Hamas’ top political leader Ismail Haniyeh killed | The Excerpt

On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Hamas’ top political leader has been killed. The incident came hours after Israel said it killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in retaliation for a rocket attack on a soccer field in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights. Some new clues emerge about Vice President Kamala Harris’ timeline and choice for running mate. Des Moines Register Chief Politics Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel looks back at Kamala Harris’ failure in 2019, and what may be different this time. Local police spotted Thomas Matthew Crooks’ gun before his assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. That was one of several takeaways during Senate testimony Tuesday. USA TODAY Sports Columnist Nancy Armour breaks down the U.S. women’s gymnastics team gold medal, and what this moment means for star Simone Biles.
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 Wednesday, July 31st, 2024. This is The Excerpt.
Today, the latest from Iran and Lebanon amid high profile killings. Plus, some clues about Kamala Harris’ running mate have emerged, and we discuss what’s different this time around for the Harris campaign from last election cycle.
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Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed earlier today in an apparent assassination at his residence in Iran, according to Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed after attending the swearing-in inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, Hamas said in a statement. Hamas and its ally Iran immediately blamed Israel. Israel rarely, if ever, directly confirmed such high profile attacks, though it has been targeting Hamas’ senior leadership, as well as senior Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon in the wake of Hamas’ October 7th attacks.
The killing took place hours after the Israel Defense Forces said yesterday that it carried out an airstrike in Lebanon’s capital of Beirut and killed a senior Hezbollah commander in response to a weekend rocket attack that killed 12 children and teenagers in the Golan Heights. The target, Fuad Shukr, was Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and head of its strategic unit. At least one person was killed and dozens injured by a drone that fired three missiles, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said in a statement on X, that Hezbollah crossed the red line in its rocket strike. While Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, responded to yesterday’s strike, saying that Israel’s assassination attempt had failed. The U.S. and Israel have blamed Hezbollah for the rocket attack, while Hezbollah has denied responsibility.
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Vice President Kamala Harris will visit multiple battleground states with her future running mate next week, according to the campaign. That signals a decision on the presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee’s pick for vice president is right around the corner. The campaign said that Harris and her running mate will make stops in Philadelphia, Wisconsin, Detroit, Raleigh, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. The first stop will be Tuesday in Philadelphia, which could suggest Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is the pick. Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is critical to Harris’ potential path to victory. But a campaign aid downplayed drawing any conclusions from the schedule.
Other possibilities include Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, among others. Harris is aiming to name a running mate before August 7th, the Democratic National Committee’s self-imposed deadline to virtually confirm the party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees ahead of the Democratic National Convention later in the month.
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Then presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ Iowa Caucus campaign failed last election cycle, but she faces a new landscape in 2024. I spoke with the Des Moines Register chief politics reporter, Brianne Pfannenstiel, about some of the lessons to take away from last time and the different factors at play this year.
Brianne, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Brianne, let’s just start here. Talk us through, if you would, what happened with Kamala Harris’ failed Iowa Caucus campaign back in 2019? What went wrong?
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
People were really excited to see her enter the presidential race. She came in with a lot of fanfare and it just never quite clicked for her in Iowa. People described her as being a really cautious campaigner and she struggled to break out of a historically large pack of Democratic candidates at that time, struggled to carve out a lane for herself. There were candidates who were very clearly the, quote unquote, “moderates” and others who were vying for the really progressive tack. And Harris just didn’t always position herself really clearly and she would equivocate on some key issues.
And so, through all of this, her poll numbers just started to fall and she never really got them to turn around and fundraising started to dry up. Eventually, she had to lay off staff. And by the fall, it turned into something that she just really couldn’t recover from, and so she ended up ending her campaign right after Thanksgiving.
Taylor Wilson:
So, things do appear to be different this year. For starters, Harris, this election, has a different funding infrastructure to build off of after, essentially, inheriting the Biden campaign infrastructure. How crucial is that aspect for fundraising this time?
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
Well, I think it’s really key for her this year. She doesn’t have time to build up the kind of campaign infrastructure that President Biden had at this point. So, being able to transfer his war chest over into her campaign is just really crucial for her. And so, by all accounts, she’s got the best in Democratic politics who will be advising her, who will be running this thing. And that, I’m sure, doesn’t come without its drawbacks either. She’s a different candidate, she may want to do things a little bit differently and try and reorient that infrastructure to suit her needs, but it really is going to be a benefit. To her credit, she’s already built on top of that in terms of fundraising.
Taylor Wilson:
And of course, Vice President Harris is going up against former President Donald Trump, who’s had this slew of legal issues and she’s a former prosecutor. How might that factor into her campaign the rest of the year?
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
Well, we are really seeing her lean into her background as a prosecutor, and that’s not something that was the case in 2019. In a Democratic primary, the candidates on the left were really pushing people to focus on criminal justice reform rather than policing and the positions that Kamala Harris had had in the past. And now, she’s not running against other Democrats, she’s running against Donald Trump, who now has 34 felony convictions. And so, she’s really contrasting that with her background as someone who goes after criminals. While she’s been campaigning already, she talks about being able to, quote, “take on perpetrators of all kinds.” So, I think we’re going to see more of that as this campaign continues.
Taylor Wilson:
And there was clearly some toxicity or negative energy around the Harris campaign last time out. She’s now polling reasonably well, she’s seen as a breath of fresh air by many within her party amid President Joe Biden’s cognitive issues. How could this mentality, really this positivity, propel her towards success this fall?
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
Well, another Democratic operative who I talked to really stressed that, hope is such a critical thing for a campaign to have, that when a campaign itself internally, the people who are working on this, are feeling like, “We’ve just got to get through this. This is a slog. There’s not a lot to build off of,” that it can really change the dynamic of what’s possible. And he said, “This reset for the Harris campaign to be able to harness the momentum, the hope that shows that she has a chance, is really going to be absolutely critical for them.”
Taylor Wilson:
And on the other side of the coin, the things that went wrong for Harris in 2019 and 2020, have we seen the Trump campaign lean into these and, really, what are their main points of attack against the Vice President at this point?
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
Well, they’re really going to be looking at a lot of the things that she said in that 2019 Democratic Primary that was really pulling candidates to the left, and say, “Look, she is just as liberal as you think she is. She’s more liberal than Joe Biden, she’s a California Democrat,” and they’re going to look at her time in the White House as well and tie her to Joe Biden’s policies, particularly on things like immigration, to say that she’s let the situation at the southern border fall apart.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for The Des Moines Register, and is also covering the presidential race for USA TODAY as a Senior National Campaign Correspondent. Thank you, Brianne.
Brianne Pfannenstiel:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Senior FBI and Secret Service officials painted the fullest picture yet of the communications breakdowns that allowed former president Donald Trump’s shooter to open fire and offered other key details about the assassination attempt at a Senate hearing yesterday. The hearing focused on the ongoing investigation into how a 20-year-old managed to fire a bullet into Trump’s ear at a Pennsylvania political rally earlier this month. FBI deputy director Paul Abbate revealed new details on the final hours and minutes in the life of Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump’s would-be assassin, including that he was photographed by law enforcement nearly an hour before the attack, and that a local officer radioed seeing him on a rally adjacent roof with a long gun about 30 seconds before he opened fire. You can read more takeaways from the hearing with a link in today’s show notes.
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The U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team rolled to an Olympic gold medal yesterday, and the win came as part of something of a redemption tour, following the Tokyo Games three years ago, and marked the latest medal for Simone Biles, widely recognized as the greatest gymnast of all time. I spoke with USA TODAY sports columnist Nancy Armour for more.
Nancy, thanks for hopping on.
Nancy Armour:
Thank you for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So, Nancy, the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics squad won the team final at the Paris games to win gold. Just how dominant were they?
Nancy Armour:
Well, they won by almost six points, which, in U.S. sports parlance, you know those early season college football games, when Alabama plays some division and it’s like 98 to 3? It was like that. I wrote in my column that, “The only way that the U.S. women were going to lose was that the bus got lost on the way to the arena,” and that was pretty much true. They dominated from the very first events, and this was definitely a route.
Taylor Wilson:
Nancy, can you refresh us on what happened to this team at the last Olympics three years ago in Tokyo? And why have they framed this as a redemption tour?
Nancy Armour:
Well, I think everybody in the world knows now about the twisties and Simone Biles getting them one event into the team final. And she withdrew because she didn’t know where she was in the air. And this was not just a, “Oh, I can’t gut through it.” It was a safety issue. She didn’t know if she was going to land on her neck, her head, or her feet. When you see that happen to a teammate, that throws you. The U.S. women, they had to do the last three events without her, and they ended up with a silver medal, which was the first time since 2010 that the U.S. women had not won a world or Olympic title. That’s how dominant they have been. So, the team members felt, just overall, as if that was not up to their standard, that they wanted more than that.
Suni Lee also felt like she ended up winning the all-around title in part because Simone wasn’t there. So, she’s wanted to have this feeling of having a performance that she feels like she would earn her medal. And then, Jade Carey was on the Olympic team, she won the gold medal on floor exercise, but she was not part of the team-team, she was an individual athlete. There was this weird thing that they had two specialists, for lack of a better term. So, she couldn’t do things like wear the same leotard as the rest of the U.S. women. And she felt like she was part of the team, but not really part of the team, and she wanted to have that team experience. So, all four of the veterans felt like they had something to prove, felt like they had a need to redeem themselves from Tokyo.
Taylor Wilson:
I want to hear a little bit more about Simone specifically here, Nancy, in the last few years. You wrote this great story about her before these games and, really, her fresh mentality coming in. Could you talk about that a little bit and how she has better refined this work-life balance, coming into these games?
Nancy Armour:
Yeah. When you look at Simone, she’s very different than how she looked in Tokyo and, quite honestly, even a little bit earlier in her career. But in Tokyo in particular, she looked burdened. She felt that she was carrying the weight of everything, not just that she had to carry the team, she had to carry all these expectations that people had of her. She was the face of those games, and that’s a lot to deal with. And especially, remember, these were games during Covid, so the athletes, their families were not there, their friends were not there, they were competing in empty arenas, which makes a huge difference.
When she started getting the twisties, there wasn’t anything to pull her out, because her family was half a world away. She was competing in an empty arena. Once she finally decided that she wanted to come back, she realized that gymnastics is what she does, it is not who she is. Yes, she is Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast ever, but she is a wife now. She’s got three dogs, so she’s a dog mom. She’s a sister, she’s a daughter. She puts a very high priority on those titles as much as she does the actual titles that she wins in gymnastics.
Taylor Wilson:
So, you touched on my next question a little bit. You said she’s the greatest gymnast of all time. How does she compare with the greatest Olympians of all time, period, Nancy?
Nancy Armour:
She, in terms of U.S. Olympians, aside from swimmers who have way more events, Allyson Felix is the only female American Olympian who has more medals now than Simone does, and Simone will probably surpass Felix by the end of these Games. What she’s doing is stunning, but it’s not just the number of medals that she’s won, but the fact that she’s done it across three Olympics, which, for a gymnast, is unusual. Usually, it’s one and done, maybe you go to two, but this is the third Games that she’s won a medal in. And so, her longevity and the success, when you combine those two, to me, she’s one of the greatest Olympians ever, whether it’s American or any other country. I think she’s one of the best.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Nancy Armour is a sports columnist with USA TODAY. Thank you, Nancy.
Nancy Armour:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Simone Biles may have more medals on the way over the next week, with the all-around and apparatus finals still to come. You can follow along with USA TODAY Sports.
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And 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. I’m Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.