Patel Grilled by Senate 

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1:06Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington, and we're going to show you live pictures of Cash Patel fielding questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee. This hearing has veered into some very unexpected directions, with topics swinging from election lies and violent immigration operations to bestiality and prostitution. You heard me right. We're going to get into that later on. But first, I do want to focus on the Democrats' questioning of Patel about election security, 49 days out from the midterm elections. And that question came around the same time President Trump was lashing out at the Supreme Court on his social media platform after justices blocked his push to restrict mail-in ballots just seven weeks before the midterms.

1:53I'm going to get straight to Evan Perez, who's on Capitol Hill at the hearing, monitoring it. What's standing out so far to you, Evan? Well, a lot of the hearing today has focused on Kash Patel's attempt to try to focus on some of the statistics you saw. You can see on the table where he's seated, he has laid out a number of note cards and pages of prepared documents, a lot of them trying to tell the story of his leadership that he says shows a dramatic reduction in crimes. Some of the numbers are a little hard to understand or know where they're coming from. For instance, claiming that the FBI has stopped 1 ,100 terrorist attacks during the past year.

2:37I'm not sure where that's coming from, but I guess we will find out. We've asked the FBI to clarify. But one of the major focuses, of course, is the question of election security. What is the FBI's role in trying to post agents, for instance, to make sure that what the president says is concerns about vote fraud, that none of that happens. Listen to this exchange with Senator Blumenthal when Patel is asked about this. The FBI has no general authority to monitor elections. That priority rests with DHS. So you would agree with me that deploying FBI agents to the polls on election day would be contrary to law.

3:20I don't know that we can't legally do it. I'm telling you we're going to house our agents and intel analysts in our field offices for election security efforts. Well, I'm dissatisfied that you are unable to give us an unequivocal, clear, unambiguous commitment that the FBI will be kept out of election interference. And Dan, in a subsequent round of questioning, the FBI director tried to, I think, say that the FBI agents are going to be posted at these command centers that are set up in all 56 field offices. Now, that is not unusual. That's how it's usually done, is that they have agents in these field offices, and their job is to take any complaints that come in and do investigations if something does arise.

4:08The question, though, that everybody's on edge on is whether the president is going to order either FBI or DHS or perhaps even the National Guard in some of these states to go to the polls, because there is a clear legal line that would be crossed if that happens. Again, everyone is sort of anticipating what the president might do. But here, the FBI director wasn't conceding any of that today, Dana. Yeah, that was a really interesting and important exchange. Thank you so much, Evan. Appreciate it. And I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here. On edge is an understatement, Jeff Zeleny, about how this is going to go down when people go to the polls vis-a-vis what the president is planning to do with federal troops, no matter what flavor of federal troops they are.

4:56There's no doubt about it. I mean, election security and sort of the mechanics of the election, once upon a time, not that long ago, was sort of an afterthought. I mean, And we focus much more on the races and the issues and the agenda. Now this year, I would argue it is perhaps one of the most important things between now and when the votes are counted. Seven weeks from today, it is 49 days away. Ballots have already been sent out in North Carolina. They'll be sent out soon in other states. So this is upon us. But this whole idea of the election security, I mean, the president throws out the word hoax on a variety of things.

5:30but it has really settled into the ethos of elections, I guess. But talking to Republicans, I mean, this whole question of mail-in ballots and things, a lot of Republicans also vote by mail, particularly in rural red Republican areas and Republican states. So there's not a lot of ease on both sides. And on the same hand, or the other hand, I guess I would say, the postal union is largely run by union members who are more likely to vote Democratic here. So it would be Pollyannish to think we could get back to a day when we're focusing on issues in candidates and not the mechanics of the election.

6:13But it is front and center in this race. It is. And it all matters at this midterm. I want to talk about another part of this hearing that has to do not with the upcoming election, but with the 2020 election that President Trump is still trying to litigate, despite the fact that we have seen no evidence to prove his claim that he doesn't let up on that the election was stolen from him. And Georgia has been a key part of this. Tia, you, of course, work for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Senator Welch of Vermont had some Q &A with Patel about the FBI doing investigations still of the past election.

6:57President Trump referred to Democrats and said, this is public at the State of the Union. The only way they can get elected is to cheat. Do you agree with President Trump's statement? The information you're discussing involves ongoing investigations and I'm not going to comment on it. I'm asking you about his assertion that in this upcoming election, days away from now, the only way that the Democrats can win is to cheat. Do you agree with the president? Based upon the Russiagate hoax and everything else that's happened, the president is completely justified in making his opinions known as does any president before him.

7:40Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November? I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies. Tia? Yeah, it's quite problematic. I mean, we should, first of all, note he's talking about this ongoing investigation. That's what the federal government calls it. The people in Fulton County whose ballots were seized, the elected officials, the voters, do not know what's going on with that election. They do not know where the ballots currently are that were seized. There have been. From 2020.

8:18Yeah, they seized the 2020 ballots last year and there have been no updates what they're investigating, what the findings are. It's just kind of there was a raid and then very little information. So I just want to say, because he's talking about this ongoing investigation, we would love to hear more. And he wouldn't answer that question. Yeah, but I would say, you know, deeper than that, and I know this is the point you're getting to, Dana, is that the fabric of our democracy is based on free and fair elections. Our democracy falls apart once people do not feel confident that the will of the voters is reflected in who ultimately gets to take office.

8:59And that's different than saying, you know, there were anomalies, there were things that need to change. You can disagree with the results, but you've got to ultimately feel like the courts and the elected officials and the candidates work together to uphold the rule of law. And that's what's so troubling about the FBI director, someone with so much power, not committing to those norms. Yeah. And this is also what you were alluding to, Tia, the idea that this is a president who sows those seeds very openly, very aggressively when it looks like he's not going to win or when he didn't win. Yeah.

9:392020. And then looking ahead to what could potentially be coming his way. And as you come in, Frank, I want to show our viewers what the president posted this morning about his anger at the United States Supreme Court. Why? Because the Supreme Court last night struck down the executive order, the plan that the president put in place to restrict mail-in voting. And the president lashed out, saying, this Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the radical left into making decisions that have set America back at least 100 years. These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

10:18They are merely a shell of their original selves. It is a court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our country's history. Now, implied there, and just to sort of put a finer point on it, the justices he appointed and were confirmed by the Senate were not on his side on this mail-in ballot thing. Exactly. And it's just a piece of a broader intimidation effort that he is waging against not just the courts when they disagreed with him, but election officials, as Tia has pointed out. And so much of this is kind of a hypothetical discussion about what might happen.

10:55It's worth pausing just to consider how much damage has already been done over the course of this administration to the independence of elections. We've had this hypercharged reapportionment war that he ignited that's netted about 10 seats to the Republicans. His DHS, his FBI are constantly bullying election officials, threatening them with jail, threatening to withhold their money. There's this big attempt to centralize elections, which the Supreme Court has in part stymied. But there's a lot that he's done to advance. Because the Constitution says specifically that's not how we do it. Exactly.

11:33Exactly. And so when we talk about the hypothetical threats this November, it's premised on all sorts of things that have already gone down. And his lashing out at the Supreme Court is completely missing the fact of how many cases have rolled in his favor, like on voting rights and other things. So that is absolutely without not seeing the whole picture here of all the rulings. As we go to break, I just want to read part of a really important story on this topic by our friend of the show, Zolan Kano-Youngs, in the New York Times this morning. Trump's effort to assert control over elections continues despite court loss.

12:09The Justice Department sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, escalating a fight to gain access to private voter data and election records. Federal agents are scouring voter rolls managed by states for non-citizens. Officials in the Justice Department have also explored whether they could bring criminal charges against state or local officials if the administration determined they had not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems. Exactly the kind of thing that you were talking about, Frank, and we are not going to let up on this story. Coming up, a very sharp term, but it comes from the same hearing.

12:47talk of bestiality at this Kash Patel hearing on Capitol Hill. What was it all about? I'm going to talk to the former FBI director, Andy McCabe, next.

13:09Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper. On my podcast, All There Is, we explore grief and loss in all its complexities. My guest is Lil Jon. He's a rapper, DJ, and producer 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.

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14:56Welcome back. There has been a really wide-ranging hearing with the FBI Director, Cash Fatal, ranging even into the FBI's new recruitment standards to remove automatic disqualification for certain kinds of offenses. Thank you for bringing this up so we can get to the truth of the matter. What we did was we did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you. Tell me what it said before. It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminal.

15:37This side of what? The bestiality? Yes. So you disqualified the animal? Well, I don't think we have great canines, but we're not going to disqualify them. I understand. I'm trying to understand why you did this. That wasn't all. Senator Kennedy had many follow-ups that led to more talk of bestiality. The FBI has removed from its list of automatic hiring disqualifications theft from an employer, sex solicitation, and bestiality. Victim of what? Give me the example. Prostitution, bestiality, crimes like that. What about the bestiality? Criminal. This side of what? The bestiality? Why would you even get into bestiality?

16:26We are not into bestiality. Again, that was just a taste of it. There have been at least 19 mentions of bestiality so far. The hearing's still going on. Former FBI Deputy Director Andy McCabe is here. Andy, but you've never had an intro like that. But talk about what this is all about.

16:53Well, that's a really good question. I'm not 100 percent sure. So we've seen the FBI took steps to eliminate what were previously automatic disqualifiers for candidates for employment. One is theft from an employer. Another is involvement in prostitution. And then the third is involvement in bestiality. They did not specify that these reductions were an effort to solely benefit persons who were victims of crime. So in the context of bestiality, I can tell you, Dana, in 21 years in the FBI, this issue never came up. There was never a problem of excluding otherwise viable candidates who had been the victims of forced bestiality.

17:40So the fact that the director is using this as a way to kind of soften the blow, as it were, now, and to try to put this in some sort of a reasonable package is not entirely believable in my estimation. The other thing is, I was just going to say, sorry to interrupt you, but I want to make sure to get to the heart of the matter. And forgive me if you were going to do this, which is the FBI struggling in its recruiting. And so it's changing the standards. There's no doubt about that. The FBI has lost a record number of personnel. By the end of this year, estimates are they'll be at a deficit of like 5000 employees.

18:22Now, many of those are people who have been forced out for political reasons. Others are people who are leaving the agency just because they're not, you know, they're disgruntled with what they see from their leadership. The point is, this is not a policy that needed to be changed to stem that flow, right? The idea that the FBI director would put his own credibility and judgment on the line over something as esoteric and irrelevant as protecting victims of bestiality who might happen to want to work for the FBI is really unconscionable to me. What he's managed to do with this decision, allowing this rule change to take place, is once again draw regretful, negative, inflammatory public attention to the FBI.

19:12It's something that every one of his predecessors assiduously avoided doing. And here you have kind of Kash Patel driving that sort of kind of negative feedback for the FBI once again. Andrew McCabe, always good to talk to you. Thank you so much for helping understand this. And Franklin, your analysis of this? Yeah. I mean, I think the laxing of standards is part of a drive to make up for that gap of all the expertise that has fled the building. And we've seen how that loss of expertise has hurt the FBI in pretty graphic ways where there's been some bungling. There's been examples of incompetence.

19:53But we also know that the loss of expertise is something that's not going to be compensated for overnight by just shifting around some standards, especially not with the more esoteric parts of the hiring criteria, because the people who have left had this granular, nuanced understanding of our adversaries built up over time. You have people who worked on counterintelligence, who understood how Chinese efforts to infiltrate the United States were working. And these are things that you build up in your mind over years. And they're not things that can be replaced easily overnight. Yeah. I just also want to say like the standards were in place for a reason, right?

20:30Because when you're thinking about our law enforcement agencies, federal agencies, sensitive data, sensitive information, and again, we want our best and brightest, the thinking was, well, perhaps if you've been convicted of certain crimes, you no longer qualify because we don't necessarily want someone who has that in their past serving in these roles. So that's another reason why the relaxing of standards is, you know, could be a concern. And that doesn't mean that people aren't irredeemable, but do we want someone who's been charged with bestiality, in these roles? That's the question. And I think underscoring all of it is readiness.

21:11I mean, that is the central point of all of this. We're in the shadow of the 25th anniversary of 9-11 and readiness and how ready and capable is the government for the next attack. All of that really has been eroded. There are deep worries among officials from both parties or who've worked administration to both parties, just a readiness question across the government with so many people leaving. Everybody stand by. Coming up, what could keep Governor Gavin Newsom from running for the job he clearly wants? You'll hear his answer next.

21:51California Governor Gavin Newsom's term is about to come to an end. My colleague Jake Tapper went fly fishing with the governor and asked if he's decided on a 2028 presidential run. Honestly, you have to feel like you can stand on there on stage with, what, 30? It's going to be a lot of people. Yeah. A lot of Democrats. 31 flavors. And you're not even the only Californian. No, right. Yeah. You got Ro Khanna. Yeah. Kamala. Yeah. I don't know if she runs, but we'll see. I know she's called around. Yeah. But I wouldn't run if she ran. If she runs, you will not? Of course not. Why would I? I wouldn't do that to her.

22:29I wouldn't do it to me. Why would I wouldn't do that to you? I wouldn't waste everyone's time. Who needs that? What do you mean? That doesn't even make sense to me. I just, I wouldn't, no, I wouldn't. First of all, electorally, it's a gift from God for everybody else. They enjoy the hell out of it. Mutual assured destruction. It services no greater good. I mean, you do whatever you want. I don't care. But like, but like counter argument would be like, you know, she had a shot. Yeah. And you've never run and she's she's run twice. Yeah. I mean, that would be the that'd be the approach to the campaign.

23:02Certainly that would be the case you'd make. Pretty good one, actually. You know, that's that's objectively true. I just but I know what that means. I know her base of supporters. I know her friends. The Zen diagram on that is just pure crossover. It's not I wouldn't do that to I wouldn't do that to people. Fascinating. Good. Yeah, it was fascinating. I want to talk about this. And I just want to show a little bit of the slight evolution in his thinking. I talked to Governor Newsom back in February when he was out on a book tour and talked about the fact that he and Kamala Harris, not only did they have the same donors and so on and so forth, they came up together.

23:45They've known each other for decades. Listen to that.

23:51She was prosecutor, California DA and senator. You were San Francisco mayor, lieutenant governor and governor. What happens if and when those parallel careers intersect and collide? Well, I'm San Francisco now. She's L.A. So we're a little bit. There's a little distance between the two of us. You know, that's the fate will determine that. And I've never gotten away of her ambition ever. I haven't. I don't imagine I would in the future. But I don't know if you run against each other for president. That's fate. I don't I don't know. You know, you can only can control what you can control. I can't control that.

24:29I can't control whatever decisions she makes. So much more definitive now. If she runs, I will not run. Also makes you think that he does not think she's going to run. No question about it. I mean, that's exactly what my first instinct was when I heard him say that to Jake there. But look, I mean, the reality is he's not wrong about the fact that there's likely not space for the two of them because of their overlapping circles. But he also, the rest of the field as well, is going to have to wait for her to make up her mind. Because for all of the criticism, for all of really a lack of demand for her on this midterm campaign trail.

25:07Do you think so? I mean, yes, maybe for Newsom, or maybe not. But you think all of those people on the screen, they're not going to wait for her. They're not going to wait for her, but their ambitions or their path is going to be determined by what she does. Particularly because South Carolina now is starting the Democratic primary process. But look, I think no one knows exactly what she's going to do. If so, she hasn't revealed it. I think there's largely a sense that she's not going to run. Someone yesterday mentioned Al Gore. Think back to O2. He traveled all around the country and listening to her.

25:41He decided not to run. She is doing some things, but she's not, she's keeping her decision much closer to the vest here, but we'll just have to wait and see what she does. I get the sense that, you know, I think Kamala Harris would love to run and win. And so she's making the calculus if that is a possibility. And until she rules it out, there is still a chance. And I think Gavin Newsom knows that, again, the math just becomes difficult as long as she's still part of the conversation. Until she completely says, I'm in or I'm out, he's got to hedge his bets a little bit. Yeah, it's a lot of, you know, chatter at this point.

26:21And I'm sure, you know, if Harris starts to run and has no traction, he's not going to sit on the sidelines and wait for her forever. He'll jump into the race because he clearly, clearly wants to do this. Yeah. She can wait longer than others to make a decision. Absolutely. And also, it depends how you define jumping in. I mean, obviously, there's the exploratory committee and all that. But, like, he's out there. He's visiting states. I mean, I guess she is, too, but it's happening. You can watch Jake's full interview with Governor Newsom streaming on CNN's All Access with a subscription. Coming up, Gen Z helped Donald Trump retake the White House, but they're swinging back toward Democrats ahead of November.

27:02What's driving them? I'll talk to a Gen Z researcher about how the parties are trying to win this generation over.

27:19There could be 8.5 million new Gen Z voters this November, not to mention the approximately 20 million who voted in 2024 and swung sharply towards Donald Trump. But Gen Z is perhaps being hit the hardest by the Trump economy and who they decide to vote for and whether they vote at all could determine if there is a blue wave this November or how big it is. My next guest is a a Gen Z researcher and founder of the Up and Up and a member of Gen Z herself. Rachel Genfaza, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. I want to start with the new New York Times Siena poll that just came out today.

27:5818 to 29-year-olds seem to be swinging back towards Democrats. Among Gen Z likely voters, Democrats lead 64 to 29. I know you've been talking to this generation of voters about what matters to them ahead of Election Day. What are they telling you about the key issues and whether they say they're looking to ship back to Democrats? Well, thank you so much, Dana, for having me. When I'm talking with young voters across the country, I am hearing one primary concern, and that is economic anxiety. We did a big Gen Z voter report at the Up and Up. We spoke to more than 70 young people in 28 states and D.C.

28:40over the summer. And we really were just hearing this pervasive sense of anxiety, insecurity, fear of what is coming down the line when it comes to the economy, jobs. And there are really just a core set of issues that they are uniting behind. And that's, again, the economy, inflation, AI, of course, and then war, corruption, really these concerns that all voters share. And one of the dynamics that emerged in the last election was Gen Z men, particularly, mostly drifting right. The women seemed to go further to the left. In 2024, the Gen Z gender split between Harris and Trump was more than 30 points.

29:26That's according to Tufts University. Is that something that you're still seeing in your research or has that changed? So what we're seeing today is that while the gender divide still exists, this idea of a culture war and a real split in the issues that are dividing or were dividing young men and young women in 2024 has sort of evaporated. Because, again, there are a core set of unifying issues that are bringing all young people together, that they all can see as concerns in their lives. And that's not as gendered as the issues were in 2024, when, for example, in 2024, there was really an emphasis on the parts of Democrats to talk about abortion and reproductive health care access and to make that a central point in the election.

30:09and you had a woman running against a man. And so you kind of saw Gen Z splitting along those same lines. But today, while, you know, young people are still seeing gendered content on their social media algorithms, on their For You pages, they are in their real lives rallying around the same core issues. And so, you know, when you think about it, we're kind of past this peak gender divide, culture divide moment in the country. and really all young people have identified this same core set of issues. Economic anxiety is the great unifier. Obviously, it sounds like the culture situation, not that it's not important to a lot of voters, but in some ways they don't have the ability to focus on that when they have to focus on the bread and butter issues.

31:02The whole notion of Gen Z and the Democratic Socialist candidates has been fascinating. Do you think Gen Z is Socialist curious, or is there something else that is more sticky with this generation and those voters and those ideals? I've been asking about this nonstop since the start of the summer. And young people see a system that's broken, and that's not working for them. And they want an alternative to the current status quo. And so socialism is one of those alternatives, but it's not the only alternative. And when we asked young voters all summer, when you think about socialism, what comes to mind?

31:47What is it that you're actually in favor of? And what they shared were more social issues. So what I've been talking a lot about is that socialism isn't really the point, but social policies are. They're looking for things like affordable education, affordable health care, affordable housing, taxes on big corporations and wealthy individuals, a higher minimum wage, more so things that speak to the economic anxiety that they're facing and would benefit their bottom line and the American people. And so, again, when it comes to, you know, we ask them point blank, do you consider yourself a socialist, a democratic socialist?

32:24And very, very few people were willing to say that they actually call themselves a democratic socialist or a socialist at all. Instead, they're in favor of these candidates, many of whom are younger and offer some new, fresh energy to the Democratic Party, who are talking about bold ideas and solutions for the future rather than just, you know, speaking about the status quo and things that have already existed. Because for young people, they really don't feel like the current system as it stands today is working for them. I want to ask about AI. An NBC poll out last week asked voters who they trust more on AI policy.

33:03Everybody was pretty evenly split. 20 % trust Democrats, 16 Republicans, 44 % trust neither. AI is really a salient issue for everybody, but especially Gen Z. How could distrust among Gen Z voters play into this November's election? Not just in who they'll vote for, but my question is whether they'll vote at all. Yeah, so I'm very concerned with that as well. And in this youth voter report that I put out last week, I actually made a prediction that I worry that youth voter turnout could be lower than it has been in recent midterm elections in which Gen Z's been eligible to vote. And the reason for that is, is because they're just not feeling inspired by either side of the aisle.

33:49They're not feeling inspired by many candidates. There certainly are a few who we heard about who came up in our focus groups who they are paying attention to. But overall, they just don't see the government as necessarily the lever that is going to affect the most change in the country right now. And again, as you mentioned, Dana, you know, AI is a top concern. It is really driving that economic anxiety that they're feeling in many cases. And they don't hear leaders necessarily talking in a coherent or decisive way about AI. And it's sort of, you know, there's been a lot of talk about data center moratoriums and things like that.

34:26Young people do want to see AI regulated. They know that this is here to stay. They are not trying, they're not anti-progress. They're not trying to say, you know, let's do away with it. Instead, they're saying, how can we actually regulate it to make sure that it is something that augments human capacity and potential rather than replaces it? So fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate it, Rachel. Thanks for all your research and your work on this. Thank you for having me. And up next, original Charlie's angel. Jacqueline Smith talks about her new book, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, and how she found her voice playing the former first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

35:04That's next.

35:12The Voice is iconic. Good morning, Angels. Good morning, Charlie. The show Charlie's Angels took American culture and television by storm in 1976. Few knew the voice of Charlie better than actress, entrepreneur, and designer Jacqueline Smith, who, of course, played Kelly Garrett. I've already made arrangements for you three to go to prison. Prison? You've got to be kidding, Charlie. It's no joke, Angels. You can say that again. Last night, Jacqueline Smith reunited with Angels Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd at the Emmys, celebrating 50 years since the show's debut and honoring their late beloved co-star Farrah Fawcett.

35:58I talked to Jacqueline Smith about her new book, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, which is out now. Thank you so much for being here. It's such a thrill. Congratulations on this book. And I do want to say that you have had an illustrious career since Charlie's Angel, never mind in show business, but as an incredibly accomplished businesswoman. But that Charlie's Angels was a game changer in the 1970s. And what I think is so interesting and actually makes me so happy is that you call it a sisterhood. Yes, it was a sisterhood. And the odd thing is, it was a real sisterhood. It had permanence, and we're still friends.

36:44I mean, after all these years. And I think when you talk about business, Charlie's Angels opened that for me. It was sort of a threshold that many doors opened after Charlie's. So I'm really grateful. It's funny, seeing that was really kind of emotional. I don't go back and see the show. And it really got me at first because, you know, we're missing some people, which is always hard, always hard. But it was a true, the first season was a true sisterhood. We launched it together. I think at the time we had no idea that we'd be talking about it 50 years later and it would have the strange afterlife that it's had.

37:29Oh yeah. I mean, it is so embedded in American and really international culture. And you write that the show actually changed pretty dramatically from the Carter presidency when you started to the Reagan presidency. Was it just the hair or was it the storyline? Oh, that's a very good question. I think everything, you know, we grew into our parts and I think we became, we changed television for women. You know, it had a strong feminist backbone. and I think it resonated on screen and off. And I think, yes, the hair was kind of had its mystic charm on the show, especially my friend Farrah Fawcett's hair.

38:16But we all had our own look and things did change. Aaron Spelling did not want us to change that much. We had to really fight to have a new hairdo. As you see on television today, each season, somebody will change their look. He wanted us consistent throughout the five years. By the fifth year, I got to wear my hair in a natural curly state. But in general, he wanted the clothes classic so it wouldn't be dated in reruns. He had his own philosophy about television. And I think he had a real good instinct. Jacqueline, I love that you talk about the feminism, because I will tell you that as a little girl growing up, when I pretended to be you, I felt stronger and smarter and, you know, sort of more on top of it.

39:03And that was the kind of role model that young women or girls didn't have really until you showed up on screen. Well, I think that's the power of it. We were in people's living rooms once a week and we drifted into the imagination of women and young girls and gave them a chance to be brave and to step out of a conventional role. And yet there was also that sense of girlfriends. I mean, we were carrying out a job, but Charlie was not our controller. We were independent, strong, courageous. And I think that was the great thing about the show. It gave women a new place on television. And being an angel, you write, almost kept you from what you call your favorite role.

39:53You say, quote, the producers told my agent, we don't want a Charlie's Angel playing Jacqueline Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy was so distinctive. A far cry from street smart Kelly Garrett. She was elegant and cultured. I had to convince them that I could pull off playing a Northeastern Vassar girl. You got the role, and I want to play a little clip. Okay. All the ride to the hospital, I kept bending over him saying, Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack. But he was dead. I mean, the fact that you had to push so hard to get that role, and I remember it very well, seemed like a natural fit. Well, I'll tell you, I had, first of all, a girl with a Texas accent, which I still have.

40:47But I had Robert Easton on that set with me, really giving me that Eastern sound to my voice of dropping the R's. And she was so familiar pictorially to us. But we didn't really, like today, we hear First Ladies. They're out there and they're talking. But Jacqueline was much quieter. So I really had to search to find her voice. And at the time, Stephen Gethers was the director. He did not want me to have as whispery a voice as she had, which was beautiful and lovely. But he wanted a stronger voice when I did the role. Well, it was great. The book is terrific. The book, I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie, is out now.

41:30A wonderful read. Jacqueline Smith, this has been a thrill. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. That was so cool. Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

41:51I'm Adi Cornish. I'm Ari Shapiro and it's 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. 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 fashion terrible now. Well, I mean, I would phrase it as how do you develop a personal style in the age of AI slop?

42:29You 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. The 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. Follow Engagement Party. Wherever you get your podcasts.