Early Voting Favoring Dems 

0:03Tom Foreman: One month to go and President Trump is campaigning deep in red country. What his travel plans tell us about a midterm map spreading into unexpected places. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and inside politics.

0:25Tom Foreman: Just 33 days until the election and we are tracking the races, candidates and stories that could shift the balance of power in Washington and across the country. Today, we're getting our first look at early voting with our newly launched CNN tracker. Nearly 800 ,000 ballots have already been cast around the country. And there are clear signs of Democratic enthusiasm and an advantage for the Democrats. In several states with key races, registered Democrats make up a larger share of ballot requests than at this point in 2024. And we don't know how those voters will cast their ballots, but it could be a sign of good news for Democrats.

1:06Tom Foreman: And the state of Virginia may provide the most insight into what direction voters are headed. CNN's Tom Foreman is live at a polling place in Fairfax County, Virginia, a very blue D.C. suburb. Early voting is underway there. Tom, what does the early voting tell us so far where you are? Well, inside this building, it tells you there's a lot of energy because there is a lot of voting activity going on right now. people humming around and pretty excited about being involved. But go up and down the East Coast, you can see more of the same. Go to North Carolina, look at some of the early voting that we know of there.

1:44The independent turnout from the presidential race a couple years ago to now, yes, very different kinds of races, but the independent vote is about the same. But look at that. You can see in this graphic that the Republican turnout is cooled down at this point early on, and the Democrats are heating up. If you move up north of here to Pennsylvania, you see the same phenomenon. There's just broken down by the Republicans and the Democrats. But again, you see enthusiasm, the energy on the Democratic side rising, and not so much on the Republican side. Across the country, this is also part of the kind of, as you know, the sort of landslide movement that can happen, where people get encouraged by what they see, but the other party can also push back.

2:26You're right to note, Dana, above all else, though, that this is very, very early in this process. What we're seeing right now may be an indicator and certainly seems to echo the polls we've seen all summer, but it doesn't mean that's how it's going to play out because we still have just over a month till the end of voting.

2:45Tom Foreman: Tom, thank you so much. Appreciate it. It looks beautiful there in Fairfax. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters. I'm going to start with Ron Brownstein. And Ron, I want to point out that the I would probably venture to say your good friend and somebody you've covered and used for analysis for a very long time, as I have, Larry Sabadeau, who is an expert on all things, but particularly Virginia, where he lives already, based on the early voting we were just hearing about, has made some changes to his predictions on three key House races in Virginia. moved Virginia 1 from lean GOP to toss-up, that is now in yellow.

3:28Tom Foreman: Virginia 2, which is a rematch between the now incumbent Congresswoman Jen Kagan and Elaine Luria, the Democrat, moved it from toss-up to lean Democrat. And then Virginia 5 moved that from likely GOP to lean Republican. What are your thoughts, Ron? Well, and the Washington Post this morning is out with polls showing the Democrats leading in Virginia 1 and competitive in Virginia 5. Look, Republicans are caught in sort of a conundrum here. You know, if you look at the total number of votes cast in the primaries this year, the Democratic share of that vote was larger than it was in 2018. If you look at the Democratic overperformance of special elections in 25, 26, it was larger than it was in 2017, 2018.

4:16and this early voting data, although very early, kind of points in the same direction. And what that says is that on the one hand, Republicans have an enthusiasm problem about turning out their core voters. And so it is not illogical for candidates to say, well, maybe President Trump can help me with that. Because one thing he has always been able to do is turn out infrequent and irregular voters, you know, blue collar in particular. The other side of the equation is if you look at that polling today in Virginia, Trump's approval rating is under 50, well under 50 percent in both Virginia 1 and Virginia 5 districts that he carried.

4:51His approval rating in the AARP polling out today in Maine is about nine points lower than his vote. So as a Republican candidate, you may want President Trump to help gin up your turnout. But you have the risk that kind of highlighting your association with him will drive away independent and swing voters where he is deeply under. I mean, he is underwater in a 56 percent Trump district in Virginia. There are a lot of Republicans looking at that number today and I think sweating.

5:22Tom Foreman: And Zolan, I want to come to you next. You cover the White House, have done a lot of reporting on the Trump political strategy. And Ron is, of course, absolutely right. There are very much two sides to the Trump campaigning out their coin. But it is noteworthy that where he is going over the next few days is red country. So the strategy is go to places where you need to turn out the true red Trump voters and try to get them enthused and maybe have less of a worry about those anti-Trump voters that you're also kicking up in the process. I'm going to show you and our viewers a map. Today, the president is going to Denton, Texas, again, what is now a battleground state, but has historically certainly not been.

6:13Tom Foreman: He's also going to Durant, Oklahoma. Oklahoma, not exactly purple territory. Friday, Mobile, Alabama. Same, even more so, I would say. And then on Saturday, excuse me, Friday in Mobile, Alabama, Saturday, Vandalia, Ohio, and then Monday, he's going to Nebraska. Zolan. Yeah, for the most part, these are these are comfort zones, right, for the president and for the White House at this point. As you said, Texas may be a little bit different now. But you're right. This speaks to a political calculation for the president and his political sort of infrastructure here that they can double down on the MAGA voters who tend to come out during a presidential election and get them to come out for this midterm cycle.

7:01And that that will hopefully, if you are the president in his political operation, that that will hopefully outweigh not just the anti-Trump voter and the anti-Trump sentiment, but also the independent voters and the voters that might be in between who are so frustrated with rising consumer prices and the fallout of the war in Iran. Those voters who not just are anti-Trump, but might have been Republican and voted for Trump, but have felt disillusioned by the break between his campaign promises, lowering prices, not starting these sort of longer wars, and the reality that we have now of being in this political quagmire of the war in Iran and having these rising prices as well.

7:47Whether that strategy will work, we don't know. But we do know that rather than distance themselves from an incumbent, even given the historical trend of the incumbent's party tends to face challenges, they are going to lean into Trump and Trumpism. I do think it's interesting that that comes at a time where we're seeing more Republicans start to break, criticize the White House than we've seen in these past two years of Trump's return to the White House. Yeah.

8:15Tom Foreman: Let's listen to what the president himself said about his political strategy yesterday. That's why I'm doing it myself. That's why I'm doing it myself, Rachel. Can you believe it? I'm going out because nobody's selling it. I'm doing we're doing an extremely poor job of promotion and an extremely great job of running the country.

8:40Tom Foreman: ELIZA COLINS WITH THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. THAT IS UNCLEAR IF HE'S CORRECT ABOUT IT'S REALLY A PROMOTION AND COMMS ISSUE, NOT A POLICY ISSUE. BUT CERTAINLY THE REPUBLICANS WHO ARE LOOKING AT THE STATE OF THIS COUNTRY, PARTICULARLY THE ECONOMY, ARE NOT HAPPY. THESE ARE THE PRESIDENT'S FELLOW REPUBLICANS. This is a brand new AP poll out today. Approval among Republicans on the economy, 57 percent, which is which is big. But it also means that there are, you know, 40 plus percent that are not happy, which is makes Zolan's point about how people are moving away. Cost of living, 38 percent. And then if you look at some of these states that are going to determine the balance of power, The president's job approval, according to a Marist poll in Texas, 43 percent.

9:36Tom Foreman: Ohio, 42 percent. Iowa, 41 percent. Michigan, also 41 percent, Eliza. So those are all states Trump won in 2024. And I think that's why we're hearing the president have such a hard time grappling with what he is seeing in the polls, the fact that these states are coming online, right? Ohio, Iowa, Alaska. These are ruby red states that are now considered toss ups. And in fact, Republicans in those states are trying to navigate how to both support the president. And as they were talking about, turn out that base and not alienate the independent voters and some of these even Republicans who have soured on Trump.

10:17I mean, when we're out talking to voters, they're talking about the war in Iran. They're talking about the economy. The economy was a huge reason Trump was able to create this new coalition in 2024. He turned out a massive number of people doing better with every demographic group. A lot of those people were just rented, though. And so they are now moving away from the president. And he's trying to grapple with how to bring them back. And it's not clear of doing rallies in ruby red places. even some of those that have now become competitive will do it.

10:52Tom Foreman: And Ron, we have a new, pretty lengthy interview out with the president in Time magazine. It's kind of reminiscent, Zolan, of the very lengthy and colorful interview that you and your colleagues did several months ago for the New York Times. We're going to talk a lot more about it later in the show. But on the topic of affordability, here is what he said. The question was, the feeling that this country is becoming less affordable. Americans shouldn't hold you responsible. His answer, when I took over, I inherited the greatest inflation in history. I inherited the greatest price hikes in history.

11:27Tom Foreman: Remember when they started screaming at me about eggs in my first day because eggs had gone up like five times higher than they were in my administration. Now I've got them down. I've got much of it down. The only thing I have to get down now is the gas and almost everything else is coming down rapidly. Ron, how many times in your years covering politics, I probably can't even count here, have we seen a frustrated president that, yes, they made promises and they don't understand why the voters who put them in are so impatient about answering those promises and keeping them? It's the Richard Pryor strategy.

12:13Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes, right? I mean, presidents, it is very hard to get, you can convince people that, you know, something happening halfway around the world is going better than they think. You cannot argue them out of understanding how much money they have in their pocket at the end of the week. And, you know, for the president to go out and argue that things are better than you know, where everyone is just kind of misconstruing how they're doing, just makes them seem further out of touch. And, you know, there is an added dimension to this that I think is different than many of those other cases, you know, what I have seen and you have seen in midterms going back decades.

12:51Presidents are often victims of proximity. I mean, they are held responsible when the economy isn't going well or prices are high or unemployment is high. There's another layer here, which is that voters not only kind of blame Trump for not making it better, they directly attribute a significant part of the problem to policies that he has deliberately pursued and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly voted for, particularly the tariffs and the war with its impact on gas prices. Real quick, it is worth noting that when you put up those approval ratings on, you know, in those states that he all of which he won, many of them comfortably in his first term in 2018 and 2020, Susan Collins in Maine in 2020 was the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won in a state where the exit poll showed that more voters disapproved than approved of his job performance.

13:41No guarantee that's going to happen again, but that is the history that these candidates are swimming upstream against. No one else except her was able to win in his first term in a state where his approval rating was anything like what you were seeing in those states today.

13:58Tom Foreman: Fascinating. Well, like Ron, I am in California, a state that has no shortage of problems, but its candidates for governor keep pointing the blame at the same targets. We have highlights from our debate, one that has national implications, plus new reporting on how Democrats are pushing Senator Bernie Sanders to help more this November. Stay with us.

14:38who are known for hits like Get Low and Turn Down for What. In February 2026, his 27-year-old son Nathan went missing near Nathan's home in Georgia. Three days later, his body was found in a pond nearby. Lil Jon has a memoir that just came out called I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me. It takes time to heal. And I kept myself busy that I didn't let myself mourn. I needed to laugh again. I needed to be silly and interact with people and feel other people's energy and make people happy, too. We have to share so other people can see that they can get through it, too. Talking grief, building community.

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16:15Tom Foreman: Now to the race to lead America's most populous state, the fourth largest economy in the world, and that is California. Last night, my colleague Jake Tapper and I moderated what could be one of the only California gubernatorial debates. It's Democrat Javier Becerra versus Republican Steve Hilton on the ballot. And they clashed over a whole lot of things, the cost of living, artificial intelligence, immigration and vaccines. No matter the topic, they kept coming back to two targets, President Trump and Sacramento Democrats. All you ever say is Trump, Trump, Trump. And that's nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state.

17:00And all you're offering is more of the same. Your words, Trump, Trump, Trump, because he is your supporter. You chased his endorsement. That's all you can say on every question. And you just said it too. And your policy says every day. Because you've got nothing to offer Californians except more of the same.

17:19Tom Foreman: Ron Brownstein, I'm going to start with you. again, because you are a Californian. What was your takeaway from this debate last night? You know, my one sentence is that there were a lot of tactical successes for Steve Hilton, but that the debate was a strategic failure, I thought, for him. I mean, he is fluent. He is, you know, kind of more quick on his feet than Becerra, more of a dynamic presence. And he carried the debate at points. But I thought that he failed really on, if your goal is to get elected governor of California, you have to be able to speak to more than the 40 percent of the state that usually votes Republican.

17:56And both in his unwillingness to differ with Trump on anything, even when Trump was taking steps that demonstrably hurt the state, like withholding federal disaster relief after the wildfires, and the agenda that he put forward, which was pretty much a conventional Republican agenda. I thought that he failed in what would be his biggest opportunity, his broadest audience that he's going to have, I thought he failed to offer really much of a reason for anyone who isn't already inclined to vote for a Republican to consider him. So I thought he left the race just too unchanged to really make a dent in the 20-plus point lead that Becerra has.

18:39Tom Foreman: And Eliza, to Ron's point, there are a number of issues, despite Steve Hilton trying to make it about the Democrats who have run California for 16 years. To make it about that, there are many issues that Californians care deeply about in addition to affordability that fly in the face of the president's policies. Immigration is one of them. Let's listen to their exchange on that. It's about enforcing the law. I mean, the federal law is... Immigration law is obviously a federal matter. Here's the problem I have with your policies. You seem to welcome immigrants who look like you, but deport immigrants who look like me.

19:21We need to have a governor who will protect everyone who works hard. I don't need to stand here and listen to you say that you'll enforce Trump's laws, but you won't enforce California state laws. You're not enforcing and your party isn't enforcing California law as it is now. And what a disgraceful remark that was.

19:44Tom Foreman: ELIZA? HERE WE ARE IN A U.S. MAP WHERE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ALASKA AND IOWA AND OHIO BECOMING COMPETITIVE. THESE ARE TOSS-UP SENATE RACES. SO IN CALIFORNIA, THIS BLUE, BLUE STATE WHERE YOU JUST SAID IT'S BEEN RUN BY DEMOCRATS FOR A VERY LONG TIME, I THINK IT'S JUST SUCH A HARD STATE FOR STEVE HILTON TO WIN. And he is trying to navigate both a Republican conventional agenda and sort of distancing himself from Trump, but who has endorsed him. It's just a tricky position to be in. And when the environment is so bad for Republicans, even though people aren't necessarily thrilled with Gavin Newsom, with the high cost of living.

20:28I mean, California does have quite a few problems. And when you talk to California voters, they are frustrated. But we also just saw last year California voters overwhelmingly approved a gerrymandered map to make things easier for Democrats because the whole argument was it was a fight against Trump. So this is a state where, you know, they can go back and forth on policies. And immigration is one certainly where Democratic voters disagree with the president. But at the end of the day, I mean, we're just talking about states that are so much redder, possibly flipping to Democrats. it's really hard to see California being an outlier here.

21:08Tom Foreman: Yeah, and that makes complete sense. What Steve Hilton is sort of reaching for and trying to do is make anti-incumbent fever and frustration with everybody stick here since the Democrats are the ones who run it. And Zolan, Hilton also, on that note, tried to really denigrate Becerra as a candidate who was kind of accidental for lots of reasons that we've been reporting on. Listen to that exchange. According to your Democrat colleagues, the ones who worked with you, like Susan Rice, who worked with you side by side when you were in the Biden cabinet, she described you as an idiot. She called you bitch ass.

21:58Why did Susan Rice, a respected political leader, call you an idiot? Since when do I have to respond to politicians? I'm running for governor of California. I'm looking for the vote of California voters, not some politician in Washington, D.C.

22:14Tom Foreman: So when somehow bitch ass sounds so different with a British accent, I don't know. I was wondering if I was allowed to actually say that on CNN when I was preparing for this segment. But no, my parents are watching. My mom's watching. But it's interesting. I reported on some of that tension at the time in the Biden White House over this issue of immigration. And it's true. There was tension. There was this debate and sort of internal chaos over this issue that Democrats really didn't seem to have a consistent plan on. And it seems like Hilton is almost trying to move forward with a message as if it's 2024.

22:51Right. As if he's we're still in that climate where Republicans have the issue of immigration as a strength, where they can continue to attack the Biden White House on immigration. Look, a lot's happened in two years on that issue. For one, the message that he's going on, Republican, we should just enforce our laws. We have seen the Trump administration's immigration agenda, the dragnet of deportations, has extended beyond illegal immigrants. More and more Americans, according to polls, feel that it's been overblown, that they've gone beyond what they said during the campaign. So I don't know if this message that Hilton is saying, we should enforce our laws, you lack a consistent plan on this issue.

23:36I don't know if that's going to work, maybe in 2024. But after two years of Trump, like the Americans have seen this operation and it's gone beyond what was said during the campaign. At the same time, Becerra moving with this attack line of almost trying to put Trump on the debate stage. Right. It may work in California, a blue state here. We should watch and see if that works in other races. and as we move on to sort of national trends, because in 2024, we saw it did not satisfy Democratic voters to only talk about Trump and only move with an anti-Trump agenda. They also wanted to see what those candidates stood for.

24:18So again, I understand it in California moving ahead with pinning Hilton to Trump, but we should see how that message moves beyond a state like California, especially as voters have made pretty clear on the Democratic side, they want to see what solution you're offering, not just what you are criticizing.

24:37Tom Foreman: All right, everybody, stand by. Up next, Bernie Sanders helped a slew of progressives win their primaries. Now top Democrats are worried he isn't doing enough to get them over the finish line. In November, we have some new CNN reporting next.

25:02Tom Foreman: Senator Bernie Sanders handpicked progressive candidates are fighting it out in battleground races all across the country. Now, Democrats are saying we'd like a little bit of help from Bernie Sanders to actually make sure they win. One Democratic leadership aide told CNN's Sarah Farris and Patrick Svitek, quote, at some point, the measure of success has to be bigger than beating other Democrats. It's about beating Republicans, winning real majorities and actually governing so we can make change and hold Trump accountable. Governing majorities aren't won in July, they're won in November. Wow. Sarah Ferris joins me now.

25:41Tom Foreman: Sarah, so the senator announced this week he is giving, quote, hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates in Minnesota and Florida. He has a$23 million war test, right? What are you hearing about how and whether he'll spend that money. So I had been hearing almost every other day from Democratic consultants and folks close to party leadership. When is Bernie Sanders going to spend this money? When is he going to spend this money? And he finally this week announced that he is going to in Minnesota and Florida. And any initial relief from inside the Democratic Party that he was opening up his war chest pretty much evaporated when they saw where it's going.

26:20Florida and Minnesota are not seats that Senate Democrats are prioritizing. We've heard in your last segment, people are talking about Alaska as a swing state. All of these other seats as swing states, this is not where they're spending, Florida and Minnesota. So Democrats are just waiting to see, like, where's the rest of this money? I hear this$23 million figure tossed around so much because there's simply not that much money left for the midterms among their key players.

26:50Tom Foreman: And that's really something we should underscore, that we're talking about money. Because if you kind of take a step back and think Michigan, for example, it's not as if what these Democratic strategists are telling you is that Bernie Sanders should go to Michigan and campaign in a general election for Abdul Al-Sayed. No, what they're saying is they would like some of his money. because what Senator Sanders has done is taken, when I started covering politics, sort of was considered fringe ideas and made them, for lots of reasons, very much in the center of where the Democratic energy is. And they want him to help to push it over the line.

27:32Yeah, absolutely. And what we've seen from Bernie Sanders and the left, there's a lot of other groups on the left too, over this really 10-year period, he's been able to mostly play in these deep blue seats. And so there haven't been a lot of crossover where he's had to, where the top Democrats have had to lean on Bernie Sanders for money, right? They do rely on his grassroots organizing, which he's famous for. They do rely on him really ramping up the energy among the base. But this is the first time we're seeing where he and his candidates are in some of the most competitive races of all across the map in November.

28:09So it's not just the Michigan Senate race, although, of course, that's the one that I hear the most about, the one that's getting the most attention. There's also candidates that he endorsed and really got over the finish line in Maine, in Michigan, in California. His candidates beat Democratic preferred moderates in these races. And so this is where there's this is where the tension comes. There's been this clash that we've been watching for years. And right now we're seeing it happen just five weeks out from the election day. And just the Democrats are being so badly outspent in so many of these places, the Senate races and these House races.

28:43So, you know, the Democratic Party here in D.C. and these groups are just shaking all the couch cushions looking for more money. And who is one of their biggest names? It's Bernie Sanders. Yeah.

28:54Tom Foreman: What fascinating reporting from you and Patrick. And And I think that last point about the fact that Senator Sanders has been so successful in areas where it's a primary and you're done because it's a blue area, that this is new territory, territory that he was so desperate for and worked so hard for. And the question is whether or not it will ultimately pan out in the general. Great reporting, Sarah. Thank you so much. Up next, Nancy Pelosi's California seat has come down to two Democrats. I'll speak to one of them after the break.

29:39Tom Foreman: It's a race to decide the successor to Congresswoman, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's California district. It's the heart of San Francisco. Pelosi's pick, Connie Chan, faces fellow Democrat Scott Wiener. I spoke to Chan recently, and now joining me is State Senator Scott Wiener. Thank you so much for being here, sir. So this seat, of course, has been represented by Pelosi for decades. Since she endorsed your opponent, what is your message to voters who trust her judgment? Well, thanks for having me. And of course, Nancy Pelosi is an icon, and she's moved mountains for the country and for our city.

30:17But my message is the same that it was before the endorsement. And it's the work that I've been doing for years, that life is too expensive for people. We need to make housing more affordable and build housing. We need to reduce the cost of health care because people are falling through the cracks. People can't afford child care. And we need to protect our community from Donald Trump, including the terror campaign that ICE has inflicted on our immigrant neighbors. I've been doing this work for years, long before I was a candidate for Congress. And that's what San Franciscans want. And that's the work that I do.

30:56And that hasn't changed.

30:59Tom Foreman: You mentioned the cost of living. It is, of course, a top issue for voters all across California, critical, I don't need to tell you, in San Francisco. I want to play the Democratic candidate for governor, Javier Becerra, and the proposed solution that he put forward in CNN's debate last night. We have to at least double the rate of building of homes. How much can we do? It just depends. How much red tape can we cut? How fast can we try to expand down payment assistant programs? How fast can we make sure Wall Street isn't outbidding the teacher or the firefighter for a home in California? First, do you agree with that goal?

31:39Tom Foreman: And if you win on a federal level from Congress, how would you support it? Yeah, I fully agree with what Secretary Becerra said. California spent 50 years making it harder and harder to build enough homes. And so we're now having massive housing shortage. And this is happening in many parts of the country. And so we need to dramatically expand the number of homes that we are building for people, including for working class and low-income people. And that means zoning and planning for more housing. It means dramatically expediting permitting. And I have done that work because of the work that I've done.

32:21San Francisco went from by far the slowest permit timeline for housing to one of the fastest. And we need to take that work national because while we've been doing this work in California to deal with this disaster, Congress until very recently did almost nothing. And so we need the federal government to be a full partner in building the millions of homes that we need in this country, mixed income housing, so that people at all income levels can have a place to live, can stay in their communities and not be pushed out. That is what we need.

32:57Tom Foreman: You went viral this summer, not in a good way, not in a way that you would have liked. pro-Palestinian activists attacked you. Some accosted you at a trans rights rally, despite the fact that you take every position you can that they support. You condemn the Israeli prime minister. You argue that Israel's response in Gaza is genocide, which Israel strongly denies. Now that you've had some months to reflect, what do you think that moment tells us? Well, first of all, I want to be clear, and I've attended the Trans March for over 20 years, and I work very hard to support trans people. And what happened to me, the harassment and the assault at the Trans March, or before the Trans March, does not reflect the vast majority of the people who attended that march.

33:47What does it reflect? It reflects, well, that in particular reflects a very fringe perspective in terms of engaging and physical harassment of people. But we also need to be clear that San Franciscans, like me, are horrified by what Israel has done in destroying Gaza and killing so many people and its actions in the West Bank to push Palestinians out of their homes, out of their communities. I believe that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. But regardless of what word someone chooses to use, they can disagree with me. It is horrific and it has to stop. There are 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians living in Israel, West Bank, Gaza.

34:35No one's going anywhere and we need peace. And the U.S. needs to be a force for peace and we should not be funding destruction, which is why I do not support funding the Israeli military.

34:48Tom Foreman: Right, which, again, is something that everybody who you're appealing to and presumably the people who harassed you also support. And again, as I was saying, it has been several months. And that's why I was just kind of wondering if after some time you've had some other thoughts about what their what their real goal was. Well, what I will say is 2026 is not, shall we say, an easy year to be a progressive Jew running for Congress. And we have seen Jewish candidates, Jewish elected officials be targeted here in San Francisco and around the country and held to a different standard than non-Jewish candidates with similar positions.

35:32And so it is an issue. Jewish candidates, Jewish elected officials, not just me, others as well, have been getting targeted for several years now. And that needs to stop. I have no problem being held accountable for anything I do or say or propose or don't do or say. That's democracy. And I have hard conversations with my constituents all the time. But when it rises to the level of straight up harassment and intimidation and assault, that crosses a line. And particularly when you're only targeting certain elected officials and candidates, specifically Jewish elected officials and candidates.

36:11Tom Foreman: California State Senator Scott Wiener, I know you have a debate tonight. Good luck with that. And I appreciate you joining me today. Thank you, Dana. Coming up, President Trump sat for a wide-ranging interview with Time magazine and they printed the whole thing. We'll get into it next.

36:36Tom Foreman: Time magazine covered a lot of ground when they interviewed President Trump, including concerns that have been raised about potential moves by the Trump administration and polling places. The Time Magazine reporter asked, do you plan to dispatch ICE agents to polling places in the midterms? The president said, haven't thought of it. Would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms unless there's widespread violence in the streets? I don't rule anything out or in. We'll see. You mean the Insurrection Act? Yeah. No, I've never used it. I could use it. A lot of people think I should use it sometimes.

37:12Tom Foreman: My panel is back now. Now, Zolan, I know you've done extensive reporting on this question. Yes. Now, this answer, understandably, is going to cause concern among many in the lead up to the midterms. It does align with the answer the president has given in the past when faced with this question of whether he would use the Insurrection Act. I did reporting around Minneapolis during the protests there on the ICE deployment. And there was actually a scene where various top officials made the case to use the Insurrection Act to the president. When he was asked by reporters, he sort of said, look, I have the ability to, but I'm not going to yet.

37:49That's been the consistent answer he's had thus far. But more often, we are hearing from advocates, from Democrats, from some Republicans who are concerned about this and are concerned about just the level of doubt that's been raised when you have an answer like this grouped with the other actions the administration has taken when it comes to changing the rules of the election or attempting to change the rules of the election in the lead up to the midterms.

38:13Tom Foreman: Eliza, another topic they hit on was the construction projects. The president said the so the White House is a very special symbol. It's a symbol of America. It's a symbol of our greatness. It's, I think, maybe the most important symbol that we have. The White House was a dump. The moldings were falling off the outside of the building. It hadn't been painted in. It was just a disgraceful dump. The doors were falling off. The locks were broken. And I said, I got to fix it. And I do that better than anybody else. Maybe I do it better than anything I do. And it's easy for me. It's actually relaxing.

38:48Tom Foreman: You know, for a lot of people, it drives them crazy. Eliza. I think that's absolutely true. Trump is a builder. He knows he likes building, right? And he likes building big, fancy things. And that is what he's doing at the White House. The question is, how is that resonating with voters right now who are seeing, contrary to what we've seen earlier with Trump talking about, you know, the price on everything going down, that's not what voters are seeing when they go to the grocery store or the gas pump. And so Democrats are trying to make the case that while voters are taking a hit economically, the president is focused on the White House and the ballroom.

39:28And really, we have reporting that Trump's focused on his legacy at this point. He really has two more years left. If Democrats take control of one or both chambers of Congress, everything will be stalled and there'll be investigations. There's possibility of impeachments. I mean, this will be really a mess. And so Trump is focusing in on his ballroom. And as the time points out, he's talking about like an eighth of an inch here. He's talking about super, super hyper-focused details, which he says allow him to relax. The question is, is that what voters want him to be focused on right now when they do feel like he has broken promises, such as saying he's not going to go to war and we're now months into a war?

40:12Ron? Yeah, look, you know, to your first question, I think, you know, the president tried to weaponize the Postal Service and immediately after the Supreme important stopped him. He's using government money to run ads, accusing his political opponents of being communists, something that Roy Cohn is probably smiling at somewhere. So I don't rule out anything between now and the election. I don't think there's any outer boundary of what could happen. And I think Eliza is definitely right. You know, part of the problem that the president faced is not only that voters think he hasn't made enough progress, they think he's not focused enough on their problems.

40:46Tom Foreman: Ron, Eliza, Zolan, thank you so much for being here. Thank Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

40:58I'm Adi Cornish. I'm Ari Shapiro and it's Engagement Party. It is Engagement Party. And we get to talk about what we're obsessed with, what we're engaged with, what we need to process with a friend. Her name is Amy O'Dell. She is a fashion writer, blogger.

41:09Tom Foreman: But the thing is, she's a journalist who's written about the sacred cows of fashion. And yes, I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anna Wintour. She has done biographies of both. And she is also the sort of rare fashion writer who, at this point, kind of outside the system. And so the question that we're going to try to tackle is... Is fashion terrible now? Well, no, I mean, I would phrase it as how do you develop a personal style in the age of AI slop? You know, on social media, like, creators have to try a whole bunch of different things and see what catches, and then they make it over and over and over again.

41:42The same thing happens with clothing. So they're sort of seeding the market, seeding the internet with all of these different ideas, and then they can see what sells, and then they can just make them really fast.

41:51Tom Foreman: Follow Engagement Party. Wherever you get your podcasts.