I'm very angry at her that she'd weaponize the justice system against me and other people. Very angry at her. I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible President. Whether the personal attacks are good, bad, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a sound bite. And she called JD and I weird. She's weird in her policy. Some people say, Oh, why don't you be nice? But they're not nice to me. They want to put me in prison. Well, of course, that's a baseless claim there. It was quite a sharp contrast more than 200 miles away where we saw President Biden and Vice President Harris today. Their first joint event since Biden ended his campaign, though there was some name calling there. Today, we take the next step. Thank you, Joe. Forward in our fight. Thank you, Joe. Thank The guy we're running against, what's his name? Donald Dump or Donald, whatever. Let me tell you what our Project 2025 is. Beat the hell out of him.

Let's discuss with some of our top political minds tonight. Van, I want to start with you. You heard the former President bringing up Harris, calling him weird, and using that as one of the reasons he's, quote, entitled to launch personal attacks against her. What is your response to that? I feel like Donald Trump failed kindergarten. I mean, he just sounded like a little kid, just petulent. And you can imagine an actual adult trying to explain to him that just because someone calls you a name, doesn't mean you have to call them a name. I mean, literally, this is the guy that wants to be the leader of the free world. We have every problem that you can think of on planet Earth, and he's going to spend his time talking about why it's great for him to be a petulent kid. He's melting down. This is not going well for him. All right, so let's talk a little bit more about that. I want to bring you and Doug. Since Harris entered the race, she's really seized the spotlight. Trump today is clearly trying to rust back that spotlight with these news conferences. He even used a table full of groceries as props today to illustrate inflation.

You have to wonder what his allies who have been begging him to stay on message, what they thought of how today went. I think probably mixed signals. And part of that that is, we heard what the setup was with the groceries, okay, we know what the framework is going to be. Then can Donald Trump stay in the framework? We don't know, and we always learn. He veers in and out of the lanes. But it's so important for the Trump campaign to stay on this message and that their direction was the right one. Just they can't depend on their candidate. I say that because Trump was in North Carolina yesterday. Kamala Harris is going to be in Raleigh, North Carolina tomorrow. So focus on what people there are focused on. And so Whether you're buying a blue cup at who he's not here in Chapel Hill or a chopped pork plate at Stevenson's in Willow Springs or a rib eye steak at the Angus Barn in Raleigh, what are those three landmark places North Carolina have in common? The prices have gone up massively in those since Joe Biden became President, and that's the Biden-Harris record.

That's what you need to talk about. That's true in all of those states, if Trump can stay on message and do that. Jd can stay on message. It's his past record and statements that come into play But you have the lane here of where voters are telling you, This is what's important to me. I wake up in the morning and I don't know if I can provide for my family because everything is more expensive. Hit that and hit that constantly. That's her record as much as it is Joe Biden's. What do you think about that? I mean, it's striking how hard it is for Trump to stay, to get out of his own way. We don't need to conjecture whether he can do it. We have enough time with Trump in the news to know that he can't. We I've been moderating focus groups for almost 30 years. I've never heard anybody say, You know what? I wish we have more candidates who feel entitled to make negative personal attacks. It is the last thing that people want because it sounds so... It doesn't even just sound, it is so self-focused and not focused on what people want, whether the issue is how people afford groceries or feel about the rate of inflation or anything else.

People want to know that you're focused on them and bringing people together, not just really thinking about your own grievances. Let me just follow I'll go up with you. And Essie, I'm going to bring you in right after. Because you hear Trump really attacking Harris when it comes to those rising prices and what consumers are telling at the grocery store. You saw the table there with the groceries. And Trump is arguing, Harris claims she's going to, on day one, lower prices. Well, she's been part of this administration for the last three and a half years. Is that effective messaging? Well, it's certainly something that folks who want to support Trump would respond to more than him and his personal attacks, which people don't like. Even people who are voting for him don't like that he behaves that way. So there are people who want to talk about these issues. I think it's important to also reflect on what's happening in the news, the news about how the rate of inflation is slowing. I mean, that's something that is part of the dialog. It's not just about the way Donald Trump talks about it, but all of that is getting overshadowed by what the headline is, I feel entitled to make personal attacks, and rambling speech that people don't want to pay attention to, refusing to take questions from reporters because he's just focused on himself doing a press conference outside.

He did take questions, though. We should know. It took a while to get there because he wanted to go through his-On that note, though, he is clearly, as he's trying to draw this contrast of, Look, I'm up here. I'm giving a press conference. He did take questions at the end, maybe not as many as others would like, but he did. And he's trying to draw this contrast. Look what I'm doing. We're not even hearing from Kamala Harris. Her campaign says by the end of the month, she will be doing a sit down interview. What do you think about that? Is that enough? And of course, tomorrow, she is laying out her economic policy. Well, he's creating a contrast, but not that one. I think he is looking wildly, sloppily undisciplined, and Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh are looking pretty organized, energetic, enthusiastic, and disciplined. I'm not surprised. He feels entitled to personal attacks. He feels entitled to grab women by the genitalia. He feels entitled to fraud the state of New York. He feels entitled to lie about his own election. He feels entitled to take money from his own donors. That's not the surprising part, but it's not working.

It would be one thing if you were working to his advantage, because we know he'll do anything, but it's not working. And in North Carolina, just last year, Biden... Trump was up on Biden by as much as 11 points. Now that margin has shrunk to two. Now that Kamala Harris is in it, that's a state that is now winnable for Democrats. He has to know this isn't working. This is only helping her. And if he cares about any of that, If he cares about winning, he will get back on message. There's plenty of policy to go after. He's just choosing to do the cheap stunts instead. And of course, this wouldn't be a Trump speech if he didn't include remarks on immigration. Let's listen to that. Most of the job creation has gone to migrants. In fact, I've heard that substantially more than... Actually, beyond the number of 100 %. It's a much higher number than that, but the government hasn't caught up with that yet. How do you make sense of that? You don't, except this is where you, again, and if you're Chris Lassavita or Susie Wiles at the campaign, this is where you're trying to get him on message.

Don't say the things that don't make any sense. Where is Kamala Harris and the Biden-Harris administration unpopular? On the handling of the economy, which we've talked about, and on the issue of immigration in the border. Republicans are going to continue to call her the borders are. Apologies to my friend, Friends at Axios. That's what they called her as well. This is what Republican candidates- To be clear to our viewer, she was not the border Tsar. That's the DHS job. That's what multiple news outlets were calling her for years. They had. That is correct. Until the Harris campaign said, Please don't do that anymore. Now that's the official line. I'll say, I, by and large, agree with Essie. Keep in mind, yes, Donald Trump feels entitled to a lot of things. Somebody else has shot bullets at him. I think he does feel a personal entitlement to respond to attacks because somebody shot a bullet at him. That's a little different than the other things that we've seen from him that are weird and bizarre. Our news cycles have moved so fast in the past three weeks or a month that we forget that that happened.

I wonder what you think about that, Van. Also, the fact that some of his allies believe that he is getting increasingly worried that he could lose this race. And that is why we are hearing more and more from him trying to lay this groundwork of, Well, if I lose, that's because the Democrats cheated. He said again today, repeated the lie that he had won Pennsylvania in 2020. Do you think that the Democrats should be confronting that rhetoric more, especially given after what happened in 2020, in January sixth? Maybe, but he's always been that way. But here's something to observe about the psychology of this guy. The past three weeks, apparently, have been the worst three weeks of his campaign, the worst three weeks. This year, he was convicted. He's a convicted crook. He was indicted, to your point. He was shot at and actually hit by a bullet. All of those things are not as important as the past few weeks where somebody is getting more attention than him. Kamala Harris getting more attention than him. It's gotten him more upset more off-message than anything else. That gives you a sense you're dealing with a level of just pure narcissism that I think people need to take a serious account of.

Now, with regard to him saying, If I lose, it's because somebody cheated. He's been saying that the whole time. He said they were cheating when he won. Democrats can't get distracted with that. We know what he's going to do. We know how he's going to act. What we've got to keep doing is focusing on what's working for us. There is an optimistic message here. There's a hopeful message here. There's a change message here. Kameron Harris is not Joe Biden. They're from different generations. They're from different parts of the country. She would be a different President than Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a President that I love a a lot. And I think Kamala Harris is the President I will love as much or even more. As long as she can continue just to stay optimistic, she's going to keep moving forward. And as long as he continues to throw fits, he's going to keep falling. Donald Trump just wrapped up a very lengthy news conference sometimes sticking to his script, hitting Kamala Harris on the economy, but often going off on various tangents and launching extremely personal and very bitter attacks. I want to bring in, seeing as Phil Mattingly.

He's joining us right now. Phil, this was billed as an economic event. What did we hear from Trump? Well, you can basically look at this 90 plus minute event as a tale of two different parts. The first part actually lived up to the billing. The former President, after an economic speech yesterday that frustrated some Republicans who thought he went off message too much down in Asheville, North Carolina, came out, you see the podium there, had a binder and almost red verbatim throughout the binder, a very lengthy economic speech going off a couple of times, but largely making the points His advisors and his Republican allies have wanted him to make about an economic message in an economic contrast between Democrats and the Biden-Harris administration, that up to this point has been a very successful message, one in which the former President has led in terms of approval and support for economic plans throughout the course of this general election campaign. He also went after the vice president who will be giving an economic speech tomorrow down in North Carolina, one in which he will lay out a series of new proposals, including one targeting price gouging at grocery stores.

This is what Trump said. Now Kamala is reportedly proposing communists price controls. She wants price controls. If they worked, I'd go along with it, too. But they don't work. They actually have the exact opposite impact and effect. But it leads to food shortages, rationing, hunger, dramatically more inflation. Wolf, just from fact-checking perspective, what Harris and the campaign are expected to propose tomorrow will not be explicit price controls. It will be a federal ban on price gouging. However, it's a message in terms of trying to define Harris and her team at this point in time. That Trump and his team want to elevate You know, it's interesting. Trump was very, very critical of Kamala Harris, as you know, Phil, launching more and more personal attacks against her. Tell us about that. Yeah. So the staying on script part was the first part of the two parts. The second part was the question and answer period, which, once again, the former President made very clear in a series of comments that he has personal animosity for the vice President, has a lot of feelings about his legal cases as well. But it was those personal feelings that from a question from our own Elaina Treen, who was there for CNN at the news conference, that led to this response.

Dégalas. I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible President. I think it's very important that we win. Whether the personal attacks are good, bad, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. Republicans Wolf, as you know, have said, Stop with the personal attacks from her President saying not anytime soon, Wolf. Phil Mattingly reporting for us. Phil, thank you very much. It's been more than three weeks since President Biden dropped his re-election bid, but Donald Trump still seems to wish he were running against his former opponent. Seeing as Brian Todd is a closer look for us right now, Brian, why is Trump so focused on the past? That's what a lot of Republican strategists are asking, Wolf, and they wish that Trump would pivot away from his preoccupation with Joe Biden. But Trump's impulses always seem to take over. At today's news conference, another instance where the former President couldn't help himself. Then Joe Biden, too. I mentioned him, but he's gonezo. It all started with the debate. It's been almost a month since President Biden has been in Donald Trump's political rear view mirror.

Almost a month that Trump's actually been running against Kamala Harris. But Trump just can't let go of Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a very angry man. You know that, right? They put in a candidate and we beat him badly. At rallies, in news conferences, and in his long interview with Elon Musk, Trump has repeatedly brought Biden up. Don't forget, I beat Biden. He failed in the debate miserably. Trump gloats over Biden's exit, incessantly ridicules the President. He even did an impression of Biden,. Like a question like, What did you have for dinner tonight? Remember, Joe, what ice cream is your favorite? Vanilla. Oh, I like to know. Trump's barbs over the debate, analysts say, give a clue to his fixation. If we didn't have a debate, he'd still be there. Can you imagine? If we didn't have a debate, why the hell did I debate him? Donald Trump is obsessed with it because he wants the race that he had a month ago. It seemed like he was on a glide path to victory. He knew how to run against Joe Biden. A Trump biographer says what also could be at play here is what he believes is Trump's preoccupation with people who have opposed him in any way.

Donald has said many times that his life philosophy is a single word, revenge. But anytime he's slighted or wronged in any way, he's like a crow that never forgets the person who threw rocks at them. Trump also seems a bit obsessed with a false conspiracy theory he's been propagating about Biden leaving the race. What they did to him was disgraceful, by the way, and it really is a threat to democracy. It was a coup. This was a coup. This was a coup of a President of the United States. He didn't want to leave, and they said, We can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way. The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I'm no Biden fan. He had a rough debate, but that doesn't mean that you just take it away like that. Analysts say there's a serious political risk with Trump's continued harping on Biden. The risk is that he is unable to run an effective campaign against Kamala Harris. Every The publican that I talk to says that what Donald Trump should be focusing on is the economy, is crime, is border security. But Donald Trump has not been able to stay on message.

We reached out to the Trump campaign to ask why the former President has kept mentioning President Biden following Biden's exit from the race, and to see if the campaign had any other comment for our story. We haven't heard back. Wolf. We begin tonight with what was supposed to be a press conference on President Trump's economic policy. Take a look. This is at Bedminister, his golf club, just a few minutes before the former President started. Those boxes of cereal, eggs, and other groceries were supposed to be the props that he would talk about, which he did, but only in passing, and only toward the very end of his very long opening remarks, a little more than 45 minutes long. 45 minutes about taxes, inflation, his desire to drill more oil. But he also rambled about stuff he brings up a lot, like windmills killing birds and trucks with apartments in them, an MS 13 gang members carving up victims with knives, and Victor Orbán, specifically, Trump's claim that Orbán says that our enemies feared him, though the former President said he preferred the word respected. Anyway, there were a lot of other detours, many of which you've heard before.

He also made quite a few factually false statements and again, painted an apocalyptic picture of the country, at one point saying, We're a failing nation. Then he took questions, and the digressions continued. Here's what CNN's Alanya Treen asked him, followed by some of his answer. I say some because we had to edit it because his actual answer went on for 10 minutes, and it covered a lot of his off-told tales. Many of your allies who want you to win in November say your current strategy isn't working, that you need to stop with the personal attacks on Kamala Harris and deliver a more disciplined message. Do you agree? I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible president. What's the last name of Kamala? Nobody knew. It's Harris. Nobody knew the last name. I don't even use it because nobody knows who I'm talking about. I did nothing wrong. I have crooked judges. I have crooked prosecutors. It's all a rigged deal, just like Fannie, F-A-N-I, Fanny, with her boyfriend, but with Hillary.

She was subpoenaed by Congress to give everything she's got. And she burned it. She acidwashed it. Bleachbit, they call it. She totally scrubbed it. And yet Hillary Clinton, when it came time to make a decision, I said, I don't want to put the wife of the President of the United States in prison. I want the country to come together and to be unified. And here it is a few years later, and these people say, Let's put him why? Because I challenge an election? Because I want to challenge an election or some other reason? It's a really disgraceful thing. That was his answer to that one question by Elaina. Starting us off tonight seeing a political commentator, Scott Jennings and Alyssa Farre-Griffin, also Michael Nutter, former mayor, Democratic mayor of Philadelphia. Alyssa, you have sat through and stood through a lot of Trump talks. Does it Does that just seem like he's tired because we've heard a lot of this before, or does he seem actually tired to you? I've been saying this since the outset of this election. Donald Trump is not the Donald Trump of 2016. He seems slowed down. He seems meandering. He seems low energy, and he really is struggling to make a point.

There were brief moments where he got on message in this press conference and starts talking about grocery prices and the economic message he was there to deliver, but he would quickly lose his train of thought and end up on any tangent, like dead birds by windmills. He is somebody who is not performing at the caliber that he once was. You know what? That might have worked when he's up against Joe Biden. The contrast did make him appear at times stronger and more vibrant. It's not working against Kamala Harris, who is the younger candidate and who's the one with more energy. Scott, it does seem like the people around the former president, they give him props. They're setting him up to deliver the policy stuff that you and other Republicans say that they want to hear from him. And yet, he goes on for 45 minutes. Were you happy with this? Well, I was happy with the impulse to want to talk about inflation and the economy and to prebut whatever Kamala Harris is going to do tomorrow, which appears to me to be pretty radical, actually, price controls and price fixing and so on. So the impulse was correct.

He did talk about it for a little bit of the time. That was correct. But when you dilute it with everything and you get off message and you just put so much other stuff in the basket, it covers it up. And so ultimately, he's the only one who can make the decision to get focused and stay focused and stay on it with her. New advisors, it doesn't really matter. It's really on his shoulders because he's the star of the show. When he talks, people listen. Some of what they heard today was great and absolutely correct, and inflation is bad, and some of what they heard today was way off the beaten path. He's going to have to decide how comfortable he is doing it that way for the rest of the election. There's an audience for it. I'm not it. I think there's more of an audience for discussion of how Kamala Harris has been terrible on inflation. It would be even worse if she institutes her plans. Mayor Nutter, the former President, of course, again, mispronounced Vice President Harris's name, which is obviously part of what he often does, particularly with black women who he doesn't like.

What did you take away from what you saw today? Well, this is the same distracted Donald Trump. He can't stay focused. He can't stay on message. This is a campaign of gripe and grievance, and that's the tour. That's what he knows. He's a performer, and he is performing. He's just going to complain this entire campaign about all manner of things. He cannot talk about trying to run the country because he doesn't know how to run the country. He does know how to run his mouth. I think as Scott said, God bless you, it is on him. He's the candidate. It doesn't matter to him what his advisors say because, of course, he told us back in 2016, he has a big brain and he's smarter than everyone else. We'll see how that works out. But the personal attacks, when Windmills and birds, EV vehicles. I mean, all of this stuff, Donald Trump knows that he is now losing to Vice President Harris, and that is driving him crazy. You've mentioned the windmill thing. I just want to play what, again, he said it because we've heard this before and it makes no more sense than it did the first time we heard it years ago.

You got windmills all over the place, and you have You want to see a bird Cemetery? Just go under a windmill. You see thousands of birds dead. The bald eagle. If you kill an eagle, they put you in jail for years. And yet these windmills knock them out like nothing. And nothing happens to the people. Savior of the birds, Donald Trump. Listen, it's up there with the Hannibal Lector rance, which I don't think anyone can really wrap their head around what he is trying to say when he talks about it. But listen, we all say know if the right advisors get around him, if he stands on a disciplined message, he's going to be able to win this thing. But this has given me so many flashbacks to 2020, to COVID, where he would insist on giving press conferences. We would give him facts. We would prepare him with materials and the message he wanted deliver, and day after day, he would fail to stay on the script. And he would frankly say, incredibly damaging and dangerous things. He's also, by the way, I just think it's important we know in this moment because where we are, he's also starting to sow doubt in the election itself.

He's complaining about mail-in He's talking about this coup of Kamala Harris now being the nominee. It really feels like late summer of 2020, when he started to institute language into his public speeches that would later be used to undercut the results of the election and to try to say that it was stolen. I think he's doing that again. Scott, do you think bringing... He brought in Cory Lutendowski back from the days of 2016. Do you think that's going to make a difference? It may make him feel more comfortable. Well, maybe. And they brought in a bunch of people today, and some good people and some smart operatives. I think it's a big campaign. They will put all those people to work, and it'll be fine. But again, it's on him. It's on his shoulders. The trajectory of this campaign, he hasn't really lost any ground to Harris. She's gained ground. We lost Scott there for a second. Alyssa, you know Coraline Dasky. Do Does it make a difference? No. If anything, I think the Harris Walsh campaign would say that's an advisor we're okay with him having back. Listen, Cory is somebody who had to leave the 2016 campaign because of scandal.

He's somebody who is a loyalist to Trump. But there is not a suburban woman in a swing district who is going to be moved by the messaging and the presence that Cori Lundowski is going to advise him to give. There's also a bit of a civil war from what I understand within Trump world right now, where some folks wanted Kelly Ann Conway back in, somebody who does have a long history in messaging and who has been able in the past to have a softer touch on how you talk about issues. But some folks don't want her back in. It's really in this a crisis mode because they're not running the race they thought they were going to be against Joe Biden. They got too confident. And on top of that, they have a candidate who's as undisciplined as ever, but also just slower and lower energy than he was before. Off the rails. Trump, for nearly an hour and a half, started on script, and then not so much. He spent his time repeatedly insulting Vice President Harris, ranting about everything from Biden to Hillary Clinton to the 2020 election and what he called unfair judicial system, and coming up with strange scenarios.

I say, wouldn't it be terrible to put the wife of the President, former President of the United States, into a prison. Now, think of that. Hillary Clinton you as Secretary of State. You got millions of more, from 10 to 12, 10 to 12 million votes more. Think of that. I did nothing wrong. It's all crooked politics and really crooked judges. You want to see a bird cemetery? Just go under a windmill. You see thousands of birds dead. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence. She actually called me weird. He's weird. We have tapes of her laughing. She's grossly incompetent. The Harris campaign quickly issued a statement calling the presser, quote, whatever that was. Well, that was supposed to be an event about the economy. Just look at what his aid set up for him. Tables filled with props, including food, a model home, and charts to show just how much the cost of certain goods have gone up. But that's not all Trump wanted to talk about. And while he aird his grievances, today, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared alongside President Biden for the first time since he dropped out of the race and endorsed her.

And Harris and that crowd certainly showing their appreciation to Biden, whose decision to step aside has reshaped the race and energized Democrats. There's a lot of love in this room for our President. And I think it's for many, many reasons, including few leaders in our nation have done more on so many issues, including to expand access to affordable health care like than Joel Bion. Folks, I have an incredible partner. The progress we made, she's going to make one hell of a president. To candidize that energy. And tonight, a new video from the Harris campaign, showcasing Harris and her running mate, Tim Walls, talking candidly about the election. I talk about it being halftime in America. We're a countdown down. But once you start that momentum, once we come out and where we're at right right now, people want to be part of something that's winning. They want to be part of something that's good, and they want to be part of something that everybody can be a part of. And I like the idea of being a little bit behind her. Well, I'm looking at Coach Walls right now. I'm looking at Coach Walls. Elaina Schrien is out front live in Bedminister, New Jersey, where Trump was speaking earlier.

Elaina, you were at the Trump event today. Was this what his campaign wanted from him today? Well, I'll put it this way, Sarah. It started off that way, and it was interesting. I go to many of Donald Trump's speeches. I've been to these events before, and he brought out a binder with him, and he was reading line by line. He didn't just stay on script. He had his finger, I noticed, marking where he was was clearly trying to stay on message on that point. And look, the economy is really the goal for the Trump campaign this week. That is what they wanted him to talk about. And part of that is because they really do believe if Donald Trump can focus on the economy, but more specifically, try to tie Kamala Harris to Joe Biden's policies, they believe that he will pull higher on that issue, and that is a way for him to win in November. And you mentioned he had those props there. It was very clear that that was the message they wanted to portray. However, once he started taking questions from reporters, you really saw that restraint go out the window.

Now, I did ask him specifically about something that we've been talking about for a few weeks now, which is that many of Donald Trump's allies, the people who want him to win in November, are urging him to shift his strategy. They say that he needs to have a more disciplined message and talk about the issues, including the economy, but also crime and immigration. And he said that he didn't necessarily believe that he needed to get rid of the personal attacks. Take a listen to how he put it. I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible president. I think it's very important that we win. Whether the personal attacks are good, bad, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a sound bite. As you could hear there, Sarah, I asked him this directly, do you think you need to stop with the personal attacks. He said, No, I think I'm entitled to them and that she makes me very angry. So very clear that he is not heeding that advice.

I also just want to point out quickly that after that, he went on to continue to attack Harris and also played the victim card. It was the Donald Trump we've seen in the past, the Donald Trump we all know well, where he was saying, everyone is out to get me. They're trying to go after me with these legal cases. And he went on for a very long time. So I think it was very clear that despite what he is hearing from his campaign, from his allies about staying on message, he doesn't necessarily agree with.