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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump's GOP Purge Continues As Paxton Ousted Sen. Cornyn; Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX), Is Interviewed About Rep. Menefee Defeats Rep. Green In Democratic Runoff; Pope Leo Warns About The Use Of Artificial Intelligence; Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Is Interviewed About His New Book Proposes Solutions For America's Divisions; Jill Biden Says She Was "Frightened" By Joe Biden's 2024 Debate Performance, Thought He Was "Having A Stroke". Aired 5-6p ET

Aired May 27, 2026 - 17:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Thanks to my panel, thanks to all of you at home for watching. Don't go anywhere. "The Lead with Jake Tapper" starts right now.

[17:00:41]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: That delete button getting quite a workout today among Republicans. The Lead starts right now.

A slew of ads and attacks from the Republican establishment over the last year and a half against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, poof, they're all gone now that Paxton is the Republican pick to face Democrat James Talarico in one of the most contested fights for the U.S. Senate. So is Paxton no longer, as the Republican establishment called him, a wife cheater and fraud?

Plus a stunning new admission just in from former first lady Jill Biden admitting that she was frightened by her husband's 2024 debate performance and even thought he was having a stroke at the time. Hear her comments for yourself.

And an investigation launched into sky high ticket prices for the World Cup, $11,000 for one seat. I'm going to talk to New York Attorney General Letitia James who says tournament organizer FIFA might be misleading fans.

Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

We're going to start in our Politics Lead. President Donald Trump getting his way yet again in yet another major Republican primary.

Cue that election music if you would, maestro. Thank you so much. CNN's election music. Pretty sweet.

Yesterday's Senate primary runoff in Texas was indeed the last stand for incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn, who was trounced, trounced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn's fate was largely sealed when about a week ago, Paxton got a surprise 11th hour endorsement from President Trump. Even though Cornyn voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment after the January 6 Capitol attack, he was slow, at least as far as Trump was concerned, to endorse Trump in his third run for the White House. At the same time, Paxton worked his way into Trump's good graces. And now here we are.

Paxton, despite his long list of scandals, winning 63.8 percent of the vote to Cornyn's 36.2 percent. So now in just 160 days, Texas voters are going to get to choose between Paxton and the Democratic nominee, state legislator James Talarico. Republicans painting Talarico as too woke and too liberal for Texas. While Democrats shine a spotlight on Paxton's many controversy, some Republican insiders have worried that it will take much more money to beat Talarico now that Paxton is the nominee instead of Cornyn. A source inside Talarico's campaign says he raised $600,000 in the first two hours after Paxton's win, his strongest two fundraising hours ever.

So what to expect from this race? Well, should we be anticipating well considered arguments about the myriad issues facing Texans in terms of affordability or immigration, education, health care? Well, probably not if this Twitter exchange is any guide and trigger alert to any parents out there watching with your kids, because this escalates quickly and profanely but it is politics in this year, 2026.

The Democratic National Committee last night posted an image of Talarico saying, "Fired up, ready to go, it's time to take back Texas." Then this morning, White House aide Stephen Miller posted "The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender Senate candidate," apparently a reference to Talarico to which the Democratic National Committee wrote to Stephen Miller and I quote, "shut up you ugly fuck." CNN's Arlette Saenz has a front row seat to how last night's primary runoff vote count went down and how the general election is already shaping up.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEN PAXTON, (R) TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE: My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated.

REP. JAMES TALARICO (D-TX), SENATE CANDIDATE: The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico now locked in a matchup for U.S. Senate that could be one of the most expensive and bitter battles of the midterms. The MAGA aligned Paxton secured the Republican nomination Tuesday with the backing of President Donald Trump despite pleas from party leaders who saw incumbent Senator John Cornyn as more electable in November.

[17:05:17]

PAXTON: Everyone in Washington told him to abandon me and abandon the people of Texas. He didn't listen. SAENZ (voice-over): Now the GOP is falling in line. The Senate Republicans campaign arm which bashed Paxton during the primary deleting posts criticizing the newly minted nominee, including one video slamming his time as attorney general.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I trust the voters of Texas and they've made their decision.

SAENZ (voice-over): As the race enters a new phase, Paxton and Talarico are diving straight into attack mode.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Texas. This is not.

TALARICO: It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption.

I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment.

SAENZ (voice-over): Paxton has survived a series of personal and political controversies in Texas, but Democrats believe those scandals won't sit well with voters in November.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In between it all, the state's top attorney had a mug shot.

SAENZ (voice-over): The battle for Texas will be costly. Talarico brought in more than $27 million in the first three months of 2026, with a source telling CNN he raised $600,000 in just two hours after Paxton's win. Paxton is playing catch up in the money race, raising just $2.2 million during the first quarter of the year.

PAXTON: I need your help. We know James Talarico is going to raise more money than any Democrat in America.

SAENZ (voice-over): Despite Democratic optimism, Talarico faces a tough road ahead in Texas, where voters have not elected a Democratic senator since 1988, the year before Talarico was born. The party has sensed optimism before --

BETO O'ROURKE, (D) FORMER TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE: We will be celebrating the victory of our lifetimes.

SAENZ (voice-over): -- only to fall short. The question this year is whether Talarico can break that streak or will Paxton extend it.

PAXTON: If there's one thing I know about Texans is that we're not going to let them take it.

TALARICO: If we the people can come together to defeat the most corrupt politician in America, we can defeat this entire corrupt system.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAENZ (on camera): Talarico is starting a five-day campaign swing through Texas billed as the People versus Ken Paxton's tour that kicks off tonight in Houston and ends right here in Plano on Monday. Paxton, for his part, is off the campaign trail, but a Republican source tells me that the Texas Attorney General will be in Washington, D.C. next week for at least one fundraiser. And raising money will be a big focus of Paxton's efforts in the coming weeks. It comes at a time when there are a lot of questions about how much money the national Republican Party apparatus will decide to invest here in the expensive state, especially as they are trying to wage very costly and competitive Senate races in other states across the country. Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Arlette, stick around. Let's talk about this. I also want to bring in Jeremy Wallace, who's politics reporter for the Houston Chronicle.

Jeremy, let's take a look at the latest attack ad from the Paxton campaign against Democrat James Talarico.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Texas. This is not.

TALARICO: There are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Tex. This is not.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something that you love that's not family or friends.

TALARICO: I love, I'm just saying this because it's on my mind, the trans children.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Texas. This is not.

TALARICO: Our southern border should be like our front porch. There should be a giant welcome mat out front.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Texas. This is not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: This is going to be what you hear from now until Election Day. Talarico is too liberal. He's too woke for Texas. What do you think? Is it going to work?

JEREMY WALLACE, POLITICS REPORTER, HOUSTON CHRONICLE: Look, you know, the battle in this race isn't about the hardcore right or the hardcore left. You know, we're talking about a small swath of voters who aren't plugged in at all right now. They don't know either one of these guys really that well. And so it's the definition game, right? And so both campaigns out the gate, you can see that what they're doing in these ads are trying to get that early sense of who -- you know to define the other guy before they get to define themselves.

That's where that money is going to be so critical. Talarico's got to raise a ton of money because his name identification with those guys in the middle. You know, there are still those people that exist in Texas. They can be important. They're the ones that made Beto O'Rourke get so close to being able to beat Ted Cruz. And Talarico needs those people somehow, and he needs to define himself on his terms and not let Paxton turn him into this, you know, meatless, tofu, vegan, whatever he's trying to do with them.

[17:10:00]

TAPPER: And Arlette, Talarico, obviously, you know, you have Paxton calling him a woke weirdo. And Talarico is latching on to Paxton scandals. He's been indicted, he had a plea deal. He's been impeached, but not convicted in the Republican legislature. His wife left him on, quote unquote, "biblical grounds."

But the primary Republican voters, it didn't deter them. Do you think, Arlette, this is -- this is going to have a different impact, these scandals on the middle voters, the Jeremy -- the middle of the road voters, the people not paying attention that Jeremy was just talking about?

SAENZ: Well, I did speak with a lot of Republican primary voters who felt that they knew about these controversies that have faced the state attorney general for years now. And they were unswayed by some of these arguments that Cornyn had made throughout the campaign to really try to paint him as too controversial for this Senate seat. But the question now is what a boatload of money coming in from Democrats to try to highlight these arguments, whether that is something that will stick with voters. Paxton has certainly survived here politically so far. He's won reelection in the states despite a lot of these scandals.

But as you were talking about earlier, trying to fight for those middle of the road voters who may not yet know about Paxton's controversies, who might be turned off by them, that is something that the Talarico campaign and Democrats are really going to try to use to drive -- to try to drive a wedge between Paxton and Texas voters.

TAPPER: And Jeremy, Talarico speaks openly about his Christian faith in the clip we just showed. He's focusing on the cost of living, things that are hurting the average tax in. Is it possible that this could ultimately work against Paxton if the Paxton campaign is too focused on the culture wars when people are in pain economically in Texas?

WALLACE: Oh, absolutely. If we're still paying $4 a gallon for gasoline come Labor Day, yes, all bets are off and this gets a lot closer. But look, you know, Talarico has two key things that he's going to have to do to make this final sale. One, he's got to fix and repair the damage from the Democratic primary. Remember that race with Jasmine Crockett earlier this year got a little rough at times.

And he has to somehow tap into that voter base that is critical. He can't win the state of Texas without black voters in Texas, and he needs her supporters to help get that done. And so he's got to make a lot of work there. That's what Beto O'Rourke was able to do in 2018. That gate made him a lot closer than a lot of other Democrats in the past. He got much higher turnout in places like Houston and Dallas and the black community.

And the other thing we were just kind of hit it with those middle of the road voters, the people who aren't plugged in right now. When you're running in Texas as a Democrat, you have to transcend the politics of it. You have to get into the cultural phenomenal part of it. That's what Beto O'Rourke was able to do. That's what you see what's happening with Bobby Pulido, the Congress -- the guy who's running for Congress in South Texas, a musician who's kind of getting word of mouth out beyond the politics people and into like the cultural. People were starting to wear use bumper stickers with Beto on it just because they thought it was cool and everybody knew who he was.

You could go to a bar, even if you weren't in politics, you knew who that guy was. Talarico's got to figure out how to do that.

TAPPER: Jeremy Wallace, Arlette Saenz, thanks to both of you.

Coming up next, another big race in Texas. Longtime Democrat Congressman Al Green lost in the primary to a candidate half his age and he too was trounced. I'm going to talk with that young man who beat him.

Plus, disaster in Washington state. Crews now searching for the remains of nine people missing after a chemical tank ruptured at a paper plant. The brand new details is coming in from authorities next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:17:42]

TAPPER: Back in our politics lead and yet another establishment Texan heading home after more than two decades in Congress. This time I'm not talking about Senator John Cornyn. I'm talking about Democratic Congressman Al Green, who also lost his runoff election last night in Texas. The 78-year-old largely known for his boisterous outbursts during President Trump's speeches or filing articles of impeachment three times against Trump in Trump's first term. Well, Congressman Green lost Tuesday's runoff against his Democratic colleague, Congressman Christian Menefee, for Texas newly drawn 18th congressional district.

Last year, as you know, the governor and the legislature Republicans in Texas redrew the state's congressional map. And in this case, they forced two Democratic congressmen to run against each other in this newly redrawn district that includes much of Houston. It's an overwhelmingly Democratic seat.

Congressman Menefee was only just elected to Congress earlier this year when he won a special election runoff to replace former Congressman Sylvester Turner, who died in office last year just two months into his term. Congressman Menefee joins us now.

I guess it's not appropriate to call you congressman-elect. You're already a congressman, but congratulations. Shortly after winning, you put out a statement thanking Congressman Green for his work. And you mentioned how he, quote, "called President Trump out to his face even when he stood alone." To what degree do you think you're going to carry on Al Green -- Congressman Al Green's tradition?

REP. CHRISTIAN MENEFEE (D-TX): If you go throughout communities in the 18th Congressional District and the 9th Congressional District, which is Congressman Green's current district, you hear on the ground that people believe that he's an icon. They know the work that he's done in Congress to bring money back home. They know the leadership that he has shown time and time again. And they know that it is a very Texan thing to be willing to stand up and stand firm even when you're the only person that's standing.

I plan to continue his legacy of fighting back against this president who has made America much more unaffordable, expensive for people, less money in people's pockets, and who time and time again has shown that he cannot be trusted with the power of the executive. And so when we win the House back this November, because Democrats will win the House back, I look forward to investigating the president through the committee process on the House side and doing all we can to hold him accountable.

TAPPER: Your race against Congressman Green was not particularly close. You won by more than 15,000 votes and nearly 40 percent margin. Green is 78 years old. Do you believe that your win is a result of redistricting versus voters wanting something new? Why do you think you won?

[17:20:15]

MENEFEE: Voters are looking for new fighters who are going to bring a strategic vision, a new strategic fight to working against President Donald Trump. And if you look, Democrats are already doing that in the House right now. You saw Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem go before House committees, get grilled by thoughtful and prepared Democrats on committee, and then the next thing you know, they were relieved of duty by President Trump. That's the type of fight that we have to bring to the table to be prepared to go up against the Trump administration and hold them accountable. And as the former Harris county attorney, I was the chief civil legal officer for the third largest county in the country, the largest county in the state of Texas, and my experience was going up against the powerful, whether it be Governor Greg Abbott or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, or even the presidential administration itself, to protect our healthcare programs, to ensure we had voting rights and clean air and clean water.

I went to court against them time after time and beat them. And that's what folks are looking for in our communities. They want folks who are not just going to write strongly worded letters, not just yell at the president, but go up strategically defeat them, and ensure that we have a government that works for the people and not just the wealthy and the well connected.

TAPPER: One of the ways you were able to win is that you also were boosted by $5 million in spending by a crypto backing super PAC which was looking to oust Congressman Green. Green is a crypto skeptic as well as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. You've previously said that you oppose super PACs. You want to regulate them out of existence. I know candidates don't have any direct control and prohibited by law from directly even speaking to super PACs.

But more broadly, are you a supporter of the crypto industry?

MENEFEE: I believe that crypto technology is here and it's not going anywhere. There's 55 million Americans who use digital currency. And when you go into black and brown communities, that number is even higher. And when you look at young people, they're using it at an even higher rate.

Congress's job is to regulate the industry. We can't bury our head in the sand. We can't turn our backs and say it's too complicated for us to figure out. I'm a supporter of regulating the industry to ensure that these scammers and these fraudsters are not doing business in the industry and taking advantage of the communities that I serve.

But I want to be clear. I've signed on as a co-sponsor to the Abolished Super PACs Act because I don't believe that super PACs should exist. We should be overturning Citizens United and we should be banning super PAC spending in this country. Regardless of who they're spending on and what they're spending for, they should not exist.

People should be raising money just like my campaign did from tens of thousands of donors under $100 per donation. A grassroots campaign. And that's why we were successful on election night.

TAPPER: Democratic Congressman Christian Menefee of Texas, thank you and congratulations again on your race.

MENEFEE: Thank you.

TAPPER: Tech journalist Kara Swisher is here coming up next with her take on one of the biggest headlines this week in the world of AI. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:27:18]

TAPPER: Now the latest in our continuing series, AI Friend or Foe, where we examine the benefits and the harms of this developing technology today. Today we're going to take a look at the response to Pope Leo XIV's call this week for artificial intelligence to be, in his word, "disarmed." The pope outlined this in his first encyclical. That's a document that represents one of the most important forms of papal teaching. The pope calling for assessing whether the advances in AI promote justice and participation or concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a select few.

He also compared AI to the Tower of Babel writing quote, "We are faced with a new form of babel, a construction that is grandiose yet fundamentally dehumanizing."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV: Artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed. Freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: We're joined by CNN contributor Kara Swisher. First of all, what was your reaction when the pope did this on Monday?

KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I thought it was great. You know, they had signaled that they were doing this. So it's not something that people didn't know was coming. But I thought it was an incredibly intelligent assessment of what's going on, encompassing both the worries and the promise of AI and where the control should be, which is in the hands of the people. And, you know, he called it, I think, magnifica (ph) human -- I don't know, I don't have my Latin correctly, so I'm not going to try to pronounce it.

But I think he was -- he was putting it in a human centered AI without rejecting it completely, at the same time understanding it's fallible because it's made by people.

TAPPER: The New York Times quotes Jeremy Nixon, who they call a well- connected figure in the San Francisco Bay Area's frenetic AI scene, they say that he said, quote, "the papal encyclical might mean something to the world's Catholics, but he doubted that it would have an effect on Silicon Valley." Do you agree?

SWISHER: No, because a lot of actually Silicon Valley people have turned to Catholicism, by the way, which is an interesting thing. Peter Thiel and others. No, I don't think so. I think they're paying a lot of attention. The more they say they don't care, the more they care.

That's their tell all the time. That's -- we don't care what anyone says. But this is an important figure worldwide, not just among Catholics, but among a lot of people, you know, especially religious leaders. He's not the only one. I've talked to lots of religious leaders who have these same concerns.

And so he just happens to be the best, probably one of the best known of them. And so I think it's really important that church weighs in, government weighs in, citizens weigh in, academics weigh in. And Silicon Valley would like none of us to weigh in because as you know, they know best about every single thing on the planet.

TAPPER: So Pope Leo in his encyclical also wrote about the dangers of AI and surveillance. He said, quote, "When every action, movements, purchases, relationships, and preferences leaves a trace, a new form of power emerges, namely the power to profile, predict, and influence behavior." How much more commonplace do you see surveillance powered by A.I. becoming, such as reading license plates, city camera systems, and more?

[17:30:20] SWISHER: It does that now, Jake. I mean, this is -- we're all being tracked all the time. Everyone who has a phone in their pocket has a surveillance device happening, and it's going to be everywhere. And this A.I. is going to be able to pattern and parse it much more quickly, already trends that were happening.

He's absolutely right, is when everything can be seen, you know, there's a really famous quote by a French philosopher, when everything can be seen, maybe we want to be blind at some point, because there's nowhere to go. And he's right. Humans are not meant to be surveilled, except by those who seek to control them. And no matter how you -- there's issues around crime and everything else, you make all sorts of arguments. But the fact of the matter is, it always concentrates in the hands of a small group of people.

And the most important thing he said in this is, it's not a question of A.I. morality, it's the morality of people who control A.I. And we cannot rely on a very few, that is just the way, I talk about this all the time, power concentrated in the hands of very few, even if they're good people, I mean, someday bad people will get ahold of this. And I think he's doing the role he's supposed to do, which is to guide us from a faith point of view, and to guide us from a larger societal human point of view. And I think it's important.

TAPPER: All right, Kara Swisher, thank you so much. Good to have you.

SWISHER: Thanks a lot.

TAPPER: Good to have you with us.

Former First Lady Jill Biden, nearly two full years after her husband's disastrous 2024 debate against President Trump, now says his performance during that debate, "scared me to death." And she says she thought he was having a stroke live on stage. You can hear her new comments, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:36:01]

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, former First Lady Jill Biden, just spoke to CBS about what was going through her mind in the summer of 2024, June 27th to be specific, as she was watching her husband's disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were you horrified as you saw it unfold?

JILL BIDEN, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: I wasn't horrified, I was frightened. Because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Or since.

BIDEN: Yes. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Or since. You've never seen him like that?

BIDEN: Never. No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What happened?

BIDEN: I don't know what happened. I mean, when I -- as I watched it, I thought, oh my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Here's now Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. He sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and he has a brand new book out called "Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America." Senator, your book does a lot of reflecting on what's gone wrong in America. Also, what's gone wrong in some ways with the failures of Democrats to meet the moment. I do wonder what you make of these remarks by the first lady.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): Well, I certainly remember that debate as we were all wondering what was happening in front of our eyes. I feel like we've litigated this. It was a mistake for the president to stay in that race as long as he did. We would have been better off as a party had he gotten out much sooner. But yes, that was certainly a moment where many of us were scratching our heads.

I had obviously seen him fairly recently in better condition than he appeared in that debate, but he never recovered from that performance. And obviously, some of the future interviews he gave didn't clear up all the questions either.

TAPPER: Democrats have hopes for the midterms right now because of high prices. President Trump only has a 37 percent approval rating. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Democrats as a party only have a 20 percent approval rating. What's gone wrong with your party? Why do so many Americans look at your party? And I know it's different reasons. Some Democrats are dissatisfied because they don't think you guys are tough enough. But I mean, that's a horrible approval rating.

MURPHY: Yes. And listen, I mean, I talk a little bit about this in the book, which is that, you know, his corruption is the story. I mean, we've never seen a president who is stealing this brazenly from the American people. But let's just be honest. The public kind of thinks both parties are corrupt, and they worry that the only difference here is that we're seeing Trump's corruption and we don't see Democrats' corruption.

So if we want to make people believe that we're serious about tackling corruption, we can't just be talking about his corruption. We have to admit that the whole political system is corrupt. People feel crappy in this country, in part because they feel powerless in their politics. They think corporations control both parties.

So if I was running the Democratic Party, I'd say, let's be for some big, bold ideas to unrig the democracy. Let's be for a constitutional amendment that bans corporate, billionaire, and anonymous money from our politics to show that we're serious about cleaning up our own shop just as much as we want to take on his corruption.

And I think that would also message to people that we're serious about making them feel more powerful in their democracy, which is part of what has created this crisis, this spiritual crisis in this country.

TAPPER: So you start the book with a very interesting and revealing anecdote. It's about your son, Rider, who's a hockey player. He's 14.

MURPHY: Fourteen.

TAPPER: And he plays in a league that is owned by a group of venture capitalists.

MURPHY: Basically private equity.

TAPPER: Private equity. And they won't let parents film their kids on the rink, on the ice, because they want to control, they want to sell it, to sell the video using A.I., whatever. I mean, it's a horrifying thing. Can I ask you, have you done anything about it? Have you legislated? Have you written a law? Is there any way to tackle that?

[17:40:03]

MURPHY: There certainly is. And so I've introduced legislation with Chris DeLuzio in the House of Representatives that would ban private equity companies from owning youth sports leagues. So there is a legislative remedy here. But it is how I lead the book, because it speaks to something broader, which is that everything in our country not nailed down has become a commodity. I mean, youth sports is literally being bought up and sold back to parents as a product.

What's a more important ritual as a parent than, you know, filming your kids' games so that the grandparent can watch? And yet that now has a price on it. This spiritual unraveling that happened in the country long before Trump is due to a bunch of different factors, but one of them is the sense that everything has been commoditized. You can now make money off of people being killed in the Middle East through these prediction markets.

TAPPER: Yes.

MURPHY: And that just feels soulless. There's something broken in our economy. We should protect more things from profit. We should protect the most dangerous products when it comes to how our kids interact with them and build a sense that we care about each other instead of caring only about investor returns.

TAPPER: You say there's a political realignment available to someone willing to capture it. I understand what you mean by that in terms of like the populism out there. Bernie Sanders sometimes is able to get into that. You remember we saw in 2016 people who voted for Sanders and then voted for Trump. There's something there.

You wrote, so then why not us? Meaning why not Democrats? Why does the Democratic Party not take the necessary steps to bring together traditional progressives and disaffected conservatives to create a new coalition? Voters chose Trump because they wanted a revolution, but my party doesn't yet seem completely ready to seize this moment. That is tragic, unacceptable, and worth having a fight over.

There are definitely going to be people out there wondering, are you pitching yourself? Are you suggesting that you want to run for president and lead that effort?

MURPHY: No, I don't know what I'm going to do. I guess what I'm trying to do with this book is to challenge my party but the whole country to be involved in more than just an electoral fight because there is something broken about our culture and our economy in which we don't care about neighbors, the common good as much as we used to and just the technologies have corrupted us. And if we don't fix that, then just winning an election isn't going to be good enough.

You know, it's interesting. I've actually had a couple of my friends who I definitely know are running for president in 2028 call me in the last 24 hours or send me texts in the last 24 hours to say, wow, you've really kind of captured something. You've created a language around something that people feel here. I think it's really important that this be part of the debate.

Maybe that's the service that I can provide is elevating the conversation so that we're not just talking about tax credits or GDP or unemployment, but we're actually talking about the things that make people feel so lonely and so powerless in their lives, which end up having unifying solutions to them rather than partisan and divisive solutions.

TAPPER: All right. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the book is called "Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America" came out yesterday. Congratulations.

[17:43:23]

We're going to get more reaction to that new head turner from former first lady, Jill Biden, and compare it with what she initially said right after that debate. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: And we're back with our Political Lead, the stunning admission from former First Lady Jill Biden saying in an interview just released this afternoon that her husband's 2024 debate performance frightened her and that her fears at the time was that he was having a stroke. Of course, this is what she said the night of the debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Did such a great job. My panel joins me now. Alex, obviously, full disclosure, you and I co-wrote a book about Joe Biden's decision to run for re-election and everything that happened afterwards. So, I mean, the first lady was not saying and the campaign was not saying the night of the debate that was so bad the first lady thought he was having a stroke.

ALEX THOMPSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, AXIOS: In fact, they said that he actually won the debate and that Donald Trump lost the debate. In fact, they yelled and screamed at any reporter and other potential Democrats that suggested otherwise. When any sort of senator, when any people, former Biden aides said publicly that that was concerning, they said, no, no, it actually wasn't. And that wasn't just like spin the night of the debate.

Since the 2024 election, you've had senior Biden aides go up to Capitol Hill and claim on the record before Congress that they didn't really think the debate was that bad. It was just one bad answer. And now you have the first lady being like, no, it wasn't one bad answer that she thought he may have been having a stroke and she's never ever seen him that way before.

Now, we talked to over 200 people for our book. We talked to a lot of people that said they had seen him that way before and have seen him that way after.

TAPPER: Behind the scenes.

THOMPSON: Behind the scenes, yes.

TAPPER: Yes. What's your reaction?

MAURA GILLESPIE, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL, BLUESTACK STRATEGIES: I mean, I understand wanting to defend your husband and protect him from bad press or just protect his health and all those things. But at the end of the day, I think that it's a little bit self-serving. I think that she's promoting a book. And so while not having seen the entire context of this interview that she gave, I do think it's a way of kind of cushioning what was a reality on the set was that Joe Biden was struggling to answer questions. And then in the debate rally, you're saying, great job. You answered the questions.

Is that the parameter we have? Is that you just answered questions like way to go. And I think about it in terms of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump of where we're putting the, you know, kind of scale of what's acceptable for the commander-in-chief who's in charge of so much that they can't comprehend one question. It's a problematic answer, I think.

TAPPER: Chuck, do Democrats want to be talking about this right now?

CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Look, I will tell you that Joe Biden wasn't the only one that was scared and shocked that night. I was too. And every other Democratic operative who wasn't working on the campaign because we were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We were told everything is cool. And this obviously is a problem. And that's when all of us freaked out. And everybody's like, we've got to change. We've got to figure it out. Not me particularly. But folks out there saw what all of us thought might have been happening. [17:50:14]

And the other point of this for Democrats, and this is important for all you Democrats at home, is that I see the same things now when I see the president currently fall asleep in a meeting in the Oval Office, where we've been taught this lesson once already. We shouldn't be reliving it again with what we're living through now, I think.

TAPPER: You know, it's an interesting point because yesterday the White House, in order to combat coverage and concerns by CNN about President Trump's health, let's be honest, I mean, like he has health issues. We don't know what they all are, but he's got the bruises. He's got the swollen ankles. He does appear to be falling asleep. We have covered this at CNN. So they took screenshots of different anchors, you know, like me included, with our eyes closed, like making fun of us, like as if that's what we're talking about. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about times that President Trump appears to be asleep.

GILLESPIE: It's very deflective. And I think it's, again, I understand there's a job to be done by the White House to protect the commander- in-chief, right? They're going to push back on any bad press. They're going to push back on reports that he is looking weak. Because not only does it impact his approval here in the country, but on the world stage, it could be seen as a risk and a security concern to have him looking so weak.

But the same token, if the same people were so concerned and talking about Joe Biden being compromised as president, you know, auto pen Joe, whatever they were calling it, I think that you can't then be so hypocritical. And this failure to be objective and this failure to recognize when there is a real concern here, you've got a president who is obsessed with his name being on every building in this city, but not telling us enough about what's going on in Iran, not telling us what a timeline is about when this affordability, this golden age of America is going to actually hit people that aren't named something Trump.

TAPPER: Yes.

GILLESPIE: You know, I think there's a real concern here for everyday Americans that's not being addressed.

TAPPER: What do you hear from your White House sources and others about President Trump and his health? I mean, obviously, one of the things that we -- one of the reasons we wrote this book is because we don't think it should happen again. Presidents should disclose everything about their health, every medication they're taking, every the result of every test, why tests are not being given, right?

THOMPSON: Yes.

TAPPER: I mean, like Biden never got the cognitive test. What are you hearing about Trump?

THOMPSON: I mean, they're all very much on message internally. And you are surrounded by a lot of people similar to Joe Biden that all have a lot of affection and love for their current principle. But that can also distort your reality field. The fact is that Donald Trump is older on his inauguration day than Joe Biden was on his. He is the -- he is going to be the oldest president ever if he makes it to this term.

And he has never, ever going back to 2015, has never disclosed the truth about his health, what Medicaid, all the medications he's on, everything. And so that should be concerning.

ROCHA: Let me take it a step further that we can take this. If you decide to run for public office, I've been running campaigns a long time, whether you're a city councilman or a congressman, we have two congresspeople right now who we don't even know where they are, a Democrat and Republican bipartisan who may be sick, maybe not sick, could be hurt. We don't know. But we should know because we pay their tax. We are taxed --

TAPPER: Yes. Frederica Wilson, Democrat in Florida.

ROCHA: And the guy in New Jersey.

TAPPER: And Tom --

GILLESPIE: Tom Kean.

TAPPER: Tom Kean in New Jersey.

ROCHA: Right.

TAPPER: Yes.

ROCHA: And you can't just disappear for months at a time.

TAPPER: And you can. You can apparently.

GILLESPIE: Apparently.

ROCHA: You shouldn't be able to disappear for months at a time. None of us can leave our jobs for months at a time and still get paid.

TAPPER: So just to put a pin on this before we turn to the next subject. Are you surprised, Alex, that there has not been more of a public reckoning? We just heard Democratic Senator Chris Murphy say and obviously that Joe Biden shouldn't have run for reelection. That's actually not a lot of Democrats have said that.

THOMPSON: Because I think Democrats just want to yada, yada, yada their way forward and just look forward and act like 2024 did not happen. But if you don't reconcile with because it wasn't just that Joe Biden hid what was happening. Other Democrats saw him behind the scenes and decided not to say nothing because they didn't see it in their political self-interest. And a lot of those political incentives still remain today in both parties.

TAPPER: Do you think that that's one of the reasons it's hard -- it's so hard to quantify these things. But Democrats as a party have a 20 percent approval rating. Trump is unpopular at 37 percent. Democrats are at 20 percent. Do you think what happened with Biden and all of that is one of the reasons? Now, obviously, not the only one, but --

ROCHA: I think that's a piece of it. And also, we live in an age now where this thing just gets information to everybody so quickly and then folks get fed an algorithm that's just about that thing. And then it just swells and it's hard to stop it, not saying that that's an excuse for Democrats.

Democrats need to learn a lesson from Donald Trump. And that is there's an anxiety in the American electorate. And we got to show up sincerely and honestly and talk about their pain if we're ever going to win their trust back to win elections. I think that has started by being anti-Trump. But now we have to say what we're for.

TAPPER: What do you think?

GILLESPIE: I think the circle around Joe Biden was too tight and too small and insulated. And Donald Trump is about to have the same exact problem. If people are unwilling to recognize the reality in front of us that he is not doing great, you're going to have the same exact problems you had under Joe Biden, where people were just lying and covering and protecting and not being honest to the American people.

[17:55:03]

TAPPER: All right. Thanks, one and all.

President Trump was also a big winner in the Texas elections, but the president brushed that off today. Why he said he doesn't care about the midterms. Plus, the other issue that has his attention. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. This hour, President Trump says he's in no rush to make a deal with Iran and that the regime's efforts to outlast him will not work. Is that a sign that both sides are moving further apart from an agreement?

Plus, a new investigation launched today over the sky. High ticket prices for the upcoming World Cup, which is set to start in just a few weeks here in the U.S. Officials in New York and New Jersey say not only are the costs astronomical, but some fans have been misled about what they actually were buying. New York Attorney General Letitia James is here.

[17:59:56]

And plus, 11 people now presume dead after a chemical tank ruptured in Washington state. The tank contained 900,000 gallons of a mixture called white liquor, which can cause --