourse. And all of these corporations, whether we're talking about meta or TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, all of them are evading accountability for it.

Congress needs to step up. But the first step to that is holding TikTok to account to US law, not to Chinese law. Well, Congress, when you just listed a number of other social media accounts or social media companies, meta you said YouTube, why single out TikTok? Why not do a more broad bill that gets across and goes after all those social media companies you just listed?

I have. What's different about TikTok is it is not domiciled in the United States. So it's not subject to any law that I would write. So the first step is, okay, TikTok, your subject to US law, second step is, okay, all social media corporations, you're going to have to answer your Congress.

So for example, I filed legislation that would raise the age of internet adulthood from 13 to 16, because I don't think 13 year olds should be transacting their personal identifiable information with multinational corporations without their parents' involvement. I'm working on legislation that would hold social media companies to account for defamation and intimate privacy violations, cyberstocking. These corporations for the last 20 years have been plundering our discourse, they've been platforming disinformation, and they're making our kids and our families miserable. But Congress, when I should ask you, are any of those bills banning those social media companies like you would, TikTok?

No, and this bill doesn't make you talk about it. This bill forces the sale of TikTok to US on a silent company. Why not go after bills that would ban those social media sites as a consequence to whatever you would want them to do? I'm not sure I'm understanding the question.

So what we're saying is TikTok needs to keep happening. What I'm saying is you just listed a number of companies you said you're pushing for regulation, and I'm asking you, why not make the consequence of those bills not be too banned? In other words, why not say Facebook? If you don't do what I want you to do, I'm going to ban you.

Why is that not part of the bills that you've been pushing? Because Facebook has already subject to US law, so Congress doesn't have to threaten Congress can say this is the law, which is what we would do for TikTok as well, where it's subject to US law. That's the great thing about a company that's not necessarily the United States and the subject to US law is we get to say what the law is in Congress. Right now, Xi Jinping is saying with the law is the TikTok, and his law is very antithetical to US values about what civic discourse looks like and how we use PII.

I would ask you, on this bill, focusing on TikTok, what's your plan for getting it through the Senate and on to the president, as the president said, he would sign it. But do you expect to convince senators to bring it to the floor, and how are you planning to do that? We have seen senators who have been champions of cracking down on big tax abuses, and my home state senator, Senator Warren, has a strong bipartisan bill that would put in place really a comprehensive set of regulations around all social media corporations. So I know that there are champions in the Senate.

Now the question is whether these senators can withstand the lobbying they lose that's about to come from TikTok because every time you try to take on big tech, the lobbyists take on the capital. We need lawmakers who are willing to stand up to those lobbyists and stand by American families, because I'm seeing the mental health effects of this day and day out from fellow parents and from my constituents, and it's time that Congress takes action. Yeah, I want to also ask you, as you push for Congress to take action, President Biden's campaign, as you know, is on TikTok. How comfortable are you about that, and are you worried that banning TikTok could hurt efforts to reach young voters?

The president is campaign as appropriate or going to use every legal means necessary to reach the wider American electorate and to tell the story of his first administration and also of the contrast that American voters are facing between him and Donald Trump. I mean, smoke signals, drums, radio, TV, they're getting everything. As they should, it's a campaign. You want to get there and reach people.

But the president has also been clear that he sees the dangers of TikTok, and of course, his campaign would comply with the law if that became into effect. I would also point out, though, that there are, okay, as we know, millions and millions of people on TikTok and 43% of voters ages 18 to 34, they use TikTok. They say at least once a day, how worried are you that voters who use TikTok will blame Democrats in particular for banning this bill? Now, I know I should tell you that Democrats, you yourself, have been very vocal about this.

I wonder if you're worried that you'll take the blame for this. So, again, not a ban. It's a forced sale. TikTok could be a ban.

Well, the consequences would be a ban. I'm sorry? The consequences would be a ban. Well, they have six months to sell this company to an American company.

There's no reason to believe that that couldn't happen. I'm sure there'd be many willing buyers here in the United States. So, this bill is not a TikTok ban. It's a forced sale of TikTok to U.S.

domiciled company. Now, having said that, I don't like to make policy based on opinion polls. I think it's incumbent upon me to use my judgment and to represent the values of my district and then go back home and explain why I'm doing what I did. Right after I voted on this bill, for example, I walked down to Capitol Hill snaps and I talked to a group of high school students about running on this TikTok to vestiture.

And they asked some tough questions. I think I gave some pretty comprehensive and substantive answers. I saw some heads nodding. I saw some heads shaking.

That's politics. That's what you do in this job. Well, thank you so much, Congressman, for your spirited answers. I really appreciate it.

Check it out. And up next, last night's primary. It's official. President Biden and Donald Trump have won enough delegates to formally become their party's nominees.

We'll hear from voters in three critical battleground states. As the rematch is on, you're watching Need the Press Now. Welcome back. The 2024 presidential election is officially official.

Both President Biden and former President Trump have become the presumptive nominees for their party. They clear the required delegate thresholds following last night's late of primaries. That kicks off will be one of the longest general elections in modern political history. With an electorate, it isn't really that excited about a rematch.

Today, our reporters are fanned out in some of the major 2024 battlegrounds as part of the NBC News, the Deciders series. It's focusing on the important people and places that will define this election. Chicago Brewster is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the president said to speak at the top of the hour. See, Patterson is in Reno, Nevada, which is key, which is in a key county, Washoe.

And playing Alexander is in Atlanta, Georgia for us. So, Shaq, you're in Milwaukee where the president is set to speak in the next hour. What are we planning to hear from the president? And how does that compare to what voters want to hear?

Hi, there. Emission. Let's just be clear. He's going to be talking about infrastructure.

You might see it with the signs on stage behind me. We expect him to hit the stage in the next half hour or so. But he's going to be announcing about $3.3 billion in infrastructure investments across the country, including about $36 million here in Milwaukee alone targeting black and brown neighborhoods. But there's also the politics that we're looking at as well.

Now that President Biden has been officially named the presumptive Democratic nominee, he's clearly focused on voters, key voters in these key battleground states. I mean, you ask about what they find to be the most important. I want you to listen for them directly. We need more positive, I guess, to the public.

Make it so that we believe in him that he gets reelected on good, good things for America for us. Please do something about Palestine. What do you want to see happening? That's his way to that.

Trying to picture the country and the economy and all these wars that are going on and build the wall, like everybody is saying, it's not just wrestling. And that's the line the president is playing with here because, yes, he's touting the fact that his legislation that he has, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the inflation reduction act, how it's going to impact these communities. But then when you hear from voters, those are long-term investments. Many of them are looking at thinking about the day-to-day and what that means for their wallet.

So that's a gap that he's going to be working the bridge over the weeks and months to come as we get closer to election day to me. So interesting to hear voters. Just be positive and fix the country. Very simple.

Now, Steve, I want to come to you. President Biden, he won Washoe County in 2020. How important is that county for both president and president Trump if they hope to win in 2024? What do you hear?

It's extremely important. This is almost always a perpetual vital bell weather of the state. And you have a good mix of people who are both politically motivated and fiercely independent. So much so that I get the sense from a lot of people that they're almost proud of sort of not knowing what candidate to choose because they don't feel necessarily energized by either of the candidates.

And they know that they are such a prize that people will come to them, that they can wait and choose based on who is going to show the most support. So these campaigns know that they need to have a ground game in this county. And speaking to both of the campaigns, they know how vitally important this is. We spoke to the Washoe County GOP who spoke about just gathering that sort of middle and harnessing it.

And if you don't, the problems that you will have. Here's what Bruce Parks told me. He's the chair. Listen to this.

What's the effort from the GOP here to sway those voters who seem to be really key and crucial to winning the Vatican? How do you get those folks on board? Common sense. You appeal to their common sense.

There's a concerted effort on those people to reach those voters. To let them know, hey, look, we're on the same sheet of music. You might not call yourself Republican. You want smaller government.

You want lower taxes. You want a better economy. You want a secure border. I mean, and the list goes on.

We agree with all those things. And it's funny to hear Parks there because both sides seem to think that this massive independence, these, you know, supporters who don't have any support through either candidate, have values that pertain to each side. Parks thinks that a lot of the independents are actually Republicans in disguise who values aligned with the GOP and a lot of Democrats feel that they're expats from places like California who are bringing their values to a state like Nevada. We spoke to Biden for Nevada.

We're hearing that there's going to be a huge ramp up here in Washoe County within the next couple of months. Both sides focusing right here. Yamiche. Lots of great reporting.

And I want to come see, because of course you're at another prize. And that prize, of course, being Georgia, you wrote a great piece today that noted that President Biden and Democrats are bracing for a tough fight ahead of his breakthrough win in Georgia in 2020. How has the landscape changed for Democrats heading into 2024? You know, Yamiche, Democrats, I've spoken to here in the state acknowledge that it took a special set of circumstances for Joe Biden to win Georgia four years ago.

We were talking about the middle of a global pandemic. All of the protests and reckoning around racial injustice. That is certainly a big factor in driving a lot of the black voters, a lot of the young voters that we saw helped sweep Biden to victory back in 2020. That's not the case this time around.

And on top of that, we have Republicans here at the state now who are very determined to prove that Georgia is a red state and not a purple state. So when I spoke with one organizer, though, she said it's important to note that the numbers just show that wasn't a fluke. If you look at Georgia trends, it's becoming younger, it's becoming more diverse. It shows that that's the way that Georgia is trending.

They say, though, it's just going to take a different approach this time around. You know, one person that I spoke with said, this is not the election where voters are going to wake up and be enthusiastic necessarily. They acknowledge that people aren't necessarily excited about who's at the top of their ticket. So what they're going to do is focus less on the candidate and more so on what the power of voting can do for them to change their circumstances.

So Democrats, I spoke with say it's going to be harder than last time around, but they're optimistic, but so are Republicans. And a big reason for that, Yamiche, is this poll that I'm about to show you right now. This is what came out earlier this morning from CBS. And it shows a very tight race between Trump and Biden here.

In fact, the former president Trump is leading Joe Biden by about 3 percentage points here in the state of Georgia. That's well within the polls margin of error. And I got to remind you, you know, we all know the number that Joe Biden won by back in 2020, 11,779 votes. That's not a very big number.

And so Republicans say what they're doing is they're going to be eyeing those people, especially in the suburban counties, like what Net County and Cobb County, where they believe that they can change minds and try and flip them back over to Trump's side. But as one Democrat told me, he said, the single greatest tool that they have in their arsenal in trying to unify and win this and keep the state blue is the fact that Donald Trump is on the ticket again. He says he believes that people will rally around that fact. When you bring up Donald Trump, there's of course the election interference case that I and so many others are watching very closely down in Georgia.

How's that weighing on the campaign? What influence could that have when you think about voters turning out? People are watching it. You know, I spoke with one of the organizers.

And I said, do you think that's going to help your cause in terms of trying to turn out voters? And she said, well, certainly not going to hurt. So, you know, when you talk about the fact that people are certainly watching every twist in turn of this case, the voters that I've spoken to have said maybe they don't know the ins and outs of it, but they are certainly paying attention. Now, the question is, which way will it go?

Well, some people as one Republican strategist I spoke with, she said that she believes that the impact it's having is it's almost making Donald Trump look like a victim. For those who may be more inclined to say, okay, these folks are beating down on him. They're unnecessarily charging him. That could drive out voters for him.

But on the Democrat side, certainly there are a lot of people who want to see the former president held accountable and are proud to know that Georgia is taking a leading role as a battleground state and is going to be in the spotlight. And that's something that could help drive Democrats turn out. Well, as our other guest said, that case has taken on a life of its own sublaying. Thank you so much.

And thank you to Steve and Jack as well. And thank you all for bringing us this important reporting and really talking to voters in some of the places we've highlighted as part of our NBC News deciders series. And after the break, TikTok on the clock, Trump legal drama and a long, long road to November. The panel's next year watching the press now.

Welcome back. Now that Donald Trump has enough delegates for his party's domination. One of the biggest remaining questions facing his can see is this. Who will be his running mate?

NBC News's Dr. Burns reports a vice presidential pick is already top of mind for former President Trump. According to his two sources, Trump has been laser focused on the issue of abortion, especially when it comes to his vice presidential pick. He sees the issue as a major vulnerability.

Meanwhile, later this month, independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. will announce his VP pick. He's reportedly considering some unique choices, like current New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, who was also governor of Minnesota. Some interesting names there.

Joining me now is our panel, Eugene Daniels, White House correspondent for political and NBC News political contributor, former Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Sherry Boostels and Sarah Chamberlain, President and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership. So Eugene, I'm going to start with you. We just mentioned RFK Jr. And he's announced that he's going to announce his VP pick.

We talked about the interesting names. Polling recently has 9%, him at 9% ability to see USA Today's topic poll. Who should be more worried about those numbers when you see RFK Jr. getting 9% Trump or Biden?

If I'm the Biden campaign, I'd probably be more worried only because of the name, right? I was in South Carolina talking about my great nonce. And she was like, I'd like that RFK. And I was like, why?

And she was like, his family. I was like, let me tell you, let's talk about the policies that she changed her mind, right? And so there are a lot of voters and she's obviously a black voter in South Carolina who loves Biden and voted for Biden. But at the same time, that name recognition is a real vulnerability for Biden.

And I think one of the things that the campaign had not done at the beginning was paying attention to him. They thought that people would see him and there was a assume that he was crazy and find out that his policies were crazy. But that's not been the case, right? And so they have to do a lot more work if they want to pin out those vulnerabilities of his.

Yeah, and Congresswoman, in that poll, it's within the margin of error, but we saw President Biden trailing Trump. What do you make of that? Well, you know, I think what you always say when you're trailing and it's your candidate, you always say, well, this is a snapshot in time, right? This is right now.

It's just what you say. But look, this is going to be tight. It's going to be tight. I don't think anybody thinks that it's going to be some blowout on either side.

Yeah. So, you know, it's... Yeah. I just think the greatest story in the world to tell.

He's got great surrogates who he can send out in the smallest of towns or the most urban east of towns. And we've just got to tell the story over and over and over again. The district I represented was very rural. I want to make sure that in a town of 3,500 people, like Galena, Illinois, where I live, I want to make sure the story is told there.

And that while we're probably not going to win places like rural America, we can't bomb. And so it's like telling this great story of what the Biden administration has done to help people. And Sarah, there's also, of course, this issue of a portion with our reporting that shows that former President Trump is very worried about this and looking at his vice presidential pick for this. I wonder, though, I mean, the cat's kind of out the bag.

Rum has been overturned. But what do you think it could be done here? Is there someone who really is both Trumpy enough to be a Trump VP while also having some position on abortion that attracts a woman? Well, I'm glad Trump is focusing on that because clearly he's losing a lot of what you used to refer to as the moderate Republicans.

Nikki Haley proved that. She stopped running and she still got a lot of votes. So that is certainly very disturbing for the Trump campaign. He needs somebody that can attract those suburban women, men back into the party.

So he needs someone that's at least 16 weeks. I just don't think it can be shorter than that. I was looking Carson, potentially. He hasn't spoken at all for years on the abortion issue.

He's from a key state. So maybe there, Tim Scott, he's got a six-week ban that's a little disturbing for the suburban women. So it's interesting to see what happens. And Eugene, former president Trump has floated maybe a 16-week abortion ban.

How is the Republican Party grappling with it? If they won this big generational win, but they're still struggling with the consequences. Yeah, they're not grappling well, right? Because you have two different conversations happen.

You have the people who were pro-life and the advocates and who really got this win, right, working behind the scenes to get conservative justices on the Supreme Court. Then you have Republican politicians who have to figure out a way to talk about this in a way that doesn't turn off voters, right? Those two are in conflict with each other over and over again, right? When Democrats said they're coming after IVF next, you have Republican politicians saying, no, that's not the case.

But when you talk to the pro-choice, they're like, no, no, we are. And so, and then we saw what happened in Alabama. And so the Republican Party is going to keep having this fight. I don't know that it matters who the VP is for Donald Trump because at the end of the day, he put the Supreme Court justices on the bench that overturned will be weighed.

And Congressman, I have to ask you, is the president, does he need to get more comfortable talking about abortion? He didn't say the word at the same union. He did talk about protecting reproductive rights, but does he just need to get a little bit more into the actual language of this fight for a time? I don't know as a practicing Catholic, not just a Catholic a name.

I don't know if you will get comfortable with it. That said, Vice President Harris is completely comfortable talking about it. And most Democrats are completely comfortable talking about it. This is a winning issue for Democrats.

And we are going to have to hammer it and hammer it and hammer it. I think from the perspective of, this is about our freedom as a woman, as a mother, and my friends, my kids' friends, this is a freedom issue. We ought to be able to make the decisions we want to make, whether it's 16 weeks or whatever that is. This is up to us as women.

This is up to our doctors having in consultation with us, with our partners. But this is not for Donald Trump or the Supreme Court justices to tell us. And I think we have to frame it in that it's freedom versus taking those freedoms away. We just, I literally just came from a live event where I interviewed near Tandon for Politico.

She's a domestic policy advisor for President Biden. I asked her this exact question, because not only did he not say it, it was in the prepared remarks, and then he didn't. And so I asked her about that. You know, she did what they were going to do.

But what she ended up was actually speak louder than words, and that people want him to say the word abortion. They get that. But also his aides know that he is who he is. It's hard to change in anyone's mind, and for them, as long as he's doing the things that they feel are the right things, then whether or not he says the word abortion is not.

I don't know that that plays, but that's what he did. Say, I will also ask you about another issue, which is these criminal counts, these criminal charges against former President Trump, now 88 to 3, go on, but 88 remain. Do you think this will drag him down in the general, because he definitely didn't drag him down in the primary? I think his base is going to be there no matter what.

I think what he may have a problem with are the swing voters, and he needs them to win. I mean, it's very obvious. He's not going to win Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, I know, is now somewhat in play. He's not going to win without getting these voters for him.

This means something to them. But let's see if he gets actually convicted, actually even really goes to court on some of these issues. I think that is a huge unknown at this point. You know, that middle, the voters in the middle, the issues that we're just talking about, the abortion, women's rights, and these criminal charges, that matters to those folks in the middle, and that is where the secret to winning or losing stands as we sit here right now.

And you do not have to ask you the one another quick topic, which is TikTok. Our young voters are going to be mad at the Democrats and say, you took away my TikTok, okay, abortion's a big issue, all these issues, but. Yeah, I think one is going to go into this in it, no clue what's going to happen there, but the Biden campaign has actually not said anything about it, they're on TikTok, and I was talking, I talked to a few people about this on the campaign, and what they basically say is that they're in a waiting game. So they aren't even really ready to start prognosticating on how it might impact them.

It reminds me of the jewel banning that happened during the Trump years, whether or not that impacted it. I think there's a lot of things that young voters are upset with Joe Biden about, I don't know how high this rises on that list, but it definitely will be, it should be a concern once it actually happens. And I think letting people off, letting more social media companies off, Chuck Todd had a great column today talking about the idea that more social media sites could be pushed off, but aren't really being impacted in the same way. Well, there's a group called the Council for Responsible Social Media that looks at all of these, and they think if we stay hyper-focused on just TikTok, it does let the others off the hook.

There's a lot of wrong that is going on, and anybody who has young children has to be concerned about this. Yeah, well, a great panel again, Eugene Terry. Sarah, thank you so much. And still to come, the fate of a nation, American forces move in to protect the U.S.

Embassy in Haiti as the island nation struggles with violence and unrest, a talk of a veteran reporter was covered the region for years about where the crisis goes from here. You're watching Meet the Press Now. Welcome back as Haiti descends further into chaos, the U.S. is sending additional Marines to protect the embassy in Port-au-Prince.

The additional deployment comes as armed games now control much of the country's capital. It also comes a day after Haiti's embattled Prime Minister, Alia Ojui, announced he plans to resign, but Ojui, who's now in Puerto Rico, has not said when that would happen. Meanwhile, concerns of unrest in Haiti and its potential impact on the region have been a key focus of the State Department earlier this week. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken traveled to Jamaica for a summit on the ongoing crisis today back in Washington's Secretary Blinken discussed efforts to stabilize the situation while acknowledging there is no quick fix.

This has been a long unfolding story. The part of the story is the suffering of the Haitian people, and we want to see that brought to an end. That requires a few things. It requires a more stable political system.

We need assistance, humanitarian assistance, development assistance so the economy can get built up, people can have the opportunity, and fundamentally we need to see security because it's very hard to do either of the first two things in an environment that is profoundly insecure. I'm joined now by Jacqueline Charles Caribbean, correspondent for the Miami Herald, who's reported extensively on Haiti. I would say he's the best reporter on Haiti in the country, in the world. So Jackie, thank you so much for being here.

Of course, Haiti has hit a new level of crisis in recent days with the resignation of the Prime Minister. What's led to the surge in violence and the political turmoil? How do we get to this moment where things are this bad? Well, we've gotten over here over 14 years.

I think if you go back to the 2010 earthquake, we started to see it down with spiral. But in more recent history, we have to remember that on the 7th of July, 2021, the presidential number we use was assassinated in the middle of the night. And since then, the country has just seen an explosion of gang violence, of gangs. They're not just in the capital, but they are throughout.

I think their numbers are now around 300. They stepped into a political vacuum. Why? Because we had not had an election for years.

He was only one of 11 elected officials, and now there are zero. So that's why you had that meeting in Jamaica this week, trying to see how they can put together some sort of a transition government that would be Haiti, eventually, two elections. And as we noted, the Marines have been sent to protect the U.S. Embassy there.

But what about the rest of the country? What's the reality for everyday Haitians who are just trying to survive right now? And explain how it happens in Haiti, how that's important to the U.S.? Well, first we have to remember the capital of Port of France.

So all of the roads are locked by gangs. They control the access roads. If you're in Port of France, you're not going anywhere by road. And international flights, as well as domestic flights, have been suspended ever since the gangs decided to crowd the airport and they started shooting.

The Haitian police were at the army. They were able to fight back the gangs. But there is still some concerns that at any moment the situation will just blow up again because it's very volatile. And the gangs have been targeting key government institutions, including the seaport, including orchestrating two massive prison breaks where you have thousands, over 3,000 criminals that are running among, including some high-profile gang leaders.

But if you are outside of Port of France, the problem you have now is humanitarian situation because of the attacks on the seaport, because there's no air bridge. There's no land bridge. There's no sea bridge. Things are not getting through.

So you already have about 6 million people that are deep hunger. The WFP World Food Program said this week that you have 1.4 million Haitians who were away from acute hunger. What you're seeing is that people are doing all kinds of things to cope. And of course, we have children.

I mean, we're seeing increased levels of malnutrition. This is a crisis that's affecting everybody in Haiti, whether they live in the capital or out. And I want to ask you, why is this important to the U.S? When you think about the strategic interests of the U.S.?

Okay, let's start by the fact that we're just two hours from Haiti. But I think most people don't realize the Haitian National Police, which isn't even like 1,000 individuals were 12 million people. That was a force that was built by the U.S. Built back after Haiti was under pressure to get rid of its army after having one too many cool.

We are the largest financers of that police force. We have a U.S. arms embargo, which determines how many guns, what kind of guns, how many bullets those police officers could get. And the arms of the gangs have a high-powered semi-automatic rifles that they're using.

They're coming from the United States for the most part. So the U.S. is very much implicated in security crisis that's happening there. But for us in terms of regional stability, there's a lot of concern among Caribbean neighbors that what you're seeing in Haiti that it will spill out, not just by people getting on boats, but also by criminal coming there and wreaking havoc in those communities.

And you also had a really good article today, Jackie with a lot of articles, but you had one about the bickering among the Haitian leaders who are now trying to come up with this transitional government. Tell me a little bit about that and how that's going in the latest there. So you know, it might be here on the clashing. We broke the story that the U.S.

had asked and read the stuff down, even when they said they had not. And they wanted to have a transitional planet. Their criticism was that, okay, we've been asking for more than two years to put together a transitional government. I think this week they realized how difficult that is.

These individuals were given 24 hours to send names on who will sit on this seven-member board where seven people with voting rights and two who would be observers. And when I checked late last night or early this morning around 1.30, the names still have not been sent in. And the bickering is continuing. I mean, when will Haiti form some sort of transition government to name a prime minister to replace our U.S.

We do not know. And the reason why that's important is yesterday, Kenya announced that they were putting a pause on the deployment of police officers that are a backbone to this multinational security support mission that the U.S. It's a non-UN mission, but the U.S. is saying, look, we need to get some help to the Haitian National Police so they can fight these gangs.

And as you mentioned, the gangs are the head of the game that's promising a bloody revolution, but thank you so much, Jackie, for joining us and for your expertise. Kristen's back tomorrow with more Meet the Press Now, and the news continues with Hallie Jackson right now. As the day wraps up, get this scoop on what's been happening with Here's the Scoop, a new podcast from NBC News with Meteor host, Gazzam Dasugio. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News's trusted journalist.

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