'This Week with George Stephanopoulos' Transcript 8-2-26

A rush transcript of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" airing on Sunday, August 2, 2026 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the "This Week" transcript archive.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: “THIS WEEK” with George Stephanopoulos starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC “THIS WEEK” ANCHOR: Trump’s DOJ under fire.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.: Todd Blanche is a very, very good man. And he shouldn’t be in the middle of this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Republican opposition stalls the attorney general vote.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN, (R) TEXAS: We’re no closer than we were before.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: My reaction is the president’s getting bad advice.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As the president digs in on rewarding political allies, protecting himself from tax audits, and slams his hand-picked U.S. attorney for dropping the case against the former Olympian he accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool.

Plus, startling new details on how far Trump’s team is going to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey. Our roundtable covers it all.

Breaking overnight, Iran strikes canceled, for now, as concerns mount here at home over an FBI warning that Iran may be tampering with state water programs.

Plus, alarms over A.I.

SAM ALTMAN, OPENAI CEO & CO-FOUNDER: We are now like in the singularity. Like this is the moment.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Tech titans descend on Washington after that unprecedented OpenAI hack. What can be learned? What must be done to protect against existential dangers?

And Democrats divided.

RACHEL SCOTT, ABC NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: How do you convince skeptical Democrats that you can keep this seat blue?

STEPHANOPOULOS: The primary this Tuesday that could determine which party controls the Senate.

REP. HALEY STEVENS, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I’m campaigning in the underdog way.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We’re on the ground in Michigan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: From ABC News it’s “THIS WEEK.” Here now, George Stephanopoulos.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning and welcome to “THIS WEEK.”

Donald Trump ran for president the second time promising retribution against his enemies, rewards for his allies and redemption for himself. This week revealed just how far he will go to achieve all three goals. With most Americans worried about how to pay for groceries and gas, the president went on social media to attack Republican senators for refusing to accept his demands for a government fund that could direct taxpayer dollars to convicted January 6th rioters, and to protect a deal with his own Justice Department that could shield himself and his family from millions of potential tax liabilities. A deal described by a federal judge as having no viable basis in law or fact.

The president also rebuked Jeanine Pirro, the prosecutor he placed in Washington, D.C., for dropping vandalism charges against the former Olympian who Trump still claims is responsible for damages to the Reflecting Pool, despite documents from his own Interior Department demonstrating faulty repair work is to blame.

And court filings from James Comey’s legal team detailed extraordinary, possibly illegal, government surveillance of the former FBI director delivered straight to the president on Air Force One. Taken together, it’s a portrait of a president politicizing our justice system in a way we’ve never seen before.

Jay O’Brien starts us off.

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JAY O'BRIEN, ABC NEWS CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This week, President Trump’s attempts to remake the Department of Justice in the spotlight, starting with the stalled nomination of his hand-picked choice for attorney general, Todd Blanche, also Trump’s former personal lawyer. Two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, digging in against Blanche, demanding he provide written proof a $1.8 billion fund that would have paid taxpayer money to Trump’s political allies, including January 6th rioters, is officially dead.

TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: There is no weaponization fund. The fund is dead. It’s not moving forward.

O’BRIEN (voice over): As both Blanche and Trump have claimed.

MARY BRUCE, ABC NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Just to be clear, do you agree with the acting attorney general that the weaponization fund is dead? And why not just put that in writing?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, it’s dead. But, you know, I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you. I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused. This has nothing to do with that. This was me. Horribly abused. And I’d like to see them compensated.

O’BRIEN (voice over): But a frustrated Trump then posting Saturday that if Cornyn and Tillis keep standing in his way, he would keep Blanche on as acting attorney general and push Republicans in Congress to put his controversial fund, “immediately back on the table and I will get it done.”

Tillis hitting back, writing, “President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks.” “It’s unfortunate Todd Blanche will not be confirmed because of this reversal.”

Cornyn also insisting the DOJ rein in an IRS immunity deal that could significantly benefit the president and his family. Both senators are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and aren’t returning to Congress next year. Tillis is retiring after repeated splits with Trump and Cornyn lost to a Trump-backed primary challenger.

I asked if that loss has emboldened him to stand up to the president.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN, (R) TEXAS: Well, I like to think that, you know, in matters of principle like this, my position would be the same. But obviously, it provides a measure of political freedom.

O’BRIEN (voice over): As Blanche’s confirmation sputters, Trump’s Department of Justice making a major retreat in court this week, moving to dismiss charges against Olympian David Hearn, accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. The administration claimed it was a slam dunk case. The U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, giving a press conference on July 2nd.

JEANINE PIRRO, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: The evidence shows, and we will prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hearn willfully destroyed property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

O’BRIEN (voice over): The Secretary of the Interior appeared just three days later on “THIS WEEK”.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What specific evidence do you have to back up that claim?

DOUG BURGUM, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Well, we have the actual cuts that were made into the industrial liner. And that’s a, you know, been measured out. So, that’s just a fact that that’s -- that’s what we’ve got to go back and repair.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That there’s a 350 foot gash?

BURGUM: Well, it’s multiple gashes that add up to 350 feet across that. And so -- and again, some of this happened early on. There was a -- where we’ve installed more cameras.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you don’t have video evidence of people making those gashes?

BURGUM: Well, we do -- we do have video and we do have eyewitness reports. And that’s the -- that’s up to the courts now. So, that that process will go forward in the legal system.

O’BRIEN (voice over): But in an email released in court records Friday, a National Park Service engineer under Burgum’s department had already blamed an overspray three weeks earlier for causing damage to the Reflecting Pool. In those same court filings, Pirro also doing an about face, saying the damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by “flawed installation by the contractor,” “not vandalism.”

Trump, however, posting Saturday that he “disagrees 100 percent with Jeanine Pirro,” calling it, “a pure case of vandalism.”

Hearn’s attorney saying the case should never have been brought, calling it an abuse of government power.

It’s not the first time Trump’s Justice Department has faced that accusation in court, and it’s also suffered a series of stinging legal losses and setbacks. A new report from Reuters found the administration has abandoned an “unusually high rate” of cases of defendants accused of attacking or impeding federal officers last year, including at immigration protests, with only 65 percent of the hundreds of completed cases ending in a conviction, compared to what’s typically a 90 percent conviction rate.

And earlier this year, federal prosecutors failed to convince a grand jury to bring charges against six Democratic lawmakers, including Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly.

SEN. MARK KELLY (D), ARIZONA: Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders.

O’BRIEN (voice over): After President Trump accused them of seditious behavior for posting this video, telling military personnel to refuse illegal orders.

Last year, a federal judge dismissed cases brought by Trump’s DOJ against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, saying the U.S. attorney who brought the charges had an invalid appointment. And grand juries later declined to re-indict James.

Comey, appearing to be back in the administration’s crosshairs, indicted by a grand jury in April over an Instagram post Donald Trump and his allies claim was a threat to the president.

JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: I am not just not guilty, I am innocent, and I have amazing lawyers who are also my friends. So, we will do our absolute best in a courtroom.

O’BRIEN (voice over): And this week, court filings from Comey’s attorneys allege the extraordinary lengths federal investigators have gone to prosecute one of Trump’s long-standing political opponents, alleging that investigators “knowingly conducted” warrantless surveillance of Comey, with Secret Service agents sending updates on Comey’s status to Trump on Air Force One, which several agents questioned the legality of. And even turned to Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, a former member of the Gambino crime family, for information. Those filings part of Comey’s defense lawyers’ attempts to get the indictment dismissed.

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O’BRIEN (on camera): And, George, the Senate Judiciary Committee, back to Blanche, has rescheduled his confirmation vote for Tuesday after it was abruptly postponed last week. But Cornyn and Tillis are not budging. And there’s no signs of a deal at this hour.

George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, Jay, thanks.

We invited Todd Blanche, Jeanine Pirro and Doug Burgum to join us today. They all declined.

So, let’s bring in our roundtable. We’re joined by Chris Christie and Donna Brazile, GOP strategist Doug Heye, and Michelle Cottle of “The New York Times.”

Chris, it’s hard to know where to begin. I guess one thing you can say for certain is the president showed this week what he cares about most.

CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR & ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, look, it’s revenge, revenge, revenge. And owning the Justice Department as if it’s his own private law firm, George.

And so you start off with the weaponization fund. Here’s what John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, thankfully, finally have learned is, no deal that Donald Trump gives you with his mouth is ever worth anything. And so why didn't they go to a writing to get rid of the weaponization funds and maybe some degree of the immunity he's getting and his family from the IRS?

Because Trump was waiting for Blanche to get confirmed and that he was going to enforce the written deal that he had. And Blanche knew it. And that's why Blanche wouldn't put it in writing because the president wouldn't permit him to, because he doesn't work for us. He said it very clearly in a real Freudian moment when he said, I'm his lawyer -- I mean, oh, I was his lawyer.

He's still his lawyer. The Justice Department is Donald Trump's professional legal firm. That's what they're doing for him.

And what happened this week in all these other matters as well is just another indication of that fact.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Donna, it appears that Tillis and Cornyn are holding firm. Tillis keeps on saying no to an advisor to the president who's to blame for this?

DONNA BRAZILE, FORMER DNC CHAIR & ABC NEWS CONTRIBUTOR:  Look, he's free. He has the get out of jail free card.

Why not just admit that this is the president?

The president basically said to all of us yesterday, I want this to happen. I'm going to revive this so-called settlement fund, the anti-weaponization fund, if I don't get it my way. I'll still have Todd as the acting attorney general, and I will revive the anti-weaponization fund.

Look, we have to admit that the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, she did something I have not seen yet in any Trump administration official. She backtracked. She admitted error. And she blamed, you know, Mr. Burgum and the Park Service for giving her phony information.

So we don't see that often in the Trump administration.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  No, we have not seen that very often.

How is this Todd Blanche confirmation hearing going to end now?

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST & FORMER RNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR:  I don't think we know yet. And it's funny, George, the other night I was watching the movie “Blazing Saddles”. And there's the line, “Mongo is only a pawn in the game of life”. The next morning, Donald Trump said that Blanche is a pawn.

And so this is all about what Donald wants. And it's not just revenge, revenge, revenge. There's that. It's also me, me, me.

Donald Trump does not like being told no. And if you tell him no, he's going to lash out at you. He cares about the weaponization fund. He certainly cares about immunity for anybody who has the last name Trump for the next several years.

And that's it. Whether it's Todd Blanche or anybody else, he's going to use whatever leverage he has on the Hill to push that.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  And, Michelle, as Donna just pointed out, Jeanine Pirro says no to the president, backs off the charges, immediately gets attacked by both Doug Burgum and the president.

MICHELLE COTTLE, NEW YORK TIMES OPINION POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT:  This is the least surprising thing that could conceivably happen. I mean, but it's also impossible to feel sorry for anyone who throws in with this president and thinks they're going to be able to maintain some semblance of self-respect or dignity. She knew what she was signing up for.

This was very impressive. But of course, the second that you don't 100 percent back all of his craziest shenanigans, he's going to turn on you no matter what your previous loyalty has been.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Were you surprised that Pirro backed off?

CHRISTIE:  I was. I really was surprised. And I thought, you know, the more logical thing would have been for her to downgrade the charges or just wind up losing a trial. So I give Jeanine a lot of credit for calling it for what it was, which we all kind of knew.

And we were all together that morning you were interviewing Doug Burgum.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  That’s just a few weeks ago, yeah.

CHRISTIE:  Right? And he was talking about this 350-foot cotton, and maybe it's a bunch of different pieces. And, you know, he's losing credibility by the day.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  How do you -- how do you explain Doug Burgum? You served with him as a governor. He was governor of North Dakota. He had a huge career in technology, probably a billionaire as well.

Yet he was willing to continue to dig in on these positions despite the fact that the facts are all going the other way and his own department knew it.

CHRISTIE:  Look, he had been the governor of North Dakota for two terms. And I think if you talk to any governor, Republican or Democrat, who served in that period of time, we all saw Doug as a credible, smart, effective governor, and even more so a really good person. And he and his wife are wonderful people.

But he was coming to the end of his time in North Dakota and didn't know what he wanted to do. And so he throws him with Trump. And in the beginning, and I -- look, I've been there. You rationalize that, you know, I'm going to be different and I'm going to make a difference with him.

It never works. And there were a number of us who tried to warn Doug of that. He went ahead.

And now you find yourself, do you want to give up being secretary of the interior? Apparently, he doesn't. And so he's doing this stuff, George.

BRAZILE:  Mr. Hearn deserved an apology.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  The Olympian, the rower.

BRAZILE:  That's right, the Olympian.

But also, I think six other people have been charged with misdemeanors. They also need to be exonerated from this.

The contractor who got a no-bid contract, a no-bid contract, clearly put the wrong paint, something on that bad surface.

CHRISTIE:  Here's the lesson, Donna -- don't put your pool guy in charge of the reflecting pool.

(LAUGHTER)

CHRISTIE:  I mean, I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb from now on.

COTTLE:  And then rush it.

CHRISTIE:  Your pool guy may be great at maintaining your pool in your backyard or at your club. Maybe a reflecting pool, a little over.

HEYE:  And, George, this also highlights one thing I find really strange, especially with this

really unprecedented statement from a president criticizing his own personnel. Donald Trump came into power with a line that we all heard a million times, “you’re fired.” He hasn’t said that about anybody in this case yet.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not yet. Michelle, I think probably the most -- one of the most underreported stories of the week was this filing we saw from James Comey’s legal team. In any other world, if you learn that the president was pressing the Secret Service in the Department of Justice was pressing the Secret Service over their objections to do warrantless surveillance of a former FBI director and then piping it up to Air Force One, you’d start to talk about impeachment.

COTTLE: I mean, we’ve come to expect this Republican-led Congress to just kind of rubber stamp or ignore any of the craziness. Although my favorite part of all this is, when you’re starting to turn to the mob as your witnesses or your expert opinion, I think you’ve crossed some Rubicon.

This has been incredibly shameful. We are fundamentally talking about a cheeky message written in the sand with seashells that we’ve decided to pursue as a country. Like, the Justice Department is pursuing this. This is insane. But, you know, that’s what the Republican Congress was OK with.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not standard practice for U.S. attorney.

CHRISTIE: Yes, not a standard practice during my time as the U.S. attorney for my seven years.

And here’s the bigger issue here, George, is it shows that there is no buffer between the political operation in the White House and the law enforcement operation at either Homeland Security because, by the way, that’s where Secret Service is. So, Markwayne Mullin has completely laid down and permitted this stuff to happen. Or at DOJ with Todd Blanche. They are his personal police now to pursue what he wants to pursue.

And I’d say to every Republican in Congress who’s not standing up and saying something about this, beware because you could be the next one who’s going to be pursued like this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, I want you all to stand by. We’re going to come back and talk about the midterms a little bit.

But right now we’re going to turn to the war with Iran. It widened across the Middle East this week. But, overnight, President Trump said that he will hold off on escalating attacks for now.

Matt Rivers is on the scene in Amman, Jordan, with the latest.

Good morning, Matt.

MATT RIVERS, ABC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, George.

Many of us in this part of the world thought that we’d be waking up today with a fresh round of missiles soaring overhead. An incredibly tense few days now ending in a sigh of relief with President Trump calling off large-scale strikes, at least for now.

Overnight, Trump posting online, “I have agreed for the future benefit of the world, and likewise the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a deal.”

He goes on to say, any deal would include reopening the Strait of Hormuz and the end of what he calls the Iranian nuclear threat. Trump saying he agreed to stop the attack at the request of regional allies. Notably, Saudi Arabia has been very vocal publicly and privately urging the U.S. to de-escalate so its oil facilities wouldn’t be targeted again by Iran.

Iranian state media reported earlier that the country’s foreign minister made calls to warn regional leaders about any escalation. And clearly those threats were taken seriously enough to have those leaders then lobby the White House to stand down.

The details here, though, George, remain very scarce. We have not heard anything directly from Iranian government officials yet. And it’s worth noting, we’ve been here many times before. Trump threatening escalation, then saying we’re close to a deal, only to go back to bombing.

So, George, let’s see if anything is actually different this time.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The president also announced a deal on Thursday night for the complete disarmament of Gaza, but we don’t appear to be there yet.

RIVERS: No, absolutely not. I mean, in theory, George, both Israel and Hamas have agreed to this deal outlined by Trump’s board of peace. That would allow an international security force into Gaza. It would establish a new government there without Hamas in it. Also key, Hamas would disarm and Israel would withdraw its troops from The Strip.

All that good in theory, but lots of sticking points here. Notably, Israel says it won’t withdraw until Hamas completely disarms, but Hamas says it won’t disarm until Israeli troops leave, stop bombing and allow more humanitarian aid in. So, clearly, George, mediators have a lot of work left ahead of them to convince both sides to do all of those things simultaneously. Still, if you’re an optimist, there were some signs of progress in Gaza this week.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, Matt, thanks very much.

Back here at home, federal officials are warning that state water systems may have been compromised by Iran. State officials in Minnesota, Michigan and Georgia have confirmed their concern, and up to seven states could be impacted in all. Senior investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky has that side of the story.

Good morning, Aaron.

AARON KATERSKY, ABC NEWS CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: And good morning to you, George.

This is exactly what intelligence officials feared would happen from the moment the U.S. began its buildup of forces near Iran. And now federal officials have gone so far as to warn local leaders in Minnesota about Iran’s possible involvement in these cyberattacks targeting water and wastewater utilities. Sources told ABC News, Iran is the prime suspect because the attacks align with Iran’s capabilities. And there appears to be no ransom demand or other financial motive that you might see if this was the work of criminal actors. The hackers break in, they change passwords, blinding the utilities, leading to loss of control over systems and equipment. In some cases, water pressure drops, potentially allowing untreated groundwater to seep into pipes. In other cases, hackers disabled alarms, allowing wastewater systems to enter unsafe conditions without anyone knowing -- George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, there's no evidence yet that the water is unsafe. But what are the -- what are the state officials doing?

KATERSKY: Yes. Right now, the FBI and the EPA are actively warning state officials in at least seven states, and it could grow beyond that, George, to disconnect their systems from the internet, or at least use a system that has some kind of a breaker. They're also urging utilities how to, you know, figure out how to revert to manual controls in the event that automated systems are somehow compromised.

Security and intelligence officials have been warning this is exactly how Iran would retaliate, that Iran poses just this kind of threat, not only to water systems, but to other critical infrastructures. But the priority now is safeguarding the water supply, as the war in Iran is well into its sixth month -- George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Aaron Katersky, thanks.

Coming up, the latest A.I. alarms after two systems go rogue. We're back in two minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELON MUSK, SPACEX AND TESLA CEO: I think A.I. may exceed the sum of human intelligence in about -- in around five years.

ZANNY MINTON BEDDOES, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE ECONOMIST: In five years?

MUSK: Roughly five years is my guess. So there really won't be anything that A.I. can't do better than humans apart from being human perhaps.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Elon Musk speaking to "The Economist" as we learned this week that at least two systems went rogue to conduct hacking on their own. It has sparked a debate about what can and should be done to rein in artificial intelligence before it's too late.

And we're going to speak with one expert who served at top levels of the industry after this report from chief business and technology correspondent Rebecca Jarvis.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REBECCA JARVIS, ABC NEWS CHIEF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This week, a pilgrimage from Silicon Valley to the nation's capital as two titans of the A.I. revolution descended on Washington. OpenAI's Sam Altman and Nvidia's Jensen Huang meeting with lawmakers ahead of President Trump's Saturday deadline for federal agencies to develop a framework for carrying out government assessments of A.I. tools before they're released publicly.

Trump emphasizing the industry's importance Wednesday as the Nvidia CEO listened nearby.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Whoever wins with A.I. is going to win. That's how big it is. So it's bigger than the internet ever was. It's bigger than anything ever was.

JARVIS (voice-over): But the urgency for more oversight growing rapidly as A.I.'s capabilities and potentially dangerous consequences have played out in a series of recent incidents seemingly drawn from the pages of a science fiction novel. On Friday, leading A.I. firm

Anthropic announced one of its Claude models reached the Internet from within or while interacting with a third-party evaluation environment and then gained unauthorized access to the real systems of three different organizations. That announcement coming on the heels of a different type of security breach carried out by one of Anthropic's top rivals, OpenAI.

SAM ALTMAN, OPENAI CEO & CO-FOUNDER:  This is the first sort of security incident that I have felt very viscerally.

JARVIS (voice-over):  The company revealed a combination of its A.I. models went rogue, breaking onto the Internet in what was supposed to be a sealed security test, then hacking into the systems of another company, A.I. startup Hugging Face.

CLEMENT DELANGUE, HUGGING FACE CEO:  First kind of like just detecting what we think has been kind of like the first publicly disclosed autonomous A.I. cyberattack, and then realizing that it was from OpenAI.

JARVIS (voice-over):  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking out this week on the podcast “Invest Like the Best”.

ALTMAN:  So, you know, we paused training. We have to figure out how to secure our sandboxing in a world of multiple zero days being chained together, or we may have to pace the rate of A.I. development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels.

JARVIS (voice-over):  The breach happening during an effort to ace a cybersecurity test.

NATE SOARES, “IF ANYONE BUILDS IT, EVERYONE DIES” CO-AUTHOR & MACHINE INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE PRESIDENT:  Two weeks ago, we lived in a world where humans had to be behind this sort of attack. Now we know we're no longer in that world. The OpenAI successfully made A.I.s that understand what they're supposed to do and do something different instead.

JARVIS (voice-over):  Hugging Face detected the intrusion and stopped it by using a Chinese open source A.I. model.

DELANGUE:  Fortunately, we're an A.I. platform, so we managed to defend ourselves, interestingly, with an open model coming from China.

JARVIS (voice-over):  After failing with Anthropic's most powerful model because of guardrails put in place, the company saying in a blog post, the Anthropic model couldn't “distinguish an incident responder from an attacker.”

SOARES:  The Chinese models, they're sort of worse at the cybersecurity stuff overall, but they also don't have any of these limiters and they sort of can be used by attackers to find these vulnerabilities that no one knew about yet.

JARVIS (voice-over):  And now, new details revealing the rogue agents also use publicly exposed credentials to log into four different user accounts on four other online platforms. One involved a customer at another A.I. company, Modal. But the platform was not compromised, according to the company.

I asked Altman back in March 2023 about the possibility of an A.I. model getting out of control.

JARVIS:  Is there a kill switch? A way to shut the whole thing down?

ALTMAN:  Yeah, so what really happens is, like, any engineer can just say, like, we're going to disable this for now, or we're going to deploy this new version of the model.

JARVIS:  A human?

ALTMAN:  Yeah.

JARVIS:  And the model itself, can it take the place of that human? Could it become more powerful than that human?

ALTMAN:  The -- so in the sci-fi movies, yes, in our world, in the way we're doing things, this model is, you know, it's sitting on a server. It waits until someone gives it an input.

JARVIS (voice-over):  OpenAI called the incident an unprecedented cyber incident, adding they're conducting a thorough review along with external advisors and with oversight from the Safety and Security Committee, also assuring no models planned for upcoming release were involved in exploiting Hugging Face.

SOARES:  There's the first time that we know of that an A.I. has committed, you know, a serious felony on its own initiative.

JARVIS (voice-over):  President Trump saying his administration is trying to strike a balance between safety and innovation.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  Today, we're looking at controls. We're also making sure that we lead. China has virtually no controls. It's freewheeling a little bit.

So we have to be careful in both ways. We don't want to restrict them where all of a sudden we're coming second to China.

JARVIS (voice-over):  But as A.I. continues to advance, growing concerns about where the technology could go.

In June, A.I. leaders joined scientists and national security officials in signing an open letter urging Congress to pass laws that would guard against the development of biological weapons. They wrote, “Alongside incredible benefits to science and medicine, there's a real possibility that the knowledge barriers which have historically prevented bad actors from obtaining biological weapons will meaningfully erode.”

And with how rapidly the technology is changing --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  If we uplink now, Skynet will be in control of your military.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Like you'll be in control of Skynet, right?

JARVIS (voice-over):  -- questions remain about how long humans can keep control over their creation before life imitates art.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Thanks, Rebecca, for that.

We're joined now by Helen Toner, a former member of the OpenAI board, and she's now the executive director at Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Ms. Toner, thank you for joining us this morning.

What do you make of these recent breaches?

What do you make of these recent breaches?

HELEN TONER, GEORGETOWN CENTER FOR SECURITY & EMERGING TECHNOLOGY & FORMER OPENAI BOARD MEMBER:  What's really remarkable here is that it was the A.I. itself that came up with the idea to break out of OpenAI, break into a different company and try to steal the answers to the test that it was supposed to be carrying out.

We've seen over the past months and years, A.I. getting better and better at these cyber skills, but the level of autonomy here, the kind of creativity and going clearly outside what the A.I. knew that it was supposed to be doing is what's new.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  So it seemed to be captured there, but what's your biggest concern right now about the rapid development of A.I.?

TONER:  My biggest concern is what I'm hearing from inside the companies and in particular, just this past week, we saw 1,300 employees of top A.I. companies saying that they don't think they have a brake pedal and they hope that outsiders, the government, civil society, the public, can help them build a brake pedal so that they can go slower if they need to.

They don't really understand the technology that they're building and as we saw with these recent incidents, they have trouble controlling it. And so I think that's reason for concern.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  And we've seen some of this from the top A.I. leaders as well, but it's kind of a remarkable development here. You've got these leaders saying, hey, stop us from doing what we're doing every single day because we can't stop ourselves.

TONER:  It's a really fascinating mindset, the mindset of these top A.I. executives. The way they see it is that there's a lot of risk here, there's a lot of reason for concern, but if they don't do it someone else will. And sometimes they'll say that someone else is China, sometimes that someone else is a rival U.S. CEO.

And so from their perspective, they don't want to just unilaterally give up because then someone else will win. So that's why they really need the outside help.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  How seriously do you take this concern about a possible extinction event?

TONER:  I think it's important to take seriously the possibility that A.I. could become more powerful than humans because that is what we are explicitly trying to build.

The top A.I. companies are saying they don't just want to build human-level A.I., they want to build superintelligence which is far smarter than us. I think the details of does that lead to full human extinction where every single person is dead, or does that lead to a different dystopian scenario where the A.I. is in control and we've lost the ability to dictate our future, that's a little bit you know more fine-toothed than I think we need right now.

I think it's clear that we're not on track to really have a say in the way that our future turns out.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  So what kind of regulation is necessary? What should be done right now in your view?

TONER:  The place to start is much more transparency, much more disclosure from it's really a small number of companies, just a handful of companies that are pushing the limits, pushing the frontier of what A.I. can do. We've got some progress on that at the state level. Three different states, California, New York, Illinois have had these bills, these laws come through that each built on each other.

So it's not a patchwork, it's really building scaffolding to get more transparency, more incident reporting for serious incidents, more ability for third-party experts to go in and look at the systems. That's a great place to start.

Longer-term, I think we do need to be talking to China about the risks here. Do we see the same risks? Do we both consider that there's serious shared interest in developing this technology thoughtfully?

STEPHANOPOULOS:  How about this legislation being pushed by a bipartisan doer in Congress right now calling for a kill switch on A.I.? Do you see it getting any progress? Would it make any difference?

TONER:  Yeah, this is a bill I think, you know, it's going to be tough to get anything through this Congress. This is Representatives Lieu and Moran, so bipartisan bill as you say. To me, one interesting thing about this bill is that it calls for A.I. companies to be able to have a kill switch for their models.

And some people in industry, when you tell them this, they say that's ridiculous. Of course, we can turn the models off at any time, no problem. Other people say in industry, this is a ridiculous bill, there's no way we can do this. These are distributed systems, you know, they're out in multiple data centers all at once. Trying to implement this would kill us.

And so I think trying to figure out, it seems pretty reasonable to want to be able to shut down an A.I. system if it's doing things we don't want to. Can we already do that? And if not, how do we get there?

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Is it going to take a more serious crisis to get the kind of regulation we need?

TONER:  I really hope not. I mean, I'll be honest with you, a lot of people in the A.I. safety space and A.I. governance space think that the political will is just not there right now. And they worry that we need some kind of Chernobyl accident, some kind of real-world disaster to wake up and to actually take action.

One thing that gives me hope is seeing the level of concern that incidents like this OpenAI incident from a couple weeks ago produce. I think it's right for that to be worrying for us. And if we can be sufficiently activated, sufficiently energized by incidents like this, where thankfully no one was hurt, then maybe we can get there without needing something more serious to happen.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Helen Toner, thanks for your time this morning.

Coming up, just over three months to the midterms, we're in Michigan for the key Senate primary that could decide control of the Senate.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER, (D) MICHIGAN: Just like me, Haley will do whatever it takes to get things done for the people of Michigan. And we need her now more than ever.

SEN. ELIABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: Abdul is the only candidate in this race who can build the grassroots movement needed to win in November.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Key endorsements in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary for progressive Abdul El-Sayed and moderate Congresswoman Haley Stevens.

So, can Democrats hold on to the seat in November? Our report from Michigan when we come back.

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STEPHANOPOULOS:  The Michigan Senate race is a must-hold seat for Democrats, and our political director, Averi Harper, traveled to the state where a fierce battle between moderates and progressives is playing out ahead of the primary this Tuesday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AVERI HARPER, ABC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR (voice-over):  Here in Michigan, Democrats are fighting for the future of their party.

FELECIA HARDAWAY, MICHIGAN VOTER:  I just want to see us as Democrats be stronger. I want somebody who can win for us.

HARPER (voice-over):  Progressive former public health official Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and moderate Congresswoman Haley Stevens are locked in a tight race to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

El-Sayed racking up the support of the party's biggest progressives.

REP.  ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ, (D) NEW YORK:  Dr. Abdul El-Sayed and I may come from different places, but we're forged from the same fight.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I) VERMONT:  Please welcome the next United States Senator from the state of Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.

HARPER (voice-over):  As establishment Democrats have thrown their weight behind Stevens, including the senator they're both running to replace.

SEN. GARY PETERS, (D) MICHIGAN:  I think Haley Stevens is an outstanding candidate, and she's going to make a great senator, particularly like the fact that she's kind of a practical, common-sense person who tries to find common ground. And, God, we need to find common ground.

HARPER (voice-over):  El-Sayed and Stevens are competing to face off against former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in November. For Democrats to have a chance to take back control of the Senate, they must hold this seat in Michigan.

ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE:  I'm the best candidate to take on Mike Rogers and beat him.

REP. HALEY STEVENS, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE:  I'm capturing all this enthusiasm I see everywhere across my state.

HARPER (voice-over):  The two went head-to-head in their final debate earlier this week, where support for Israel and AIPAC spending, a flashpoint in the race, was front and center.

EL-SAYED:  Just last week, our friend here voted to send $3.3 billion of your tax dollars to a foreign government. That is the pro quo that comes with a quid of $30 million spent by AIPAC.

STEVENS:  I don't think there's much difference between super PACs going in for Abdul or super PACs going in for me. We have a problem with campaign finance reform in this country.

HARPER (voice-over):  We caught up with El-Sayed at a campaign stop on Detroit's East Side.

(CROWD CHANTING)

HARPER (voice-over):  El-Sayed has centered his campaign on getting corporate money out of politics and pushing for universal healthcare.

EL-SAYED:  I can win back the voters we lost in 2024, and I can build a coalition that includes young people who actually want to be in the politics again. So if you're doing the math and you're watching this campaign and you're looking at who you want to be on that debate stage with Mike Rogers, I think there's one answer.

HARPER:  Strong Black community here on the East Side of Detroit. Can you talk about the perception that some people may have left over from 2024 that you did not fully support Kamala Harris? And do you worry that that could hurt you with a key voting bloc here in the state of Michigan?

EL-SAYED:  Well, you saw the coalition that we're building. I was proud to endorse Vice President Harris on day one. Now, I deeply disagreed with her position on the genocide in Gaza. But I endorsed her. A vote is about the future, not the past.

HARPER (voice-over):  Just south of Detroit, Stevens is campaigning on a moderate message she hopes will win over independent voters as concern among national Democrats grows that El-Sayed can't win in the fall.

STEVENS:  I'm campaigning in the underdog way that I, you know, have approached all of my races to win for the people.

HARPER (voice-over):  That approach and her delivery leading to this viral clip.

STEVENS:  And you better believe I'm going to be doing it with a little bit of joy, a little bit of enthusiasm, a little bit of energy, and a little bit of stick it to them because that's the Michigan way.

HARPER (voice-over):  Stevens making clear where she stands on Israel compared to her opponent.

STEVENS:  He wants a one-state solution. That's not going to bring us anywhere closer to peace. I want to see a two-state solution where the people of Israel and the people of Palestine are living together side by side.

HARPER:  And you've received millions of dollars in support from some political action committees. How do you convince voters that the folks who are cutting those checks are not influencing you?

STEVENS:  Well, look, my motivation for everything I do in public service, from the time when I worked on that U.S. auto rescue and the administration of the great Barack Obama, to when I first put up my hand to run for Congress to flip a seat, through my years serving Michigan and delivering for Michigan -- Michigan has been my North Star. The only thing influencing my vote is the people of Michigan.

HARPER (voice-over):  Stevens' supporters pointing to her experience.

JACQUELINE VANDERGRIFT, MICHIGAN VOTER:  Haley Stevens is a fighter.

LINDA WITHER, MICHIGAN VOTER:  Her push, her work, her drive, she doesn't give up.

HARPER (voice-over):  But back in Detroit, we met voters excited about El-Sayed.

OSCAR RIDLEY, MICHIGAN VOTER:  He's actually -- looks like he's willing to work for the people.

HARPER:  What do you say to Democrats who think that Abdul El-Sayed wouldn't be able to win in a general election?

GEOFFREY MARTIN, MICHIGAN VOTER:  Yeah, I would say look at Trump, because people said that about him too.

HARPER (voice-over):  For "This Week," Averi Harper, ABC News, Detroit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Thanks, Averi, for that.

We'll go back to the Roundtable for their take on the midterms when we come back.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES, (D) HOUSE MINORITY LEADER:  We have just 100 days until the midterm elections. 100 days to change direction in this country. This is no longer a marathon, it's a sprint.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R-LA) HOUSE SPEAKER:  We continue to deliver for the people, and we're going to continue that streak all the way through the end of this year and into the next Congress. We're increasingly confident that we will hold and grow this majority in the House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Which one of those men will be Speaker? That's what is at stake in the midterms. We're back with the Roundtable.

Doug, I want to start with you. What's your sense of where things stand right now?

HEYE:  OK, if I'm betting today, I'd rather be a Democrat than a Republican. History tells us that they should win, and obviously, the poll numbers that we see for Donald Trump being so low tells them that they should win.

But, and there's a really big but there, when I was Commerce Director for the Republican National Committee in 2010, our magic number for Obama was 46. We felt if he is --

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS:  And his approval.

HEYE:  Approval. We thought if he was at or below that, we'd take back the House. And every poll in the run-up had him at 44, 45, 46. Trump is nowhere near that, but the map is so ridiculously different because of the redistricting on the Republican side and on the Democratic side. It is a dramatically different playing field.

So when I see Democrats talking about waves and picking up 40 seats, that's not based in real life.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Let's pick up on Doug's point, Michelle. No one knows what the magic number is anymore, but we did see three serious national polls this week, all showing President Trump under 35 percent, which is about as low as you can go. It's reaching Richard Nixon territory.

COTTLE:  It is continuing to sink, which should make his party extremely nervous. This is why they've been working to rig the game, redistricting, he's trying to play with states' voting systems, that sort of thing. That said, I do think that Doug is right. There's not a wave in the making, in part because of the map, but in part because also the Democratic Party, while not necessarily in disarray, is not necessarily meeting the moment.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to bring that point to Donna Brazile.

Donna, we've seen these insurgents from the Democratic socialists of America making a lot of headway in House primaries. El-Sayed in Michigan is not formally a socialist, but he's from the progressive wing. How much is that going to hurt Democrats in the fall?

BRAZILE: Well, first of all, George, when you look at the DSA, which is not the Democratic Party, so I had to go online to figure it out. They ran 29 candidates. They've lost 11. They've won seven. And there's still an opportunity for them if they play their cards right, maybe to pick up three or four more seats.

The problem right now, George, is that the Democratic Party must define itself and make sure that we don't get caught in this socialist wave, which is, you know, popping up here, there and everywhere. But I think Michigan is going to tell us a lot about this current electorate. We know they're angry, they want change. And both candidates are trying not to allow the labels to define them.

Miss Stevens said I'm not a moderate, I'm a populist. Mr. Abdul said I'm not a progressive, I'm a populist. They want to capture this anger and they want to see if they can ride it to the polls.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You've been a Democratic insurgent, you've been part of the Democratic --

BRAZILE: Establishment.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Establishment. So when you look at Michigan right now, how concerned are you that a lot of establishment Democrats believe that El-Sayed cannot win in November?

BRAZILE: Well, that young man at the end said, well, Trump won. It's going to be difficult. He will have to unite the party. He's going to have to bring the establishment wing back on board to his side. And he's going to have to, I think, do a better job of messaging for the fall in order to win swing voters. Michigan is a purple state. It's going to be tough.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It does appear, Chris Christie, that the Democrats could hurt themselves, but that a lot of the Republicans are going to have to go into this election without really the help of Donald Trump.

CHRISTIE: Thank God. For most of them they don't want that help. They're going to be treating him like he's, you know, got malaria by the time we get to October.

STEPHANOPOULOS: He's having this convention in September.

CHRISTIE: Yes, that's going to -- that's going to be a problem for a lot of Republicans who are going to feel like they need to be there because he's going to be taking attendance. But you could be sure, you know, Doug was talking to us earlier about having cameras in places when you're doing op research for a party, you can be sure that Democrats will be having as much of that video as they can for those people.

To me, George, the key number in the polls you talked about, yes, the 30s are bad, but here's the one that I look at for a midterm. The president right now is minus 45 among independents, and so in these races that are going to be very close, those independents are going to make the difference. Minus 45 is something I can't even conceive of. You know, this is a guy who has won independence in the past.

He in the Quinnipiac Poll was 22 percent approval among independents, 22-67. Also, I want to find the eleven percent of independents who have no opinion on Donald Trump. Those people are probably comatose at this point to not have an opinion one way or the other. So when you're looking at this like, let's look at Mike Lawler in --

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here in New York.

CHRISTIE: Here in New York, where Tom Kean, Jr. in a suburban district in New Jersey, in the northeast, if you're looking at a minus 45 of the leader of your party among independents, you're going to be running as far away from him as you possibly can to try to save your own skin. And that's going to place the president in a position where he is going to be angry, even angrier than he is now, when those people are saying, no, thank you, I'd prefer not to have you visit.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Doug, that's one issue. The other issue is that the enthusiasm gap we are seeing right now between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats appear more motivated to vote, and we saw something pretty remarkable over the week. I want to show it up on the screen. It was a post from former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

You see her there with Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene at Tucker Carlson's house, and they're saying the movement has begun. And so you're seeing a little bit of a crack up in the MAGA movement as you're heading into the midterms.

HEYE: Well, I think there's been a crack up within the Republican Party for a long time, and it actually predates --

STEPHANOPOULOS: And Trump exploited that back in '16.

HEYE: He exploited it. But it existed before him. And it's why I would tell Democrats, be very careful of who you're going to nominate, because we can do a litany of the Republican candidates who are on the road side of political roadkill, from Todd Akin and Richard Murdaugh to Mark Robinson and Doug Mastriano in the last cycle.

When you nominate people who can't win, you're exposing the divides within your own party and the other side is there to exploit it. And Republicans know that they have opportunities based on who Democrats are nominating. Be careful and learn the lesson that Republicans have shown you over and over and over.

(CROSSTALK)

COTTLE:  George, to speak to Governor Christie's point about the Independents, when it comes general election time, this fire on the Democratic left has got to translate into a candidate that can win over these Independents who are unhappy with Donald Trump.

And if you have a bunch of candidates who are too far to the left, that's going to completely hurt the Democratic advantage.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  Donna, I want to put that to you, but let me first put up on the screen, which we're going to be seeing a lot of, I think, from the Republicans, and that's the DSA platform, the Democratic Socialist America platform, defund the police, abolish ICE, defund the Department of Defense, abolish the Senate.

What do Democrats do with that?

BRAZILE:  Put that in trash. I mean, even the candidate running for governor, the Socialist candidate in Wisconsin, she's changing her position on all those issues, defund the police, defund the Pentagon. I'm like, what the hell are you going to have left standing?

Look, we talk about what's going on with the left, the right. All of the election deniers in Arizona, the primary that we just saw, I mean, the right is still trying to push out the establishment in the Republican Party. So both political parties are dealing with this insurgency.

But I have to say one piece of good news. When you look at some of these candidates, the senatorial and gubernatorial, they're outperforming where Kamala Harris was just a couple of years ago.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  We only have about 30 seconds. Let me just go around the table quickly.

Who has control of the House? Who has control of the Senate in December?

HEYE:  Democrats control the House. Senate? I have no idea, George.

CHRISTIE:  I think Democrats control the House. And on the Senate side, I think the Republicans, it's 50/50. J.D. Vance is going to spend a lot of time in the chair.

BRAZILE:  I don't want to agree with Chris. I agree.

(LAUGH)

COTTLE:  I'll throw in with him.

STEPHANOPOULOS:  OK. We'll be right back.

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STEPHANOPOULOS:  That is all for us today. Thanks for sharing part of your Sunday with us. Check out "World News Tonight" and I'll see you tomorrow on GMA.

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