Meet the Press NOW — September 3

If it's Tuesday, campaign crunch time starts now, with just nine weeks to go until election day as both campaigns prepare to hit the trail and face off on the debate stage. Plus, grief, protest, and arrest across Israel as demand for a ceasefire and hostage ill grow louder and the Biden administration considers offering a final take it or leave it deal to Israel and Hamas. And Ukrainian President Zelensky meets the press, telling NBC News he won't back down from his military operation inside Russia as Russia responds with one of the deadliest missile strikes since the war began. Welcome to Meet the Press Now.

I'm Yani Shossendor in Washington. There are just nine weeks to go until election day. And the first presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump is in just one week. But that on the horizon, both candidates are kicking off the final stretch of the campaign with very different strategies.

Former President Trump was off the campaign trail over Labor Day weekend, and his opponent hit key battlegrounds using the holiday to amplify her economic message. Vice President Harris appealed to union workers in Pennsylvania while campaigning alongside President Biden for the first time since she became the nominee. At the event, President Biden he prays on Harris an emotional tribute to his potential successor. It really is all about the dignity of work.

Then there's only if you care about the dignity of work, there's only one person you have a rational choice with this time. That's Kamala Harris. And she has a backbone like a ramrod. She has a moral compass of a saint.

This woman knows what she's doing. I promise you, if you elect Kamala Harris as President will be the best assistant you will have ever made. The latest polls show Democrats continuing to make gains since Biden left the ticket. A new poll of likely voters from USA Today and Suffolk University has hairs closing the gap with Trump on issues where Democrats have struggled.

When the economy, Trump now leads by six points. That's down from a 14-point lead against President Biden among registered voters back in June. On immigration, Harris has narrowed the gap from 13 points to three points on an issue that Republicans feel is one of their strongest. This comes as the Harris campaign is hitting the airwaves with a new ad focused on the economy, highlighting the vice president's pledge to address price gouging.

We all know costs are too high. But while corporations are gouging families, Trump is focused on giving them tax cuts. But Kamala Harris is focused on you. Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.

She'll make groceries more affordable by cracking down on price gouging. And she'll cut housing costs by taking on corporate speculators. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is leaning into one of its strongest issues, abortion. Today, Harris surrogates kicked off a quote, reproductive freedom tour in former President Trump's home state of Florida.

It's one of 10 states where abortion acts as it's on the ballot this November. As both campaigns repair for a debate in the final sprint to November, let's take a look at the stay of the race from NBC News and Steve Kornacke at the big board. All right, Yamiche, a couple of ways to look at this race as we come out of the Labor Day holiday nationally. This is the average of the major recent national polls.

You see Kamala Harris with a three point advantage over Donald Trump. A couple of ways you could look at this. If you're a Democrat, you're obviously happy that Harris is ahead of Trump. You're also happy that this is an improvement from where the race was when Joe Biden was the Democrat candidate.

He pretty much been trailing Donald Trump all year in the poll. So a reversal of that with Harris as the Democratic candidate. But if you're a Republican, you're not necessarily despairing when you look at these numbers. In fact, you could probably take some solace in them because Donald Trump is no stranger to being in this position on Labor Day.

In fact, this position being down three is better for him than it was the last two times he ran. In 2016, he was down on average by five points to Hillary Clinton at this point. And of course, he came back to win that election. And in 2020, he trailed Joe Biden by high single digits at this point.

Trump didn't win in 2020. But of course, he made it very, very close in the electoral college. And that's one of the keys here. A question for the fall in election night itself is, does Trump still have that advantage just because of the geographic distribution of the support in the electoral college where he could afford potentially to lose the popular vote by two, three, four points, something like that, and still potentially stitched together 270 electoral votes.

So let's take a look at the road to 270. We're going to be using this one a lot between now and election day seven states in gray here. These are the core battleground states. Six of them were blue states in 2020.

They went for Joe Biden. One of them was a red state in 2020. That's North Carolina. That's the only state where Democrats in this battleground are playing offense.

And the other states the Democrats are trying to hold on to what they already carried in 2016. Now, in terms of the polling at the state level, it's all pretty close right now. Democrats, Kamala Harris seem to be doing a tick better in the three, let's call them great lakes, in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Now, that's probably the most direct path for Harris if she's going to get to 270.

Let's just play it out. If she were to hold those three states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, there you go. You see it. She's at exactly 270 electoral votes.

This would also require her, by the way, to hang on to that one congressional district around Omaha, Nebraska. They give out the electoral votes by district there. Biden had carried that in 2020. It's a district very suburban.

It's a lot of demographics that have been favoring Democrats. They would need to hold on to that too. But that would be 270 electoral votes. Now, where it gets dicey for Harris is, well, I say the polling's been a tick better for her in the state and it was a tick better for Biden when he was the Democratic candidate too.

These are also state Wisconsin, especially where we saw in Michigan too, where we saw some of the biggest polling misses in 2020 and even back in 2016, a lot of theories why. But these states are demographically similar and they have large blue collar, white populations. And the question there is, are pollsters able to reach necessarily all of the sort of a representative sample of the Trump supporters from that demographic in those states? It's been an issue before.

If it's an issue again, then it gets tricky for Harris, especially if she were to lose. Let's see this one here. Let's see this one here. Pennsylvania.

If Harris were to lose Pennsylvania, that's the biggest of the swing states. It has 19 electoral votes to compensate for losing Pennsylvania. Even if she's getting Michigan, Wisconsin, she's going to have to win two of these at two of these states from the Sun Belt that get over the 19 that she loses by not having Pennsylvania. And if Trump gets Pennsylvania, his simplest path would just look like this.

Hang on to North Carolina, which he already won as we said in 2020. It was close, but he won it in 2020. And then go to Georgia. The margin in Georgia in 2020 was just about 12,000 votes, just under 12,000 votes.

The polling for Trump, when you look at all these different battleground states, it's tended to be the best for him or close to the best for him in Georgia, extremely close. But if Trump were to do that Pennsylvania, hold North Carolina, get Georgia and there, you see it, he'd be at exactly 270 electoral votes. Those are probably the most efficient paths for each candidate to get to 270. But you can see there's all sorts of other combinations that are possible.

And the good news is we got more than 60 days to go through all those possibilities. So we are just getting started. And thank you so much to Steve Kornacke for breaking all that down. Let's now bring in more of our NBC News colleagues.

There's a part is in Florida following the hair campaign's reproductive freedom bus tour. Kelly O'Donna has more on the campaign strategy from the White House and Garrett Hake is following the Trump campaign and he's here with me on set. So thanks all of you for being here. So Marissa, I want to start with you, Florida is no longer a swing state when it comes to the presidential election.

So why is the hair campaign launching a bus tour in that state right now? And what have you heard from folks on the ground? Hey, Amish, well, I'll start by saying it may look like I'm standing outside of just a regular building. But this is where the event was earlier today, that giant bus that we've been seeing video of with reproductive freedom written in the largest of letters was parked right outside of this building earlier today.

And it is already on its way to the next leg of the tour, which is in Jacksonville, Florida. So it is not coincidence that they chose Florida for the first two stops of this, specifically here in Palm Beach County. Amish, we're only 10 miles away from Marlago. Of course, that is the former president from home.

And this was something that was mentioned several times. And there's a couple of reasons for that. But one of them being, we have amendment four on the ballot. You mentioned roughly a dozen states that either already have abortion rights on the ballot or are still considering that.

And so we had a 15 week abortion ban that was overturned to the current six week abortion ban, but the Florida state Supreme Court simultaneously decided in May that amendment four would be on the ballot. So what that means is if 60% of Florida voters decide to pass this, then abortion rights would be protected until quote viability, which is roughly 24 weeks here. So one of the reasons why they stressed coming to Florida for those first two stops is to really do a full court press on amendment four, which of course we know is a big part of the campaign here for 2024. But the other part here that I thought was interesting when you look at the Harris Wall's campaign key battleground states, Florida's not among the seven that they're really targeting here, but they still chose to be here partially to show that they are confident that Florida is still in play for Democrats.

This is something that I asked Senator Amy Klobuchar about earlier today. I want to take you to a little bit about what we heard. You see Democrats, Republicans, independents galvanized by this, just as they were in Kansas, in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in Alaska, it really brings people together across party lines. So this is really the great place to begin this bus tour.

You have something like an amendment measure like this on the ballot, and that really turns people out to vote because they believe, you know, this is my future, particularly women who think I'm just not going to stand for this anymore. And I will add this to Miesh. The Florida comms director for the Harris campaign tells me that Florida saw the quote largest surge of volunteers signing up after Harris became the nominee, announced that she was going to be throwing her hat in the ring for November. And so this was, I'm told, a big part of the reason why they chose Florida to kick off the campaign here, even though we have seen that Democratic erosion in previous election cycles, both presidential and midterm.

Miesh. Great. Well, that's of course, great reporting, Marissa. Kelly, as we heard just now from Marissa, the campaign is currently leaning into one of their strengths of the course.

It's talking about abortion and reproductive freedom. How did yesterday's joint event in Pittsburgh play into the campaign's overall strategy when it comes to the economy? Well, certainly focusing on labor and on working Americans, they want to really stress that they believe that Kamala Harris has a plan to lower costs. And she's talked about that through things about price gouging, which gets some pushback and reaction over where that really, how effective a policy that would be.

But they want to emphasize that she is very aware that costs for Americans are among the top priorities, if not at the very top. So being with President Biden on the trail, which we saw in Pittsburgh and we'll see again in some key places, is one of the ways where they want to show that the vice president is able to focus on this issue and to try to connect. She talks about her own middle class background, talks about the kinds of jobs that she has to relate. And so they recognize that speaking the language of families who worry about grocery bills, who worry about making their budgets stretch, that that is a way to connect.

And so she is going to try to focus on that wherever possible. Also, as Marissa was saying, just dealing with the issue of reproductive freedom as another core principle of her campaign, but the economy has long been a driving force for voters. Yamiche. And while you're talking about sort of the way that they're talking to people and trying to connect with voters, in both Pittsburgh and Detroit, we heard Vice President Harris call herself the quote underdog.

It's a message that we've heard from the campaign overall. At the same time, the campaign is counting its advantages in momentum and fundraising and infrastructure. Why do they feel like that message of calling themselves underdog as a winning messenger? Well, I think they might keep the focus on activating those voters who believe that her candidacy either sparks something new with them, or issues like reproductive freedom or the economy or the differences between the two campaigns, Trump and Harris, can get people out to vote.

And they are concerned that in states where there will be a narrow margin, and they expect that in some key battleground states, those who stay home could be decisive. And so they want to portray as much as possible, that even though they have strong showing, strong support, strong fundraising, that it will take grinding out the work week by week in the remaining nine weeks to guarantee that they can do as much as possible to drive up their voters and to encourage those who have been less interested in the election, perhaps had been Trump voters at some point, or Nikki Haley voters, to entice them to come on board for Harris and Wall. So underdog is something they believe puts her in a good position to try to connect to those voters who want to feel like they're being asked to participate. Yeah, and Kelly, as you said, the remaining nine weeks, my head almost spun because I thought, oh my gosh, it really is nine weeks.

But of course, in that nine weeks, we're going to see the first debate between Trump and Harris. It will take place as we said a week from now. So there's been some back and forth on the rules of the debate. Where do things stand right now?

Well, as far as the debate she is preparing and the expectations are that the rules will be a lot like they were for the CNN debate, June 27th, which presumed to be really pivotal in changing the dynamics of this race and effectively forcing President Biden to consider his own future. So that includes things like they can't sit, they can't have notes, expecting the microphones to be muted when the other person is not speaking. So you would not have the free for all that we've seen in past kinds of debates. And certainly for Kamala Harris, a different candidate than Joe Biden, she has been advocating publicly for wanting the microphones on the whole time in order to allow for those unpredictable moments.

At this point, we don't have an indication that it will it will go her way on that. But meeting with the and meeting for the first time in person with Donald Trump will certainly be notable in and of itself. It would certainly be notable. Thank you so much, Hill Donald, from the White House.

And Garrett, thanks for coming here on set with me. Of course, Labor Day is as time where you see sometimes, oftentimes, campaigns ramp up. But for President Trump, he's been off the campaign trail for the last couple of days. Is there a sense of urgency you're picking up there from your sources?

Not that I can tell. I mean, it's really striking. The pools close, the weather is getting a little bit crisp. You expect to be out on the trail, but we're not really seeing it from the Trump campaign.

The sense I get is that they are basically treading water until this debate. I mean, I keep being told by Trump sources. They're going to increase the pace. He's going to be out on the trail more.

We're going to see a more aggressive campaign. We haven't seen that from Trump. We didn't see JD Vance or Trump really at all this weekend. And we're not seeing it from surrogates.

There's not been a functional equivalent of that bus tour that Marissa Parr was just talking about. It's possible that the campaign wants to try to use the debate as kind of a pivot point around which to regain focus. They've said for a long time, they thought Kamala Harris would have a honeymoon in the media and in the polling. But I've seen vanishingly little attempts from them to stop it up until now.

Yeah. And as you bring up the debate, how is former President Trump sort of preparing the sources of what he said? He's not really doing traditional debate, probably even saying that for years. But what are you picking up?

Look, there is no Donald Trump at the podium. There's nobody dressed as Kamala Harris doing the traditional back and forth like we typically would see when we think about debate prep. What Donald Trump does do, and I've experienced this with a certain degree, he's always on the phone with people. He's always bouncing ideas off people.

He's sort of like field testing and tack lines with Mar-Lago members, with staff members. With Tulsi Gabbard, who his campaign has brought on, who famously got under Kamala Harris's skin a little bit when they were on the Democratic debate stage four years ago, Gabbard, I'm told by a source, has been particularly helpful with the former President in taking his instinct to attack and then figuring out how to pivot, how to go beyond that. Don't just hit her with the nickname, but use that and then talk about what your administration did. So they're trying to polish his skills, but I will say Trump, as we know, has a very high opinion of his own ability as a debater.

And, you know, some of it, after he sort of survived and Joe Biden got knocked out of the race after their last debate, he's not particularly interested in advice. He's interested in how to do what he thinks he does well better, if that makes any sense. Yeah, and Donald Trump having a particularly high opinion of himself is striking but not surprising in some ways. But I wonder, do you think that he still thinks he's winning this race, especially after President Biden has dropped out?

It's not to say. He still says he's winning. I mean, he was on another, it was on a podcast today that I was listening to, and when she was asked about, you know, what do you do if it's a close win or a close race and it's the results are contested, he's not going to be close. We're going to win him a blowout.

That's when he continues to say publicly, but his actions don't suggest that. He seems more unnerved on his social media. He seems a little bit more disorganized on the stump. And we're hearing a little bit more about some degree of friction within the campaign about the right courses to take.

And we see him publicly kind of pushing back against his advisors, which is a thing that he doesn't do when he's winning. So that's a long way of saying that the public, the public perception certainly with Donald Trump wants us all to believe is that he's comfortably ahead. But signs are, and we know that he's an avid poll reader, poll consumer, that he's at least aware of the data pointing the other direction. Whether he believes or not, I really couldn't say.

Well, I mean, this is the best window with Donald Trump's mind that we've gotten on today. So thank you so much. And coming up, we'll have more on how this presidential race has changed, especially when it comes to some key groups of voters where Harris is making dramatic gains, reverse another day of anger, protest, and anger and protest in Israel and new threats from Hamas that it would send hostages back and quote, coffins. If Israel's military campaign continues in Gaza, you're watching me the press now.

Welcome back for a third straight night. Protesters took to the streets in Israel. This was the scene earlier in Tel Aviv with thousands of Israelis demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire deal. The protests come just three days after the IDF recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, including Israeli-American Hirsch Goldberg Poland.

Meanwhile, the White House is also ramping up pressure on Israel with President Biden publicly criticizing Netanyahu. And today, National Security spokesman John Kirby renewed the administration's sense of urgency. He told reporters, quote, clearly what happened over the weekend underscores how important it is to get this done as quickly as possible. NBC News International correspondent, Raf Sanchez, has more from inside a protest in Tel Aviv.

Hey, though, this is the third consecutive night of large-scale protests on the streets of Tel Aviv. These demonstrators demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make a deal to bring the remaining hostages home. This is part of a wave of public anger sparked by the murder of those six young hostages in Gaza at the end of last week. But many of these people say they blame not just Hamas, but also the Israeli government for failing to bring those hostages home.

I want to give you just a sense of geography here. We gathered outside of Israel's defense ministry, and we're standing on what is normally one of the busiest highways in Tel Aviv. Instead, it is now just a sea of flags and protesters. And these people are absolutely determined.

You can see they're holding on flights now. Speaking right now is the father of one of the young Israeli soldiers who is being held in Gaza is among the 101 hostages still there. And the question is, will these protests force Netanyahu to change course? That's it.

And our thanks to Raf for that reporting. And joining me now is Aaron David Miller, a former senior advisor at the State Department for Arab-Israeli negotiations. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. So thank you so much for being here.

So do you think the Biden administration should present a take it or leave it ceasefire deal at this point? You know, I've been involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations, particularly Israeli Palestinian negotiations for the better part of two decades. Take it or leave it propositions. When it comes to core issues, when two parties are involved in existential and near existential struggle, it's not a wise decision.

Let us own the administration, present it, take it and leave it. At best, you're going to get a yes but that's at best from both of us. Yakuza and Lauren, these really, and then what does the administration do? They revert to one more last chance essentially.

So no, I don't think it's wise that they cast this as take it or leave it because the reality is it'll be legal. And then, and then where's the Biden administration will be 60 plus days in the run up to one of the most consequential elections in modern American history where the issue of Gaza still resonates unlike any foreign policy issue that I've experienced since Vietnam in domestic politics. And you put that way really underscore sort of this moment. I want to ask you though, yesterday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that Israel must remain in control of the Philadelphia corridor, which is essentially the border between Egypt and Gaza here.

I mean, you see it there on your screens for those folks who aren't familiar with that corridor. Is that the main sticking point you think in getting this deal done? I mean, I think there are so many issues. The Prime Minister, who's the organically principle of his world is to maintain himself in power, could come up with any number of deal breakers or near deal breakers in order for the Philadelphia corridor.

Look, that's a legitimate issue. The problem is, or the issue is, that a security establishment is assured of that there are other ways of dealing with this issue. And you can always return to it. Once in essence, you get the hostages out.

It is the hostages that are diminishing resource. Time is a cruel and harsh enemy for them and sadly for Sinwar, the principal Palestinian decision-maker who's in Wisconsin in a tunnel somewhere, meters below ground, probably surrounded by hostages for his own personal security. Time is not an adversary. Time is an ally.

And what is clear, if you and I were negotiating with me, the truth is, we make a deal with one another, one of the incentives in reaching a deal out with a distant sentence of not including one. There's just not enough urgency here. The only party that's in a hurry, sadly, understandably, is the Biden administration, the hostage families, obviously the hostages themselves. And I think for the bulk of the Palestinian population in Gaza, which over the last 11 months has been treated to the prosecution of Israel's war, exponential rise of Palestinian deaths, humanitarian catastrophe, disease, apolar outbreak.

I mean, it never ceases to end. They are the ones who are in a hurry, not leaders. When you talk about the sort of urgency of time and who is sort of having me forced into urgent positions and who aren't, I wonder when you think about the potential alternatives to Israel maintaining a military presence, they are on that corridor between Egypt and Gaza. Are there alternatives to that?

I think there are. They're not perfect. And let's be clear. Gaza has no Singapore like ending, where in fact, once the shooting stops, Gaza has become the new Singapore on the Mediterranean.

But look, until 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority, the EU, in combination with the Palestinian Authority and the Egyptians, with Israeli monitoring, provided a pretty effective constraint against contraband smuggling, much of the contraband that has come into Hamas's hands over the last, what is it, 17 years, has come through open trade through the Rafaq autocracy, not in the tunnels, necessarily, and even through Israel. So again, I think there are fixes to the Philadelphia corridor. It is an important issue. It is not the most urgent issue.

The most urgent issue is the redemption of the hostages, the ones who remain alive, and the ones who sadly and cruelly have either been killed on October 7. Their bodies brought back to Gaza for Hamas to trade. They died in captivity or from Israeli friendly fire. Yeah, I also want to ask you, as we talk about this, President Biden, about President Biden, he said Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to try and secure a ceasefire deal.

Netanyahu says the responsibility really now lies with Hamas. What's the reality here? Do you agree with what we're hearing from President Biden? Well, I agree that the president, who's dealt with Netanyahu for decades, basically is frustrated, angry, and probably persuaded that Benjamin Netanyahu is sort of a con man.

At the same time, it is not one-hand clamping. If this were a conflict between Egypt and Israel, the United States would have, as has had in the past, much more leverage, much more opportunity, margin pressure of the Israelis, but it is not a conflict between Israel and Egypt. It's a conflict between Israel, the most right-wing government in Israel's history, admittedly, and an organization that's the embodiment of an idea, which is the replacement of the state of Israel by an Islamic state. It took hostages on October 7 and engaged in widespread sexual predation and mutilation.

It just executed six hostages, including one American. So given that, it's really hard to imagine this administration or any administration. I work for Republicans and Democrats, pressing the Israelis and identifying them as the source of the problem. They are not only source.

It's an equal opportunity employer. Neither Sinwar or Netanyahu, right now, sees any kind of urgency in this deal. Well, definitely, it's something to think about. And the word urgent really being a big part of this.

So thank you so much, Aaron, David Miller for your expertise. Thanks for having me. And up next, I'll talk to a family member of an American hostage freed from Gaza after she met with a White House National Security Advisor about efforts to free the remaining hostages. You're watching me at the press now.

Welcome back. As we mentioned, the Biden administration continues to act with urgency to try to get Israel and Hamas to agree on a ceasefire and hostage deal after six hostages were murdered by Hamas and Gaza, including American Hirsch Goldberg, Poland. And Hamas now says its militants are operating under new instructions on how guards should handle hostages. If Israeli forces approach their locations, that is further raising concerns about the safety of the 101 hostages still in Gaza.

Joining me now is Liz Hirsch, Ms. Fali. She is the great aunt of released American hostage, Abigail Mori Donne. She was also part of that meeting between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and American hostage families earlier this week.

Thank you so much for being here. So it's been almost 10 months since Abigail was freed and returned home. How was she doing? First, thank you for having me.

And you know, Abigail's return is a miracle. The fact that she came back to our family. I don't say she came back home because she didn't come to our home as you see right now. Her parents and that photo, they were murdered.

So she doesn't have a mother and father. They were murdered on October 7th by Hamas terrorists in front of Abigail and her sister and her brother. So she can't go back to her house because where they lived was destroyed by Hamas terrorists. So she is safe.

She is with family. She is loved. And she is being taken care of. But when we think about like what a child at three years old should experience that her brother and sister at six and nine, it's just devastating.

And we are doing everything that they'll have a beautiful life. But what they experienced on that day and what is part of them for the rest of their lives is just beyond and tragic. Certainly beyond tragic. Thank you for telling us about her.

And I understand the idea of her not being able to return home. But it's beautiful to hear that she's being taken care of and loved by your family. So thank you for sharing that. I don't want to ask you if you can take us inside that meeting with Jake Sullivan.

Did you feel like you got the answers you needed from the Biden administration about the state of the ceasefire talks and especially how are the families who still have relevance being held in Gaza? How are they doing it? And how do they feel about that meeting? Especially after this recent murder of six more hostages.

Well, first of all, I'll answer the second part of your question. I know what it felt like to have a relative of 51 days of three year old who turned four in captivity as a hostage. I don't know what it feels like to be 11 months. These parents, these children, they are out there every day, the American families and all the families.

But I spend most of my time with the American families. I don't know how they find the strength. They get up each morning and they figure out what they can do and how much more they can do. And I know they go to bed at night and basically try to get a little bit of sleep but thinking what more could I have done?

And as we saw after 11 months, Rachel and John, their son, Hersh, was executed. He was murdered by Hamas. And you think about the grace and the beauty in which they spoke yesterday at his funeral. And that yesterday was six young people, Hersh is an American, but they were six young people, two beautiful young women, four beautiful young men, and they were murdered by Hamas after being held 11 months.

And you think about a family, what they put up with, what they did, how they fought for their child. And they were killed. They were murdered. So when you say, how are they holding up?

I don't know how they're holding up. These are some of the most brave people I have ever seen. They are the most brave people I've ever seen in my life. And you know, I know that we give each other strength.

And we say on October 7, we all became a family. And even though Abigail was released, her parents were murdered. So there is something between all of us that are these shared stories that are all tragic. The second question, the first part of your question is, you know, the American families have had as good of transparency as you can have with the US government.

From President Biden, Vice President Harris, we've had meetings with them throughout the last 11 months. But we've also had consistent meetings with Jay Sullivan for the last nine, 10 months. And we've had 15 meetings. Many of them have been in person.

And the ones when we haven't been able to be together have been virtually done. And the one thing that I will say is that we understand there is a deal. There is a deal that has been since May 31 when President Biden announced a deal. It is still that same framework.

And it came from the Prime Minister Netanyahu had presented as a deal. It had already been and has been approved in this form, in a general form by Hamas. So what we've seen since May 31 until now, is this dance between these two. And I don't mean to call it a dance in a nice way.

But we're one agrees and the other doesn't. One has something else and the other refuses it. And here we are now at 11 months. And I know that the Biden administration is tirelessly working to rehome return the American hostages, but all of the hostages.

They are working as hard as they can to stop the fighting because we know that releasing the hostages and stopping the fighting also helps the people that are living in Gaza who have been who are in a terrible situation. And so when you ask like how the meeting went, and what we learned, what we learned is that there is steal a deal. And Americans like Secretary of State Blinken and Brett McGurk, they are in the direction of earns. They're not in the region today, but they have been in and out of the region, trying as hard as they can to make a deal.

And look, where we are, and you see it on the news, the real impediment on the side that we have pressure over is Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government. Wow. I mean, I'll just add one more thing. President Biden invited the American hostage families and Prime Minister Netanyahu when he came to address the Congress, he invited us to join a meeting.

And in that meeting, again, what we discussed was things that we don't go outside and speak about. But at this moment, I will say that I did when it's my turn to speak, look at these two gentlemen and said, what can you commit to us? These people are suffering. The Israelis are suffering.

And I'll just add as a side note, in order for our family to move forward, we need Abigail to come home back to us so that we could begin the healing process and move forward. And for her and the Israeli families that haven't received their loved ones back and don't have them and the nation is full and you see it on the streets, there is no way to move forward until these loved ones come home and until the country of Israel has their people home. And I go back to this meeting because it's important. And I said, what can you commit to us?

Not again, specifics of a deal, but a commitment from two leaders. And the first thing that President Biden said, and he has been doing this, which was he said, I commit to doing everything I can for the rapid release of these hostages. And then I looked at the Prime Minister and I said, and what is your commitment? And he looked at the President and he said the same as his.

And in that room, we all watched. And there has been only one person who has been committed since that meeting that took place at the end of July to releasing the hostages. And that is President Biden. We have not seen that commitment from Prime Minister Netanyahu.

We have seen him talk. We have heard him speak. But we have not seen any action to this date that will bring home our loved ones. Well, thank you so much, Liz Hirsch.

And I have Tyler for taking the time to talk with us about that meeting and also, of course, about your family and little Abigail. So thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me. And after the break, President Zelensky speaks to NBC News about the latest Russian assault on Central Ukraine and his military is capturing of Russian territory.

You're marching me to the press now. Welcome back Ukraine is reeling after a Russian strike on a military training facility killed at least 51 people and injured more than 200 others, according to officials in Ukraine. It appears to be one of the deadliest strikes on Ukraine since the start of the war more than two and a half years ago. The country's interior minister said rescue workers have contained the fire and are now working to clear the rubble.

This comes as President Zelensky sat down with NBC News's Richard Ingle in Ukraine for a wide-ranging interview on the war, including that deadly strike. A real major attack in the city of Pultava today. What can you tell us about what happened? That's another tragedy in Ukraine.

The Russians struck. The missile flew some three minutes and people didn't have time to go to shelter. And now many of them were wounded or killed just at the time of going to the shelter. NBC News's chief foreign correspondent, Richard Ingle joins me now.

So Richard, what more did President Zelensky tell you? And did he provide any new details about Ukraine's strategy in Kursk? That I think was perhaps the most interesting part of this interview. Of course, in reacting to the explosions in Pultava, it was timely.

It happened just as we were sitting down from the interview word of this attack. It broke and came with release by authorities there. But most of the one-hour sit-down was focused on Ukraine's strategy. Because just a few weeks ago, Ukrainian forces crossed the border and in this surprise move took a piece of Russia in the Kursk Oblast and took about 500 square miles of Russian territory, flipping the script on Russia.

Instead of Ukrainian forces fighting for this city, where I am right now, fighting for Kyiv, fighting for other parts of Ukrainian Petile out in the east, now it's been Russian forces digging trenches, sending in reinforcements, calling up conscripts. And Ukrainians here have been very pleased that they gave Vladimir Putin a bit of the medicine that they've been forced to swallow over the last two and a half years. But the question is, what do you do now? And that's one of the first things that I asked President Zelensky.

What's next? Now you've captured this territory in Russia. So the big question is, what do you plan to do with it? We don't need the Russian territory.

Our operation is aimed to restore our territorial integrity. We capture Russian troops to replace them with the Ukrainian. We tell them, you know, we need our military soldiers in exchange with the Russian one. The same attitude is to the territory.

We don't need the alliance. Is the plan to take more territory? I will not tell you. Sorry, I can't speak about it.

It's like the beginning of our the Skorsk operation. And with all respect, I can't speak about it. I think that the success is very close to surprise. But conceptually, you have this territory now.

You say you don't want to keep it long. Conceptually, we will hold it. Conceptually, we will hold it. And the question is, can Ukraine hold it and for how long?

Because this country does have limited resources, as a limited manpower, is dependent on the United States primarily for financial support, military support for weapons. And this is a different kind of operation. Occupying land in a hostile country with a potentially hostile population is very different than defending your own borders from an outside attack with almost limitless domestic support and limitless goodwill. So it will be, I think, an open question.

How long Ukraine will be able to hold this territory and keep up its defenses in the east and try and defend against attacks like the one Russia launched today in Boltava, which, by the way, is just over the border from the curse Obla. So it could very well have been Putin's reprisal or part of Putin's reprisal carrying out this attack just opposite from the region that Ukraine not only occupies, but according to the president, will occupy for an indefinite period of time. Yeah. Well, Stella reporting as always, Richard, congratulations on doing a timely interview.

Thank you so much. And still to come, we're 63 days out from the election and anything can still happen. The stakes and what to watch for as we enter the final stretch. The panel's next.

You're watching the press now. Welcome back. Joining me now on set is my NBC News colleague and senior national political reporter, Sahil Kapoor, also with me, Megan Hayes, Democratic strategist and former special assistant to president Biden and Stephen Hayes, no relation to different spelling editor and CEO of the dispatch and NBC News contributor. So thanks you all for being here.

So Sahil, it's the day after Labor Day. Voters will begin voting this month. They're already actually about getting mailed out this week. You've been reporting that this final stretch is going to be a dogfight.

That's what your sources are telling you. What's the big picture state of the race right now? It's a dead even race. It's a dogfight.

It's a toss up. Both parties agree. It's a wafer thin margin between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. This was a race that was rapidly falling away from president Biden even before that debate.

He has been behind Donald Trump all year long. And after that debate, it proved to be a politically fatal wound. It was not surmountable. I think what happened there.

And Kamala Harris has taken that deficit. She's pulled it into a dead even race in the battleground states. It's a margin of error. And not only the Rust Belt states would seem to be Joe Biden's only path.

He was kind of sort of within striking distance there in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. She's opened up the Sun Belt path as well, which was rapidly fading away for Joe Biden. So seven states, it's dead even in all of them. They could all go one way.

They could all go the other way. They could split. It's a good way to really level set things because even though there's so much enthusiasm on the Harris side, they do keep calling themselves the underdogs. And I want to read to you part of Harris campaign memo that was released earlier this week.

And instead, in part, make no mistake, we head into this final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs. Donald Trump has motivated as a motivated base of support with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020. So she's calling herself the underdogs. The campaign is calling themselves the underdogs.

I wonder, do you think they really see themselves that way? Or is this messaging given what we just heard from style? No, I think they see themselves that way. They're out there there in Florida doing a 50 stop bus tour with all their surrogates.

They were just in Georgia. They're hitting the trail every day. There's many more announcements of Governor Wells and the vice president being out on the campaign trail. I think that they are taking this extremely seriously and they want to get out there and talk to voters at every turn.

So I do think that they see themselves as the underdog. I mean, I've worked with Jen. I've worked with this team before. And they would not be saying things like this if they were not genuinely serious about taking this and talking to every single voter seriously.

But there's obviously the enthusiasm. There's the money. There's so much money. There's even getting money to down the races, right?

There's like an excess of cash. So talk about how is this sort of the glass half full, the glass half empty is just sort of looking at polling, but they're reading what their resources the way they are. I think that they got an incredible bump when the vice president took to the top of the ticket with organizing and with raising money, which is incredibly helpful now that they are able to get it down. So that's a really great problem to have to be able to spread the wealth around to people in this way.

But I do think that they will use every dollar on ads on air on organizing when the vice president took over, they had over a thousand people in battleground states on the ground doing the work and that money will just enhance that operation and boots on the ground. JOD firmly believes in getting boots on the ground, people knocking on doors and organizing component of this. So they will use that money wisely in that way. Yeah.

And Stephen, I mean, there are Republicans who just wait for the honeymoon period to over wait for it to be over. It's been six weeks. Do you think that there's really a honeymoon that's ending or do you think that this is just sort of the way the race is going to be? No, I think she's had a very successful month.

This is probably one of the better months that you've seen from any presidential candidate of any time in recent memory. I'm not sure it's going to come to an end. I think she has friends and fans in the media to a certain extent. She's getting away with not having to sit down for interviews in a way that I don't think Republicans would be able to.

But more broadly than that, she's done a very effective job of avoiding taking the kinds of positions that she took in 2019. If you look at what she did in 2019, she was running a Democratic primary appealing to progressives. If you look at what she's doing now, she's doing everything she can to blur those views certainly. To some extent, I would say that the views that she advocated during the Biden administration, but if you look at just like a couple of the main issues, you've got Kamala Harris now, in effect, running ads suggesting that she would be the one who's really tough on the border.

I was just in Wisconsin for several days. You can't watch television without seeing those ads. And you've got Donald Trump arguing that he is the protector of reproductive rights for women. So you're seeing this blending of messages and sort of a blurring of these policy distinctions.

So fascinating way you put it that way. Saha, I'm going to put up some numbers for you from this USA Today, Southwick University poll. You have black voters. They were in June plus 47% for President Biden.

Now they're plus 64% in August for Vice President Harris. But then when you look at Hispanic voters plus 2% in June for Trump now plus 16% for Harris voters 18 to 34 years old plus 11 for Trump plus 13 for Harris. That last one hurts a little bit because they cut off at 34. We thought we were young voters, but we're not appearing.

So I wonder though, when you think about this, what do you make of the impact of these? Is this? Do you think that she's gained this round just because she's not Joe Biden or is it because she's actually done something to sort of change people's minds? Well, it's a mix of both.

She definitely gained some ground by not being Joe Biden. It's very clear voters were clamoring for a choice that wasn't Joe Biden or Donald Trump. But if you think stand out to me in this poll, the first is her margin over Trump was about four and a half points, almost identical to the margin that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by in 2020. Among white voters, she's only down by four points.

If she can hold that, that would be spectacular. Joe Biden lost white voter by double digits and still went. And among black voters, she's at 76%. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both times were over 90%.

She has a lot of room to improve with black voters. And I think her target should be at least 90% because a number of Democratic strategists I've talked to don't think her numbers with white voters, at least the ones that are showing up will hold. If the black voter number at 76%, again, much better than Joe Biden did, but if that holds, that's going to make a lot of Democrats nervous. And among Latinos, she's still not doing as well as Joe Biden did, who didn't do as well as Hillary Clinton did.

So is there a real movement among Latinos to white Republicans? Or is it just a moment? I think that's still a question that she's going to have to try to answer. Yeah.

So even what do you make of these numbers as you see them? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty interesting. It's very clear, I think, to his point, the fact that she's not Joe Biden is done, world's of good for her. There was a poll, and I wish I could remember which poll it was over the weekend that found that 2% of Democrats say that they wished that Joe Biden were still looking at it.

Democrats are very happy about this change. They're very energized about this change. And you've seen it, I think, in the organizing and in the response for polling. I think that we've heard what the Trump campaign wants to do is dirty her up.

It's going to be super aggressive. It's going to be super ugly. I think that's what we're looking at over the next two months. We're having Nikki Haley who said the first party to retire their annual candidate will win.

Well, they'll have to talk about that. Yeah. Well, I mean, in the few seconds we have left here, she's, Vice President Harris is trying to run up the change agent, but she is, of course, the incumbent vice president. How's she going to pull that off?

I think she's going to run on the policies and she's going to expand some of these policies that will help expand the middle class and give some early for the economy on some cost issues and hopefully continue to bring down inflation. But I think that also, her just being a younger voice is bringing a lot of change. And I think it's giving people hope and people talk about the vibes. When all these things are so close and people are so, they're mutting up the waters on the issues, that's where the vibes and how people feel and the hope, that's where she's really going to benefit in moving into the election.

Yeah. When you think about the vibes, I mean, I'm going to be in New Hampshire tomorrow. There's all this sort of energy out of her campaign rallies. But of course, the big question is, how is she going to turn that into votes?

So we'll have to see. Thank you so much to Sahel to Megan and Steven. Thank you all for coming here. And of course, we'll be back with more Meet the Press now.

The news continues with Hallie Jackson right now. Hey, everyone. I'm Dylan Dryer, co-host of the Third Hour of State and Mom to Three Wild Boys. I've learned a lot in my years as a parent, mostly that I don't have it all figured out yet.

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