JAKE TAPPER: My panel joins me now.
First of all, let's just start with the fundraising figures,
because that's really significant in terms
of how much support somebody is gonna be able to get in the--
or somebody is getting.
Biden and the Democratic National Committee,
$72 million.
Trump, $35 million.
DeSantis, $20 million.
Haley, $7.3 million.
Tim Scott, $6.1 million.
Some of that was transferred from a Senate account.
Ramaswamy, $2.3 million.
Christie, $1.7 million.
Burgum, $1.6 million.
Pence, $1.2 million.
And then there are three candidates
who got under $1 million, Suarez, Hutchinson, and Elder.
Any surprises here for you?
SCOTT JENNINGS: No surprises in terms
of what they were able to do individually,
out of their campaign committees.
I was interested that the cash-on-hand numbers, which
is what you have left to spend, show
that Tim Scott actually has more cash on hand than DeSantis.
Of course, the counter for that is that DeSantis
has a massive super PAC out there
that's gonna be able to augment what he's doing.
So look, these candidates that have millions of dollars
in the bank-- you know, there's an upper tier of it
and then there's the lower tier, as you mentioned.
They'll have enough money to operate and to communicate,
and that's what matters, getting you to Iowa and then,
do you have enough money to make it to the next two
or three states?
So clearly, though, some of these folks
are gonna struggle to make it to the end of the year.
JAKE TAPPER: Congresswoman Houlahan, I
know a lot of Democrats were hand-wringing
about President Biden and his re-election campaign.
That's a pretty great number, $72 million, more than Trump,
more than DeSantis combined.
It is less than Trump was able to raise at this point
four years ago from the White House.
Is this gonna stop the hand-wringing, do you think?
Or--
CHRISSY HOULAHAN: I absolutely think it does.
I think that $72 million is a pretty
stunning number, in comparison.
I think it's more than all the other Republican candidates
combined, as I recall.
So I think that's a very, very good sign for the vibrance
and health of the campaign.
JAKE TAPPER: Sarah Matthews, take
a look at these headlines, some bad ones for Governor DeSantis.
"DeSantis Campaign Sheds Staff Amid Cash Crunch."
"DeSantis Fundraising Slowed After Initial Campaign Launch,
Filing Shows."
Should he be worried here at all?
I mean, he's-- letting go of staff
this early is not nothing.
SARAH MATTHEWS: Definitely not a good sign,
but he did manage to out-raise Trump,
and he raised over $20 million in just six weeks.
So I think it shows that he has the fundraising
power and mechanisms in place.
But obviously, their burn rate is really high,
and they're trying to offset some of their costs
by offloading staff, which doing that this early isn't
great for them.
JAKE TAPPER: Who do you worry about the most as a Democrat?
Which Republican do you not want to get the nomination
because you think they would offer the toughest
challenge to Joe Biden?
KAREN FINNEY: I learned a long time
ago to never say who I would prefer
or not prefer to run against.
JAKE TAPPER: Not on camera, anyway.
KAREN FINNEY: Not on camera, anyway.
Of course.
But not this minute, Jake.
But I would say, I think the people who would create
the most of a challenge would be someone like a Tim Scott, who
is younger, who is African-American,
brings different perspective, different ideas.
I just don't think he's gonna get the nomination
for a whole host of reasons.
I think it's pretty clear that Donald Trump's
support is quite hardened.
And that base that he has got, they are with him.
Whether or not they'll stick with him all the way
through Iowa, we'll see.
But I just don't see anyone really taking him out,
so to speak.
And I it's likely he'll end up with the nomination.
JAKE TAPPER: So let's talk about the Defense Authorization
bill, because it passed the House Armed
Services Committee 58 to 1.
Big bipartisan majority, which is usually how these bills go.
But then it goes to the floor of the House,
and Republicans, majorities, voted to add more controversial
amendments having to do with getting rid of the Pentagon's
Office of Diversity, having to do
with stopping the Pentagon from paying for transgender
health procedures.
And then there's that travel policy allowing individuals who
are service members or married to service members who
are in states where abortion is essentially illegal to travel,
not paying for the procedure of abortion,
but paying for the travel, as the Pentagon does
for other health procedures.
I want you-- here's how a Republican
from a swing district, Congresswoman Jen Kiggans
explained the vote.
Quote, "Taxpayers should not be paying for elective surgery.
This wasn't a bill about abortion.
It was about taxpayers paying for travel for military members
for elective procedures."
What do you make of this all?
CHRISSY HOULAHAN: [LAUGHS] Incredibly
frustrating narrative coming from Representative Kiggans.
Abortion care is not always an elective decision.
And I think that what's missing here
is how we've just basically said to women in service
and their families that their reproductive freedoms
and their reproductive health is not
important to the American people.
And I think nothing shorter from the truth.
I think I'm enormously frustrated that we've taken
what was, as you mentioned, an enormously bipartisan bill
and turned it into a wish list of Republican campaign ideals.
And I think it's actually gonna backfire on them.
I think it's gonna end up with places
like my part of Pennsylvania recognizing that--
we're even playing games with our American people
and men and women in uniform.
What's gonna to happen to them?
You know, this is a back door to, I think,
a federal ban on abortion.
SCOTT JENNINGS: Republicans obviously see it differently,
and they believe the military should be about one thing,
lethality, protecting America.
And they think under the Biden administration,
a lot of ancillary programming has been added that has
nothing to do with that.
And so they voted to strip it out.
My sense is, this will all be worked out in committee.
And what can pass the House under Kevin McCarthy
is probably different than what will pass
the Senate under Chuck Schumer.
So there'll be a conference committee,
and we'll see what survives.
JAKE TAPPER: I want to turn to something
on the Democratic side that emerged this weekend.
There is growing angst that potential third party
challengers Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Marianne Williamson
could really hurt President Biden's re-election chances.
RFK, Jr., the "New York Post" reports, with video--
it's not just their account--
spreading some really deranged lies
about COVID that really walk into anti-Semitism
and anti-Asian bigotry.
The "New York Post" has tape of Kennedy saying,
quote, "COVID-19, there's an argument
that it is ethnically targeted.
COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.
The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.
We don't know whether it's deliberately
targeted that or not.
We do know that the Chinese are spending
hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons."
Unquote.
There is no truth to this.
You know, plenty of Ashkenazi Jews
and plenty of Chinese and Asian people died of COVID.
It's a deranged argument, but this guy is posing--
he's polling in the double digits among Democrats.
KAREN FINNEY: Well, but again, I think that is
more about name recognition.
I mean, his own family doesn't support him.
And as you just said, that is a deranged, disgusting thing
to say.
Let's just be very clear.
It does not represent the values of the Democratic Party.
So I think when voters-- he's not
on the ballot in any states.
And I think when voters actually get to hear him say things like
that, those numbers will fall.
I'm not concerned.
And as the Congresswoman said, the fundraising numbers
from the Biden campaign should just
shut up the people who have been,
you know, wringing their hands.
We see it every cycle.
I'm very confident in President Biden's ability
to run a solid campaign.
And the last thing I'll say very quickly is, in part because--
you know, a lot of what 2024 is gonna be about
is who is, who is an Amer--
who gets to be an American?
When we talk about the Defense Authorization bill,
I mean, a lot of what is in there are anti-LGBTQ,
anti-woman, anti-civil rights.
And we're seeing this at the state level.
We're seeing this at the federal level.
And calling it culture wars is such a disservice.
JAKE TAPPER: Yeah. So--
SARAH MATTHEWS: I want to stay on Karen's point,
too, about the people who have been kind of underestimating
President Biden--
I think that his fundraising numbers
need to be a wake-up call to Republicans as well.
Because I feel like a lot of people
are pointing to his low approval ratings and everything.
But if Republicans nominate someone like Donald Trump,
then Biden could succeed and win re-election.
But I think if we put up anyone else,
we could pose a threat to Biden.
But these fundraising numbers are really strong.
JAKE TAPPER: Any thoughts on what Robert Kennedy had to say?
I mean, I can't--
CHRISSY HOULAHAN: I have to echo the fact
that it's nauseating and disgusting and divisive.
And the Democratic Party has no room
for that sort of narrative.
I don't think he will gain any traction,
and I'm not worried about it.
I am confident that it will end up
being a rematch of Biden and Trump,
and I believe President Biden will prevail.
JAKE TAPPER: All right.
Thanks one and all for being here.