Capehart and Johnson on if Harris can sustain the momentum and pressure on Trump

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• Amna Nawaz:

  We're at a major point in the presidential race now with both tickets fully set.

  On that, we turn to the analysis of Capehart and Johnson. That is Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post, and Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of The Washington Free Beacon. David Brooks is away.

  Good to see you both.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Hi, Amna.

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

• Amna Nawaz:

  So we now just had our first full week with both tickets fully set. Harris and Walz have been on the battleground blitz. They have been taking this message to voters. Take a listen.

  Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (D) and U.S. Presidential Candidate: We believe in our country. We believe in each other. We believe in the collective. We're not falling for these folks who are trying to divide us, trying to separate us.

• Amna Nawaz:

  As you know, Senator Vance has also been on that battleground blitz, largely alone, but Mr. Trump held his first press conference at Mar-a-Lago, his first, rather, since the full Democratic ticket was set. Take a listen.

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: Because I'm leading by a lot and because I'm letting their convention go through. She's not smart enough to do a news conference.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Jonathan, though, from the Walz rollout to strong fund-raising numbers, it's been a good week for the Democrats.

  Can this sustain for the next several weeks?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It's been a great week for the Democrats after the last three months that they put themselves through with all the yelling and screaming at each other and pushing the president off the ticket.

  But enthusiasm's up. The fund-raising's up. The spirit among Democrats is up. And yet all things that are up must come down. And the thing that the rank-and-file Democrats have to prepare themselves for the bad press that's about to come, the attack that might land, the punch that might land.

  The thing that Democrats also have to keep in mind is that Vice President Harris is fully aware of that, that she's been saying to her team, right now, this might be a sugar high. We have to keep our eye, our focus on November. And so knowing that the vice president is thinking in that way gives me confidence that, when the momentum starts to slag or when they get punched really hard with an effective attack, that they will be ready to parry it.

  I — I'm sorry. I just lost my train of thought.

  (Laughter)

• Jonathan Capehart:

  There was another really good thing I was about to say.

• Amna Nawaz:

  It will come back to you. Let me know when it does.

  But response to that, if you can, Eliana, I mean, this idea that Trump and Vance are still sort of adjusting a bit to this ticket. Is it clear to you what the strategy is to go after the Harris/Walz ticket? And, also, why haven't we seen Mr. Trump out on the trail more?

• Eliana Johnson:

  You know, all of us here are following this race really closely right now, but the campaign doesn't really begin in earnest until after Labor Day.

  The challenge for Trump and Vance right now is dominating a national news cycle, which, given all the news around the Democrats, the Harris campaign has been dominating those news cycles. So, in terms of the rallies, I can understand why he's not doing a ton of them right now. They're big events. They're very expensive.

  His time is probably actually better spent doing these press conferences, like you saw him do yesterday, where he had the entire attention of the national media for an hour. And his point there was to draw a contrast with Vice President Harris to say, I'm doing press conferences. I'm taking questions from the press. She's not.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What about that press conference? Please, Jonathan, go ahead.

  (Laughter)

• Jonathan Capehart:

  OK.

  I mean, talk about contrast. Fine. Donald Trump has done rallies, but he's all upset because he's done rallies in the same spaces where Vice President Harris has done rallies and hasn't gotten the same size crowd, which is why, when he was asked about crowd size, he went off the deeper end of the deep end.

  Look, just because you stand before the press doesn't mean that what you're saying is doing you any good. And I'm so glad you showed the vice president and then followed by showing just a snippet of Donald Trump's press conference, because what we saw are two completely different visions for the country, but also two different campaigns.

  Vice President Harris and Governor Walz, they are happy warriors. They are talking about, we're in this for you, in this together, together, we can move the country forward. And Donald Trump is still stirring the grievances of the last four years, last eight years, if you want to go all the way back to his start of his campaign, a very heavy, dark vision for the country that I don't think is going to sit well once we really do get into the campaign in the fall.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Eliana, what do you make of that, also this idea that, while we have seen Mr. Trump continue with personal attacks and kind of veering way off-message, we have seen from Senator Vance focusing now on Tim Walz's military career?

  This is a new line of attack we have seen open up from Republicans. We know Mr. Walz served in the Army National Guard for 24 years before retiring, and we have heard Vance attack him in this way from time to time.

  Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Vice Presidential Candidate: I did it honorably, and I'm very proud of that service. When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Eliana, this is so reminiscent of that swift-boating attack on John Kerry back in 2004. We know the same man is behind it. He's running the Trump campaign now, Chris LaCivita.

  Why run with these attacks when there's no evidence for what they're saying right now?

• Eliana Johnson:

  Well, I do think there's some evidence for what they're saying, but let's look at it in two parts.

  One is the issue on the merits, where I think there's no question Tim Walz has padded and inflated his resume. And the second is…

  (Crosstalk)

• Eliana Johnson:

  … his military resume.

• Amna Nawaz:

  In what way specifically?

  (Crosstalk)

• Eliana Johnson:

  Well, J.D. Vance mentioned that the timing of his retirement is suspect, and I think it would take a little bit longer to talk about the timeline of that.

  But the…

  (Crosstalk)

• Amna Nawaz:

  He's alleging that he retired because his unit was being deployed.

• Eliana Johnson:

  Right. He knew that they were going to be called up. He had gotten a warning that they were going to be called up, and he said in a press release for his campaign, if called up, I have a duty to serve. He didn't do that.

  It's clear he has — he's inflated this, and he's made it a part of his biography. By the way, this has been an issue in every single one of Walz's campaigns. But, separately, I think there's a question of, how significant is this going to be down the road? You mentioned the swift-boat veterans.

  Those attacks were effective, but they were levied against the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, John Kerry, back in 2004…

• Amna Nawaz:

  We should say they were also discredited.

• Eliana Johnson:

  … which is different. And so this race is not going to be won or lost based on attacks made on either J.D. Vance or Tim Walz.

  It's going to be about Trump and the Harris/Biden record. So I don't think they're — that this is actually likely to be a very significant issue down the line.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Jonathan, please — your face…

  (Crosstalk)

• Amna Nawaz:

  I don't know how to react.

  (Laughter)

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It's a spurious charge.

  The man served his country for, what, 24 years? And, sure, this is a race between Trump and Harris. And if you're going to talk about military record and military service, Donald Trump has none. And so let's just put that to the side.

  I remembered what I was going to say in that first — and the thing is, Vice President Harris is not afraid of Donald Trump, which is why I think she has been very effective on the trail in terms of reacting in the most minimal way possible to the racism and sexism and misogyny that he's been hurling at her since she got to the top of the ticket.

• Amna Nawaz:

  At the same time, the criticisms being levied at the top of the ticket on the Democratic side are valid. She has not yet sat for an interview since she moved to the top of the ticket.

  We also haven't really seen any kind of policy rollout, right, which leaves a lot of voters wondering, if you're voting for Harris/Walz, are you essentially voting for the same policies as Biden/Harris?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It's a legitimate concern.

  I also think it is one that the Harris/Walz team is fully aware of. It's also we are a week out from the Democratic National Convention, which will be her opportunity and his opportunity, but specifically for the vice president, to lay out in some detail before — to the American people, the largest audience she will probably get during the campaign, her vision for the country more specifically.

  I mean, her campaign speech is fantastic in terms of rallying the nation and trying to unify the nation, heal the nation compared to the other ticket. But there are gaps. Like, what is her economic policy? What are some specifics of her international relations, her view of the United States on the world stage, what a Harris administration would be doing?

  Those are all legitimate questions, and I'm confident we will find out.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, the context for all of this, of course, is what we're seeing in the polls, that Harris has been rising since she was moved to the top of the ticket.

  Our latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll says that she's four points higher than she was about two weeks ago. She's now leading Mr. Trump 51 to 48. Cook Political Report this week moved three battleground states, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, from lean Republican to toss-up.

  Eliana, when Republicans look at that, not just at when you're talking about the presidential race, but are they worried about downballot implications here?

• Eliana Johnson:

  I don't think so. The scenario before was the Democrats saying, this is a catastrophe. Now what we have is a toss-up race. There's no question Harris is a more competitive candidate.

  The situation isn't a catastrophe for Republicans. Now we're back to a jump ball race. And I think what the Trump campaign needs to keep in mind and the candidate would do well to keep in mind is that he actually retains an issue advantage on the economy and on immigration.

  And any day that he spends not talking about those two issues, which are of the utmost importance to voters, is a wasted day.

• Amna Nawaz:

  These are also issues sure to come up in a debate, Jonathan, which we now believe will happen on September 10. Both Vice President Harris and former President Trump have agreed to that.

  We saw the impact the last presidential debate had on the contours of this race. Could this one have a similar impact?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  It could. It all depends on what happens. It depends on what Donald Trump says during the debate. It depends on how the vice president reacts to whatever Donald Trump says on the stage.

  It depends on what she says in terms of staking out new policy positions or says something or has a gaffe, the other has a gaffe. We will all be watching that debate, I think, with the same amount of anxiousness and anticipation that we did the June 27 debate, but for different reasons, because now, with these two tickets, they're both on firm, solid ground, and the stakes — now folks can really focus on the stakes of November.

• Amna Nawaz:

  How do you look at that?

• Eliana Johnson:

  Well, the last debate was hugely important for Joe Biden. He had to show that he could perform, and he didn't. This debate is really important for Donald Trump, because he needs to force Kamala Harris out of the controlled settings that she's engineered for herself.

  She said she'd sit for a debate this month at some point. We're three weeks to go in this month. He has got to get her talking extemporaneously. That has never gone very well for her. And he's got to force her to answer for why she's turned 180 degrees on issues from fracking to Medicare for all.

  And those are things that I don't have a lot of faith in the media to press. I don't have a lot of faith in her sitting for interviews. He's got to take matters into his own hands on a debate stage.

• Amna Nawaz:

  One month to go before we believe that debate will happen, and we will see.

  Eliana Johnson, Jonathan Capehart, thank you so much. Great to see you both.

• Eliana Johnson:

  Thank you.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  You too, Amna.