Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Polls on President Trump; Trump Pins Economic Woes on Democrats; Fewer Jobs Added in September; Zuckerberg Shaped Trum's A.I. Pledge. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired October 02, 2026 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:24]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Today, President Trump soon hitting the campaign trail, looking to boost Republicans in ruby red states as polls show some races are too close to call now. And they are states Trump won overwhelmingly in 2024. On the campaign trail, Trump quipped that if he was the person to be running, if he ran for president today, he'd win by 25 percent, even though polls have shown he has a very low approval rating.

CNN's Harry Enten is with me now.

So, what do polls actually say about Trump winning an election? Now, to be clear --

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes.

SIDNER: I think it's the 22nd Amendment that says he absolutely cannot do it.

ENTEN: Yes, can't do it. He cannot do it.

SIDNER: OK.

ENTEN: But if he ran again, the idea that he could win by 25 percent or 25 points, yes, maybe on planet krypton people. But in the reality world in which we live in, here on planet earth, President Trump is just -- it's just not real. It's just not real. Look at this. OK, choice for president in the 2024 election. You know, he beat Kamala Harris by a point.

But we actually have pulled the redo of this. We've asked folks, if you had a chance to vote again, how would you vote? And look at this. We've got two polls here. All right, we've got the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Kamala Harris, this was polled at the end of August, wins by six points over Donald Trump. What about NBC? They asked it earlier in the year. Look at that, an eight point margin. So, when you look at these numbers, you just go, no, President Trump would not win by 25 points. In fact, he wouldn't win at all.

And I will note that the underlying numbers of these said that these folks back in 2024 did, in fact, said that they would have voted for Trump. And, at that point, they voted for him by a point or two. And now in the redo, you see six and you see eight. Therefore, I say maybe on planet krypton, but not here on planet earth, that Trump would win by 25 points.

SIDNER: I mean this looks like regret here when you see this, right?

ENTEN: Yes, this is -- yes, voters, they have a regret or two. And we've seen this in poll after poll after poll. The regret has grown since the beginning of Trump's presidency.

SIDNER: What is pushing this major shift from 2024?

ENTEN: Yes, what -- who are the voters who are most regretful of their vote? It's independents. Independents are the name of the game. Independents have dragged President Trump's approval rating down. And they are the ones who are saying, if I got another chance, I am not going to vote for President Trump again.

Just take a look here. Choice for the 2024 election among independents. Back in October of 2024, independents, they supported Trump by two points. Look at this, in the University of Massachusetts Amherst 2026 redo of the 2024 election. If they were asked if they could do it again, look at that, independents supporting Kamala Harris by 18 points. Trump's numbers have gone down. Kamala Harris' numbers have gone up among independents specifically. This is a shift of 20 points towards Kamala Harris, away from Donald Trump in this 2024 redo. Independents, they definitely have regrets.

SIDNER: Give us a sense of how long President Trump has been underwater in approval ratings.

ENTEN: Yes, OK. So, you see this two to 18, right? You see this one point to six and eight points. The reason why folks are having such regrets is they really don't like the job that President Trump is doing in the White House.

And look at this. Hello. OK, Trump's negative net approval rating. This is all the polls. And every single poll since March 29, 2025, he has had a negative net approval rating. That is 553 days in a row. I remember when this was less than a year, and now we are approaching nearly two years in time and there is no sign whatsoever that President Trump's numbers are going in the positive direction. They're actually going further and further into the deep Red Sea.

SIDNER: And we should be clear, this is not about him running again --

ENTEN: No.

SIDNER: Because the Constitution says he can't. But it could give you an idea about how people might be feeling about those who would supported him, the Republicans in Congress.

[08:35:03]

ENTEN: Exactly right. And President Trump, in poll after poll, his endorsement is a net negative for those Republicans. No wonder that Trump is spending his time in red states and not actually in the swing states of the 2024 election cycle.

SIDNER: Harry Enten, it is a pleasure. Thank you so much.

ENTEN: The pleasure was mine.

SIDNER: Happy Friday.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, with us now, CNN political analyst Zolan Kanno-Youngs of "The New York Times" and Francesca Chambers, White House correspondent for "USA Today."

You know, when the president goes out and says he would win by 25 points, and when he says what I'm about to read to you, it's almost like he's trying to make political fetch happen. It's like he's out on the campaign trail doing this campaign swing, saying these things with the same effect it had in "Mean Girls," because what he said on social media was, "prices are way down from what Biden and the Democrats left us. It's why I won the election, and now prices are coming down rapidly." He then goes on to say, "it's the Democrats fault, not the fault of Republicans, but we're fixing it."

The fact of the matter is, prices are not way down. Inflation is up from when he took office. That's not even prices, by the way. And prices are up, because they're always up. And inflation is also up since he took office. And I wonder what the political impact, Zolan, of him continuing to say things like this that aren't true, and then continuing to say, you know, to say like, he'd win by 25 points. What's the impact of that? How much does that help Republicans running for re-election?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, we can see what kind of impact it hasn't had, which is it hasn't quelled the economic anxiety throughout the country, including among many Republican voters as well. You know, this is a president who ran on driving down cost of living, right? And we have not seen that happen.

There is a tricky dynamic here that every president faces, which is, what do we mean when we talk about the economy doing well, right? The job market has been stable, right? I mean unemployment has remained low. But when you talk about wages keeping up with inflation, right, that is what is fueling so much economic frustration here. So, even when you have politicians and public officials go out and tout the success of the job market, well, voters aren't really going to listen to that because they're seeing the number when they go to fill up the tank, when they go and actually fill up their gas. That is, you know, a blunt sort of measure of how --their economic sentiment, right? You cannot just talk your way out of the feeling somebody has when they go to the grocery store. And we saw this with the Biden administration. We're seeing it with the Trump administration.

What President Trump has taken to another level are statements that are detached with reality that people are feeling. We've seen public officials in the past not have the certain kind of empathy and kind of meeting people where they are, but a certain denial of this issue in the country. That is what we've seen from the president, equipped with some of these far-fetched proposals, like giving direct cash to people after the midterms, which we know that $5,000, you know, payment plan would amount to $1.3 trillion of costs. And there's still a lack of details on exactly how he would get that done, or whether he actually gets that done.

BERMAN: It was interesting, he was talking about that on the campaign trail when he was in Oklahoma, of all places. Still, we will see how much he continues to press that as he heads into the midterms.

Francesca, I want to shift gears here and talk about some of your own reporting, because you had a chance to speak with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who very much wants to be speaker of the House. And you had a chance to ask him why -- a ranging number of issues. But one of them was sort of beyond 2026 into 2028, on what he thinks will happen with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I'm going to read you the quote from your piece and then ask you more about it.

He said, "Alex," he's talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "has done a tremendous job championing a whole host of issues of great importance to both New Yorkers and to the nation. I think the sky is the limit for her in terms of how she decides to move forward."

"The sky's the limit," I think, is the soundbite there. How did you read that?

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "USA TODAY": Well, I'd asked him about this New York Senate race that's coming up and whether or not Chuck Schumer, the sitting Senate Democratic leader, should run for re-election and whether or not he thought that Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez should run for that seat. And he said to me that Chuck Schumer had been a great partner, someone he's worked with for a long time, and that he's going to have to make his own decision after the midterm elections about whether or not he runs for re-election. Then he proceeded to say what you just read there about his fellow New York representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

So, I followed up, John, and I said, well, do you think that she should run for president? He didn't want to go that far. He wasn't ready to make a 2028 endorsement. He said he thinks there could be one or two members of the House who are running for president. That second comment seems to be about Representative Ro Khanna from California, who's also looking at a presidential bid.

[08:40:01]

Although Jeffries didn't specify it that way. But he said there's going to be a, you know, a very robust conversation in the Democratic Party after 2026 about what the future of the party looks like. And he said that he thinks it's going to be a pretty big presidential field.

But I will note that we had, like you said, a wide-ranging discussion where we also talked about A.I. and whether or not he thinks he can cut deals with President Donald Trump on other issues. BERMAN: Yes. When I was reading the stuff about Chuck Schumer I kept

thinking, politics is a brutal thing, man. I mean Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have worked closely together for a long time and Jeffries wouldn't or couldn't say at the moment that he hopes he runs for re-election there.

Francesca Chambers, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, thank you both so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, John.

Breaking just moments ago, new data shows job growth was much lower than expected. The economy adding about 29,000 jobs in September.

CNN's Matt Egan is here to break down the report.

Was this expected to be this slow?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Sara, this is the last jobs report before the midterms. And it came in cold. Surprisingly cold. Job growth weaker than expected. Unemployment unexpectedly went up. And paychecks, they are not keeping up with prices.

This was disappointing all around. Let's run through the top line numbers here, 29,000 jobs added in September. That is far shy of the 90,000 that was expected. And 4.2 percent is the unemployment rate. That's a step in the wrong direction. It was expected to stay at 4.1. It did not.

When we look at the trend for unemployment, you can see, here we are now. It's not high. It has gone a little bit in the wrong direction. And this is a little bit of a disappointment. But, of course, it's not in an unhealthy place when you compare with where things were four years ago.

Let's look at the trend for job growth in the economy. The disappointment here is this month, this is September. Again 29,000. This is a big slowdown from the prior month of August. Not only that, but we had a negative revision for both August and July. In fact, July was revised down to negative 10,000.

So, let's take a look at where the jobs are. There's a couple of key sectors that I was looking at, starting with health care. So, health care added 23,000 jobs. That's a pretty solid number. We also -- I'm sorry, this is leisure and hospitality. Excuse me, wrong place. Health care added 23,000 jobs. That's a solid number. Leisure and hospitality added 10,000. Also a decent number there.

However, there was some disappointment elsewhere. Government losing 17,000 jobs in the month. This was mostly local government. And then we also had job loss elsewhere. Information was down by 10,000 jobs in the month and finance losing jobs as well, negative 7,000. And this is interesting to me and significant because these two sectors, information and finance, they're among the earliest and most aggressive adopters of artificial intelligence. And this is more signs that perhaps A.I. and adoption of A.I. is slowing down hiring, at least in parts of the economy.

Now, the other really important thing that came out here is the new number on wages. So, the estimated inflation rate, we don't have it yet for September, but the estimate is 3.6 percent. That's elevated. Well above what's considered healthy. The problem here is not only do we have elevated inflation, but we have pretty weak wage growth of just three percent, three percent. That is a step in the wrong direction from the month before. That is weaker than expected. And it's well shy of the inflation rate.

So, Sara, that means that for the sixth month in a row, we have a situation where paychecks are trailing prices. For half a year now, almost every single month since the war started, real wages adjusted for inflation are getting smaller.

So, you put it all together and this was a disappointing report. Job growth, weaker than expected. Negative revisions. Unemployment unexpectedly went up to a three month high. And again, paychecks are trailing prices.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you because you were reporting on, you know, housing and interest rates going up there in a -- in a very robust way. I mean, how is all this going to potentially affect the Federal Reserve's potential next decision on interest rates?

EGAN: Well, it's a great question, Sara, and I think we're getting the answer right now in real time from the market. Stock futures have moved higher on this news. And this does appear to be a situation where bad news for main street is being viewed as good news on Wall Street. And I think that's because the fact that this was a disappointing report, the fact that unemployment went up, the fact that you have negative revisions, the market is pricing in less of a chance of an interest rate hike at the next meeting later this month because the thinking is that perhaps the Fed should slow down some of its interest rate hikes because of this soft patch in the job market.

[08:45:02]

And so, that could mean that some less pressure when it comes to mortgage rates, car loans and other borrowing costs. So again, you put it together, this is a disappointing report. And, Sara, again, it does come as the last report before the midterms.

SIDNER: Yes. And with a disappointing report. And then all of those revisions down from the jobs. It could be difficult politically for the Trump administration and Republicans running as well.

All right, thank you so much, Matt Egan, for your reporting and this brand new jobs report showing that numbers are down quite a bit. Only 29,000 jobs were added to the rolls.

All right, an incredible reveal decades in the making. A man who was adopted finds out his biological father is a rock legend. We'll tell you how this all went down, coming up. Plus, I am sitting down for a delicious meal with celebrity chef and

restaurateur David Chang.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:50:32]

SIDNER: Chef and restaurateur David Chang is on a cross country food journey with an all new episode of "The Detour," premiering this Saturday. This week he hits the road from Sonoma to the Pacific with his close friend Chris Ying to challenge some preconceived ideas he has of the northern California food scene.

I sat down with David Chang to talk about the episode, and how traveling with a friend changed the sort of dynamic of his road trip.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: You jump in a car with your buddy, longtime friend.

DAVID CHANG, Host, "THE DETOUR WITH DAVID CHANG": Yes, Chris Ying.

SIDNER: And you go to northern California.

CHANG: I love San Francisco. I love the bay area, wine country. So many of my closest friends live there. I think it's one of the most special places in the world to eat and to travel. Great produce. And it was a no brainer to go there.

SIDNER: There's an incredible array of food, but there is a downhomeness (ph) about that area as well because it's farmers who are doing the wine.

CHANG: And winemakers that are doing it a little bit counter to what is in vogue right now.

SIDNER: It was, by the way, the first place I ever ate dim sum. My close friend, Amber Lee (ph), took me to a dim sum restaurant. And she goes, I cannot believe -- because I'd eaten a lot of things from a lot of places. She says, I cannot believe you've never had this. And I have not stopped eating it.

CHANG: I feel like I've traveled Sonoma and Napa quite a bit. So, part of this was going to places and challenging what I actually know. And my biased assumptions, like everything's the same thing. I was wrong about everything.

It was always great hanging out with Chris. But California was fun. And there was a lot of stories that we could have told for sure.

SIDNER: Maybe I'm a weirdo. Do you ever put kimchi on it?

CHANG: (INAUDIBLE) You know what's (INAUDIBLE).

SIDNER: So, California, how is this one different? Because you're with someone who knows you, knows you. You could tell that.

CHANG: I always joke that the point of having friends is trying to make fun of each other.

SIDNER: Yes, because they know you love them.

CHANG: Chris and I tried to make fun of each other all day, every day, and tried to get under each other's skin. And that's what a road trip is. If you haven't been on a road trip with your friends, if you're not making fun of each other, it's not a road trip.

SIDNER: You're looking at your phone. Get off the phone. Don't let the algorithm tell you what to do.

CHANG: Have a conversation in real life. Not on Facetime. Not on Zoom. And just have a different experience.

SIDNER: Because you might just find some joy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: And that's what we try to do here on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, find some joy. Good luck.

Be sure to tune in. An all new episode of the CNN Original Series "The Detour with David Chang" airs Saturday, 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, right here on CNN, and the next day on the CNN app with an All Access subscription.

John.

BERMAN: It's our metaphorical road trip through the news every day.

All right, new this morning, the airline captain who thwarted a suspected hijacking is speaking out for the first time. He was badly injured while trying to fight off an attack from his copilot on the way from Dubai to Tel Aviv. Officials say he probably saved the lives of more than 170 people on board.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPT. SMIT MACHCHHAR, HERO FLYDUBAI PILOT (through translator): And when I was on the ground, I realized that the aircraft was falling down. And I knew in that moment, one last push, Smit. Just do it. The door is right there. And even at that time, he was beating me up. And then I just opened it, sir, and then everybody came. And everybody else also played an equal role in this. I was telling, sir, that I was doing this for my life, but at the same time I knew that I cannot let everybody else die.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: New video shows when passengers tried to seize control from the pilot, the one who was trying to hijack and crash the plane there. Investigators are still, well. A family reunion in Saint Louis is now a small part of rock and roll history. Michael Goessling was adopted as a child, but his life changed at 58 when he heard from a brother he did not know he had. Michael asked about their biological father, who turned out to be five-time Grammy winner and rock and roll legend Michael McDonald, the king of yacht rock. McDonald was just 14 when the younger Michael was conceived. Nearly 60 years later, he also reunited with his biological mother, who is still friends with McDonald. The beards tell you everything.

Overnight, the SpaceX crew docked with the International Space Station. You can see, not a quick process, but a successful one. The two crews greeted each other. Hopefully they get along because they're going to spend the next several months together conducting research.

Sara.

[08:55:01]

SIDNER: Yamabe (ph) there up and -- oh, sorry, I -- I've always wondered exactly what that meant. And I bet you know the trivia behind it. But they should be playing it in space as far as I'm concerned.

All right, this week President Trump met with top tech executives and said they had signed a new commitment aimed at better self-policing their companies A.I. models. This morning there is new reporting by Semafor about the central role that one of those tech leaders played, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It reportedly goes back to a conversation Zuckerberg had with House Speaker Mike Johnson at last week's White House state dinner.

Joining me now with her new reporting is senior tech correspondent for "Semafor," Ashley Gold.

Thank you for being here. Really interesting reporting. What, to you, stood out as you learned how this all went down and how this sort of new pledge came out?

ASHLEY GOLD, SENIOR TECH CORRESPONDENT, "SEMAFOR": So, what stood out to me is just how much Mark Zuckerberg's reputation in Washington has changed over these past couple of years. Just a couple of years ago, after the January 6th Capitol riot, Meta kicked President Donald Trump off of its platforms and President Donald Trump was very, very angry with Zuckerberg, even threatening to throw him in jail.

Fast forward to a couple years later, and Zuckerberg is standing next to the president outside of the White House, having played a key role in making this A.I. accord that they got all the A.I. CEOs in the room to agree to. So, Mark Zuckerberg is different from these other A.I. CEOs in that he's done his time in Washington. He's testified before Congress. He's had to deal with bipartisan anger on everything from child safety online, to privacy, to so many other things. So, he's sort of done his rounds and knows how to navigate things now.

So, he was able to take that opportunity when he was sitting next to Mike Johnson and say, hey, I have some ideas of how, you know, we can self-regulate and how we can go into this upcoming meeting, sort of all on the same page, with things we can all agree to.

SIDNER: Is there the sense here that the exact wording that Zuckerberg came up with is what ended up in the president's sort of policy?

GOLD: No, I wouldn't say exact. There were some key principles that Zuckerberg had outlined. They were pretty similar to things that he has said publicly before. And then it was sort of passed around to the rest of the CEOs. Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang also played a key role here in sort of ginning up support in the room. And together they made their tweaks and they worked on it for a final document. But Mark did the initial drafting, yes.

SIDNER: Look, industry is often involved in helping to create policy. That's how a lot of bills end up being passed. Do you see this particular situation as any different when it involved the president and the way this all played out?

GOLD: It's a little different because this is -- you know, the A.I. CEOs directly liaising with the president about this. It's not like a situation where they're up on Capitol Hill saying what a bill should look like. That process can be informed by many different lobbyists and parties that have some sort of stake in the bill. This is sort of a direct conversation with the president that ends up on a piece of paper that everyone signs.

But mind you, it's just a piece of paper. It is not binding legislation. It's not new rules to be, you know, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. So, this is sort of unusual. But it's not unlike Trump to sort of cut these direct deals with companies.

SIDNER: Ashley Gold, great reporting from you. Thank you so much.

And be sure to tune in to the all-new CNN Flash Doc, "Zuckerberg: Facebook and the Cost of Connection" premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern on CNN, and the next day with an All Access subscription.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news, the final jobs report before the midterms. And it comes in weak. What's more, wages fall further behind inflation.

We are standing by for an update on the investigation into the alleged gang rape at Cornell University. The New York governor just appointed the attorney general of the state as a special prosecutor. They are both set to speak shortly.

And then first on CNN, remarkable new video of the arrest of Luigi Mangione that we had not seen before. What happened at the end of the five-day multi-state manhunt for the CEO killer? It is remarkable to see police at work there.

Kate is out today. I'm John Berman, with Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SIDNER: All right, breaking just moments ago, new data showing the U.S. economy added just 29,000 jobs last month.

[09:00:02]

A major slowdown from August. Economists had expected employers to add about 90,000 jobs.

Now...