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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Offers $1 Million For Tips That Lead To Voter Fraud Convictions; Trump & Obama Hold Campaign Rallies In Critical Michigan Senate Race; Trump Brags About Oil Profits Amid High Gas Prices For Americans. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired October 26, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:00]
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A trillion dollar IPO. Fascinating that with that much loss, you can still be valued so high.
David Goldman, always appreciate you. Please --
ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Thanks, David.
SANCHEZ: -- I have to insist, some attire, some wardrobe. He does these things for CNN AM. He puts on like weird clothes and has props.
HILL: Yeah, we want props.
SANCHEZ: We want props, David.
HILL: Richard Press has like a whole, there's funny hats.
SANCHEZ: Props to Erica for joining us today. Great to see you.
THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT starts right now.
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KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Breaking news, President Trump now says he wants to give away millions of dollars as he hunts for alleged voter fraud.
Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's great to have you with us on this Monday.
As we come on the air, we're entering the final week of midterm campaigning. We're about to cross a big milestone with almost 30 million early ballots submitted. That amounts to nearly a quarter of all the ballots that were cast in 2022.
But just moments ago, President Donald Trump posting this on social media. Here's the claim, quote, "Anybody reporting voter fraud in the past elections or the upcoming 2026 midterm election will be paid $1 million upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the fraud," end quote.
This just his latest attempt to shape an election that polls indicate could be brutal for his party. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TODD BLANCHE, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape, or form. What we're trying to do is make it clear that if it is obvious after the election that confusion led to an improper and illegal result, that the Alaskan system should be able to address that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The Attorney General, Todd Blanche, this weekend defending the preemptive lawsuit from the Justice Department that could upend that tight Senate race in Alaska. That lawsuit seeks to block certification of Alaska's Senate race if Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan loses. Remember, there's two Dan Sullivans on that ballot.
At the same time, we are awaiting a ruling on another lawsuit, this one in California, where the DOJ has asked a judge to require the state to not count some 20,000 mail ballots, alleging that they are from non-citizens. A decision on that could come really at any minute.
And today, the Justice Department announced the largest ever effort to observe polling locations for potential civil rights violations, saying they'll send approximately 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states.
Just for comparison, 400 monitors were sent to 24 states in the 2022 midterm election.
All right, let's get off the sidelines, head into THE ARENA. My panel is here.
CNN contributor, host of "The New York Times'", The Interview, Lulu Garcia-Navarro; CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangel; CNN political commentator, former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield; and former Trump White House communications director Mike Dubke.
We're also joined by our CNN senior legal analyst, Elie Honig.
Welcome to all of you. Great to see you.
Elie, let me start with you on this, because this just came down shortly before We sat down here to come on the air that the president wants to give a million dollars to anyone who reports voter fraud apparently in the past, but also in this upcoming election, if in fact the person that is alleged to have done this is ultimately convicted of doing it.
Is this real?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I have no idea whether it's real, but I can tell you that there is nothing inherently wrong or illegal with offering a reward. There is a federal crime of voter fraud, and the FBI and DOJ do get a large pot of money from Congress every year. And DOJ and the FBI have broad discretion over how to allocate that, including to rewards.
But I think there's fair questions to be asked about that amount, $1 million per voter fraud case. Just for reference, Kasie, just last week, the FBI offered a $20,000 reward, so 1/50th of that amount, to capture the person who tried to burn down an ICE building in Atlanta, Georgia. And for a historical reference point, if we go back to the late 1990s, the FBI actually offered the exact same amount, $1 million, to catch the Unabomber.
Now, I know 1998 dollars are different than today, but I think that gives some helpful perspective.
HUNT: Agreed. Yes, I appreciate that perspective, Elie.
Can I ask you, what is the risk around incentivizing people to do this with money, to show up at a polling place potentially, or to hunt around for this kind of information? I mean, what kind of risk is being created here?
HONIG: Well, you're going to certainly run the risk of deputizing or quasi-deputizing every person in the country. Everyone's going to become Inspector Clouseau. Now, look, sometimes these rewards do lead to good tips that lead to arrests. But I promise you this, whoever has to man that hotline or that email address at DOJ is going to get thousands upon thousands of tips that will be false, that will lead nowhere.
So there's a cost-benefit analysis to be done here. I noticed this came from the president, not from the Justice Department or the FBI, although they surely will adopt it. I'm not exactly sure what the advice they would have given had they been asked, however.
HUNT: Yeah. Mike Dubke, again, I guess the question is -- and I appreciate Elie basically telling me he can't answer my question, but providing helpful context on other things -- like, is this real? Like, what is the president doing?
MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I mean, why not? You have whistleblowers. I don't know if the million dollars is coming from the RNC or if the million dollars is coming from the DOJ or where the million dollars is coming from.
But I think he makes a broader point here. I mean, if there -- look, there is a-- from time to time, there is fraud that happens. It's a relatively small number. We don't need to argue about that. I think what the president is doing is incentivizing on -- on this, and if people show, you know, call in and dial up, and there's some dollars that get exchanged for a whistleblower, we're fine.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: He's acting like a chaos monkey is what he's doing in these elections.
DUBKE: How is that any different than the way he's been the last two years?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, okay, well, no. KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Agreed.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: No argue --
BEDINGFIELD: Agreed.
DUBKE: Well, then, where -- I mean, when are we having a friend?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You said my friend.
DUBKE: I did, I did.
BEDINGFIELD: I mean, I think, well, it's very obviously an effort to incentivize, even if just to incentivize so that they can then turn around and say we've received 100,000, 500,000 whatever claims of voter fraud, and then they can use that number. Whether they -- whether they wind up being borne out or not, it still gives them a big denominator to suggest that there's fraud going on that isn't.
I think let's look at -- let's look at Nevada, for example, this summer. You had DHS accuse the state of Nevada of having 15,000 non- voting, sorry, non-citizens voting. Nevada said, okay, looked into it, came back and said, well, actually, no, we don't see any evidence of any non-citizens voting.
DHS said, well, we looked again and actually it's just 185. And Nevada said, okay, and looked into those 185 and said, there's no evidence that these are non-citizens. So this is essentially a charade.
DUBKE: We've had -- we've had 6,600 in New Jersey that the Democrat governor of New Jersey came out and said we're erroneously registered. We've had Texas look and they pulled 21 percent of the 2,200 people they said they are citizens, that leaves 79 percent that they can't determine.
So, again, I'm coming back to my point there are cases out there. They're relatively small.
BEDINGFIELD: Very, very small.
DUBKE: But there are cases clearly an effort by the president to try to juice this narrative up in advance of and then after an election that seems like it's not going to go very well for his party.
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Just to underscore that, this is about Donald Trump trying to undermine election integrity. January 6th was not a hallucination. This feels as if he's setting the stage for 2.0.
This, of course, all comes amid the other piece of this, the Department of Justice Elie Honig suing in Alaska to preemptively challenge those results.
Elie, can you walk us through what you think the process is going to be there, whether it's going to end up being real? Because, of course, the attorney general, who just a day before the president went out and said, I wanted to do this, had gone out and basically said, I mean, maybe a doomsday scenario. And then it turns out to not be the case that the president wanted him to move forward with this, and he was out blanketing the Sunday shows about it this weekend.
HONIG: Yeah, I think the end result of the process is this lawsuit will be thrown out. I'm quite confident in that.
Here's why -- the Constitution is actually quite clear that election procedures are up to either the states or to Congress if Congress passes a law.
Now, this whole issue about the two Dan Sullivans was litigated all the way up to the Alaska State Supreme Court, which ruled back in June that there need to be some modification to the ballot to help people differentiate. The incumbent is now labeled incumbent, but the ballot can proceed. So that's the state of Alaska deciding how they want to do this.
Now, Blanche's argument is really misleading and really devious, and I want to point out why. He's saying however Congress passed a law saying we can get involved but if you look at their brief the law that Todd Blanche and DOJ relying on, it's a 1993 law that has nothing to do with this type of scenario. It has to do with voter registration and technicalities like that. It has nothing to do with ballot design or voter confusion.
And then worse than that the actual language in that law that Blanche and are using is from the preamble, which is the introductory mishmash that has no legal relevance. So they're taking inoperable language from a law that has nothing to do with the situation in Alaska and saying, aha, Congress has authorized this.
So they're going to lose. To me, it's really just a question of when.
HUNT: So let's watch what Todd Blanche said, how he explained why what's going on in Alaska is a problem as he tried to defend the filing of this lawsuit. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BLANCHE: What's the crime? Well, it depends. There could be a crime, but the real wrong here is that Alaskans are going to be confused and will not have their vote heard. So an Alaskan intends to vote for one candidate but is confused because of the second candidate with exactly the same name who's voted Democrat his entire life who donated money to the other Democrat opponent is running. That's the real question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DUBKE: So I know a little bit about what's happening in Alaska here, and the Division of Elections did remove Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the ballot. The state -- Elie's right. The state Supreme Court then put him back on and allowed the state to create a differentiator.
Now, they thought it was good enough to have just a middle initial. A lot of people thought that that wasn't enough, so they put the word incumbent next to the sitting U.S. senator. But there was enough smoke there of interference by the Democrats and potentially Senator Sullivan's opponent that they -- that they tried to get this person removed from the ballot. The threshold to get on a ballot in Alaska is 100 bucks and that's it. So, that's why you had 18 people running and the top four people made it on. So there is some "there" there.
But to the point of all of this nothing's going to happen on that lawsuit unless the margin of error is so close that there's some question.
BEDINGFIELD: Well, that's the bet, right?
DUBKE: And that's why they filed the lawsuit, according to the DOJ. Now, I've had to deal with this. I'd much rather be talking about how liberal Mary Peltola is than talking about a DOJ lawsuit in the last eight days of a campaign. But that's what we're dealing with, and this comes back to the chaos that I've talked about for the last two years.
HUNT: Jamie, do you want the last word?
GANGEL: I just want to say, I think it also says one's a Democrat and one's a Republican.
DUBKE: It does not. It says Republican --
HUNT: Registered incumbent and the other one, Daniel J. Sullivan, no party affiliation.
DUBKE: Yeah, yeah.
HUNT: All right, well, I guess we'll find out.
Elie Honig, thank you so much, sir. Always great to see you. I'm sure we'll have plenty of reasons to be talking over the course of the next eight days if past is prologue. So see you soon.
The rest of our panel is going to stand by.
Coming up here in THE ARENA. You won't believe it, or maybe you will, where Republicans are putting more campaign money today as the president heads to Mississippi to defend a deep red Senate seat that suddenly landed on everyone's radar.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So we're making hundreds and hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars. My people said, please don't mention that, sir, because people are paying a little higher. That number's going to come way down.
No, I could just see the fake headlines. President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. That'll be the headline. But I said, I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it. We're making a freaking fortune.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: He said it himself. Do with it what you will.
Soon, President Donald Trump is going to head to Mississippi. That's a state no one imagined would be competitive just a few months ago. Is that the message he's going to take with him to Mississippi?
According to a new CNN analysis, the average price of gas has now been higher on average during President Trump's second term than it was during President Joe Biden's single term. And a new poll from CBS finds that likely voters believe Democrats are more likely to bring gas prices down if they win, with half saying the President's party will cause them to rise even more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Does anybody really think this guy is spending that much time thinking deeply on these issues? I don't know if you've noticed, but he is very focused on home renovation.
What's up with the gold? He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened the Cheesecake Factory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Former President Barack Obama campaigning in Michigan there over the weekend. The race there between Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers, critical to Democratic hopes of retaking the Senate. And with just about a week left, it is, of course, becoming, it really has been all along, one of the most brutal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE ROGERS (R), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: We sure know that Abdul El-Sayed does not belong anywhere near the United States Senate.
OBAMA: They will use lies, and they will use fear, and they will use division. And they may even use your name.
TRUMP: Remember Barack Hussein Obama's --
OBAMA: We have seen this movie before. I starred in it.
TRUMP: Abdul Muhammad El-Sayed is a jihadist.
ABDUL EL-SAYED (D), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: I don't care how he pronounces my name. I don't even care that he remembers my whole name because he can just go on and call me senator after November. That'll be Senator Muhammad to you, bro.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Lulu Garcia-Navarro -- GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes.
HUNT: They said a lot of it all out loud.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: As someone with a strange name and ethnically attached. Yes. What is the question?
(LAUGHTER)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, listen. Barack Obama finally showed up in a way that only he can. I think at this point right now, he is the sort of head of the Democratic Party. He's finally assumed that mantle after running away from it in 2024. And I think at this point right now, he is the sort of head of the Democratic Party. He's finally assumed that mantle after running away from it in 2024.
And, you know, he's got the jokes.
[16:20:00]
But behind the jokes, of course, is something real. We see it all the time whenever I have my Republican colleagues here where they are always hammering Abdul El-Sayed about his name, trying to raise these questions about where his loyalties lie.
I don't like anti-Semitism. I don't like Islamophobia. They're two sides of the same coin, and this is clearly something out of that playbook.
HUNT: I mean, Jamie Gangel, the reason, of course, that Obama's in Michigan is in no small part because black voters in Detroit, our polling shows, have been more reluctant to support El Sayed in the same numbers as they have supported previous Democratic nominees. And there's been a lot of conversations about how he can bridge that divide.
What impact do you think Obama has on that?
GANGEL: I think it has to help. I've spoken to Democratic strategists who have done a lot of work in Michigan. They are worried about getting out the vote. They are very happy that Obama is there.
Can I go back to --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It's the Black vote, isn't it?
GANGEL: It is the black vote.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And it's the black male vote, actually, more than any other kind of vote, and that's where Obama helps.
GANGEL: Well, the Jewish vote is a problem for El Sayed in Michigan, but it is a much smaller number of people. He needs Detroit to get out.
Just one other word I'd like to add in here, Mississippi. Mississippi was not on my bingo card for needing Donald Trump to go in and campaign.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm still skeptical that that one really belongs there, but if you're going to send the president somewhere to try to get MAGA Republicans out, Mississippi is a relatively safe place.
Kate?
BEDINGFIELD: You know, the other thing I would say about Obama certainly helps with the Black vote, certainly the Black male vote, but Obama helps with all Democrats across the board. He is far and away the most popular figure in the Democratic Party. He's somebody who I think can assuage concerns that maybe more moderate Democrats in Michigan might have about Abdul El-Sayed.
And so, I think it's important, you know, to acknowledge that certainly helps with a Black vote, no question. But I think he's playing a very, very important role here in the final stretch in helping to convince some Democrats who may have misgivings about, you know, Sayed's position on Medicare for All and some of the things he said about Israel.
I think Obama is offering a bridge, as you said, Kasie, to those voters as well.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You know what, it's going to be a real problem? In 2028, not to jump ahead or anything, but like --
HUNT: She's done.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm done with the midterms.
(CROSSTALK)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm just saying like Obama -- no, no, I just mean, I just mean that President Obama still got it. You know what I'm saying? He's popular and he is charismatic and he's well spoken and it will be hanging over 2028.
DUBKE: When did political rallies turn into comedy routines? I mean, both the Trump... I was at a Trump rally, and it was an hour and a half comedy hour, and it seems that the Democrats are doing the exact same thing with Obama.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Better make people laugh and cry.
DUBKE: Your headliners, and that's where we are with eight days left.
HUNT: Yeah, I'm reminded of Michelle Obama. When they go low, we go high. Somehow we're in a different universe now.
Let's watch some farmers in Iowa, because as much as we are digging into these individual races, and in the case of the Senate, obviously, these individual races matter very much. But the national environment is being driven, especially in the Midwest, by the price of gas, especially the price of diesel. And you could hear that when we went out and talked to farmers, voters in Iowa.
Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COREY GOODHUE, IOWA FARMER: We had to do a lot of cutting to get this thing to a positive number. brutal amount of cutting.
KELLY WALKER, IOWA FARMER: The diesel fuel, the price of chemicals, the parts, it all follows. Bottom line is you're trying to make it profitable so you can be here next year. But you know, sometimes the fight gets to be too much.
STEVE KUIPER, PRESIDENT OF THE IOWA CORN GROWERS ASSOCIATION: Everybody in agriculture is tired. It would be the best way to put it. They're just tired. They feel very beat up right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, Mike, it's this dynamic that has the president in Mississippi, right? Has people concerned in South Carolina, right, across the board, like people feeling beat up?
DUBKE: No, frankly, I mean, I think gas prices across the board, I'm seeing it in all different states. But inflation isn't, if you look at grocery store prices, a lot of those items are coming down, eggs are down 20 percent, whatever the case may be. It's that -- it's that billboard that you see at every street corner that is the gas price that people feel at the pump, and especially on the diesel gas price, we've never seen a price this high. So that is what I think is creating the headwinds here.
The Democrat brand is terrible. It's not like the Democrats are proposing anything. There's no policy conversation here. Everyone is reacting to this kind of ripping off in their pocketbook and it's caused by these gas prices.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They don't have to have a policy conversation. You know the political -- no, but you know, like I'm not the strategy.
DUKE: I hear you, yeah, yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, politically speaking --
BEDINGFIELD: In midterm races, you really don't, right? Because the dynamic is almost always, it's a referendum on the president. It's a referendum on the party of power.
DUBKE: Sure.
BEDINGFIELD: So you're trying to drive the conversation. In this scenario where the president's as unpopular as he is, you're trying to drive the conversation to be about the unpopular.
DUBKE: But I do think it's holding the Democrats back, though, because they don't have -- their brand is terrible at the moment. They don't have policies, and they're not running away with it.
The one thing -- I don't trust the polls, but the one thing I've noticed in the polls is they haven't moved much and I think that's telling that the that no one is -- you know, igniting the American people one way or the other.
GANGEL: Well, they're igniting against. I mean, the Democrats are not responsible for those gas prices. Somewhere along the line, Donald Trump convinced himself he could get away with anything. Those gas prices, he cannot get away.
DUBKE: I don't think he can. That's why he's out there too trying to get his base out.
BEDINGFIELD: And a little bit to your point I mean one of the single most powerful motivating factors across the board right now is anti- incumbency and an anger --
(CROSSTALK)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, I think you're probably going to see a pretty scrambled map and I think it's very unclear what's going to happen because a lot of these important races are so close but I don't think it helps when the president goes out and says and I'm going to do what he said we were going to do and say hey you know we're making a lot of money who's making a lot of money the oil companies are making a lot of money.
HUNT: In that case the president was basically saying he personally.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, he personally is making a lot of money but also the oil companies are making money but also like rich people are making money, but we're not making money. People have to pump gas in their car.
And so, I think this just feeds into this message, and I've been saying this over and over again, but the one thing that I have been personally astonished by this midterm season is the absolute message discipline coming into the close of the Democratic Party. You can talk to someone in Michigan, and I'm astonished. I can't overestimate how astonished I am by this, but you talk to Democrats in Michigan, you talk to them in Maine, you talk to them in Alaska, you talk to them in Texas, as I just did.
And they are all singing from the same hymn sheet. It is us against the billionaire.
BEDINGFIELD: I mean, okay, astonished, maybe tough, but fair. But it's also if you cannot hit this message in the closing weeks, then you deserve no place in politics, period. So -- I mean, this one is -- it's right there. It is right there. If you're hammering this one, then you're in the wrong business.
HUNT: Well, and the way that the Senate candidate in Iowa, Ashley Hinson, had to, you know, answer questions over the weekend about the economy. Again, just a reminder, Republicans have not been able to distance themselves from Donald Trump for the decade that he has been on the stage, in no small part because they risked alienating the base. The base was so loyal to President Trump.
But now, let's watch what Hinson had to say over the weekend when she was pressed on the war and the economy because she sounds a lot different than the Republican president. Watch
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ASHLEY HINSON (R-IA): I do think the war needs to come to an end. I've heard from Iowans who are being squeezed by the gas prices and the challenges we're facing here at home because of what's happening there.
JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: The president said this is an A++++ economy. Is that the way you see it here in Iowa?
HINSON: Well, it sure doesn't feel like it right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean --
DUBKE: Well, and that's the thing. It's the feeling. That's what the headwinds are about. You know, I don't want to make the -- thank God Republicans are making the argument that Biden made that, you know, the economy is great, you're just not feeling it. I mean, but he is making that argument.
But you have Senate candidates that aren't, that they're recognizing, look, people are hurting. This is a terrible thing.
My joke is, what color is your incumbency? To your point, Kate, I don't think it's a blue wave. I'm not sure it's a red undertow. I think it's just an anti-Washington thing that's happening right now. That's what makes Michigan interesting to me because Mike Rogers isn't the incumbent. He's a former congressman, but he isn't the incumbent. So is that race closer because you've got two non-incumbents in the race?
BEDINGFIELD: True, true, true. But if you're a change voter and you're looking for somebody who feels like they're going to shake up the status quo, I think hard to argue that Abdul El-Sayed is not that candidate over Mike Rogers.
DUBKE: Yes, and that's why you're bringing up other issues around him saying, Well, you might not be comfortable with these other things if you knew them.
HUNT: Yeah, one other piece of this at Lulu's, I wanted to end on this, Hispanic voters, Latino voters, are in many ways becoming one of the most important blocs of swing voters we're learning. We can put up on the screen, let's look at who Hispanic voters trust on the economy, okay?
In 2024, when, of course, President Trump touted gains among Hispanic voters, 49 percent said that they trusted him on the economy. Now look at how many -- 2024, when, of course, President Trump touted gains among Hispanic voters, 49 percent said that they trusted him on the economy.
Now look at how many Hispanic voters trust Republicans on the economy.
[16:30:01]
I mean, they 62 percent of them say that they are trusting a Democrat. So you can see something similar in the immigration numbers, but I really want to focus on the economic ones because in so many ways and in so many communities, Latino voters often feel all of this first and pay the price first.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They do. And, you know, it was not so long ago that everyone would talk about the sleeping giant of the Latino vote, which would drive me absolutely crazy.
But the idea, of course, is that this is the largest minority group in the United States. And if they vote, they will sway elections because they're not just in places like California or Texas or Florida.
They are --
HUNT: Everywhere.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- in places all over the country.
And also, though, what makes them, I think, so interesting is that they are swing voters because they're thermostatic. They feel the economy, as you mentioned, first. And so they will vote not in a partisan way, but in a way that helps them.
And so, it is good that different parties have to fight for their voters.
HUNT: Yeah. I think it's going to be a storyline we see emerging from this midterm straight into the 2028 presidential.
All right, coming up next here in THE ARENA, Democratic congresswoman, Michigan political whisperer Debbie Dingell will be here live as Mike Rogers and Abdul El-Sayed both try and get a presidential boost in the final week of what's become that bitterly contested Senate race.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: Do you consider yourself to be a MAGA Republican?
MIKE ROGERS (R), MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: Listen, I'm going to tell you something. I get you guys on the national press, but this is a little bit disgusting to me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [16:35:57]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN HOST: You're still fully behind Abdul El-Sayed?
REP. HALEY STEVENS (D-MI): Look, I'm on the Democratic ticket. You know, I can't say that I agree with everything that's gone on. You know, I wish that first debate had been more about, you know, that rubber stamp for Trump because we got a lot of chaos in Michigan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens there, sidestepping that question from my colleague Dana Bash about whether or not her former primary opponent, Abdul El Sayed, has her full support in his bid for Senate. Stevens, who lost a bitter primary to El Sayed, seems to be everywhere these days except alongside her former opponent, though she did endorse him immediately after the primary.
Her absence from the trail has raised some questions about whether the now Democratic nominee, El Sayed, has done enough to mend the relationships that he's going to need to pull together a winning Democratic coalition. Stevens's answer, not really quelling those worries.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVENS: You know, I don't want to debate, you know, who's the enemy of the United States, but that was litigated in my primary. You know, I'm not looking to be front and center right now. I'm looking to be on the team to support, you know, my next governor, Jocelyn Benson, and frankly, these great Democrats who are working their tails off, who are going to make Hakeem Jeffries the first Black speaker of the House.
BASH: You didn't mention Abdul-Sayed in that last answer.
STEVENS: Well, look, I would just say you had asked me if I'm still on the team. I'm on the team.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, joining me now in THE ARENA, someone who's always got their finger on the pulse in the Wolverine State, Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, Debbie Dingell.
Congresswoman, it's always great to see you. Thank you so much for being here. What is the state of this race?
Is Abdul El-Sayed in position to win?
REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): (AUDIO GAP)
HUNT: I think we're having some trouble with the microphone. We might need to work on it for just a second. So I think we're going to continue this conversation here with the panel.
Jamie Gangel, great work by Dana, of course, with Haley Stevens. But, you know, the way she answered that question, you know, for average viewers, you may not realize the depth of the animosity that must exist for her to, in the final week before a campaign, come on and not answer the question the way that she did, right? And it really says a lot about the very hard feelings that still exist in Michigan in this race, and underscores the challenge that, you know, that's why El Sayed has not been able to put this away.
GANGEL: It absolutely speaks to where we are, why this is a toss-up. There are many people who felt if she had been the candidate, it would have been hers in a walk. Now, you know, we are just seeing over and over again, whether it's the ugly Islamophobia and racism going back and forth.
There is a real question that the Democrats can take this seat. And she still thinks she could have won it.
HUNT: Yeah, let's watch what she had to say about Mike Rogers and Black voters in Michigan. This was, again, more of Haley Stevens talking about Mike Rogers, the Republican, and his efforts to win over voters in Detroit. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVENS: To be fair, Mike Rogers is also campaigning rigorously in Detroit. I mean, every time you turn around, the guy's in Detroit. And so I had said to, you know, the coordinated campaign, I'm like, hey, give a speech in the Black community, right? But yeah, I mean, that didn't happen. That speech hasn't happened.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: I mean, Kate Bedingfield, political malpractice?
BEDINGFIELD: I would question a little bit why she chose to come on this week, and if she wasn't either going to make a full-throated defense of him or lay out her criticisms clearly of him, I'm not sure I understand the strategic benefit to her, even, of choosing to go on this week, a week and a before the election and give sort of an equivocating answer.
[16:40:07]
I certainly believe her when she says she doesn't want to be the story right now. But doing an interview like this and giving an answer like this ensures that she is. So I didn't quite understand the strategy behind that.
HUNT: Let me see if I can get Congresswoman Dingell back into the conversation.
Congresswoman, I hope we'll have a little bit more luck this time. I really do want to hear your assessment of where this race stands eight days out. DINGELL: Can you hear me now?
HUNT: We can. Please, go ahead.
DINGELL: Okay. It's good to see all of you.
Look, it's competitive in the Senate race. I would rather be the Democrat than the Republican, but the amount of money that is being poured into horrific, hateful ads is incredible. I think it's actually starting to backfire. I have had Black ministers who tell me, they've said this to me today, that they are remembering what it was to be attacked the way he was being attacked and it's bringing their congregations more together.
I think there's it's going to be a long week and there's a lot of hateful things being said and I'm not calling it till next weekend to be perfectly frank. The governor for -- Jocelyn will win the governorship and if she wins by a significant amount, that will help bring Democrats along as well.
HUNT: If you had to identify something that was going to move the needle in next weekend by next weekend, what could it be?
DINGELL: I think there's a lot of different things happening. We have hit more doors than we have ever hit in the history of campaigns in Michigan. I think he is talking about, I think national media tries to get talk about too many other things. And this week we need to be talking about those grocery bills, the gasoline costs, the number of people that are not going to the doctor house, people are getting sicker.
And he's trying to stay on those subjects and not let other people try to have all these conversations that, quite frankly, you were even just having. And Haley is supporting Abdul. I've been on the road with her. I've seen her in rooms. We want Democrat elected because we've got to stand up to Donald Trump.
HUNT: Were you surprised that she wasn't willing to be more forceful?
DINGELL: I think she's been -- you want to know what -- she's a human being and last week, everybody was saying why aren't you on the trail with him? Well, Abdul's out on the trail by himself and people are going other places. I haven't been with him that much and give her a break. She's a human being, but I know she's voted for Abdul and I know she's supporting him.
HUNT: I want to ask you big picture here as we quickly are going to turn from these midterms straight into the presidential. "The New York Times" issued a, and listen, obviously polling at this stage, we're all going to take it with a grain of salt, but it gives you a little bit of a sense of who voters at least are aware of.
So the Times has Kamala Harris at 12 percent, Gavin Newsom at nine, Pete Buttigieg at seven, AOC gets in there, Jon Ossoff gets in there, and Mark Kelly. But of course, there's a huge chunk of voters, the vast majority here,
that have no idea. They think it's going to be another candidate or they don't know. As you look ahead to what you think Democratic voters are going to demand from the party in 2028, what kind of candidate do you think voters are going to want?
DINGELL: So I'm one of those I don't know. And I'm happy to see that we finally have a competitive primary system that is going to test these candidates in places that have a population that reflects the country. I think people want to see people that are going to talk about how we're going to return manufacturing to this country. They're going to stand up to foreign countries like China and Russia.
I think they want to know that somebody cares about lowering the cost of their groceries and gasoline. I think they don't want any more wars. And I think all of us want to see how did the candidates answer questions? Did they duck them or did they have solutions?
HUNT: All right, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, thank you very much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. It's always great to see you.
DINGELL: Thank you.
HUNT: All right, ahead here in THE ARENA, guess who's not coming to dinner? Who the president is telling not to call him anymore after breaking bread with him recently at the White House?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:49:04]
HUNT: All right, welcome back.
Just days before Election Day, we were treated to President Trump's longest Truth Social post ever. And it isn't the cost of living or the war in the Middle East that is the focus. It was actually dedicated to the HBO comedian Bill Maher. Did you guess?
Yesterday, the president posted more than 1,300 words detailing his apparently complicated relationship with the comedian. In it, Trump lashed out at Maher, called him a complete and total loser, and a pothead. And at some point, he even wrote, quote, "Bill, don't call me anymore."
This all comes after the HBO comedian had dinner with the president earlier this month, along with ESPN host Stephen A. Smith and the musician Kid Rock. Last Friday, Maher talked about that White House dinner on his HBO show, and he cracked jokes about Trump's sagging poll numbers, which apparently hit a nerve.
[16:50:02]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL MAHER, TV HOST, COMEDIAN: Trump has the lowest approval rating of any midterm candidate ever. Only 1 percent of the Republicans are mentioning him in his ads. It's gotten really bad. I mean, the billboards outside of his rallies now just say, Lee Greenwood, and friends.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Lee Greenwood and friends. Jamie Gangel --
GANGEL: Yeah, yeah. He had a nerve. He hit him where it hurts, his poll numbers, right? Or as Trump likes to call them his ratings and you really have to wonder the post went on and on.
It's worth a dramatic reading if you have the time because what it comes down to at the end, you know, Trump says I never watched him. I watched him and I saw it. It's ridiculous.
President Trump's approval rating is at an all-time low, and the consequences may likely be coming.
Let's watch what the president said a little while ago, this was back on October 16th, about this dinner with Maher and Kid Rock and Stephen A. Smith, because now, of course, it's, what, October 26th. So this was 10 days ago, this was how the president framed it then. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The dinner last night with Kid Rock and Stephen A and Bill Maher was great. I think they had a good time.
REPORTER: What'd you talk about? We talked about everything. It lasted a long time. And, you know, even though they have to sort of put on a certain little facade for their people, they like Trump, and I actually like them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So he says that I like them, all three of them. Let's watch a little bit more of what Bill Maher had to say on his show this week, this past week, on Friday. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAHER: The dinner went on for four hours, slightly longer than the press secretary hired last week.
I mean, we talked about a lot of things -- the Supreme Court, ICE shootings, pulling Skylink down, abandoning the Afghans who helped us during the war. Hegseth is dragging you down, sir. You know, I mean, when you say Obama's not a centrist, your racism is showing. Please don't name the ocean after yourself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And then, of course, fast forward to yesterday, and he's posting on Truth Social that Maher is a drunk who was wandering around the White House with a drink in his hand. And, I mean, if you know, President Trump, of course, there's a history of alcoholism in his family that has led him to, you know, have feelings like this.
But, I mean, Mike Dubke, why? Why? Why Bill Maher, eight days out from an election, nine days out from an election?
DUBKE: Well, because I think, you know, look, the day after, on the 16th, he was saying, positive things about this dinner guest and I just keep coming back to that as an eclectic dinner to have.
HUNT: Actually, I mean -- I mean interesting dinner party.
DUBKE: I mean, it is a very interesting dinner party.
HUNT: Yeah, and guests.
DUBKE: So coming back to Bill Maher though but Bill Maher if you know is has been kind of on the outs with a lot of Hollywood because of the positive things that he has said about Donald Trump and I think part of --
HUNT: The fact that he would attend a dinner like this at all, okay?
DUBKE: Well, the first -- time this is the second time.
HUNT: The second time now.
DUBKE: The second time.
HUNT: Right.
DUBKE: So the first he did it, he got, I think, Larry David went after him. There's a whole bunch of Hollywood elites that went after him after that. And he has been, you know, kind of this, say what you want about Trump.
He's getting this done, getting that done. I think the president probably felt that they had a good dinner, and now all of a sudden, Bill Maher's trying to get back into the Hollywood elite or something.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Wait, wait, Bill Maher's about Bill Maher?
DUBKE: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Oh, my God. Stop the presses right now.
DUBKE: This is the kind of CNN news that --
BEDINGFIELD: Bill Maher mocks everybody.
DUBKE: Yeah.
BEDINGFIELD: That's his deal. This is probably great for Bill Maher. He's thrilled. I mean, not like Donald Trump, like FYI, man, nothing says I don't care about you, like a 1,200-word screed. Like, all you've done --
HUNT: He's the president of the United States. BEDINGFIELD: All you've done is reinforced that Bill Maher is living in your head.
So it's great for Bill Maher. I mean, I can't imagine that there's a single voter in this country who cares what Donald Trump thinks about Bill Maher. And so to your point, Kasie, it's just a it's a weird use of bandwidth eight days out, nine days out from the --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But the president has always cared about the support and the approval of said Hollywood elites. And so when he I mean, why did he invite Bill Maher? Because he saw an opening there because He has always been very attuned to the idea that politics is downstream of culture.
BEDINGFIELD: Sure.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And so, in that sense actually, I think it's Obama used to have a lot of celebrities coming around There's nothing there's nothing wrong with this at all him engaging with those people. I mean, I think Bill Maher was being Bill Maher and I don't think you should have taken it personally.
BEDINGFIELD: Yeah, I mean Donald Trump has always cared about television. He is a television producer at heart, He's somebody -- it's one of the most popular television shows.
[16:55:01]
DUBKE: We're now talking about this. I mean, in terms of attention gathering, this is something that we're talking about, and that's part of what Donald Trump's done for years.
HUNT: Well, again, if you're seeing it on your phone, however many days out from the election, and you're struggling to keep your farm afloat, fill up your gas tank, et cetera, The president is focused on other things, apparently.
All right, we'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: Thanks very much to my panel. Really appreciate you joining me.
Thanks to you at home for joining as well.
Don't go anywhere. Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD".
Hi, Jake. Happy Monday.
