Special: Trump's veepstakes and longtime Florida congresswoman indicted on fraud charges

ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra .

MS. IFILL: Hello, I’m Gwen Ifill. And welcome to the Washington Week Webcast Extra , where we pick up online where we left off on air. I’m joined by Carrie Johnson of NPR, Beth Reinhard of The Wall Street Journal , Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post , and Manu Raju of CNN.

As we watch the candidates exchange political slings and arrows, it’s always wise to remember the best stuff is happening behind the scenes. Example the first: the veepstakes. The courting of candidates has become so obvious that it’s almost suspicious. Who is really on the list and who’s really not? What do we know? What’s the latest, Manu?

MR. RAJU: Well, Donald Trump has taken a different tack than we’ve seen other politicians in recent years and actually, you know, almost having a public auditioning process and tweeting about them and talking about how great certain people are. You know, two of them who were considered to be on the so-called short list have taken their names out. That includes Joni Ernst, the Iowa senator, as well as the Tennessee Senator Bob Corker.

MS. IFILL: Can I just stop you there? The weirdest moment of the week for me in many respects was the night that poor Bob Corker came wandering out onto the stage at a Trump rally as if blinking in the lights and said, mighty big crowd here; we don’t get crowds like this in Tennessee. (Laughter.) Then the next day he’s like I’m not really – it felt like he had been – it did not look good for him.

MS. REINHARD: Shanghaied.

MR. RAJU: Yeah, he said he didn’t really feel – I talked to him afterwards and he said that it just – it didn’t feel right for him.

MS. IFILL: No kidding. You could tell that. (Laughs.)

MR. RAJU: Yeah, exactly. But he’s open to something else in the administration – like secretary of state, because he the Foreign Relations chairman. So that’s something he’s possibly interested in. But you know, we’re probably looking at, you know, Newt Gingrich on the top of the list, Mike Pence, the Indiana governor. Trump’s said that there may a be a couple of generals that he’s thinking about. He even said that there were maybe up to 10 names he’s still considering.

MS. IFILL: Karen, if you are –

MS. REINHARD: Chris Christie.

MR. RAJU: Chris Christie, of course.

MS. IFILL: I want to – (chuckles) – and Beth is covering Trump especially. If you guys are Donald Trump, do you really want someone on your list who wants too badly to be on it?

MS. TUMULTY: Yes. If you are Donald Trump? Yes.

MS. REINHARD: Actually, yes, because Donald Trump prizes loyalty, flattery. As we saw this week, you know, when he met with folks on the Hill, if you have crossed him, he will – he will punch back as hard as he possibly can. And if you’ve been loyal to him, and if you were loyal early on – as Chris Christie was, for example, which is a big reason I think why he’s on the list – that is very prized by Trump.

MS. TUMULTY: I think so, too. I think that, you know, what he wants more than anything else is, you know, somebody who’s not going to disagree with him, who is not going to challenge him, who is not going to criticize him.

MS. IFILL: You think there’s any chance for a surprise, someone whose name we haven’t seen at all? Last time Sarah Palin came trotting out and we all went, who?

MS. TUMULTY: With Donald Trump there is a very big chance of that.

MS. REINHARD: Absolutely, absolutely.

MR. RAJU: And if there is a good woman candidate, certainly that would be helpful given how underwater – potentially helpful, given how underwater he is with women voters. There was some talk about – there were report of –

MS. IFILL: I’m sure woman voters will say, oh, well, he’s got a woman vice president, so I’ll just change.

MR. RAJU: There were some reports of Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, the congresswoman, being on the list. One of my colleagues spoke with her about it. She didn’t rule it out. She also didn’t say that she was being vetted or not, but she also didn’t seem totally interested in it. So I’m a little skeptical that he’s going to go that route.

MS. IFILL: Fascinating. OK, well, Carrie, I’m going to move you back to the Justice Department here because today, probably buried in all of the other news of the week, was an indictment of a sitting congresswoman. Tell me about it.

MS. JOHNSON: Corrine Brown from Florida, who’s been in the House since 1993 and is up for reelection this year, got indicted for essentially operating – allegedly operating a slush fund – for creating this charity that was supposed to give scholarships to students, raking in $800,000 according to the Justice Department, and then using a lot of that money to buy tickets and skyboxes at NFL games, Beyonce concerts.

MS. IFILL: I have to say the last time I saw Corrine Brown on camera somewhere was when she was walking off Air Force One with the president when he arrived in Orlando for his – to meet with the victims of the shooting.

MS. JOHNSON: So authorities say, of that $800,000 that she allegedly raised with her chief of staff, who was indicted alongside her, they gave $1,200 to scholarships and to charity.

MS. IFILL: Wow.

MS. JOHNSON: That case has obviously got to be litigated through the courts. And in these situations lawmakers tend to mount a big defense, as Chaka Fattah did, Democrat from Pennsylvania, earlier this year. He ultimately wound up convicted of bribery and numerous other offenses.

MS. IFILL: And had to leave Congress. But she doesn’t have to until – obviously, unless she’s convicted.

I want to ask Beth about a story you had this week about Trump’s general election strategy. We talk a lot about him from week to week to week, lurching along, but it turns out there’s a long view here somewhere.

MS. REINHARD: He has come up with a list, or the campaign professionals around him have come up with a list of 17 target states, which is a pretty big landscape of – that’s a big battleground. I think Mitt Romney had closer to 10 or 12. And so part of the reason it’s so long is that it’s got some reliably Republican states on there that most of the time Republicans sort of take for granted, but Donald Trump can’t because he’s Donald Trump and the numbers are all wacky this year. He’s also got a couple blue Democratic-leaning states on there that he thinks he can do well with.

MS. IFILL: He has said he thinks he would do well in California, but he is way, way behind.

MS. REINHARD: Yeah, California and New York did not make the cut. And the reasons are obvious, that the costs of competing in those states, and the gap he needs to make up is just enormous. It’s just prohibitive. But he is going – the battlegrounds will be different. The states that we’re so used to seeing the race focused on – Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Colorado – those are still going to be big states, but you’re also going to see Trump having to defend states like Arizona, a very large Hispanic population. One out of five eligible voters in Arizona is Hispanic, and he’s doing terribly with Hispanics.

MS. IFILL: That used to be reliably Republican.

MR. RAJU: And even Georgia, or even a Utah, right?

MS. IFILL: Even Utah.

MS. REINHARD: Georgia has a growing Hispanic population. And in a close race, that can make the difference.

MS. IFILL: OK. Well, we’ll be watching for all of that, of course, as always. Thank you so much, everybody.

We’re gone for now, but stay online and take our Washington Week News Quiz. I do so miserably at this every week, you can outscore me. See how you do. And we’ll see you next time, from Cleveland, with a preview of the Republican National Convention, on the Washington Week Extra .