Trump campaign seeks Vance reset | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Campaign Reporter Zac Anderson discusses the Trump campaign's latest approach to JD Vance amid controversies. Debby strengthens to a Category 1 hurricane as it moves closer to Florida. Colleges keep closing. Are regulators doing enough to warn students? USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise discusses why sharks are moving closer to shore in the Pacific Northwest. Plus, check out our special episode on sharks from earlier this summer. Noah Lyles is the world's fastest man.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, August 5th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, a closer look at controversy surrounding J. D. Vance, plus why so many colleges are folding, and Noah Lyles wins a big race in Paris.
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In response to a backlash over Donald Trump's running mate, J. D. Vance's remarks about childless women, the Trump campaign is seeking to help him get past the controversy by focusing on other issues that resonate with the GOP base. My colleague Sara Ganim, spoke with USA TODAY campaign reporter Zac Anderson for more on the latest Trump campaign approach with Vance.
Sara Ganim:
Let's get right to it. Social media has been in an uproar about several comments that then-senatorial candidate Vance made in 2021, namely that the country was being run by "A bunch of childless cat ladies." In another interview, the same year, Vance argued that childless people should pay more taxes. Now, some of his own fellow Republicans are heavily criticizing Trump's decision to put him on the ticket. Do they have a point? Was the vetting here just bad?
Zac Anderson:
Yeah. I don't know if the vetting was bad or they just ignored the vetting or didn't care, didn't feel like these were concerns for them. Picking Vance was viewed really as Trump going with his heart, maybe more than with his head going with somebody that he likes that is more aligned with him ideologically, that he gets along with rather than somebody who might be helpful in reaching out to certain demographic groups. Somebody like a Marco Rubio who might be able to appeal to Hispanic voters or Doug Burgum, people who maybe were a little bit more traditional Republicans that could appeal to some of those Nikki Haley voters as well. Vance, his base is more with the hard right of the party. He was really pushed by Don Jr., Trump's son, who is sort of beloved by the MAGA faithful. So that side won out and it's leading to some controversy for them during Vance's rollout here.
Sara Ganim:
Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris is a very different candidate than President Joe Biden would've been, but of course the change happened after Trump picked Vance as his running mate. Does your reporting indicate that Trump would've chosen a different VP candidate had he known that they would be running against Harris and not against Biden?
Zac Anderson:
Yeah, that's a good question. I haven't heard anybody say that explicitly, but you have to think that if he knew he was running against Harris that this was going to be a tighter race, that it might've given him pause. When he picked Vance, he was really in a real position of strength in the race. He had come off this debate where he really had Biden on the ropes, and Biden obviously would later drop out. He had just survived an assassination attempt. The party, and much of the country was rallying around him. And so there might've been a sense that he could really, like I said, go with his heart, pick whoever he really liked, electoral consequences be damned. Facing Harris, and the race was a toss-up, would he have picked him again? Who knows? But it might've been a more difficult decision.
Sara Ganim:
Do you get the sense that Trump regrets this decision?
Zac Anderson:
There's no explicit sense of that, and the people that I've talked to that are close to the campaign say that those in Trump world are staunchly standing behind Vance. But you saw on Wednesday when Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalists and he was being questioned about Vance and he was really having to defend him and say, "No, he doesn't dislike childless people." Trump wants to be the center of attention. He doesn't want to be talking about his running mate. So you have to think that that might bother him a little bit. And at one point during that appearance, he actually said, "Well, the running mate doesn't even matter. People are voting for me."
Sara Ganim:
Harris's campaign has said that she's going to announce her VP pick today or tomorrow. Of course, speculation has been rampant. Many people are guessing that it could be Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, but Democrats are divided over his recent pro-Israel statements. Could there be a similar party unity problem at the Democratic National Convention in two weeks?
Zac Anderson:
Yeah, I think you could see some of that. Harris seems from the reporting that she is probably going to make a much more strategic pick and pick somebody like a Shapiro who can really help in a critical swing state like Pennsylvania or like the senator from Arizona, which obviously seems more in play now. So if she goes with one of those two, those are more moderate candidates and you might upset some people on the left. That's probably something that she's willing to accept to try and get a candidate who has broader appeal.
Sara Ganim:
Zac Anderson covers the Trump campaign for USA TODAY. Zac, thank you so much.
Zac Anderson:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Hurricane Debbie is set to make landfall today along the Big Bend coast of Florida as a category one storm. Debbie is the fourth named storm of what's expected to be a historic hurricane season. President Joe Biden yesterday declared an emergency across the state authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also said that the Florida National Guard and Florida State Guard were activated to support humanitarian assistance and search and rescue missions. Debbie is expected to move slowly across northern Florida and southern Georgia today and tomorrow.
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Colleges fold all the time, but metrics show they've been closing at a faster pace in recent decades, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. And there are indications the trend may speed up. Over the first half of this year, roughly one higher education institution per week announced it would close or merge according to one estimate. And a crisis in college financial aid this year, which will have downstream effects on enrollment, especially at smaller schools, could make things worse. In the past few years, the Biden administration has taken an aggressive approach to college oversight picking up on work the Trump administration paused or undid. Biden has made student loan forgiveness a hallmark of his agenda, but has also been adamant about fixing the root causes of massive student debt. A key piece of that puzzle is preventing colleges from closing with little or no warning. That task though is challenging no matter who's in the White House because the federal government's metrics for identifying at-risk private colleges have long been flawed. That's been highlighted by a number of recent high-profile closures. You can read more about those with the link in today's show notes.
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Some big shark species were found far from the open ocean in Washington State. Sara Ganim spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Elizabeth Weise for more.
Sara Ganim:
Okay, so surprise visits from big sharks sounds like the absolute most terrifying thing ever. What is going on here, Beth?
Elizabeth Weise:
So this is for anybody who's ever been to Washington State, Puget Sound, huge inland waterway, I mean enormous. And actually the Salish Sea, which is the part that's both the Washington part and the Canadian part is even bigger. It is very far inland. I mean it's a saltwater sound, but we're talking like 180 miles of waterway and there are these big old sharks, they're 10 feet long, they can be, called broadnose sevengill sharks, which everybody knows go up and down the coast on the West Coast, and they're very happy there. And then this fisherman is in his little bitty tiny narrow inlet way the heck inland, and he pulls up this big shark and he takes a picture of it and he posted on Facebook. Well, okay, fine. And everybody thinks it's a sixgill shark, which people have known have been around there for a long time.
The deal is you're not supposed to catch sixgill sharks. So Washington State Fish and Wildlife saw this and we're like, "Yeah, we need to go down and cite this fisherman." And then I talked to a guy from NOAA and he said, "And then I looked a little more closely and I'm like, that is not a sixgill. This was a broadnose sevengill shark." They can get up to 10 feet. They eat sea lions, not humans, but sea lions. I mean, they hunt sea lions and it's way the heck down in South Puget Sound where it so should not be.
Sara Ganim:
But if they eat sea lions, is this potentially going to lead to a Jaws situation? Because I feel like sea lions and people, you could get them mixed up.
Elizabeth Weise:
Actually not. While sevengills are ... They're aggressive and they do hunt in packs, there's never been a human attack, and these guys love murky bottom water. That's where they hang out, and then they'll kind of come up maybe to grab a seal or a sea lion to have a snack, but they're not like great whites that are out fooling around looking for things. They're not going to attack humans.
Sara Ganim:
I am fully embracing swimming pools. That's what I'm taking from this conversation. But in all seriousness, why do researchers think it's happening?
Elizabeth Weise:
So they're still trying to work out why it's happening. The Pacific Northwest has in the last 10 years, they've had crazy hot weather, and then they had this, they called it The Blob. I grew up in Seattle, and let me tell you, swimming in Puget Sound, it's cold water. It is cold water. It should not really be all that warm. And they think one of the things that happened is there's northern anchovy that live out along the coast. They were trying to get away from that warm water, and they moved into Puget Sound where they wouldn't normally be. The sevengills, but also fin sharks, which are a little smaller, which also really have never been seen in Puget Sound and shouldn't be there, are following their prey in.
Sara Ganim:
What are scientists doing now with this new information?
Elizabeth Weise:
Well, they're doing something that sounds really, really gross. You've heard of people getting their stomachs pumped. They go out, they pull up the sevengills, and then they pump their stomachs to see what they're eating, and then they tag them, and then they put them back in the water and they swim away, and they're perfectly fine. But it's exciting because you're like, "Oh, look, there's a crab. Oh, there's a fish. Oh, there's a piece of harbor seal." I know.
Sara Ganim:
The story keeps getting better.
Elizabeth Weise:
I know. So they're trying to figure out what they eat. Because if they're eating a lot of seals and sea lions, depending on how many there are and how many they're eating, that could really start to impact the ecosystem. The other crazy thing about this is that it's not like it's this pristine waterway where no one ever goes. I mean, it is a well populated, highly urbanized area. It's just weird. We don't know how they're getting past us, but they are. How is this happening?
Sara Ganim:
So surprise sharks with a secret portal?
Elizabeth Weise:
Exactly.
Sara Ganim:
This is an advertisement for swimming pools. Thank you so much. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent for USA TODAY. Always such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Elizabeth Weise:
I love these fun stories.
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Taylor Wilson:
For more on all things sharks, check out our special episode from earlier this summer when I sat down with Dr. Stephen Kajiura, a professor of biological sciences to discuss whether shark attacks are on the rise. You can find a link in today's show notes.
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Noah Lyles is the world's fastest man in the 100 meter. The US sprinter crossed the finish line yesterday with a gold medal-winning time of 9.79 seconds in a photo finish, it took a picture to determine Lyles had beaten Jamaica's Kishane Thompson by five thousandths of a second. As the Olympics move into week 2 today in Paris, 11 events will award medals to the world's best athletes. These events include three-on-three basketball, cycling, canoe slalom, and badminton among others. You can follow along with USA TODAY Sports.
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And today is National Oyster Day, time to celebrate a tasty treat and a crucial part of our ecosystem. Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. Thanks to Sarah Ganim for stepping in last week. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump campaign seeks Vance reset | The Excerpt
