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More GOP Candidates Distance From Trump As His Approval Falls; Trump To Greet Chinese President Xi With Arrival Ceremony; CNN Puts "Meta Muse" To The Test. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired September 23, 2026 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:30:20]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Brand new warning signs for Republicans this morning. Larry Sabato -- you know, the University of Virginia -- who has long rated congressional races -- his crystal ball has now moved three key Senate races toward the Democrats. Moved them in the Democrats' favor -- Iowa, Kansas and Michigan. You can see the difference in the ratings there. Maybe he's not predicting the Democrats will win each one, but they've moved in the Democrat's direction. Four governor's races, the same thing -- moved to the Democrat's direction -- Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Texas.

Some Republican candidates are distancing themselves now from President Trump -- distancing, which is a word that really only exists in politics. It basically means I'm not with him now.

Byron Donalds running for governor in Florida. He is one of the biggest supporters of the president, who even dressed like him outside the president's criminal trial in 2024. But now Donalds has scrubbed several references to Trump from his campaign website. It's a pretty big difference.

Let's get right to CNN's Annie Grayer for the latest on this. Even Byron Donalds, they're saying this morning, Annie.

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN That's right, John. So, Byron used to have President Trump featured very prominently on his website -- a photo with him and the president and his wife featuring his endorsement by the president, and that was right there on the landing page. And now that has been scrubbed, and instead there's a carousel of endorsements when you go to the landing page that features a number of endorsements, including from House Speaker Mike Johnson and Elon Musk. There's still references to President Trump on the website, but it's not as front and center, John, as it was weeks ago.

And this change on the website was first reported by The Miami Herald that we've since independently confirmed. And the Byron Donalds campaign and the White House are dismissing this and saying that this is not a big deal.

But this is just the latest example in a series of Republicans who are creating that distance with the president, especially when it comes to the Iran war. We saw last week two House Republicans in Iowa running in very competitive races vote against President Trump's Iran war. We saw the Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, who's running for Senate in Iowa, also say it's time for the war to end.

We see the Republican candidate in Michigan coming out with an ad saying it's time to end the Iran war. And even the Republican senator from Ohio, John Husted, running for re-election has made comments about time for the Iran war to end. And that's because Republicans are seeing this polling that the Iran war is increasingly unpopular.

And what's really notable here is a lot of this distancing is not just happening in battleground areas, it's happening in Republican strongholds like Iowa, like Florida, like Ohio. And so that just raises the question is, what are Republicans in swing districts doing, John?

BERMAN: It's a great question.

Annie Grayer for us. Thank you very much.

With us now, Washington bureau chief at The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, Tia Mitchell, and Washington bureau chief at The Boston Globe, Jackie Kucinich.

And I want to read for you, Tia, first, Punchbowl's headline this morning. "The Republican freakout is here," they say. "Republicans hit the panic button," they say. "Over the past few weeks, the electoral climate for President Donald Trump and Republican leaders has worsened dramatically, according to lawmakers, aides, and political advisors who see daily polling."

So Tia, you know, Annie asked the question just before, which is what about in the swing states? If Republicans in some of these red states are flipping, what about the Republicans in swing states? You're in Georgia. Are you-- you cover -- The Atlanta Journal Constitution does.

How are you seeing this Punchbowl named freakout manifest itself in Georgia?

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah. I mean, to me, we see it playing out in two separate ways in the two key races in Georgia.

In our Senate race, Republican Mike Collins has not distanced himself from President Trump. Now he's perceived to be in a lot of trouble against incumbent Jon Ossoff, so he's hoping to turn out the MAGA base in hopes of getting enough of Republican voters to push him over the edge. So he is not shying away from Trump, even though you know he has bigger fish to fry with his race.

In the governor's race, Republican Rick Jackson has more distance with Trump. He kind of has all along, but even more so lately, you know. He doesn't talk about Trump, doesn't mention the president. Really tries to avoid making any connections with the president. And that wasn't quite the case during the primary where he was in a crowded Republican primary.

So I think in a swing state you're going to see both. You're going to see some who just hedge their bets that Trump himself is popular enough. If the base turns out they can still win. And some saying, you know, I've got to create some distance with the president because I want to appeal --

BERMAN: Um-hum.

MITCHELL: -- to swing voters, Independent voters to win in November.

BERMAN: So Jackie, two other numbers to show you which may be leading to this freakout that Punchbowl calls it. How is the president handling his job as president? Fifty-one percent strongly disapprove. So a majority of voters telling our pollsters they strongly disapprove of the president. Again, it's hard to imagine a voter who strongly disapproves of the president then deciding to vote for someone the president supports. It could happen, but it's unlikely.

And then just the Republican approval of the president over time. I want to put this up there. He's 75 percent now. It's very high, but you can see how much lower it is than other points this year that we've polled. And we put that list even further if we wanted to. And 75 percent will be the lowest we put on the screen there. So sagging even among Republicans.

Those are serious headwinds, Jackie.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE BOSTON GLOBE (via Webex by Cisco): I mean, look no further than the issue list in that same poll. Twenty-seven approve -- percent approve of his handling of the economy. Twenty percent approve of his handling of inflation. These are economic issues that the president himself has dismissed, so -- and has focused instead on other things, all of which -- none of which it seems like voters in this poll approve of.

Now, one of the biggest differences this cycle than even, say, in 2018, is that the president really is pulling Republicans close. He said, "I am on the ballot." He has tried to tie himself to Republicans. Usually incumbent presidents when they're this unpopular, take a step back and kind of let their party do their thing in order to get individual members elected. Not so. Trump wants to be on voters' minds. And I don't think there were any Republicans who were sad when the

sound didn't work or there was no longer sound at the White House the other day when the president was talking.

BERMAN: It's a great point. I mean, the president saying, look at me, look at me, I want this to be about me. And all the polls are saying me, meaning him, is not doing that well right now.

So very quickly, The New York Times has a heck of an interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from New York here. A very frank discussion about her next political steps and whether she'll run for Senate, whether she'll run for president. Here's a quote from that article in the Times. "There's an argument

that some make that this is a very unique political window and oftentimes in politics you do only get one shot. And you don't -- and just in life in general -- life doesn't wait for you to be ready for things. Sometimes life just makes things ready for you."

So, Jackie, is she running?

KUCINICH: That is to say -- I mean, to your point, John, that article was very revealing, really candid and fascinating and she's current -- she's clearly mulling what her future is going to be. I'll tell you who has probably read that article a couple times at this point is Chuck Schumer because he's someone who's been watching his back when it comes to AOC again for some time now.

BERMAN: I'm not sure he needs to read it, Tia. He's living it every day as he waits for --

KUCINICH: Oh yeah, every day.

BERMAN: -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to make a decision, you know.

But, Tia, I don't know if you had a chance to look at that, but she really does speak very frankly about this moment and how, you know, you don't get to wait for things.

And the other thing she says it was interesting to me in that article is she said if you run for president and lose, though, in the primary or anywhere, she says it's sort of game over for her. And I wonder if that's an indication maybe about which way she could be leading.

MITCHELL: I mean, I think it shows that she's being thoughtful. I think she also always has shown she has a gift for being in tune to the people -- your working class voters. She's always been able to speak to their issues really well and communicate with everyday Americans very well. It's one of the reasons she's found herself to be in such a powerful position, particularly among Democrats.

I think she is going to weigh the internal polling, weigh the focus groups, weigh what she's hearing when she's traveling across the country holding rallies and campaigning for other Democrats, and then she's going to decide if she can win. I think if she thinks she can win, she will run for president. If she thinks it's going to be too crowded or she might not be viable, she's not going to do it because she understands the risks. She's a very astute politician. But I do think her backup is Senate and in New York, I think there's a higher probability she could be successful given a lot of voters are backing generational change among Democrats.

BERMAN: Tia Mitchell, Jackie Kucinich, great to see you both this morning. Thank you very much.

[07:40:00]

There's so much to talk about regarding these midterm elections, and if there's just not enough time in the morning, you know what you can do tonight? You can join Kate Baldwin, Sara Sidner, and I'll be there too. We're doing "OFFICE HOURS" at 7:00 p.m. tonight.

You go to that link right there, cnn.com/office hours. You can watch it live. Ask us questions now. Go there right now after Kate's done talking and put your questions in. We promise we will answer them tonight. It will be fantastic -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: If nothing else, when I am looking over John's shoulder with that smirk on my face, you know you want to come for whatever is about to happen. That image is quite funny to me.

Let's move to this because this is likely something we will discuss this evening. Big oil pushing back after President Trump said that he is considering a temporary ban now on diesel exports because of the skyrocketing price of that.

The American Petroleum Institute now suggests that that move could be a disaster. The way they're putting it is it would be -- "It would make the problem worse, not better for consumers, farmers and the broader U.S. economy."

Let me read for you how The Wall Street Journal is putting it just this morning. That "Trump's Oil Allies See Nightmare Scenario of Diesel Export Ban Becoming Reality."

It comes as diesel prices -- they're up 77 percent from last year.

CNN's David Goldman is here with much more on this. There's no way to cut a 77 percent increase as a, you know, nothing burger.

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: It is definitely not a nothing burger. I mean, we're up to $6.52 a gallon. We hadn't seen anything close to $6.00 before the war started.

What's going on here, though? I think that people forget that diesel actually started to come down around here -- middle of June when the Strait of Hormuz reopened. We started to see diesel prices come down. Then what happened? The strait closed and we've been up ever since.

But there's good news potentially. The president is talking to Iran, supposedly. That's bringing some oil prices down. Well, they're a little bit up right now, but they were below $100 just a little bit before.

But here's the thing, right? We're talking about an export ban. The thing about an export ban that you need to understand is that we have 5.3 million barrels of oil every day that is produced in the United States, but we only use 3.6 million of those barrels. And so we basically are making 1.7 million more barrels than we need.

So what happens if you ban diesel? Well, you say, well, we don't need 5.3 million barrels; we only need 3.6 million barrels. And so that means that they're only going to produce enough for Americans to use. Gas prices will start to rise. Refiners start to use less fuel. That's why the industry hates this. Although the president supports it, it's not something that anyone in the oil industry really wants right now.

BOLDUAN: David, thank you so much for that look -- an important, important thing that's definitely not changing anytime soon.

A huge moment also is about to unfold in Washington. President Trump is set to welcome the Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House -- a face-to-face to the world's two biggest economic superpowers. The consequences of this sit-down cannot be overstated, especially when you consider the influence of both over, well, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, the race for AI supremacy, and the tenuous state of global alliances today.

Xi is expected to receive a full-fledged state arrival ceremony and is set to be greeted by the president when he lands at Joint Base -- Joint Base Andrews. That welcome and Xi's visit really altogether is not sitting well with some Republican lawmakers, including the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS): Mr. President, during every minute of dialogue our commander in chief should keep in mind that his guest is a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors, and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now is White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, David Sanger. Great to see you, David.

DAVID SANGER, WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Great to be with you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: What are you and what are so many smart people watching for this -- when this -- when this meeting happens with Xi Jinping?

SANGER: Well, first of all, the president is determined this is going to be a successful meeting, no matter what happens inside, and you can see it. When was the last time you remember him going out to Andrews Air Force Base --

BOLDUAN: I don't, yeah.

SANGER: -- to greet a foreign leader, right? And, in fact, that's more of a greeting than he got when he arrived in Beijing in the trip in May. I remember I was on that trip. He got a big welcome and, you know, the Chinese military was out in Tiananmen Square.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, that's right.

[07:45:00]

SANGER: That's right. But we didn't have the kind of flyovers and what you're going to go see.

The second is Xi recognizes that President Trump is at a moment of weakness here. He knows about the coming elections. He's looking at the kind of poll numbers that you were -- you were discussing yesterday morning --

BOLDUAN: Um-hum.

SANGER: -- particularly the approval ratings on foreign affairs.

He understands the president is stuck in Iran with no easy way out and that he has done nothing to make that any easier. In fact, we believe that the Chinese have been providing the Iranians with at least some basic technology and intelligence that probably has helped them target those bases in the Middle East.

And Xi is in no mood to set guardrails or limits on artificial intelligence because he believes this entire thing is a plot for the United States to keep its lead.

BOLDUAN: Which is such a fascinating part of -- a piece of this whole kind of puzzle, which is whenever you talk about leaders in Taiwan -- leaders in China and the United States coming together and meeting, Taiwan is always a topic. The -- especially -- and especially a question now when it comes to this president, President Trump. He has yet to approve this ongoing sales package to Taiwan.

What is Xi Jinping -- what do you think -- do you think something comes of this -- something is clarified when it comes to this coming out of this meeting?

SANGER: I doubt you'll see it publicly clarified.

On the flight back from Beijing, we asked President Trump -- I asked him several times, "Are you going to approve this arms package to Taiwan," which would be the most visible sign that President Trump is actually willing to continue back in Taiwan.

BOLDUAN: Right.

SANGER: He said I'm going to talk to the Taiwanese leader, which American presidents don't do, and he didn't, right? And he said we'll make a decision soon, and he didn't. So he just wants to push this down the road.

What Xi would like would be a commitment that the U.S. is going to stop providing these arms to Taiwan. It was Ronald Reagan, of all presidents, who said in back in, I think, 1982 or so that the United States would never consult China ahead of a decision to back Taiwan. When I asked the president about that, he looked at me and said, that was a long time ago.

BOLDUAN: I actually remember listening to you cite this to him and it was fas -- it was a -- it was a moment for sure.

On yesterday, the fallout, the consequences, the tentacles of what the president said from the stage at the United Nations. I really was fascinated by your piece and your take and what you've been hearing about it. But what -- talk about his talk of annihilating Iran from the U.N. stage. Like, what kind of view of the world and view of the U.S. approach to

the world did Donald Trump lay out, do you think, and what are you hearing about it?

SANGER: What he described was a very winner-take-all approach. It was pretty remarkable. I mean, the United Nations was created in 1945 to avoid war and to make sure that large powers did not use too much of their leverage over small powers. President shows up, he said, if I can't get a deal with Iran, well, I have a decision to make whether or not to go about annihilation. He didn't say regime or the whole country.

BOLDUAN: And to the victor goes the spoils.

SANGER: And that was with Venezuela.

BOLDUAN: Yeah.

SANGER: That was his explanation about why the United States should have priority rights to the oil reserves in Venezuela, which are some of the world's largest. But he said, "To the victor goes the spoils." It was a kind of gunboat diplomacy, 1890s view of American foreign policy.

You got to give him credit. He was at least upfront and honest about it. You go into the Oval Office these days, the pictures on the wall are presidents who did just that.

BOLDUAN: Hmm.

It's great to see you, David.

SANGER: Great to see you.

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much.

Coming up for us, the FBI is now investigating after a cybercrime group claims they stole data that includes detailed personal information about thousands of FBI employees. What we are learning now about this hack.

And the robots are cage fighting humans now. Who won? Well, in the end, we all know who wins.

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[07:53:25]

BERMAN: All right, new this morning, Meta's new artificial intelligence agent app called Meta Muse just hit number one in iPhone's app store, sending Meta's stock soaring 11 percent.

CNN tech editor Lisa Eadicicco is with us now. So you've been, you know, kind of playing with Muse. What is new or different about this?

LISA EADICICCO, CNN BUSINESS TECH EDITOR: Yeah. So the thing that's new and different is that what Meta is trying to do here is have an agent that can really do things for you, not just answering questions, but it can actually browse the web using its own virtual computer. It can access your files if you give it permission to do that, to send emails and create documents on your behalf. Things like that.

And here is how Meta explained it when it announced Muse. Let's take a listen.

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ALEX CORNELL, META, MUSE PRODUCT DESIGN: Speaking with AI usually begins with a blank screen, and we wanted this to feel more like a conversation between you and your very capable personal agent, Muse, who you can see at the top of the screen.

Now, I talk to mine about all kinds of topics. It's usually golf, but I also have it do things for me, like buy movie tickets, help me plan a very complex weekend away with my family, or I have given it access to my Chess account so it can monitor my very frequent losses and send me an analysis in the morning.

And it can do all these things because it has its own computer and it's always working in the background.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EADICICCO: And so John, I've spent the past day really digging into this here and what I've found so far is that it can do certain things. Like, for example, it sent an e-mail to a friend for me about places that we want to go on a trip, and then I asked it to organize her responses into a Google Doc.

[07:55:00]

But it's really, you know, agents in general are not ready to really handle everything yet. There were times when I asked it for recommendations for restaurants and it pulled up answers for places that had closed years ago. So I think there -- you really need to kind of check the answers and the responses. So some things it does well, some things it still needs a little bit of work.

I think shopping is another one that I think is going to take some time, specifically because a lot of websites simply don't want AI agents crawling their websites. So this isn't even just a Meta- specific problem; it's a question for AI agents in general. So that's what I'm finding so far.

BERMAN: A) have fun dining at those restaurants that have been closed for years, and B) and to even have this work, you've got to turn over to Meta like a huge amount of your own data, right?

EADICICCO: Exactly. I mean, privacy I think is going to be a big barrier as well. You have to really be comfortable with Meta and these other big tech companies that have agents meddling with your files as well.

BERMAN: All right, Lisa Eadicicco. Those are some important questions to be asking going forward. Thank you very much -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Other important questions. Forget hiding money under your mattress. So what do you do with it? Italian police say they found more than $3.5 million in cash hidden inside an apartment under floor tiles, in walls, and secret drawers. Officers carried the bundles of 50 euro notes out in mop buckets. Take a look at that.

The raid was just outside of Naples and led to 34 arrests. Prosecutors say the suspects belonged to the Angeleno mafia. Police also seized Rolex -- seized Rolex watches, guns, and drug paraphernalia. And investigators say the case was built in part on wiretaps of phones smuggled to mobsters in prison.

There's also new video this morning of a Waymo self-driving vehicle driving through a farmer's market in Denver. The vehicle passed barricades and a stop sign before people were able to kind of guide it back to the street. Under current Colorado law -- this is a fascinating thing -- there's no way for police to ticket or cite the vehicle for breaking the law -- breaking traffic laws. Thankfully, no one was hurt in this. But it does raise, again, to John's point, important questions.

It is real life rock'em sock'em robots. Social media influencer Frankie LaPenna got in the ring against a Terminator-looking robot. It's six feet tall, 165 pounds, and made of heavy aviation grade magnesium aluminum alloy. Yes, of course. Robotic startup REK is behind this stunt.

LaPenna held his own for a bit, we're told, until a roundhouse kick just made him not hold his own. The robot was being controlled by a human, not AI. That doesn't change the fact that the man landed on his you know what. The fight was a promotion for REK's new robot fighting game.

John is very excited and would like to take part.

So, yeah, we'll -- let's turn to this. Baby turtles to round out your morning. For the first time in recorded history, a wild sea turtle was spotted nesting on the West Coast of the United States. So here's how it played out. Lifeguards first found that the rare olive ridley turtle had laid eggs near Seal Beach. Surfside Beach is where it actually was in California.

Days later, and a few miles down the coast, Huntington Beach officials got a report of a possible injured turtle. When they arrived, they found another nest. Experts say it's possible it's the same turtle, and there are hundred of -- hundreds of eggs in each location. This is hundreds of miles, though, north of the usual turtle nesting grounds in the southern end of Baja, California.

Experts say the reason being they think this year's rare Super El Nino may be making the water too warm in their usual nesting sites, hence the adventure north.

That was one of today's stories on my show "FIVE THINGS." It's streaming on the CNN app and CNN All Access right now and every morning. That is a big version of my face. John.

BERMAN: "FIVE THINGS" is awesome, first of all. Yeah, yeah, there you go. There you are. There's Kate.

BOLDUAN: Hi, I'm Kate. And you know what the world needs not more of? More Kate.

BERMAN: Kate and Kate. It would be awesome if a Waymo vehicle just sort of drifted through --

BOLDUAN: Just came through, right.

BERMAN: -- your shot right now.

BOLDUAN: Waymo.

BERMAN: All right. Thank you very much.

All right, it is still baseball season. Did you know they are still playing baseball? Sometimes it's easy to forget because football has already started, and also there really aren't many pennant races left.

CNN'S Coy Wire is here with some of the games that did actually take place last night -- Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yeah, that's right, John. It's actually that time of season when each game feels a little heavier.

The AL Central race, it's still going tighter than belt buckles at Thanksgiving. The Red Sox hosting Guardians. Bottom of the eighth and John Berman's Mickey Gasper goes yard. A pinch hit homer ties the game. But Cleveland would answer in the ninth. Nathaniel Lowe goes high up into the sky. A sacrifice fly brings home the go-ahead run. Guardians win three to two. Six straight wins for Cleveland, keeping its slim division lead. Boston has lost eight of its last 12.

But we will move on, Berman. The White Sox doing their part in Kansas City. They've had an unlikely hero step up down the stretch. Veteran Randal Grichuk going five for -- four for five yesterday, two doubles, a home run. He's 35 years old, playing for his eighth team in the last nine years.