Jack Smith Grilled on Capitol Hill 

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1:03Why is the GOP focusing on old battles when the election is about what comes next? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and inside politics.

1:19You're looking at live pictures of former special counsel Jack Smith fielding questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about his investigations into President Trump. We're hearing about classified documents, 2020 election lies, and the January 6th attack on the Capitol. That day has already been mentioned more than 20 times, and Smith is defending his decision to dozens of felony charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.

2:11Remember, this is all happening five weeks before an election with dozens of Republicans across the country locked in competitive races. not so sure they want their party relitigating the president's old grievances when they could be addressing what's driving voters right now, like the rising cost of living. CNN's Evan Perez is on Capitol Hill following all of the developments in this hearing. Evan, senators, or at least some of them, seem to be trying to get new information out of Jack Smith. Is that happening? No. You know, I think much of this hearing is not so much about getting new information from Jack Smith as much as it is about reframing what happened during the Jack Smith investigations, reframing what happened on January 6th itself, the attack on the U.S.

3:02Capitol, and of course, the classified documents investigation. And part of the work here, behind me just a few minutes ago, Senator Ted Cruz had a poster board listing the number of Republican entities that were being investigated or that or were subpoenaed, their records were subpoenaed. Well, you know, the issue here is that the president was trying to overturn an election. And of course, the people he was communicating with and people like Rudy Giuliani were communicating with were, of course, Republicans. They weren't talking to Democrats. That's the reason why those records were sought. Here's an example of the kind of exchange you have between Republican senators and Jack Smith about the work that went on during that investigation.

3:43Listen. You saw the phone records of a bunch of US senators, right?

3:54We saw the toll records, non-content records. Any Democrats or just Republicans? if President Trump had reached out to Democrats to further his... Yeah, but I'm just trying to get the facts. And so that's sort of like the type of exchanges we're hearing today, Dana, because, you know, I think senators want to make this about the records that were sought. Again, there was no content from those records. It is the typical way investigations are done. Yeah. And hanging over all of this is the fact that the current Trump Justice Department is investigating Jack Smith and other Trump perceived enemies, political enemies.

4:37How is that playing into Smith's testimony, particularly given the fact that he knows that these Republicans are trying to catch him in a contradiction that they could use against him to claim that he perjured himself? Yeah, look, I mean, I think that is very much part of the influence of what's happening behind me. Jack Smith is limited on talking about the classified documents case because the report, that part of his report, the volume two, is still under lock and key because Judge Eileen Cannon down in Florida has said that that cannot be released. So he cannot speak about some of the things that he did in that investigation.

5:19And as you pointed out, he is also still under investigation by the current Justice Department, which believes that there might have been a vast conspiracy that stretches from 2016 to 2024. And that's one of the cases that they've been pursuing behind the scenes, Dana. Evan, don't go anywhere. I want to bring in our colleague Nia Maliga Henderson and also Mariana Sotomayor to talk more about this. I want to play a little bit of what Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary, said at the top of the hearing. This is the result of the President Trump's campaign, aided and abetted by many congressional Republicans, to whitewash the history of the 2020 election and the January 6th insidious attack on this Capitol building.

6:09Nia, starting with you, just sort of, again, kind of on the politics of where we are right now in this election cycle. I personally have talked to Republicans, even those who are publicly, you know, gung-ho on pushing on Jack Smith and pushing on January 6th issues. Privately, people even around them say, this is not what voters want. Right. Listen, it's not even clear that it's it's what Republican voters want. Right. I mean, the idea here, you know, if you're the president of Republicans there is that, you know, you play the same old hits and you get the mega crowd dancing again. right, and voting for the Republicans who are on the ballot.

6:55The problem now is affordability has moved ahead in terms of some of those animating issues among the MAGA faithful. You know, if you are sort of fighting the last war as a party, it is usually a losing gambit, right? Voters want to look forward. They want to see promises fulfilled, right, in terms of affordability in terms of making their lives better. There's so much anxiety across the country about prices, obviously, about AI, for instance, about data centers, so many other issues trump what we're hearing today. And also, one of the takeaways, I think, from this hearing is if you at least listen to the Democrats and listen to Jack Smith, I mean, Jack Smith's statement was Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation, right?

7:45I don't know that that is necessarily what Trump and Republicans want to have out there right now as they're trying to get voters, particularly independent voters, to rally around Republicans and this president. That's right, which is a big part of why you have seen President Trump lead the charge to try to disqualify Jack Smith, call him partisan, despite the fact that there's no evidence of that, as Evan can tell us as well. I mean, he's a career prosecutor with no political skin in the game. And just on the whole question of perjury traps, there was a moment, Mariana, where the Republican senator from Missouri, Eric Schmidt, Schmidt rather, tried to catch Jack Smith in either a lie or something that looked untoward on face value, didn't go as Senator Schmidt planned.

8:44Let's watch. I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I'm sure of that. Did you ever meet Nathan Wade or Fannie Willis in your time at special counsel? No. What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?

9:12I don't think you know that we have this stuff. So I'll give you a second to process it so you don't perjure yourself. You just took it down really quick. If I could look at that again. So here's what happened. It was actually a text exchange about Jack Smith going to an Iowa Hawkeyes game. So this is, of course, to see the phenom, Caitlin Clark, play basketball at the University of Maryland. It had nothing to do with what Senator Schmidt thought he was really nailing Jack Smith on. Yeah, that is correct. And it was a moment where everyone who was paying attention and watching it in the room were like, what is he trying to say here?

10:03What is the point that Schmidt is trying to prove? And, you know, this is one of those moments where as much as Senate Republicans today are justifying this hearing as, you know, them trying to provide oversight. Well, this just adds to, I think, the perception already in the public that hearings are just just get out of hand. They're not serious. And it really doesn't add to that argument of the Republicans are trying to make that this is an opportunity for them to talk to Jack Smith and try to nail him on potential contradiction. Democrats today at varying points have brought up the fact that Jack Smith had been willing to testify, not just this year, but this entire Congress, raising the question as to why Republicans want to do this in the final week before the election.

10:55And as everyone has more or less pointed out, there is a lot of speculation as to why. Like Republican voters aren't talking about this. And Republicans could make the argument that they really need to gin up that base, make sure that those voters turn out. But this is already an issue that's been baked one way or the other, especially among like the MAGA faithful. Real quick, final thought, Evan. No, look, I mean, I think I was like it was like watching a Three's Company episode. Dana, you and I might remember that television show, but it was literally, it was the whole premise was just false.

11:30And then it was like, oops, never mind. Right. Well, maybe they'll all get a drink at the Regal Beagle afterwards. Thank you, guys. I hope so. Don't go anywhere. Coming up, how do Democrats crack the red state code? My next guest is a governor and potential 2028 contender who's done just that twice. PLUS WE HAVE NEW CNN REPORTING ON THE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS REPUBLICANS PLAN TO SPEND IN A STATE THAT HASN'T ELECTED A DEMOCRATIC SENATOR IN 38 YEARS. COULD THAT TEXAS TAB COST THE GOP ELSEWHERE?

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13:11It's been almost two decades since Democrats held a majority of the nation's governor's mansions. This year, the party is hoping to recapture that majority with a number of toss-up opportunities to flip Republican-held governorships. Leading that operation is the head of the Democratic Governors Association, Kentucky's Andy Beshear, a Democrat with a personal track record of winning a red state. He's laid out his approach to politics and how his faith informs his work in a new book, Go and Do Likewise, How We Heal a Broken Country. Governor Beshear joins me now. Thank you so much for being here.

13:46I want to get to your book in one second, but I want to start with the fact that in Washington, leaders from top tech companies are arriving at the White House as we speak for a Trump summit on AI. If you were in that room, Governor, what would you tell the leaders about what needs to be done and what do you think the government's role should be? Well, thank you for having me on. And let me first acknowledge a profound loss here in the Commonwealth. Yesterday, we lost a state trooper Hayden Phillips, 28 years old, would be 29 tomorrow in what should have been a routine traffic stop, shot and killed, leaves behind a wife and three young kids.

14:26So to anybody watching who wants to be helpful to that family, the Kentucky State Police Foundation has set up a fund in his honor, and we're going to do everything we can to wrap our arms around that family. If I was in Washington, D.C. today, I'd look at each of those AI tech leaders and say, we have to get this right. The stakes are far too high, and we are all better off by having significant federal oversight in the development of AI. It offers the opportunity to do some incredible good. It could potentially wipe out every genetic disease in our lifetime if you pair it with CRISPR, but it also could cause significant job displacement and major national security issues.

15:13So we absolutely have to get it right. And that's what I'd be pushing. I would also tell them that the United States would directly engage in talks with China. We were able to negotiate treaties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War that prevented any additional nuclear proliferation. And we ought to take the same approach here. The stakes are simply too high. I want to play what your fellow Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this weekend about the AI tech leaders and risks of this moment. In an environment of AI, they want to wipe out all of our livelihoods. They want to make sure none of us have jobs and they want to keep all the spoils of those riches.

15:59What they want is for all of us to not be able to do the basic thinking that we are capable of today and be reliant on a machine for the most basic questions and tasks. Is that how you see it? Do you think this is just about billionaires trying to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, wipe out everyone else's livelihood, to use her words? I think there's some of those billionaires who don't care about the rest of us, and there are some that do. What I know is that AI is coming, and we have got to be responsible in how we manage it, the oversight that we provide, recognize that we can cure certain forms of pediatric cancer and never have to tell a family ever again that there's no other treatment or that there's no cure, but at the same time, it could profoundly change our world in negative ways.

16:59So this doesn't just get to be a black or white issue. It's one that we've got to get right. And the other thing I think I'd do if I was in that room is look at the tech leaders and say, we got social media wrong. And tech has lost a lot of trust because of that. This is the time to get this part right, because whether you're a billionaire or not, you're still living in this same world that could be threatened by this technology. So what does that federal oversight look like? a regulatory board? Have you thought about the right way to do it? Oh, I think it's got to be significant oversight where the federal government can bring in people as knowledgeable as we need.

17:41If we try to do this on a state level, 49 states could do it the right way, and the one that didn't could cause all the problems we're trying to prevent. I think we need to think about whether or not oversight could include folks embedded in these companies so that we know exactly what's happening and so that the oversight is fair and equal amongst all the companies. I want to turn to your book. It is about your faith and how it influences your politics and your policymaking. You open the book with a pretty harsh judgment of your party, the Democratic Party. You write, it is unthinkable that we as a country and the Democratic Party in particular have all but ceded faith and basic morality to a modern day Pharisee.

18:24The modern day Pharisee you're referring to is, of course, President Trump. When did Democrats cede basic morality to the president? What do you mean by that? What I mean is we have a president that is willing to stop food benefits during a government shutdown, saying aloud that starving Americans are good leverage. The exact opposite of that miracle of the fishes and the loaves where in a place of scarcity, Jesus made sure that everyone had enough. We have a president that walks out after Erica Kirk in the toughest of moments, gives voice to the golden rule saying she forgives even her worst enemy.

19:03And Donald Trump comes out and says, no, no, I hate them. We have a president who says you're not supposed to love your neighbor, but your neighbor is the enemy from within. He uses faith to manipulate, to divide, sometimes to foster hate. And that's the exact opposite of what faith is about. I mean, Jesus had the chance to be the prince of power, and he chose to be the prince of peace. The teachings in the Bible should unite us and not divide us. And let me just say, I talk about my faith because it's my authentic why. It's why I'm willing to deal with the toxicity of politics and fight for a better world.

19:38I don't try to impose it on anyone, and I'm not trying to write it directly into law. That's It's called Christian nationalism, and I'm against that. But whatever it is that pushes us to be a little kinder to each other, to want good things for our neighbor, that's what we should be giving voice to. And you explain that in your book, talking about your faith and how you use it to connect with voters. You say, when I made the decision to run for public office, I was going to be myself. That meant I was going to talk about things that are important to me and nothing is more important to me than my faith and my family.

20:10Politically speaking, Governor, do you think about the way that candidates who have a strong faith but are not Christian can do that? Look at Michigan. Abdul al-Sayed is running. He would be the first Muslim senator. We're putting up a recent poll in The Washington Post. Forty five percent of voters said they would not vote for a Muslim to be president. Twenty percent say they wouldn't vote for somebody who is Jewish. Oh, I think that expressions of any faith are positive if they are authentic. In this post-pandemic politics, people care more about the why than the what. When you can look at an Instagram video of people talking directly to you, they want to know what drives you, how they can trust you to do the right things.

21:02I mean, look at Donald Trump, who told everyone he was going to bring down costs. And what has he done? He's made life that much harder. He said he'd keep us out of foreign conflicts, and we'd get in them over and over and are now stuck in what appears to be a forever war that has diesel at$6.50. So Josh Shapiro talks about his faith in such a true and authentic way. And I think people are just looking for what drives you to be good, to fight for people like me, to make my life better. And so I support any candidate talking about their faith or just their values and their experience. Amy Acton, who's going to be the next governor of Ohio, talks about how she was homeless with her brother, but a woman on her way to school fed her breakfast every morning.

21:45And that's what she's trying to pay forward. Those are the types of things that Democratic candidates need to be talking about are true and authentic. why. Yeah. And, and listen, I think what you're saying is it makes sense politically in a lot of ways. Um, but I guess my just candidate question to you is, is it easier for you to put forward your authentic why when it is, uh, your faith is, is the Christian faith, especially in a place like Kentucky as a Democrat, where that definitely helps you. And in other places and other religions, it might not be as easy. It may be, but people can see what's real and what's not.

22:25They can see your actions. They saw how Donald Trump held that Bible, suggesting he hadn't held one before and certainly had not read it. And so I think it is a test of authenticity. And so whatever your faith is or your values, I think being authentic about it builds trust in people more so than it can harm any candidate. Yeah. Well, I hope you're right because that speaks to the good in everybody. Governor, thank you so much for being here again. Your new book is Go and Do Likewise, How We Heal a Broken Country. Governor Andy Beshear, thank you. Coming up, I will speak to a Republican senator fighting to hold his seat, one his party used to count on.

23:12And next, we just told you some of the biggest names in AI. They're heading to the White House this hour. How will this go for the president and Republicans so close to an election?

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24:03Any moment, President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson will meet with AI executives at the White House as AI safety warnings and fears reach a fever pitch. Today, President Trump signed an executive order to incorporate a newly unveiled government website powered by AI called America.gov. It's supposed to make it easier to navigate government websites. We're leading now over China and everyone else, and I want to keep it that way. I want to keep it that way. The only way you can keep it that way is to do exactly what we're doing right now. We don't want to stifle growth. At the same time, we want people to behave honestly.

24:43We want them to be trustworthy. And that's why we have the DOJ. That's why we have the FBI. That's why we have forms of government that are very effective if people decide to go down a very dark and dangerous path. President Trump is not only embracing the AI industry, he's called warnings from the inside by scientists and executives, a hoax dismissing voter concerns. CNN's Hadass Gold joins me now. Hadass, who is going to be at this event and what is the actual stated purpose of the meeting? Yeah, I mean, I think this event is in direct response to this sort of summer of AI safety panic where these conversations over the existential risk posed by AI has moved from the corridors of Silicon Valley to the mainstream.

25:29We have Saturday Night Live parroting Dario Amadei and AI safety risks in its season opener. So, I mean, keep in mind, we don't even have testing standards, national standards when it comes to AI. So in terms of when you're testing an AI model, there's no national standards that everybody follows to make sure that your AI agents don't break out of their lab and hack into another company. And sources familiar with the meeting tell CNN that this is just an effort to get the government and the top industry officials on the same page amid these sort of increasing security concerns and these calls from the industry themselves for some sort of standards and regulations.

26:03And we saw just on the screen just there, it's a who's who of the industry and government, from President Trump and the vice president, the chief of staff, the speaker of the House, as well as people from Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amadei, Elon Musk, Sunder Pichai, Jeff Bezos. These are really the top industry leaders of AI who have differing viewpoints on what the government should do when it comes to this regulation. And I think what's really interesting, Dan, is we're starting to hear from Speaker Johnson, who has been so resistant to congressional oversight or Congress stepping in on regulation, but now we're starting to hear him move a little bit.

26:38He's saying that there is a way to strike a balance between some external audits and some oversight and transparency. Take a listen to what he had to say. Each of them have said in their own ways and their own words that, you know, they welcome oversight. And I think what's going to come out of the meeting today, I hope, is that we have an agreement of the mind, so to speak, around the table. Congress can't go in and just, you know, take a knee-jerk reaction to overregulate this because the frontier labs are ahead of where members of Congress are. So we're not expecting any sort of major policy announcement out of this meeting.

27:13Not even clear if we're going to see everybody on camera together. But this is seen as a very important step and a very important signal to voters, everybody getting in the same room, at least, and talking to one another. Yeah, it sure is. It genuinely is extremely important. This is one of those things that should be apolitical since it is so existential, as people like Bill Gates have said. And clearly, Mike Johnson has been very vocal about him wanting the president to be the one to take the lead. And now that's happening. Hadass, thank you so much for that reporting. Coming up, Nebraska is big red country in football and politics.

27:49But this year, Republican Senator Pete Ricketts is in a serious fight to keep it that way, and he'll be here next.

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29:02The last time Nebraska elected a Democratic senator was in 2006, when voters gave Republicans a, quote, thumping. That was what President Bush very memorably said. Could this year be painful for the GOP again? Republican Senator Pete Ricketts is trying to fend off a challenge from independent candidate Dan Osborne in a surprisingly competitive race. Senator Ricketts won a special election in 2024 and is now running for a full term. We spoke with his opponent, Osborne, earlier this month, and now Senator Ricketts is here with us. Thank you so much for being here. I do want to kind of get to this state of play that I just laid out in Nebraska.

29:41You are in a tight race against an independent. President Trump won your state by more than 20 percentage points. Just two years ago, you won by an even wider margin. Why are you even vulnerable at all right now? One of the things that's going on in my race is that this fake independent Dan Osborne has had$38 million spent on him in 2024. And while he ultimately lost that race to my senior senator, Deb Fischer, they did create an image of him being this moderate independent, which is absolutely not true. And over the course of the last 15 months or so, that's what we've been pointing out with tapes that have been released.

30:22But when he thinks he's not being recorded or behind closed doors, we've been demonstrating that despite the fact he says one thing to Nebraskans about being this moderate behind closed doors, he is anything but. You know, he's said that he would publicly that he would support Trump's border wall behind closed doors. He says it's racist and that it doesn't do anything. He says he doesn't support boys and girls sports. But then behind closed doors says he will be a champion for transgender, you know, and transgender people in sports and abolish ICE and that sort of thing. And then he's been caught on camera or on tape again saying that he's disparaging rural Nebraskans and saying their lives suck and so forth.

31:08So what we've been doing is really unmasking him for what he really is. And that's why we think we're making progress in this race. Again, got to go out and earn each and every time. I've done that every one of my elections. And right now we're making progress on Democrat Dan Osborne. And we had him on, as I mentioned, a few weeks ago and asked him about some of those leaked comments. But you focus a lot on him. You're the incumbent. President Trump is in office. Isn't this really a referendum on you and on the Republicans, the fact that Osborne can come as close as he had in such a red state like yours?

31:46Well, we are certainly pointing out that I've been delivering for Nebraskans for the last 12 years. As governor, we delivered some of the largest tax relief in our state's history. We did that while controlling our expenses and actually increasing our rainy day fund from about$450 million to about$1.6 billion. We improved services along the way. And we also made some of the largest investments in law enforcement and public safety in our state's history. Again, keeping people safe. And I sent the Nebraska State Patrol down to the southern border when Joe Biden opened it up. So I've got a history of delivering as Nebraskan, and we're doing it again as senator with a working families tax cut.

32:24And you are, despite all of that, you are up against the reality of what people in your state are facing every day. The average price of diesel in Nebraska is$6.12. I don't need to tell you how crushing that is to farmers in Nebraska. You told my colleague Manu Raju, you're hearing about the cost of living everywhere you go. So President Trump, Republicans like you, you said you'd bring cost down in 2024. What do you say to Nebraskans now when the costs are anything but down? Yeah, there's no doubt that high fuel prices put a strain on the budgets for every Nebraska family. And as you mentioned, the high diesel prices are putting the same sort of budget crunch on our farmers and ranchers and making it very difficult for them at a time when commodity prices are low as well.

33:17It just adds to the financial burden that they have. A country that chants death to America can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. They've killed tens of thousands of their own people. They'd kill hundreds of thousands of ours. I think that a lot of folks understand the danger that the largest state sponsor of terrorism poses to us. They've been killing Americans for decades. And trying to make sure that they don't have the resources to do that is what the conflict in the Middle East is about right now. So it's certainly a challenge for Nebraska families. And that's one of the things, as you mentioned, I hear about when I travel the state.

33:51So just to put a finer point on it, the higher price of fertilizer, the higher price of fuel, including and especially diesel, which matters a lot to farmers. When the constituents that you're talking to, the voters you're talking to come up and say, Senator, I'm really strapped here. Your message to them is it's worth the sacrifice? Well, certainly, everything you mentioned with regard to the higher inputs is, again, making it challenging for our farmers and ranchers. And it's directly related to the Iran war. And a lot of it is related directly to what's going on in the Middle East. You're absolutely right there.

34:27One of the things we also talk about, though, is how we're looking, I do this as governor, go on trade missions to open up markets overseas. The Working Families Tax Cut, we double the amount of money for Trade Promotion Authority. And in fact, you can see this year we're on track to have record trade with countries like the UK, with the EU, with Mexico, with Canada or South Korea, rather. So we are looking to open up those trade opportunities for our farmers and ranchers to be able to sell more of their products overseas. OK, so you mentioned trade. I want to ask you about that. So there's one bucket of a challenge based on the president's policies.

35:04That's the Iran war. The other, of course, are tariffs. And you really vocally opposed what the president did in August, an executive order rolling back beef tariffs because you said it would hurt farmers in your state, the same farms struggling with the high cost that we were just discussing. Part of your argument for reelection is that you can push this president on policies that are bad for your constituents, but the president hasn't reversed himself. How do you sort of square that? Do you have sway with the president on issues that matter to Nebraskans? I engaged with the White House on many different issues.

35:37This was one of them where we were talking to him about the fact that his desire to lower beef prices would actually be harmed by what he's trying to do with this. That he's bringing in low quality foreign beef would actually have the impact of making it more difficult for our farmers and ranchers to expand the size of the herd, which is a long-term solution to being able to bring prices down. And when it came to, for example, him, the White House, giving small refinery exemptions and expanding those, we were able to work with the White House to get the guarantee that those would be reallocated to the rest of the industry to make sure that our ethanol industry and our renewable diesel industry would not be harmed by that.

36:19So that would protect our corn farmers and our soybean farmers. But he hasn't reversed himself on beef, which you are pushing him to do. He hasn't done it yet. We are continuing to let him know that the policy of bringing this untariffed low-quality foreign beef is actually not going to help with regard to bringing prices down. And it actually does the opposite as far as harming our farmers and our ranchers when they're trying to make the decision about hold on to that heifer for another year or two. This is actually a problem for them. Do you want the president to campaign with you? Well, the president is going to be coming to Nebraska.

36:53We're going to welcome them there and talk about the things we've done with regard to, you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. The things we have done for agriculture and the Working Tax Cuts Bill or Working Families Bill to be able to, for example, get rid of or make permanent the death tax exemption. That really helps our farmers and ranchers a lot. Again, I mentioned the doubling of trade promotion authority, but also extending the 45C tax credits for renewable fuels. All that helps our farmers and ranchers. So we've got a lot of good policy that we are going to talk about. Before I let you go, since you are an incumbent senator, I want to ask about a taxpayer-funded campaign ad the White House released.

37:33It's nearly identical to a 2024 campaign video that he put out that was actually paid for, not by taxpayers. Several of your Republican Senate colleagues, John Thune, John Cornyn, Tom Tillis, have said it's not appropriate to use taxpayer money for that kind of ad. Do you agree with them, or do you agree with the president that it's okay? Well, I haven't seen the ad specifically you're talking about, but again, if you're using campaign ads and using federal dollars, that would not be appropriate, but I can't speak exactly to the content of the ad you're talking about. Again, we should try and keep those things separately from the campaign dollars, and this is why we have ethics rules.

38:16Yeah, yes, it is. Senator Ricketts, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks very much for having me on. And up next, we have new CNN reporting on the staggering and growing price Republicans may pay to try to hold on to a Senate seat in Texas.

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39:36The headline sums it up. The Texas Senate race is quickly becoming a Republican money pit. One of our great colleagues who is involved in that Reporting is CNN's Patrick Vitek. And Patrick, you are with us now. Also, another one of our great colleagues, Nea Malika Henderson, is still with us. Patrick, I'm going to start with you. And just to kind of give some illustrations of how much Texas voters are seeing ads for Ken Paxton, pro-Paxton groups during Judge Judy, they see pro-Paxton ads, I should say, are running 750 ads. This is just in September during Judge Judy. So if you're a fan of Judge Judy, you've seen a lot of these ads.

40:28During college football games, 1 ,300 pro Paxton ads. And this is part of why$166 million is being spent. Yeah, this is part of a massive Republican effort to save Paxton in this Senate race against Democrat James Tallarico. All the polls show it's a very close race, especially for a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. It's been a very long time. And much of this latest spending has come from a group called Texas PAC, which is a group affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the top Republican super PAC in Senate races. It's closely aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

41:11It is a heavyweight player here. And in recent weeks, they have spent well over spent or plan to spend well over one hundred twenty, one hundred fifty million potentially on TV ads in the state. And so this is really a Herculean effort to try to get Paxton over the finish line in a historically red state. Yeah, and it means that even though Republicans do have gobs of money, that's money that they aren't spending elsewhere because the map is pretty big and they're playing defense in most of those races. The Democrats, Nia, are starting to spend in Texas from the outside. Tallarico, obviously, has been spending.

41:49But from the outside, the Senate Majority PAC, which is the sort of national Chuck Schumer-based PAC, is up with its first ad there. What does that tell you? Listen, they see Tallarico as having a chance in Texas in a way that other Democrats over these last years haven't. And partly it's because Paxton is such a terrible candidate, right? He's got a lot of baggage. There was a focus group of Texas Republicans, and they were asked to, you know, name, you know, say a word when they heard the name Ken Paxton. And almost all of them said crook. And so the betting here is that this is sort of a perfect storm for Democrats.

42:33It's an open seat. They've got a terrible candidate who has all sorts of baggage, but it's also just bad on the stump. Right. I mean, you see him there. He's just not a very good politician. And in Tallarico, you have somebody who is fresh and young. And sure, he has some baggage around some of the things he've said, you know, the sort of culture war issues. But he seemed to sort of get past that in some ways. The other issue here is data centers. That has really come to dominate the last stretch of this race, positioning around data centers. You've seen Abbott sort of reposition himself to be more skeptical of data centers.

43:14And Ken Paxton have to sort of have a come to Jesus moment as well around data centers. So listen, I have long been skeptical of Tallarico, of Democrats' chances in Texas, but the folks I talked to down there are pretty bullish on his chances. Can he get it done? You know, down the stretch, we'll see. I think these ads usually matter around the margins, and this is going to be a marginal race. And it looks like down the stretch, Tallarico will at least have some money from the National Party to compete. Yeah, which wasn't entirely clear that was going to happen. I mean, just looking at the screen, $300 million is what, Patrick, you and our colleagues are reporting is expected to be spent just from outside groups on Ken Paxton.

44:02It's just, it's hard to even imagine that. But Texas is an expensive state, and this is a tough one for them. Thank you both. Appreciate it. Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

44:40Thank you.

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