Capehart and Johnson on Harris’ running mate shortlist and Trump’s latest attacks

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• Geoff Bennett:

  On the major political stories shaping the week, we turn to the analysis tonight of Capehart and Johnson. That's Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post, and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon. David Brooks is away this evening.

  Hello, hello.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Hi, Geoff.

  Eliana Johnson, Editor in Chief, The Washington Free Beacon: Hi, Geoff.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So Kamala Harris has passed the threshold to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination in this virtual vote of party delegates. This is the same day that the campaigns says it raised $310 million in July.

  This is the biggest haul of the 2024 cycle, more than double what Donald Trump's campaign and the RNC raised in the same month. But, Jonathan, it was far from a guarantee that Democrats would remain as united and as energized as they have been since V.P. Harris emerged atop the ticket.

  What do you make of this launch of hers and this historic fund-raising haul?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Well, the launch is pretty spectacular. I remember sitting here and saying, if Joe — Joe Biden needs to be the top the ticket, and if he's not top the ticket, and it's not Vice President Harris, Democrats are going to lose.

  And I said that because there were people talking, there were moves afoot to leapfrog over the sitting vice president for someone else. That did not happen. And I think the way the vice president comported herself through all of this spoke well of her, the team around her, her commitment to the president.

  And I think that once the president endorsed her, which was very, very important, the level of enthusiasm went from zero to 1,000 in a nanosecond. And we see, according to the Supreme Court, money is speech. So $310 million raised in just, what — in the month of July, but the bulk of it in the last 10 days, that says something.

  The Democratic Party is energized. They're thrilled. And her campaign speeches and her events show that it's not just that they're — you got a new candidate, but there's some passion behind her.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, Eliana, for Donald Trump, I mean, he's now facing criticism for falsely claiming that Kamala Harris misled voters about her race. He's also having to defend his vice president, J.D. Vance, who's being scrutinized for past comments he made disparaging childless women.

  The vice president has a real record that Republicans could scrutinize, but Donald Trump keeps reverting to these race- and gender-based attacks. Why are he and his campaign struggling to find a line of attack that sticks?

• Eliana Johnson:

  One thing on the Democrats before that is, in terms of uniting the party and getting people excited, it helps not to have a primary, where Democratic candidates were pummeling each other, which they managed to avoid.

  In terms of Trump, yes, he's veering off into bizarre spaces. And what the Trump campaign needs to do — why is he doing it? He's not a particularly disciplined messenger. I don't think anybody's particularly surprised to see this.

  They need to settle on one message and one line of attack against Kamala Harris, whether it's that she's a San Francisco liberal whose views are out of touch and to the left of those of the average American, or that she's flip-flopped and changed every position she held that she ran on in 2019.

  And so if they do that, they can say she doesn't believe in anything. She's willing to say anything in order to be elected president. But pick one and hammer it home every day. I'm sure that is what Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, Trump's campaign managers, are telling him to do, but Trump is Trump.

  He's the same candidate he's always been.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, Jonathan, Democrats say that they have learned their lesson from 2016, that now, when Donald Trump attacks, they try to respond aggressively, but they use his attacks to reemphasize their own message.

  Are we seeing more of that?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  We are.

  Well, here's the thing about the vice president and her campaign's responses to the racism and misogyny coming from Donald Trump. She does — she gives it maybe one line in any of her campaign speeches, and she moves on to talking about the Biden/Harris record and then what a Harris administration would do if she's entrusted with the presidency.

  So they're not paying attention — they're not giving it undue oxygen to keep it going. And so I think they're doing what they need to do. Meanwhile, on the social media side, however, they're all over it, I mean, so many memes, so many little videos that the young people can share where she — where the campaign is responding to the ridiculousness, particularly from NABJ, with Donald Trump saying she turned Black, which has set off a whole meme on its own.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, we expect that the vice president could name her running mate any time this weekend, certainly by Tuesday, when she and her running mate are expected to have their first appearance in Philadelphia.

  And I'm told that she has settled, she's narrowed her list of finalists to these six, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Arizona's Senator Mark Kelly, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and, of course, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

  So this is according to two sources familiar.

  Eliana, the conventional wisdom has always been that a V.P. pick doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Is that different in this election cycle?

• Eliana Johnson:

  I think it could be, in that Harris has a more difficult row to hoe in the Electoral College.

  And so, if I were her — the Harris campaign is not asking me for advice.

  (Laughter)

• Eliana Johnson:

  I would pick someone who could help me win.

  And some of these candidates could help her marginally, given that they come from states that are very competitive, Mark Kelly in Arizona, though I think he has too much personal baggage. He had a very testy divorce in 2004, and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania. And, for that reason, I think those two are probably the front-runners.

  My money would probably be on Shapiro, but I have no special insight into this process.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Jonathan, do you have special insight into this process?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  I have no special insight into this process.

  (Laughter)

• Jonathan Capehart:

  But I will say, I mean, every four years, we talk about, well, the vice presidential pick doesn't really matter.

  But tell that to John McCain in 2008, where Sarah Palin looked real great. I was in the hall when she gave the hockey mom, hockey mom speech and thought, ooh, Obama's going to have some issues here, and then, within a couple of weeks, completely imploded. And so the vice presidential pick does have an impact, as Donald Trump is seeing.

• Eliana Johnson:

  I actually don't agree with that on Palin, though. I think McCain — I think Palin actually helped the McCain ticket, even though, in retrospect, people think, oh, she was a total moron.

  I think McCain got more votes with Palin on that ticket because she excited women at the time than he otherwise would have gotten.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Initially, but come on, a couple Katie Couric interviews…

• Eliana Johnson:

  I don't think she hurt him.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  … Charlie Gibson. She didn't know anything.

• Eliana Johnson:

  I don't think she hurt him.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, as we end our conversation, I want to talk about the fact that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan were among those two dozen detainees released as part of the biggest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

  Lasting takeaways. President Biden said it was a feat of diplomacy.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Yes, not bad for an 82-year-old man everyone said had cognitive decline and were questioning his mental acuity. When you read what was that — the ticktock of what happened in The Wall Street Journal, that man was all over it.

  This was a huge diplomatic feat, but this was also a huge victory for the United States and for the American people. To bring those Americans home is something that should be universally celebrated.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And the detail that he was on the phone with his Slovenian counterpart basically coordinating this deal just an hour before he announced that he wouldn't seek reelection, I mean, how does that strike you?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Well, that example is something that, when I have interviewed — I have the president twice. And in both interviews, I came away with one really distinct impression. He loves that job.

  And the fact that he's got all of this stuff going on, but he is on the phone trying to make a deal, that's why he wants to be president. That's why he loves the job. It's about getting something done.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Eliana?

• Eliana Johnson:

  It's wonderful that they're home. However, we need to stop doing deals where we trade terrorists and assassins for reporters and dissidents.

  And what dictator wouldn't take more hostages to make that deal? And in order to do that, we need to impose serious consequences on the hostage-taking nations. And that is not something I have seen from the Biden administration. If we continue to do deals like this, we will find more Americans behind bars, unjustly detained in despotic nations.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Eliana Johnson and Jonathan Capehart, thank you both.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Thanks, Geoff.

• Eliana Johnson:

  Thank you.