If it's Thursday, the White House announces that Israel has agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses in Gaza, as President Biden expresses new frustrations with Prime Minister Netanyahu and its growing pressure for a more sustained ceasefire. Plus, at last night's five Republican debate contestants struggled to confront the party's growing problem on the issue of abortion, and the field's absence but still dominant front-runner former President Trump. And just breaking, moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announces he will not run for reelection, leaving a blow to Democrats' hope to hold the Senate and renew its speculation because it won't be present. Reporting in Washington, while we're tracking the fallout of last night's third Republican presidential debate posted by NBC News, after the five candidates on stage seemed to struggle when faced with their party's two biggest liabilities at the ballot box, Donald Trump and the issue of abortion.
We'll dive into the very latest in the presidential race in a moment, including the news from Joe Manchin that suggests he might run. But we begin with breaking news in the Israel-Hamas War, after the White House announced that Israel has agreed to daily four-hour pauses in military operations in northern Gaza, starting today as it faces escalating pressure to address a spiraling humanitarian crisis, arising Palestinian death toll, and ongoing efforts to free hundreds of hostages. It is unclear if the commitment from Israel represents a change in its current military operations. Israeli officials today said the fighting will continue, along with, quote, tactical, local pauses for humanitarian aid.
Yesterday, 50,000 people fled northern Gaza, many on foot, according to the United Nations. Announcement comes as President Biden is facing pressure from members of his party to call on Israel to do more to stem the humanitarian crisis. The White House acknowledging today that a series of four-hour pauses is far short of what it wants. Speaking on the tarmac, a joint base address earlier today, President Biden said he'd push Prime Minister Netanyahu for a significantly longer pause in military operations.
And despite frustrations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the President expressed optimism about the state of hostage talks telling reporters, quote, things are moving along. And official tells NBC News CIA Director William Burns, along with Israeli counterpart, are both in Doha today for tried-lateral talks on hostages in humanitarian aid. In a White House national security spokesman, John Kirby told reporters that the agreement marked significant progress and that it could provide a crucial lifeline for civilians and for potential efforts to free hostages. Around the same time as a White House made the announcement, a militant group inside Gaza known as Palestinian Islamic Jihad released footage of two hostages, claiming they're ready to release them if their conditions are met, they're looking at the missing posters of the two hostages.
We're not showing a video out of respect of a request by the families, as it shows apparent captivity speaking under duress. And joining me now on set is my White House colleague, Mark Alba, and with us from Israel is NBC's Aaron McLaughlin. Aaron, I want to begin with you. I want to start on that latest video released of the hostages by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Do we know how many hostages are held by them versus Hamas? And how does this all complicate efforts to get hostages released when they're held by different groups? Well, chaos is the word that would describe the hostage situation. It seems as though not even Hamas knows where all of these hostages are at present, two diplomats familiar with the ongoing negotiations that are mediated between Israel, the United States, and Qatar have said that this negotiation is ongoing.
It's reaching potentially a critical point. And what's on the table being discussed right now is a potential one to three-day pause in order to allow a small number of hostages to be released, 10 to 15 hostages. And the thinking, according to this diplomat, is that that pause is necessary, in part, to allow Hamas to figure out where all of these hostages are to secure the future release of hostages. Now, Israel is adamant that there will be no ceasefire unless all 239 hostages are let go.
At some point, Israel is trying to understand the magnitude of the situation, only recently some of the families have been notified that their loved ones previously thought dead are, in fact, potentially kidnapped in Gaza. I was speaking to Thomas Hand, his eight-year-old daughter. He was separated from her on the day of October 7th when Hamas stormed his kaboots. He was told that she was dead.
Weeks later, Israeli military notified him that they had reason to believe that she was taken to Gaza. I asked him at this point, does he have proof of life? Take a listen to what he had to say. Have you ever been any proof of life?
No. The red cross for proof of life? There's nothing. No, no proof of life.
But you feel that she's alive? Of course. Yeah. Yeah.
The evidence that I've got is enough to tell me that she's alive. And so many of the hostage families are in a very similar situation. They don't have proof of life. They don't know where their loved ones are, Gabe.
And Aaron, on these four-hour pauses, how new of a policy is this? There have been, in a similar humanitarian corridor, it's opened before. But what changes here? Is this really about semantics, that ceasefire versus humanitarian pause?
What's going on here? Well, this seems like a formalization and an expansion, even, of Israel's current policy. Since November 5, Israel has been opening up a humanitarian window, a four-hour window, to facilitate the evacuation of Palestinians from the northern part of Gaza, where they're going to be concentrating most of the fighting to the southern part of Gaza. There was 50,000 Palestinians, according to the United Nations, evacuated just yesterday.
What John Kirby from the NSC announced today is that they were going to formalize that, add to that a three-hour window prior to the four-hour corridor to allow Palestinians to be notified of where and when this window was taking place, and also open up a second corridor along the coastline, the thinking being is the corridor can help not only get Palestinians out, but also get badly needed humanitarian aid back in. Israel, for its part, is being very tight-lipped on the details of this. We put the question to the Israeli Prime Minister's office, asking about this announcement coming from the White House today, and they simply reiterated the line that there will be no ceasefire until all 239 hostages are released. Okay.
Aaron McLachlan, live for us in Israel. Aaron, thank you. And I want to turn now to our White House correspondent Monica Alba here on set with me. Monica, why did we first hear about this pause from the White House and not the Israelis?
It was significant that that is how the news came, and that we learned that this was something that had been happening already, but that the Israeli Defense Forces hadn't been advertising in the same way that the White House came out today very clearly in a way that signals to us was a way to pressure and let the global community know about why these humanitarian pauses are important in terms of trying to have these hostage recovery conversations, but also to try to allow civilians safe passage from the northern part of Gaza to the south. What's significant here, according to the White House, is that they are going to be adding this humanitarian corridor. But when the IDF came out today and said, look, this is something we've already been doing for a few days, a U.S. official told us what's important here is trying to send the message of why this matters and why it needs to keep happening for several days.
So the fact that you're not going to see military operations during this agreed upon four-hour pause is something that even President Biden to us to reporters signaled was something he had pressed Prime Minister Netanyahu to do, and he even said, the president, that he was disappointed in how long it took to get to this place. So it's clear that it's a little bit about ramping up the pressure on Israel while the U.S. is saying we're not directing the Israeli military on how they should operate, but they're clearly in favor of this after the Biden administration has come under immense pressure to stay and do more. It was interesting the president's response that I looked at daylight, which you don't often see or haven't seen in the last few weeks between President Biden and Netanyahu, with the president saying that he seemed frustrated that he had asked for a longer pause.
How surprising was that to hear the president speak so plainly? We know that the two have spoken something like 11 times over the course of this month long conflict. It's clearly been a relationship where they have been constantly in touch, where we knew when President Biden went to Israel in those early days of the war, this had been a complete standing and show of support with Israel, but in recent days, there has been this shift that has been clear with the president being a little bit more honest and candid, it seems from the White House approach about what he hopes Israel will do, even if they're not doing it. It's something that the president and his top aides have ramped up a little bit, Secretary Blinken, delivering that in person as well when he was in the region, and we do know privately that some senior administration officials are worried that even though this public display of support and what they've asked the Israelis to do hasn't always panned out with what the U.S.
would like to see in the long run, that could end up backfiring on the president. We started to see a little bit of that play out today. Monica, how about our White House correspondent? Thank you so much for joining us here on said Monica.
And now I'm going to turn now to more of the humanitarian situation in Gaza. And joining me now is Dr. Tanya Hashhasan, a pediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor who also works as a learning and development trainer with Doctors Without Borders. Dr.
Hashhasan, what is your reaction to this four-hour humanitarian pause? What does this mean for organizations like Doctors Without Borders who are on the ground? I mean, I've been repeating this from the beginning, humanitarian pause doesn't make sense in the gravity of what's happening at the moment on the ground. You have a population that's completely besieged, more than half of which is internally displaced, living in awful conditions, strangulated from access to food, water, electricity, medicines, emergency services, rescue operations to remove the bodies from under the rubble.
Humanitarian pause would be a break for people to move, maybe see if they can access food and water, whatever's left within the territory, only to then to be indiscriminately bombed right after. I just want to paint a picture of what has been happening recently, because people have been asked to evacuate from the north to south. Meanwhile, the road from the north to south by some of my colleagues in the Dazistric I'm in touch with has been called the corridor of death. People have been targeted and killed on that road as they're trying to evacuate on foot, and then emergency vehicles have been prevented from reaching them, both to try and get them to a hospital or to evacuate the dead bodies and they're just left there on the roads, even the ambulances that have been trying to evacuate patients through the south.
You may remember from two, three days ago, the ambulances that were targeted just outside of the largest trauma hospital as they were trying to evacuate patients. I appreciate any efforts that getting humanitarian aid, but the real question that I don't want this or any other nominal efforts to distract from is the immediate need for a ceasefire. You have a besieged population, essentially living in a large concentration camp, unable to flee the indiscriminate bombardment, dehydrated, drinking water that is not potable, that is giving rise to diseases, hungry, no access to food, no access to fuel, hospitals are sending out SOSs saying we are having to shut down large proportions of the electricity supplying the different areas of our hospitals and we're using the last little bit of fuel that we have left to supply, for example, the Intensive Care Unit where we have ventilators or the operating room where we also need ventilators and other electronic equipment, but that means that the rest of the hospital is functioning in pitch dark, and when that last bit of fuel runs out, you'll be left with a situation where these patients on ventilators are sentenced to death. Solar panels that were providing a small proportion of that energy were also targeted, so you are having a population that is being stripped from all the things that are indispensable to life and the hospitals that they turn to in moments of distress, both for shelter and for medical aid and for where all of the injuries are being taken are being systematically targeted over the course of the last three to four days, there have been at least seven hospitals in the Gaza Strip that have been targeted by Israeli forces, these are functioning hospitals with thousands of patients receiving care and with colleagues who I know personally who are just like me, doing their job, dedicating their lives to caring for patients who are now fearing for their own lives.
We have had three doctors killed in the last 24 hours, one of them was someone I knew personally, it's one of my previous students, him and his entire family were killed, his two brothers were out trying to search for food at the time that their apartment building was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, that they were all, that the six story building collapsed, they were all under the rubble, emergency services couldn't get to them, the brothers came back, tried to pull the bodies of their family out from under the rubble and were killed while trying to pull their family out of the rubble, this is an entire family and this isn't new, entire families, civilian families are being wiped off the civil registry. Dr, I can't imagine how difficult this must be to take in and I'm sure you're hearing from your doctors there on the ground, I want to bring up one last thing that the White House said today, that they said their goal is to get 150 humanitarian aid trucks into Gaza each day, is that enough? Absolutely not, Gaza has been under siege for 16 years on a normal day, so a besieged day prior to October 7th, they were requiring about 500 trucks of aid, of food, medicine, water, now you're talking about a population that has been completely blocked off for an entire month, they need unhindered humanitarian corridors and anything less than that is a smoke street, it's a drop in the ocean, it's nominal compared to what is needed, I cannot begin to stress, I mean I'm sure you hear desperation in my voice, I'm sure you've heard desperation in the voice of every humanitarian if you've had others on the show, I cannot begin to express the catastrophe that is happening there, it is the massacre of an entire civilian population, and a killing of an entire civilian population in a thousand and one ways, there are over 4,000 children who have been accounted for as dead, and over 1,300 whose bodies are still trapped under the rubble, and so they cannot even account for them in that statistic, so you're talking about more than 5,000 children, more than 10,000 human lives killed in the matter of one month, that's more than the Ukraine war, and you've probably seen the reports from say the children, that is a higher child death tool than at the annual collective death tool of children in any conflict in the world since 2019, this has to stop. Dr.
Tanya, thank you so much for your time and perspective, I'm sorry we'll have to leave it there, and we should point out that the Israeli military says that it has been targeting only targets related to Hamas, still such a difficult situation for those doctors and civilians on the ground as well, thank you for your time doctor, and coming out to debate night divisions, Miami debate stage got heated at times last night as the candidates and the Republican party tried to reckon with Donald Trump and the abortion issue, plus a White House wants to take a victory lap after two days elections, so big wins for Democrats, but Biden's name was not on the ballot and more polling is showing more problems for the president, as he may be about to get a primary challenge from Senator Joe Manchin, you're watching, be the President now, and welcome back Democrats efforts to retain control of the Senate next year, just like a major hit with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announcing today he will not seek reelection, he made a surprising announcement just a few hours ago in a video that not so subtly hinted that the Senator might have bigger aspirations for 2024. What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together. The centrist Democrat was already facing a tough reelection fight, and his announcement this afternoon all but assures Republicans will win his seat in the state Donald Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020. Joining me now is M.E.C.
News Senior Capitol Hill correspondent, Garrett Hayk, and Garrett, joining us live there from Miami, how surprising was tonight's announcement? Well, only in the timing, Gabe, I mean, I think this has been widely considered to be a possibility or even a likelihood by Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats alike, as well as all of us sort of professional Manchin watchers who've been wondering about his political future for quite some time. When you talk to people close to Manchin or people who've been watching his race, they say he hadn't been taking the necessary steps you might expect to prepare for a brutal Senate reelection race in a presidential year. It was more of a question of what he would do instead of running for a Senate.
A question we still don't have a good answer to. And how devastating is this new to Senate Democrats here? Well, look, it's huge. I mean, holding on to West Virginia was always going to be a long shot, but Joe Manchin was probably the only person who could make an even reasonably competitive.
Now if you take that seat off the board, Republicans have to pick up one other Senate seat on a map that is incredibly favorable to that to take control of the upper chamber. They could do it in Ohio, they could do it in Michigan or Pennsylvania, they could do it in Montana, another heavily Donald Trump state with a moderate Senator just barely trying to hang on. It's the kind of map you would really have to see sort of a complete collapse of the Republican Senate apparatus on election night next year to have serious problems. Is that possible?
Yes. Have they done it before? Yes. But should Republicans be considered a strong favorite to take the Senate next year?
I think the answer to that is also yes. Garrett, thanks. Stick around though. We're going to turn now to last night's Republican debate there in Miami where five presidential hopefuls argued they are the candidate that will write to ship for both the country and the Republican Party, even as former President Trump maintains a commanding lead over the field.
candidates were mostly cautious in their criticisms of former President, attacking him just nine times over the course of two hours. Here's Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis who are both vying to become the field's main Trump rival. He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance. He should explain why he didn't have Mexico pay for the border wall.
He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn't drain the swamp. And he said Republicans were going to get tired of winning. Well, we saw last night.
I can tell you that I think he was the right president at the right time. I don't think he's the right president now. I think that he put us eight trillion dollars in debt and our kids are never going to forgive us for that. I think the fact that he used to be right on Ukraine and and foreign issues now he's getting weak in the knees.
And Trump was once again not on the stage for the debate. Instead, the front runner held the rally interest a few miles down the road in Iowa. Once again with us and Shaq Brewster also joining us from Des Moines, Iowa after he attended a watch party with voters in that state last night. And Gary, I want to go back to you.
We heard the candidates stick to their standard lines on key issues like abortion and former President Trump last night. But what did last night tell us about the path forward for the Republican Party overall in this race? Well, what it told me is that none of these candidates are quite ready to try to take up the mantle of being the major challenger to Donald Trump. You saw that first round of questions where some of these candidates, including Haley and DeSantis, were critical of the former president.
But after that, they barely took a moment to breathe his name. And we know why that is. Attacking Trump directly isn't popular with the Republican-based voters that these candidates are going to need if they're ever going to try to dethrone Trump. And you saw them do this kind of compliment criticism sandwich approach where every attack on Donald Trump was wrapped in praise for his policies or praise for him as the president, trying to turn the page, give a permission structure to Trump-friendly voters to let the guy go and go with one of these other candidates.
But I don't know that you saw anything last night that's going to fundamentally change the dynamic. I mean Haley continues to impress in these debates, but I think you're probably going to find smaller and smaller audiences and smaller and smaller numbers of persuadable voters the closer we get to the Iowa caucus now in two months. Garrett, DeSantis and all of them really, except perhaps Chris Christie, have been trying to walk the finances. They don't want to offend the Trump voter.
Where does that get them? Is that going to be something that they will eventually change? Or it sounds like DeSantis doesn't want to do that, but where does that lead? Yeah, whether they admit it or not, kind of all of these candidates are facing a strategy except for Chris Christie, where they're hoping somebody else takes Donald Trump down a peg, right?
They're ways for them to elevate themselves. They're ways for them to elevate themselves in contrast to the other non-Trump candidates. But everybody has a strategy with a giant Trump shapole in it. Something has to make him smaller or make him go away.
It's clear that in a primary the indictments haven't done it, the legal troubles haven't done it, even the distraction of having to go to court every day in New York. But I do think it's taken some speed off Trump's fastball politically over the last couple of weeks. It doesn't seem to be doing that job. It lessens until any of these candidates get serious about really trying to bring Trump down within the Republican base that loves him so much.
Nothing's going to change this dynamic and I'm hearing it from voters. This kind of acknowledgement that whether they like it or not, Trump may be inevitable. A lot of the base voters like it, but there's plenty of voters out there who will grudgingly vote for Trump against Joe Biden, but don't want to end up in that space and they're staring it in the face with just not that much time left to change the dynamic. Right.
And as we saw, Donald Trump holding that rally in highly last night didn't seem too concerned. Okay. Now I want to turn to Shaq, who's, Shaq, what did you hear from Iowa voters last night after the debate? Did it change anything for them?
Well, Gabe, you know, there didn't seem to be any fundamental change in the voters' minds after that debate. One thing that I talked to people about as they were coming in was where do you stand right now? How are you looking at the candidates who were you supporting? And there was no one who flipped based on the election or based on the debate performances, but you did hear some shifts that were taking place.
And you know, one thing that we saw in our NBC News, the Morning Register and Media Compole that was released last week is that you have the majority of Iowans saying that they are still up for grabs, so to speak, that their minds could be changed based on new information. And I think one thing that you can hear in the conversations that I had is the willingness to at least consider other people based on what new information they get. Just listen to some of those conversations. I love what Trump did.
I said I was stuck between Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, but I'm probably going to vote for Ron DeSantis in the caucuses. My allegiance is still with Donald Trump, but I really like the way that Ron DeSantis came out. I think much stronger in this debate than he did in the first one. I'm hands down Nikki Haley.
We need serious politicians in office. She's clearly very knowledgeable, and she's willing to speak the truth, even when the truth is not what people want to hear. One thing that I asked at the end of the debate in that room full of Iowans was I said, raise your hand if you think Donald Trump should have been on that stage and should be on future debate stages and nearly the entire room raise their hand. The problem is many of the people who raise their hand also said at the end of the day they plan on caulkusing for Donald Trump.
So you always have that feeling where people say, you know, I'm looking at someone else, but I still really appreciate the former president. Yeah, there's that inevitability idea. Garrett and Shaq, thank you both so much. And don't bet.
Up next, don't bet against Biden. That's the message from the White House, even as the president faces a crisis of confidence among voters across the country in a key battleground states. They're watching me the press now. Welcome back.
It's been an eventful week in politics with an election, a debate, a shakeup in the 2024 Senate map and more. What it all means for the Biden reelection campaign? We're about to find out. It comes as at least three polls this week show President Biden trailing the former president in a hypothetical matchup.
That includes the New York Times Senate College poll that shows Donald Trump ahead of Biden in five of six battleground states at the White House today. The president dismissed the significance of those polls. And I'm joined now by any news for White House correspondent Mike Mentally and Mike, you know, we were expecting to have a surrogate from the Biden campaign. Unfortunately, they canceled last minute, but it is great to have you here.
And I want to know more about what the Biden campaign is saying in reaction to these polls of the last few days that don't seem to be looking so well for them. No, that's right. I mean, it's interesting because first of all, the Biden campaign is starting to actually feel more like a campaign. They've been really staffing up.
They're into their more permanent space in the headquarters in Wilmington. And they are very actively engaged in what they're calling pundit accountability, right? They have a real chip on their shoulder about the way this campaign is being covered right now. And the view that there's too much of a freak out, let's use that technical term about what these polls are showing.
Their argument is that what we should be looking at our election results like on Tuesday night when, as they view it, sure Joe Biden wasn't on the ballot, but the Biden message was to be sure the governor talking running on things like infrastructure on the chips bill, things that he's been able to use in Kentucky to grow the economy. The salience of the abortion argument still very powerful in Ohio in legislative elections in Virginia. They say these are very much arguments that the Biden campaign has been and will continue to be making and that will put a lie to the idea that there is need for Democrats to be worried about. But two things can be true, Gabe, right?
The same fear and motivation that's driving voters to the polls against the MAG agenda as the Biden campaign put it also has Democrats especially worried that Joe Biden is maybe not the best person to leave them into that fight next November. So the real challenge for the Biden campaign is going to be really showing that Joe Biden can strongly carry that message forward. And there's still, as these exit polls are showing us a lot of questions about that. And you mentioned this, but this is something the Biden administration has been saying for the last couple weeks, especially trying to tie what's going on to MAGA extremism.
That's something that they feel that the election earlier this week really brought up. And from the White House podium earlier this week, when we jump here, mentioning that President Biden was injected into the Kentucky race and seemingly taking a victory lap there. But specifically for these battleground states, how are they explaining these specific polls? I know they say it's a year out, but for example, in Michigan, where the president is down several percentage points, I was there earlier this week, and talking to Arab Americans there that have significant concerns about how the Biden administration is handling the Israeli Hamas war.
What's the Biden administration saying about places like Michigan? Well, they're saying, listen, we're basing all of this on polls and there are different polls showing different results. They actually sent a memo to reporters saying, here are different polls that showed the president leading the former president, and we didn't cover those polls in the same way. But I challenged the Biden campaign today as they were speaking with reporters.
Do you have internal polling that you can share with us that shows a different result? They weren't willing to do that. So they don't, if they don't have those numbers that show a different result, they're not willing to share them. They say they're doing other measurements of things like some of their television advertising, which shows that their message is moving voters.
And then they say that, listen, there's a year to go. I was covering the 2020 Biden campaign after Iowa, after New Hampshire when he was, as they rightly say, he was counted out, and just a few weeks later, he was the nomination. So we have a long way to go, Gabe. The question is, is time going to be a friend for the Biden campaign, especially with all these developments that continue to add to Democrats?
And really quickly, while I have you here, any reaction from the White House or the campaign regarding the breaking news in political world this afternoon, Joe Manchin, not running for reelection, and perhaps suggesting he could be running on a third party ticket, who knows if it's no labels, but any reaction from the White House? Yeah, not just yet, as we know that a top White House adviser to the president, Steve or Shetty, has been closely keeping tabs on Joe Manchin. They had dinner fairly recently, as he was, for instance, not showing up for one of their events touting the Inflection Reduction Act. They certainly have kept those open lines of communication to get a sense of what he's doing.
Another third party candidacy is not with the Biden campaign, he's right now, that's for sure. Mike, our White House correspondent and our Biden expert here at NBC. Mike, thank you so much for pincheting. Again, we're expecting a surrogate from the Biden campaign.
Unfortunately, I had the cancel last minute. Mike, thank you. And after the break, two parties, two unpopular leaders, and no clear path forward. We're digging deeper into the nation's treacherous political environment, following a chaotic 24 hours in American politics.
The panel is next. You're watching. Meet the press now. A lot of back Republicans are once again grappling with the party position on abortion, as the issue drove Democrats through the polls in key races in Ohio and Virginia this week.
The parties struggle arguably on full display when Republican presidential candidates were asked about the issue. You got to do a better job on these referenda. I think of all the stuff that's happened to the pro-life cause. They have been caught flat-footed on these referenda.
It's back to that Republican culture of losing. The Republicans did not have an alternative amendment to our vision on the table. Let's find consensus. Let's agree on what, how we can ban late-term abortions.
Let's make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions. This is an issue that should be decided in each state. Our challenge both Nikki and Ron to join me at a 15-week limit is in our nation's best interest. And joining me now is my panel.
NBC News senior national political reporter, Sahil Kapoor, Stephanie Shriok, senior advisor at the Strategic Victory Fund, and former president of Emily's List, and Danielle Placka, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and an NBC News contributor. Thank you so much for joining us here. I'm here to press now. Sahil, I want to start with you.
Big takeaways from the debate. Yeah, I mean, the abortion question was very revealing. We saw a little bit of a split among the candidates. Nikki Haley was trying to take the more compassionate position saying, can't be judgmental to where people who have a different view.
And she did end up saying she would sign whatever ban the Congress passes. That's where they do agree there is a desire to have a federal restriction on abortion. And then you heard Ron DeSantis point out accurately that the pro-life movement has been caught flat-footed when it comes to these referenda. And this is where I think Republicans are panicking a little bit.
There's been alarm after every off your election where this has gone poorly. Now you have the National Republican senatorial committee encouraging candidates to not only come out against a national abortion ban, but to actively campaign on it. They said they need to put money behind it in TV ads, but in speeches because they worry that the word the term pro-life now codes to a lot of voters as then wanting to ban abortion across the board. It's stunning.
Seventeen months after that decision and the dog that caught the car still doesn't know what to do. Well, Stephanie, I want to bring you in on this point. It appears to be a winning issue for Democrats abortion. Can Democrats ride this through 2024?
Well, I hate the idea of writing an issue of freedom and a right that was taken away by this Trump court, which is really the problem that the Republicans have right now. It's not a messaging problem. It's not that they're positioning themselves incorrectly. They have the wrong policy for the American people.
They are not losing these referenda because they're doing a poor job. They're losing because they're wrong on the issue. And until they change their actual position and give that right back to women, they've got a huge problem in every election, moving forward until we have a national conversation about what we're going to do here. And Denny, should Democrats be worried all about Nikki Haley's more moderate stance on abortion?
It doesn't really not matter since she's so far down when compared to Foreign President Trump. But what do you make of that? The more moderate position than Nikki Haley? Well, I think she's trying to be responsive to what she sees and what's out late out as a series of failures as responsive to what the public view is.
I don't think the public is quite as hard over as Stephanie describes. 15 weeks is actually a position that most Americans support when you start to go beyond that they don't. But I think the Republican Party, as you rightly said, has simply lost the fight on messaging. Now pro-life means anti-abortion.
Well, turning out to the attacks on Foreign President Trump. DeSantis pinned the recent election losses on the former president, but then any of them go far enough. I mean, besides Chris Christie, I guess. But DeSantis go far enough in blaming the election losses for Republicans on Trump.
No, I don't think so. But what's interesting when I think Democrats need to watch for us, we can see in these elections where Trump is not on the ballot that we have very good turnout coming out, which is good. A lot of that recently has been driven by the issue to protect abortion access, but also other issues. But Trump does pull out these atypical voters when he's on the ballot.
So, when we're looking at 2024 as Democrats, we got to get real serious about making sure our coalition goes to the polls. We know how to do it. We can do it, but we've got to do this because he does pull out a different group of voters that don't come out when he's not on the ballot. And so, some of the voters in Iowa told our Shakuristor that they really do want to see Donald Trump at these debates.
Of course, the Trump campaign has said he's not going to the next debate. They feel he has no reason to. But do you see in any world where it would be beneficial for Donald Trump to participate in these as we had closer into the Iowa caucuses? At this point from a pure political standpoint, no, he skipped the first two debates.
It didn't hurt him. He skipped the third debate. It's unclear that that that will hurt him. I think clearly Ron DeSantis is trying to make Donald Trump pay up a price as he did.
The previous debate he did it. Last night, our voter is going to, is that going to work? Ron DeSantis has been a little bit behind the curve every step of the way here with Donald Trump. Remember, it took months for him to even begin attacking Donald Trump.
While Trump was trashing him on a daily basis, he wouldn't even defend himself because he wanted to operate on his own timeline. I think Trump changed that timeline, and I think DeSantis has been playing catch-up ever since then. Right now, there's one tier, one candidate. Trump is polling above 50 percent nationally, dominating the whole field.
And I would say DeSantis and Nikki Haley are there two candidates if he were to collapse. And before I turn to the breaking news of the last few hours, then I want to get your thoughts. It was last night Tim Scott Swanson. He's such a nice man.
No, no, he is. And I say that not insincerely at all. He is a lovely man, and he has a good message, but it didn't feel like he made it last night. And my colleague, Marc Thiesen, has a column in the post just saying, you know, we need a debate with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
Everybody else is a distraction. They are, they're the undercard at this point. Everyone else is just there to talk. And I agree with that, actually.
I mean, it's nice to have Donald Trump there, but obviously he's too busy being indicted, and maybe too scared to stand up with these younger, more vital people. So I want to turn to you, your beat on Capitol Hill. So I want to get your thoughts on Joe Manchin not running for re-elections, suggesting, you know, making it insinuating that he might run for president. How do you see the shaking out in the next couple of weeks?
Well, firstly, it's an earthquake in the battle for the Senate majority in 2024. Joe Manchin has been defying political gravity in his ruby red state for many years, winning a state that Donald Trump recently won by 39 points in a year where he lost the national popular vote quite substantially. So Joe Manchin is probably the only Democrat in the entire state who could have held West Virginia. That is over now.
It's an easy pick up for Republicans. That means the battle for the Senate starts at 50-50 in 2024. There are seven states that Democrats are defending, two red states, Ohio and Montana, and then five purple states where Democratic incumbents are defending. Republicans just need to flip one of those and hold their own seats in order to gain the majority.
It's going to be a very, very difficult map for Democrats. If there's one silver lining, it's very hard to find one, but if there's one silver lining for Democrats, it's that West Virginia would have been a very difficult hold, even if Manchin did run for Senate, and that's not for his money that they might be able to spend to protect their others. Stephanie Sowell just mentioned a congressional racist. What does this mean for the presidential race?
What do you if Joe Manchin jumps in as a third party candidate? What does that mean for the Biden campaign? Well, I truly don't believe he's going to jump in. He's not the kind of person who's going to lose.
So he's smart enough not to do that. What I will say though is all of this conversation about the labels party and these other third potential third parties that are looking for candidates, we have to be very well aware that that means they're going to probably pull from Joe Biden and it is not a good thing. And so we are all hoping that they don't find any decent people to rely on at no labels party because we think it's literally just going to elect Donald Trump. And I don't think that's really where the majority of the country is.
Right. Well, we're going to have to leave it there. Stephanie, thank you so much Danielle and Sowell. Appreciate you joining the panel.
Instead of come, a Republican Party transform former Republican congressman and member of the House January 6th committee, Adam Kinzinger joins me next. The former president's power and the party's leadership problem in Congress. Don't go on. You're watching the press now.
Stay with us. I think Washington, there's no doubt that it's broken. There's no doubt that there's, you know, it's become personal. It's become vitriolic and acidic.
People need to work together. We need to have these discussions. And I think the American people be pretty impressed with the kind of discussions that frankly Republicans and Democrats have. We get along behind the scenes, you know.
And welcome back. That was then freshman congressman Adam Kinzinger in his first appearance on Meet the Press over a decade ago on the biggest crisis facing Congress back then, negotiations on raising the debt ceiling. But those concerns about vitriol and dysfunction in Washington were before Donald Trump ran for president. And joining me now is former Republican congressman from Illinois, Adam Kinzinger.
It was one of the only two Republicans to serve on the January 6th committee. And he's out with a new book Renegade, Defending Democracy and Liberty in our divided country. And in that book, he mentions his first appearance on Meet the Press. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
And look, first of all, I want to start. What was it like to hear your comments on Meet the Press more than a decade ago? What has changed? Oh, if I can go back and talk to that kid and tell him what the next 12 years is going to be like, look it, you know, a lot's changed.
I mean, back when I was a freshman, you know, you could talk to Democrats, Republicans had our internal disagreements. But you know, everybody still kind of at least gave lip service to governing. And that's changed. It's turned into like, how do we make the other side angry?
How do we demonize the other side? And the most important thing is become fundraising. So it's a real concern. Of course, Donald Trump popping into the scene and becoming a party unmoored to the truth is not anything I had in my, in my prediction list, that's for sure.
Well, Congressman, you know, on that point, you know, last night's the day didn't seem to change the status quo. Mr. Trump remains the front runner. Do any of the candidates on that stage have a path to the nomination?
Well, I mean, it's obviously really tough, particularly when nobody takes on the front runner. I mean, I didn't hear many compelling reasons to not vote for Donald Trump. I mean, I could tell you many, but I didn't hear it from them. I think, look, obviously Nikki Haley is surging.
And there's a lot of eyes on her. Is she able to consolidate as people drop out? But I think it would be kind of simplistic to say that, okay, let's say the Santa's drops out that 18% is going to go to Haley. I think it actually gets split.
So as of now, I would say nothing changes. Of course, it's a year, it's a year where Donald Trump is going to be facing justice. And that could make some changes around the margins. Is there any candidate on that stage that you would support?
I like Chris Christie. I would support Chris Christie because he's telling the truth. And I think, you know, for me, anybody that tells the truth, that's important at this moment. But, you know, he's got obviously a pretty tough road to get there.
But after last night's debate, also after Tuesday's election Republicans, they don't have an answer on the abortion issue. Nikki Haley is calling for a consensus position. But what does that look like? Well, yeah, I mean, they don't know.
It's like the dog that caught the car say, we want to return this to the States. I think at that point, it's like, okay, then just leave it to the States and actually focus now on what I would call like kind of pro adoption policies, maybe federally, you know, I mean, type stuff that can be where the federal Republican party should focus, but they can't help themselves. And they're pushing this 15 week, but then somebody wants six and then they're internally divided. And what you saw up on the stages, you don't want to tick off anybody on the party because you need other votes.
So you just kind of hem and haul around the issue. And yeah, I mean, it's again, it's something that the party may not have a specific position, but each one of these candidates should have a position that they talk about. All right, Congressman, let's turn to your book. You said in the first hearing the Danry six committees mission is to find the truth and ensure accountability.
Donald Trump is the GOP front runner. So did the committee fail to meet its mission? No, actually, I think we succeeded because we were able to achieve a lot more than I frankly ever hoped when we got started. You know, I think the DOJ's investigation is not just largely, I think it's solely because of the work that the January six committee was able to do.
And ultimately, I never thought we'd be able to change the mind of, you know, every Republican. I didn't think that at all. I certainly wish we would have done more. But I think in five or 10 years, there's not going to be a single person.
This is just my prediction in America that will ever admit they were a Trump supporter because I think once this emotion is gone and this election passes, people are going to wake up. They have to wake up to just how bad it had gotten. Well, one of the engineers of the election conspiracy theory and then ardent Trump supporter is now Speaker of the House. So why wasn't there more accountability for those lawmakers who were involved in efforts to overturn the election?
Well, we certainly tried from our end. We tried to even just do basic subpoenas and they refused and we knew that by the time we would take that we were very limited on time. Obviously, and by the time we would take that to the courts, the courts would very much demure and say that, okay, well, you know, this is an internal house matter. And so there's only so much effort you can make.
But now as they subpoena people, people need to be aware that they rejected there's no Mike Johnson wasn't one of them. But he actually, if you look back during the intervening time between the election and January six, almost 90% of the arguments that anybody cites that has to do with Constitution were made by Mike Johnson. As a constitutional lawyer, he twisted these arguments into a constitutional argument, which was complete garbage, by the way. And I thought it was amazing to watch the split screen of Jenna Ellis tearfully admitting she lied to the American people about the election, while also seeing that the barrier to entry to be a legitimate speaker candidate was, you have to continue to lie about the election.
And Congressman, the New York Times called your book, a campaign book in search of a campaign. Now, earlier this year, you ruled out a 2024 run for president. Is that still your position? And would you consider running on a no labels ticket?
No, I have no intention to run it in 2024. I never rule out something like 2028, because, you know, who knows, it's a lot of time. I'm not doing any of this as any desire to ever get into public office again. I just know that itch could easily come back.
I just think people need to hear the truth people. You know, it's we're all cynical about politicians and we should be because they've earned that. But my grand scheme isn't to plan some grand scheme. It's just to get out there and tell people like we've got a correct course right here.
And particularly the GOP, it's very sick. And it's going to take some time to get back on course. No, Kinzinger mentioned unity ticket. No, no, no, definitely not.
Former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, author of the new book, Renegade. Thank you so much for your time. Of course you bet. And that does it for us this hour.
Kristen, welcome. We'll be back tomorrow with more Meet the Press Now. I'm Gabe Gutierrez. NBC's news now coverage continues with Hallie Jess right now.
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Demi opens up about starting in Hollywood young and why she now thinks she may have started too soon. She talks about recovery, her new marriage, and the deeply personal reason behind her new cookbook. The drink is always about the journey to the top. And this was an honest conversation about what that takes.
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