"It Really Is Just Plain Weird": Bakari Sellers Laughs Off GOP Defense of Trump's Controversial Comment
"It Really Is Just Plain Weird": Bakari Sellers Laughs Off GOP Defense of Trump's Controversial Comment
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00:00All right, with me now is Lance Trover, former spokesperson for Republican Governor Doug
00:04Burgum's 2024 presidential campaign, and CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers.
00:10Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this morning.
00:12I am curious from you, Bakari.
00:14We've heard this line where the Harris campaign is calling Vance and Trump just weird.
00:20Vance really got a lot of bad publicity, if you will, angered a lot of women by calling
00:25Kamala and others childless cat lady.
00:28Kamala, of course, is a stepmother, by the way.
00:31What would you advise the Harris campaign to do with some of the things that Vance has
00:37said or should she be concentrating on Donald Trump?
00:39Well, I mean, I think that one of the things is that the cake is already baked with Donald
00:45Trump.
00:46There's nothing new you can say about Donald Trump that would magnify any of his weaknesses
00:51per se.
00:52J.D.
00:53Vance is new on the scene and is someone who has little to no experience running absolutely
00:57anything, is a very, very young United States senator and has shown himself to be ill prepared.
01:03And not only that, but I believe Lance would probably tell you his balls probably deserve
01:08to be picked as VP more so than a Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. temper tantrum.
01:14They got J.D. Vance on the ticket.
01:16J.D. Vance is probably the biggest mistake that Donald Trump has made along the campaign
01:20trail, particularly this year, because Susie and Jason Miller have him going in a good
01:23direction.
01:24But J.D. Vance is a hell of a mistake, one that we have to capitalize on.
01:28Lance, I'm curious if you agree that obviously you were there for Burgum when he was running
01:33for president.
01:34He was also this close, he told us that during the RNC, to potentially becoming Trump's vice
01:41presidential candidate.
01:42Did they make a mistake with Vance?
01:45No.
01:47To Bakari's point, it wouldn't matter who Donald Trump picked.
01:50They would be going after them.
01:51He would be saying the exact same things, whether it was Doug Burgum or Marco Rubio
01:55or whomever.
01:56The Democrats are going to go after them.
01:57I think what we have to remember at the end of the day, it's going to be Donald Trump
02:00versus Kamala Harris.
02:02Those are the two people who are at the top of the ticket.
02:04And the question is going to be, do they want more of the Biden-Harris policies, open border
02:09policies, more of the runaway inflation that we've seen and more things like that?
02:14That's going to be the question in front of voters.
02:16Whether calling somebody weird isn't going to affect anybody.
02:19When voters are out there saying, oh, you call somebody weird, well, how are you going
02:22to lower my cost of living?
02:23How are you going to get this border under control?
02:25Those are the questions that voters are going to be asking at the end of the day.
02:28One of the issues here, obviously, is that that hasn't been at the top of the attacks
02:32on the Republican side.
02:34They've tried other things, calling names.
02:36And so some of them are starting to go down that sort of rabbit hole and look at policy
02:42when it comes to Kamala Harris.
02:43But I do want to ask you about what Donald Trump said over the weekend.
02:46There was a lot of talk about this, where he was talking to a group of Christian Christians.
02:51And here's here's what he said in one part of his speech to them.
02:58Christians get out and vote just this time.
03:05You won't have to do it anymore.
03:07Four more years.
03:08You know what?
03:09It'll be fixed.
03:10It'll be fine.
03:11You won't have to vote anymore.
03:13You got to get out and vote in four years.
03:15You don't have to vote again.
03:16We'll have it fixed.
03:17So good.
03:18You're not going to have to vote.
03:20There's a lot of consternation about what he exactly meant.
03:22Lance, what do you think he meant?
03:25I think it's a day that ends in why.
03:27And we're having a discussion about something Donald Trump said at a rally.
03:30This is what he does.
03:31This is the hyperbole that he uses in rallies.
03:34And every time we get into this and there's a question of what do we think he meant, what
03:37of all that stuff he said, it seemed pretty clear to me what he said.
03:41If you elect me, I'm going to fix everything.
03:43We're going to get it done.
03:44You don't have to vote again.
03:45I know the left wants to take this and turn it into some kind of thing that the election
03:48in 2028 is over.
03:49Look, this is Donald Trump.
03:50It's what he does.
03:51It's no big deal.
03:52He has floated, though, in the past, maybe going for another term during these rallies.
03:58And he has said he'd be a dictator just for one day.
04:00But when he got elected, Bakari is laughing.
04:02So I'm going to let you go ahead, Bakari, and make your comment.
04:06I just find it funny.
04:08Previously, Lance said that we couldn't focus on on J.D. Vance.
04:11It's about the people at the top of the ticket.
04:13And then when we focus on the top of the ticket, it's like, oh, well, it's a Donald Trump ism.
04:16It's a day that ends in Y.
04:17See, the problem is that border crossings and contacts are going down.
04:21Violent crime in this country is going down.
04:23Cost, inflation are going down.
04:26People are seeing that.
04:27People are seeing policies over the last three or four years and whether or not it's affecting
04:30them directly in their pockets just yet is a is a great question to ask.
04:35We can focus on those things.
04:36But we can also focus on the fact that when Donald Trump says stuff like that, yes, it
04:40really is just plain weird.
04:42We can also talk about the fact something that's not just plain weird, that he put three
04:45justices on the Supreme Court that took away a woman's right to choose.
04:48And so there's a long litany of conversations that we can be having.
04:52But the fact is, Donald Trump is the oldest candidate for president in American history.
04:57And so, yes, his record will be adjudicated.
05:00The weird stuff, he says, as well as the fact that the childless cat lady man that's running
05:04with him has said some utterly weird things as well.
05:07His record needs to be adjudicated because he's one breath and one heartbeat away from
05:11the White House.
05:12All right.
05:13So there is this landscape of people who are up for the potential vice presidential position
05:19with Kamala Harris, including, it seems, Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation.
05:25He has made some comments earlier, sort of speaking to what you are talking about, Bakari.
05:30Let me let you listen to what he has said over the weekend.
05:35But even before the pandemic, even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing
05:40recession, which really hurt places like where I come from in the industrial Midwest.
05:44But anyway, my point is, my point is, he broke his promise for that kind of economic growth.
05:50He broke his promise to pass an infrastructure bill.
05:53Right.
05:54He said he would do that.
05:55He failed to do it.
05:56The Biden-Harris administration got it done.
05:58He even broke his promise to that January 6th mob when he said, I will be at your side
06:01when you march down to the Capitol.
06:03But he actually did keep two promises.
06:05He kept his promise to destroy the right to choose in this country.
06:09And he kept his promise on tax cuts for the rich.
06:11And if you want to know what a second Trump term would be like, I would start by looking
06:16at those rare promises that he actually managed to keep.
06:20Bakari, that sounds awfully vice presidential to me.
06:24Oh, man, listen, Pete Buttigieg is a bad man.
06:28Like a bad man.
06:30He is one of the best, if not the best communicator we have in the world.
06:33Yeah, I mean, that was a colloquialism.
06:35There we go.
06:36That SAT word I'm using this morning.
06:39So he is one of our, if not our best communicator.
06:43But look, we have Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly.
06:47You've seen Governor Walz, who's probably not at the top of my list, but I'm not choosing,
06:52making some headway.
06:54You see Pete Buttigieg, Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina.
06:57I mean, there are a lot of good choices, a lot of good communicators.
07:01There aren't many minuses to the ticket.
07:03They bring governing experience.
07:04But I know a lot of reporters are chasing this story down about vice president.
07:07And I will tell them what I believe to be true, that Kamala Harris is looking for one
07:13real thing, which is who will be a governing partner with her, that comfortability, that
07:18level of trust.
07:19I know that Pete and his husband have a great relationship with the vice president and the
07:25second gentleman.
07:26I know there's some other relationships with the other candidates.
07:28But if Pete Buttigieg is the vice presidential nominee, I'm not sure he will be.
07:33But if he is, you know, there will be a robust question of, is the country ready?
07:38I'm grateful that it is, but that will be a question that is asked.
07:42Lance, I'm curious, just turning this on his head.
07:44Who do you think would be good for the Republicans, for Donald Trump, for Kamala to choose, someone
07:50that you could go after, for example?
07:54I'm going to go back to what I said originally.
07:56I think, look, she's got a she's got a choice to make on her own.
07:59But going back to what Pete Buttigieg was talking about, no one believes what he's saying.
08:03Show me a poll where voters actually believe that the economy is headed in the right direction.
08:08Show me a poll that people are happy with the cost of living.
08:11Show me a poll that said people think, oh, everything at the border is fine or that crime
08:14is going down.
08:15That is not the case for voters out there.
08:17So I don't really think it matters who she picks.
08:18Again, I go back to it will be Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris at the end of the day.
08:23And how hot what has she done to fix the border?
08:26Nothing.
08:27What has she done?
08:28She cast a deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which sent prices skyrocketing
08:32even further in this country.
08:33What was her role in the decision making to pull out of Afghanistan?
08:36These are all questions voters are going to have, not calling people weird and not really
08:40figuring out who she's going to pick as her vice president.
08:42They want to know how she's going to govern at the end of the day.
08:45And based on her record, it's a pretty far left record of governing.
08:48McCurry, you have the last word very quickly.
08:52I saw that.
08:53No, I was just going to say he wanted a poll.
08:54Yeah.
08:55I was just going to say, go look at the stock market.
08:57I mean, look at every economic indicator to figure it out.
09:00If you want to have a conversation about cost and like the price of whiting at Piggly Wiggly,
09:04then that's fair.
09:05We can have that conversation.
09:06But if you actually want to look at true economic indicators like job growth, wage
09:10wages, the fact that inflation is actually going down, the stock market, those type of
09:15questions, then all of those indicators are pointing in the right direction.
09:18But I like this conversation.
09:19It's better than most conversations we have when we're talking about the trash that Donald
09:23Trump spews.
09:24McCurry Sellers, Lance Drover, thank you both.