'Disqualifying!' Ex-GOP lawmaker clashes with Trump lawyer over Vance's election lies
A former Republican lawmaker clashed with a former White House attorney for Donald Trump over some high-profile endorsements that have been announced in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, and their debate ended with a fiery denouncement of GOP election lies.
Barack Obama will campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris next week in Pittsburgh as he kicks off a blitz of other battleground states, while Bruce Springsteen announced his endorsement of the vice president, and Elon Musk will appear with Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of his first apparent assassination attempt.
"There's so much enthusiasm for Kamala Harris across the board," Walsh told CNN. "Barack Obama remains the most popular Democrat. I've spent a lot of time on the ground in Pennsylvania, in all the battleground states, and there's great receptivity among Republicans, independents and all the way down, all the way across, to progressives for something to stop Trump. Barack Obama will really help to make that case. I think a lot of people are waiting for him to come out."
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May Mailman, who served as associate White House counsel during the Trump presidency, argued that Musk's backing would be more likely to move the needle for undecided voters.
"He is somebody who can actually point to doing something for the American people right now versus Bruce Springsteen, you know," Mailman said. "What do you know about the life of a Pennsylvanian, right, where have you been? I think that that issue of the common man, that there is an elite class that does not know the American people, that does not care about them, that spent $43 billion on rural broadband internet to not provide it to one single person out of a vindictive anti-Elon Musk motive like that message to the American people. I think is super powerful because people just want their government to work for them."
"That's it. I pay all these taxes, I want the government to work for me," she added. "Bruce Springsteen, what are you going to do? I think Barack Obama is actually maybe harmful because it reminds people that Kamala Harris is part of the incumbent party and incumbent class."
Walsh laughed as Mailman attacked Springsteen, arguably New Jersey's most famous native and a career-long chronicler of the common man, as an out-of-touch elitist while claiming the wealthiest man in human history better understood the needs of the average American.
"I just, I need a break – that was a tough one for me," Walsh said, still chuckling. "I was having a hard time putting Elon Musk and the common man in the same sentence."
The two panelists also clashed over Trump's continued lies about his 2020 election loss, which J.D. Vance explicitly endorsed in a video posted online by the comedy group The Good Liars.
"J.D. Vance is just trolling," Mailman said of the clip, in which Vance answers "yes" to the question of whether Trump won. "I mean that but, yeah, there's a lot to campaign on, and as a Republican and, you just know that if he had gone quietly into the night in 2020 and run again, I really, you couldn't campaign on Jan. 6 you couldn't trot Liz Cheney out and say, 'This guy's a threat to democracy.' It would be a blowout. I think people would just say, 'Was I better off four years ago or am I better off now?' So it's frustrating, but he's going to keep doing it, and so you go with a candidate you've got."
Walsh pushed back, saying that Vance's response to a question he would not answer during his vice presidential debate with Tim Walz was not just a joke.
"Here's all I know – it's not just trolling and it's nothing to laugh at, not that you or May or anybody's laughing at this," Walsh said. "This is it right here. This is an attack on our democracy. My God, you cannot acknowledge who won an American election? That's utterly disqualifying. That's bigger and more important than where do you stand on the border or taxes or health care. We have these things every two years or every four years. We have winners and we have losers, and the thing that keeps America going is we all respect the will of the people, we acknowledge the winners and the losers and we move on to fight another day. Trump and Vance are still there and it's wrong, and it is an attack on our democracy. It's not trolling."
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