Soon, Donald Trump will return to the campaign stage for his first rally since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket officially. But the former President is not taking the stage in a battleground state tonight. Instead, you're going to see him in a few moments in reliably red Montana, where a Senate Democrat is trying to hold on to a very competitive seating a very expensive race. Donald Trump, obviously, is there stumping for his Republican opponent. That's where we find CNN's Elaina Train in Bozeman. Elaina, obviously, it's been six days since since Trump's last rally. What are you hearing from the Trump campaign about where he is choosing to spend his time and why?

Well, it is interesting that he came to Montana, especially on such an important week, Kaitlyn, where Harris, and excuse me, it's very loud in here. You have Steve Gaines behind me right now, roaring up the crowd. But especially on a week where Harris had picked her vice presidential candidate and announced that she would be running with Tim Walsh. They tell me, and you heard Donald Trump himself address this yesterday during that press conference at Mar-a-Lago, that he's going to be picking up his schedule following the Democratic National Convention, and that he's not traveling as much as he thinks other candidates need to because he believes he's doing better in the polls. Of course, we know that the race has tightened significantly now that Harris is atop the ticket and that they're really in a dead heat, according to our own polls. But look, the reason he is in Montana, you're exactly right, is to stop for Senator Tim, or excuse me, for Senate candidate Tim Sheehe, who's in a very close race with John Tess. I actually caught up with Steve Daines, Montana Senator, as well as the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee off stage.

He's currently on stage behind me, but we spoke moments ago where he told me that he privately encouraged Donald Trump to come here, even though it's not a battleground state, and it doesn't matter for his own campaign because he thinks that this state is key to winning the Senate majority. He said he sees this as the 51st state after if they're able to win West Virginia, which Staines said he thinks he's confident in. That's why you're finding Donald Trump here tonight instead of focusing on his own race. Kaitlyn?

Elaina Threen will be watching that rally. Thank you very much. Meanwhile, Donald Trump angrily insisting tonight on his way to Montana that he can prove he was in an emergency landing in a helicopter with Willy Brown, even though it is something that the former San Francisco mayor himself denied on CNN. This all started during the former President's news conference yesterday when he said this.

Well, I know Willy Brown very well. In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him. We thought maybe this is the end. We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.

The reporter who is on the other end of an angry phone call from Trump this evening is Senior Political Correspondent at the New York Times, Maggie Haberman. Okay, this was 20th on the moments from yesterday's news conference, but why is he angry about this and why is he calling you about it?

The phone call was actually on another topic, and then in the middle of it, he started rambling about this story because the New York Times and other publications wrote about the fact that Willy Brown, as you know, said it on CNN, too, says this did not happen. Trump got asked about Willy Brown, and he brought up this helicopter story. What I learned today is that Trump put this story in his 2023 book, Letters to Trump. One of the letters he included was from Willy Brown. They knew each other in the 1990s, and he referenced this alleged a helicopter emergency landing. Fine. Nobody noticed it at the time. His issue is with Willy Brown, who is saying that this didn't happen. But in the middle of it, he said that he has in the middle of his phone conversation, he said they found the records and it landed in a field and indicated that he was going to release them, and I said that I would love to see them. He made fun of me asking that in a child sing-song voice and then said he was probably going to sue. He said, You. I didn't write the story, but I assume he meant the paper for writing about this.

If he has records, he should show them. What I thought was most interesting about this conversation, although certainly if he has these records, we would write about it. It'd be interesting, was that he was focusing on this because that is what we have seen him do historically when he is in times of stress.

What do you mean in a sing-song voice?

You asked a question. I really don't want to do a recreation here. You repeated it back to you? Right. It was that I asked a question, and I said I would love to see the records, and it was, Oh, you'd love to see the records in in a childlike voice.

Okay. This came after The New York Times wrote up about that news conference yesterday and all of the moments that happened inside of it. Part of that said the goal of Mr. Trump's news conference was to highlight that Ms. Harris is yet to hold a news conference of her own or to give an unscripted interview to the news media. Both of those things are true. We just talked to Pee Boody Judge about it. But do they think that they achieved their goal in this?

It's interesting, Kaitlyn. Yesterday was such an example of how these two campaigns, and this has been true of every campaign that I have covered going back to 2004. They are living in different bubbles. Those bubbles have gotten more divergent as partisanship has gotten worse and as create your own media adventures have increased, where there's proliferation of partisan outlets, more proliferation of partisan outlets. People can choose what information they want to believe. And so these bubbles exist, and there's these wildly different theories of the case. And so if you talk to the Harris US people, their basic take was, this was a gift. He said a bunch of things that we are going to be able to use. And if you talk to the Trump people, it was, generally speaking, we were really happy that he stood there for an hour and he took questions. And yes, he said some things that were not helpful, but he also made a bunch of points that the campaign wants him making. I don't know who's right. We will find out in November.

We'll see what the poor voters think. It was August, 2016, when he made a pretty big campaign shakeup the first time he was running. Anthony Scarabouge, you raised this idea the other night about him possibly doing that now just because he's frustrated with how this race has been reset and how the polls have tightened significantly. What's your indication of how he's feeling about the campaign team?

Look, so two things. He did a shakeup He did two shakeups in 2016. He did one in June and he did one in August. He did one shakeup in July of 2020. I don't believe that that is in the offing right now. The problem really is is not the campaign. The problem is the candidate. The candidate actually still has a lot of advantages that favor him in this race against the vice president. The map favors him. His message in a large way about his record favors him. The fact that voters many of them are nostalgic about his record, and this is something we wrote about yesterday, too, favors him. If he could just stick to that message, but he wants to talk about what he wants to talk about, like Willy Brown in a helicopter.

Also, he's getting in a fight with Joe Rogan because the very popular podcast host said that he supported RFK Junior, that he liked him. Trump said, Now it'll be interesting to see how loudly Joe Rogan gets booed the next time he enters the UFC ring. He's not a UFC fighter, but obviously goes to those events. Ivf, or excuse me, Mifeprestone, and access to that yesterday was something that Trump was asked about. If he would have the FDA block access or limit access to it, if he becomes President again, it's a key part of Project 2025. Harris talked about that on stage tonight. This is what she had say.

And just yesterday in a press conference, we got a fresh reminder of what Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda would do. It would ban medication abortion in every state. But we are not going to let that happen because we trust women.

Now, he didn't He didn't say he'd ban it, but he didn't give a clear answer on it yesterday.

You were there. It wasn't even clear to me that he understood what the question was, to be honest. I mean, his answer was incoherent, and it was something about support and voters, and the question was about FDA regulations and about Justice Department enforcement. I don't know what he thought he was answering. He suggested to Time magazine many weeks ago that he was going to have a major announcement about this and that he felt very strongly about it. As we have seen him do with many other things, he just kicks it down the road by saying he'll talk about it at a later date, as he did with a question yesterday about an abortion referendum in his own state and how he'll vote on it. It is not surprising that the Harris campaign framed it that way. It's not quite what he said, but he is going to deal with this until he addresses it.

Yeah. Your story tonight, just on a lot of 2016.

Now, remember, he won in 2016, so we'll see what that ends up looking like. But it also felt like 2020, and that had its moments, too.

Maggie Haberman, as always. Thank you.