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Joel Rubin is Interviewed about Russia; Military Attacks on Alleged Drug Boats; Michael Roth is Interviewed about Federal Funding for Education; Maine Senate Candidate Covers Up Tattoo. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired October 23, 2025 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Administration planning to send dozens of federal agents to San Francisco. Part of the administration's immigration crackdown. Border Patrol agents will be staging at a Coast Guard base in the bay area.
And Broadway musicians could go on strike as early as today. They've been in contract negotiations since August and plan to walk off the job this morning if they can't come to a deal. Twenty-three shows could be impacted. The union is demanding fair wages and stable health coverage.
President Trump appears to be running out of patience with Vladimir Putin. He just canceled an anticipated meeting with the Russian president to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. And the Treasury has announced new sanctions against Russia's two largest oil companies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today is a very big day in terms of what we're doing. And look, these are tremendous sanctions. These are very big. Those are against their two big oil companies. And we hope that they won't be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: So, how did the Russian leader respond? Well, by personally overseeing a nuclear readiness test.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIA (through translator): Good afternoon esteemed comrades. Today we are conducting a planned -- I want to emphasize, a planned nuclear forces command and control exercise.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Rubin joins the chat now.
Joel, I want to play one more clip of you of the president because he actually explained specifically why he canceled this meeting with Putin.
Let's see if we have that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Didn't feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So, I canceled it. But we'll do it in the future.
Well, I think that in terms of honesty, I -- the only thing I can say is, every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations. And then they don't go anywhere. They just don't go anywhere.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I wanted to play that for you because you've often said that yourself on this show.
JOEL RUBIN, AUTHOR, "THE BRIEFING BOOK" ON SUBSTACK: Well, that's gracious of you. Thank you.
CORNISH: So, what do you think of this moment?
RUBIN: Well, first, Vladimir is not his friend. He's nobody's friend. And for President Trump to finally show a little backbone, good. It's taken him nine, ten months to figure it out that he's getting strung along. But we'll see.
You know, these are sanctions that are going to have an impact potentially. They are bigger sanctions than we've ever done before on the oil sector. But it requires real steadfastness. And my fear with President Trump is that all he needs is one phone call in the other direction, coming to him from the Kremlin, to back off. And clearly, this saber rattling from Putin is intended to try to scare President Trump. And I feel like President Trump's policies -- just every day it's a twist and turn and there's nothing very clear about what he wants to do.
CORNISH: I need to ask you a silly question that I should know the answer to, but I do not, which is, sanctions versus tariffs.
RUBIN: Yes.
CORNISH: Why can't the White House do tariffs against Russia instead, which it does not have, and would that make a difference?
RUBIN: Well, we have basically no trade with Russia.
CORNISH: Right.
RUBIN: And so the tariffs are -- are -- it's like tariff zero.
CORNISH: Yes.
RUBIN: It means nothing.
CORNISH: But he's used tariffs as leverage with other countries so effectively.
RUBIN: He uses -- exactly. Exactly.
CORNISH: It feels like, is there some other point of leverage here that could be utilized to bring pressure to bear on what's left of Russia's trade?
RUBIN: Well, I mean, you're laying it out exactly right. Like the integration of the pressure is what matters. The military strategy, the diplomatic political strategy and the economic strategy. And when you have secondary tariffs on third countries, like on India and elsewhere --
CORNISH: Like India. Yes.
RUBIN: It has to come within a political framework that people understand.
So, right now, there's no clarity about the policy. The tariffs have to be in coordination. There's one good thing I will say that did happen with these -- these sanctions, which is that the European Union did also announce sanctions themselves. So, maybe a little transatlantic coordination is happening. If that is the case, that matters and that will help.
CORNISH: OK, Joel, stick around because I want to ask you about one other thing, which is the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has sent out a video basically confirming the eighth and ninth strikes carried out by the Trump administration. These are strikes against Venezuelan narco traffickers. But this time it was in the Pacific, which is why we're paying attention to it now. Thirty-seven people have been confirmed killed across all of these attacks. Up until now they had all occurred in the Caribbean.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have legal authority. We're -- we're -- we're allowed to do that. And if we do by land, we may go back to Congress. But we -- we have -- this is a national security problem. They killed 300,000 people last year, drugs. These drugs coming in, they killed 300,000 Americans last year. And that gives you legal authority.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I just wanted to bring this to you first, that legal authority.
RUBIN: No.
CORNISH: Drugs killed 300,000 people. RUBIN: Yes.
CORNISH: We don't know what the unnamed, uncharged people who have been killed did.
RUBIN: And --
CORNISH: So, I just want to know, what is the legal sort of ramification for this?
RUBIN: Well, it's a war powers grab by the president. He has no legal authority to do this. What he did was redesignate these groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Thus, in his mind, giving him authority to strike.
[06:35:00]
They are not terrorist organizations. They are not imminent threats to the United States of America. Certainly some may, and we don't even know, some may be selling drugs. But more drugs are sold within the United States by Americans than we see even coming out of these countries.
CORNISH: But the war on drugs has been going for a long time. We just haven't seen it as a physical war in this way in many years. And I know that the Justice Department had this legal opinion sort of authorizing secret -- secret strikes. Can you talk about that message, Mike, just the idea that, like, you reclassify something and then you can shoot on sight.
MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, years ago we went into Colombia and burned crops in order to strike back on illegal and illicit drugs. This is -- in one --
CORNISH: Was there a high number of civilian deaths?
DUBKE: In one -- in --
RUBIN: In partnership with the government.
DUBKE: Well, in partnership with the government.
CORNISH: Oh, say that louder.
RUBIN: Y Es, in partnership with the governments.
DUBKE: But we're in international waters here, correct?
RUBIN: We are. We may be. We may not be. We don't know. But these are strikes against vessels that we don't even know who we're hitting. And third countries, like in Colombia, they're saying, you actually killed some of our civilians.
DUBKE: Here's -- here's the -- just the bottom line basic part of this that I -- we -- we talk about the scourge of drugs in the United States. We want to stop drugs from coming into the country. The president is doing something about it on this, whether we're designating them narco terrorists or not. And now we're debating this. I think he should go to Congress. He absolutely needs to do that part of the -- of the federal oversight of this. But this --
CORNISH: Well, right now he's not.
DUBKE: Act --
CORNISH: And here's what Senator Rand Paul had to say --
DUBKE: OK.
CORNISH: Because people are raising questions about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): There is no fentanyl made in Venezuela. Not just a little bit. There's none being made in Venezuela. These are outboard boats that in order for them to get to Miami would have to stop and refuel 20 times. They're in all likely going to Trinidad and Tobago.
When can you kill people indiscriminately? When you're at war. That's why when we declare war, it's supposed to be done by Congress. It's supposed to be thoughtful. It's supposed to be debated. And we're not supposed to do it willy nilly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I don't know, you can't explain it better than that, Mike, right?
DUBKE: Rand Paul is an isolationist. I mean, Rand Paul is going to say these things over and over again.
CORNISH: Well, Meghan's going to defend Rand Paul. I need to somehow --
MEGHAN HAYS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Wait -- wait --
DUBKE: I know. This is why you -- I -- this is what I want to see too.
CORNISH: OK.
HAYS: I'm not going to defend Rand Paul.
Ninety-nine percent of fentanyl comes in from our southern border, from American citizens, or people who are legally here. And so I just think that killing people that we don't know who are actually bringing in drugs is not something that we should be doing. It's not something the president should be doing. It actually probably is illegal.
And why are -- if it was -- if these people were bringing in drugs, why didn't we prosecute the two survivors from last week when we did this? Why did we return them back to their country? So, I just -- there's a lot of things here that we don't know, and
Congress should know about it, because this is -- to me, this is disgraceful and the American people should be up in arms that we are just killing people willy nilly. Like what he said, willy nilly.
CORNISH: Yes.
Also, I'm kind of curious about what Joel is saying here, which is that -- and -- and, Mike, to your point, these are tied, you're backed into a position of defending a narco terrorist state and Maduro if you don't somehow embrace indiscriminate killing.
RUBIN: Yes, I --
CORNISH: Like it makes a binary choice --
DUBKE: That's why I feel better about my seat right now.
CORNISH: Good messaging. Good messaging.
DUBKE: Yes.
CORNISH: Yes.
RUBIN: Well, there is also something -- there's a big tell in all of this, which is that the commander of Southern Command, our top military official overseeing these strikes, just quit. He just quit. Now, why did he quit? Because he knows that these are illegal strikes. He doesn't want to go to The Hague. He doesn't want to be answering the hard questions about why he said yes to orders that he knows are completely contrary to what we've learned over the last 25 years.
We are not fighting al Qaeda in the southern hemisphere. There was an authorization for the use of military force against al Qaeda and ISIS and the terrorist war.
CORNISH: Yes.
RUBIN: There is no authorization for these strikes.
CORNISH: OK, you guys, stay with us. We've got more to talk about.
Coming up next on CNN -- I just actually want to mention, if you're into this chat, we're a podcast, too. You can scan the QR code right here on the screen. CNN THIS MORNING is available anywhere you get your podcast. So, please, check us out.
We're going to talk next about that Maine Senate race because the candidate actually was shirtless in an interview because of a tattoo that he's now gotten covered up. It's complicated. But we're going to talk about it next.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RABBI ELLIOT J. COSGROVE, PARK AVENUE SYNAGOGUE: A vote for Mamdani is a vote counter to Jewish interests. (END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: And a prominent rabbi calling on Jewish New Yorkers to not vote for Zohran Mamdani. Can he win without this key voting bloc?
And universities facing a dilemma, make a deal with the White House or protect academic freedom. I'm going to talk to a university president next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:44:03]
CORNISH: The University of Virginia has become the first public university to make a deal with the White House. Under the agreement with the Justice Department, UVA agrees to dismantle all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and make quarterly reports to the Department of Justice. In exchange, the DOJ will drop its investigations into the school once those DEI policies are gone.
The agreement comes as the administration places fresh pressure on schools to bend to the president's will, with an offer for federal funding in exchange for agreeing to White House demands. Seven universities have publicly rejected the offer, which would also require schools to do things like prevent school employees from commenting on, quote, "societal and political events." It would also, quote, "abolish institutional units that purposely punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas." Notably, the University of Virginia rejected joining the compact last week, claiming it, quote, "further erodes confidence in American higher education."
[06:45:03]
Joining me now to talk about all of this is Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University.
Michael Roth, so, thanks so much for being with us.
MICHAEL ROTH, PRESIDENT, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY: Good morning. Good to be with you.
CORNISH: Now, I don't think it's an accident that a public university would be the first to sign on to this. Obviously, federal funds are very much at stake there. But are private universities worried as well?
ROTH: Of course. Public and private universities are worried about protecting academic freedom. And that sounds like a fancy thing to protect, but it's actually just the ability of teachers to teach the way they see fit, giving -- given their professional expertise. It's also protecting the rights to admit the kinds of students you think will most benefit from the university or college that you run.
It also means that you have the ability to decide what kind of ideas you should be asking the students to wrestle with. Not to believe in, not to accept, but to wrestle with, to debate. And that compact, which I should say, the UVA did not accept, right, they did not agree to that. They agreed to a -- what looks like a fairly innocuous deal with the White House to just not do anything illegal in regard to anti- discrimination laws.
Now, at UVA, that does come on the heels of the White House pressuring the university to fire its former president, Jim Ryan.
CORNISH: Right.
ROTH: Because of what the White House perceived as his efforts at creating a diverse student environment. UVA actually has --
CORNISH: Michael, can I jump in and ask a quick question, though?
ROTH: Sure.
CORNISH: You know, this focus is on DEI. That's what we're mentioning here because, as you said, UVA didn't sign on to the entire compact.
ROTH: Right.
CORNISH: They basically said, we won't do the illegal stuff. But what do you make --
ROTH: Yes, we won't do the illegal stuff.
CORNISH: Yes.
ROTH: This -- yes, that makes sense (ph).
CORNISH: It's the basics. But what do you make of some of the other demands in the compact, the stuff in the fine print, that you think might be causing universities to finally say, look, we're not signing on to this?
ROTH: Well, there are things in there, like, you -- employees of universities shouldn't be commenting on political issues, which is an extraordinary restriction on freedom of speech. You know, many schools, since October 7th, have embraced institutional neutrality, which means that the leaders of the school are not supposed to comment on public events outside of the mission of the university. And most university heads don't do that anyway. And so, it's a policy that probably doesn't make too much of a difference. But this compact goes further, insisting that schools have a posture -- a posture of neutrality that is really an infringement on free speech.
It also talks about not -- not engaging in gender ideology, whatever that is. Really going back to the White House obsession with having just two biological genders, as they would call it. And the -- the compact also underscores that the White House wants schools to say they agree with the White House's approach to education and speech and research. And that kind of loyalty oath, in exchange for preferential treatment for research, is really anathema to American values and it -- it goes against the grain of -- of the -- the cooperation between the government and research universities that has existed and has done so well for the last several decades.
CORNISH: This started out as an issue of dealing with anti-Semitism on campus. What do you think of where it's gone, where we are now, these, you know, two years later?
ROTH: I'm delighted that the Jews are no longer part of the deal, you know. For the -- if we talked about a month ago, this would have all been about protecting Jews from anti-Semitism, which at the time I thought was bogus. There, of course, is anti-Semitism on -- in colleges and there's anti-Semitism at Charlottesville or in Boston or in Washington, D.C. But that was the -- the cudgel with which the White House was hitting schools a few months ago.
The new deal doesn't talk about anti-Semitism, but it's still very much concerned about anti-white discrimination or reverse discrimination. And I think that the White House certainly has the prerogative to define civil rights law or statute in that way that is saying, we don't want any kind of racial preferences given to anyone. I think they have the authority to do that.
I don't know that any schools are actually using racial preferences now, either in admissions or in other areas. But most schools believe, because it's true, that you learn more from being in a diverse environment. You learn more when people feel they belong or included in the environment. And you learn more when it's fair. That is, when it's equitable. And so this -- this cudgel of DEI, as if it's some mysterious thing, is really unfortunate. It's wrongheaded.
[06:50:05]
We -- we want diversity in our schools. We want to -- we -- and you can have that without having racial preferences. You can have diversity without having a government monitor telling you how many conservatives you should have, which is also part of the compact.
CORNISH: Yes. Well, it'll be interesting to see how more schools deal with this.
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan, thank you for your time.
ROTH: Thanks for having me.
CORNISH: All right, now this, the final debate in the New York City mayor's race. This time the gloves came off.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: You could turn on TV any day of the week and you will hear Donald Trump share that his pick for mayor is Andrew Cuomo.
ANDREW CUOMO, FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR AND NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: President Trump has to respect you. He thinks he's a kid and he's going to knock him on his tuchas (ph).
(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: OK, Andrew Cuomo throwing around some Yiddish there to hit frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, who's been fiercely scrutinized for his positions on Israel and the Jewish people.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW CUOMO, FORMER NEW YORK GOVERNOR AND NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: It doesn't -- it doesn't justify leaders who stoke the flames of hatred against Jewish people, which is what Zohran does, in my opinion.
CURTIS SLIWA, NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: You've got a lot of explaining to do, a lot of apologizing to do.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI, NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: I do still want to be the mayor that will keep your sons safe, that will keep every single New Yorker safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: The anti-Mamdani movement has been fueled by this viral warning from a prominent New York rabbi.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RABBI ELLIOT J. COSGROVE, PARK AVENUE SYNAGOGUE: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of the New York Jewish community.
I'm throwing a flag on the field and calling out a threat to the Jewish people five minutes early rather than risk being five minutes too late.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK, group chat is back.
I actually want to talk to you first, Meghan, because I think this race is being looked at as a potential kind of proxy for bigger conversations in the party in general. What did you see on stage that reflects that?
HAYS: So, I think, as we've talked about before, Mamdani is a socialist. He is not a Democrat. So, I think that his policies still on the debate stage are still very light and any explaining what he is going to be doing, separate of the other issues about Jewish people and defunding the police, that he also has issues with, his policies don't make sense for the city of New York.
So, I think that when people are looking at this, they saw last night that he doesn't have a lot of substance behind his policies. And I do think that what works in New York will not work in the rest of the country.
CORNISH: OK.
HAYS: And I think Democrats need to be extremely careful moving forward here.
I think that is -- is really interesting because I was talking with Astead Herndon, who -- formerly of "The New York Times," wrote a big piece about Mamdani and about how he was able to rise so quickly and how he tried to shift some of these positions that are clearly problematic for him.
Here is that conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ASTEAD HERNDON, HOST AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, VOX MEDIA: There were so many progressive and left candidates who were supposed to be ahead of him in this race, right. But what they were not doing was centering Palestinian advocacy. And so, he -- it becomes a key connector. And I think this is important for folks to get, like, he raises initial money because of that.
CORNISH: Even using the phrase anti-Zionism.
HERNDON: Absolutely. But he stopped saying anti-Zionism. He mostly says now about supporting Palestinian rights.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Do you think the shifts he has made have made a difference, Joel. And, obviously, Evan, I know you've been following this race as well.
RUBIN: No, they have not at all, Audie. Look, yesterday a letter came out signed by 650 rabbis. And this is after months of direct personal outreach by Mamdani to the Jewish community to try to assuage their fears. And the letter comes out and basically says, not only are we going to be more at risk here in New York, but every Jewish city is going to be more at risk, or every city where there are Jews is going to be more at risk. That is a damning statement. And I just don't think that his arguments are credible. I agree with what you just talked about a second ago.
CORNISH: Yes.
RUBIN: This was a motivating factor, his anti-Israel viewpoints, at getting him into the lead in this primary. And now people are realizing it.
CORNISH: But one of the reasons why I'm bringing it to the chat is because he is in the lead.
RUBIN: Yes.
CORNISH: Listening to this panel, you would think he is not in the lead. But he is. And what -- I have questions about where the party is right now on this issue and others. And, Evan, do you think that is revealed here in this conversation?
EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, CO-AUTHOR, NOTUS MORNING NEWSLETTER: Well, it's a two sided issue, right? Because on the one hand, Mamdani, unless all the polls are wrong by a lot, is going to win by a lot. And now on his shoulders will be this idea of carrying this issue that progressives, you know, want to find some common ground on forward. He has a problem when it comes to this issue in terms of, you know, uniting his base.
But the other problem is, the Democratic Party has had no message on this. The Democrats lost that primary by a lot because young voters in New York, a lot of voters in New York were motivated by this issue. And the mainstream Democratic Party had nothing to say to them.
[06:55:04]
So, Mamdani has something to say. People don't like it a lot because it sounds very different.
CORNISH: Yes.
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: But that doesn't alleviate the original problem here, which is that they didn't actually have any counter message to it.
Now, what's being said now, I think, is interesting when you talk about, like, just how much of a burden this is going to be for Mamdani to try to actually solve this problem. But the problem is not his problem. He didn't create it. He just found --
CORNISH: Yes, and fundamentally you had a party that still backed Cuomo, which I think is also --
DUBKE: And I'm the only person smiling at this table.
CORNISH: Yes.
DUBKE: Because he's going to be a great counter for Republicans at the midterms. He's an executive in a large city who's going to do bad things. And we can point that out.
CORNISH: And that's a --
HAYS: He doesn't have the ability to do bad things because he can't raise taxes in a place -- so, all of his policies are not going to be implemented --
(CROSS TALK)
CORNISH: But it's the simplicity of the message that (INAUDIBLE) can deliver.
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: I mean, I --
DUBKE: Yes.
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: I don't know the answer to that question. Republicans have been saying this for a long time. This is great for us. We're so excited. But, you know, Democrats said that about Trump, too. I mean the idea, like, there's a very exciting candidate, exciting among young people, exciting online. That candidate is not a Republican. I don't know why that's so great for Republicans, but they -- but they say that it is. So, we'll see how that goes.
CORNISH: All right, this connects -- this connects to another issue, actually, because people have been talking about the Maine Senate race. The candidate there is named Graham Platner. And he had to cover a tattoo because when it went public, people were like, hey, this kind of looks like Nazi symbolism. And Platner, who's running against Maine Senator Susan Collins, actually posted on Instagram saying, he's sorry he ever got that tattoo. He took off his shirt for the cameras. Here's a sample of that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM PLATNER, SENATE CANDIDATE FOR MAINE: It's come to my attention that it has a stark resemblance to a symbol that is used by neo-Nazis. And I want to say, that was not the intent at all.
I went to a tattoo parlor, and I got this to cover up the skull and crossbones.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK. So, in a recent interview, he also tried explaining his position to voters on the matter. I'm going to play that for you as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM PLATNER, SENATE CANDIDATE FOR MAINE: I'm proud of the person I am today. I'm not proud of the person I always was. But I also don't get to be who I am today without that journey.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: All right, the reason why I wanted to talk about this is because he talks about being in the armed services, saying some of the things he said, having trauma. But what he is, is a person who says, I did some things wrong and I apologize. And even with Mamdani, he said, defund the police. I shouldn't have said that. I apologize. And does a party that before disqualified everyone, is the lesson that they take away from those last couple of years of purity and litmus tests to again turn away people who have base energy?
RUBIN: So, I'm not going to say definitely he should leave or not be part of this campaign.
CORNISH: Yes.
RUBIN: But, you know, having that skull and crossbones, on his chest, for 18 years, and seeing it in the mirror for 6,000, 7,000 days, and not knowing what it's about, I don't find it credible. You know, the cover up is worse than the crime, as they say. Now, the coverup here --
CORNISH: The tattoo cover up. RUBIN: Yes. I mean, this is ridiculous.
DUBKE: Yes, now he's a Viking.
CORNISH: Yes.
DUBKE: I don't get the Viking symbolism.
RUBIN: And he did not apologize.
CORNISH: Oh, OK.
RUBIN: He did not apologize to the Jewish community. He lightly referenced, concerned about anti-Semitism and nothing else.
CORNISH: OK.
RUBIN: So, he missed his moment.
CORNISH: So, the other reason to talk about this is because we just had a bunch of Republicans in a -- in a chat text group also espousing anti-Semitism.
RUBIN: That's right.
CORNISH: And the vice president said, well, you know, kids. So, what I don't understand is what is politically disqualifying and what is not.
HAYS: I don't think anything --
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Well, nobody -- nobody understands what that is.
HAYS: Yes, I think --
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: To be perfectly clear, what --
(CROSS TALK)
CORNISH: Does Mike understand what that is?
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: No, no, no, what's happening now is --
DUBKE: I'm thinking Nazi SS tattoo is disqualifying.
CORNISH: Isn't this the worst conversation to have?
DUBKE: For 18 years.
CORNISH: Texts --
DUBKE: How drunk do you need to be to get a Nazi SS tattoo?
CORNISH: Hold -- but here's the thing.
DUBKE: This is a ridiculous conversation.
HAYS: Or (INAUDIBLE) gas chambers on this --
RUBIN: Or to (INAUDIBLE) Nazi slogans as well.
(CROSS TALK)
HAYS: Yes, on the text chain.
CORNISH: What's better, hiding it in your text?
(CROSS TALK)
RUBIN: Yes, why is Nazism popular in American politics?
(CROSS TALK)
RUBIN: Didn't we fight the Nazis in World War II?
DUBKE: Yes.
HAYS: That's a fair question here, why is this rising? Why is this so popular right now in America? And that is the bigger question I think we need to address.
CORNISH: And why is it so hard for, collectively, politicians to be like, this is not good, instead of what, aboutism?
DUBKE: Anti-Nazi?
CORNISH: That's the thing that drives me crazy as a moderator --
RUBIN: Right. That's right.
CORNISH: Is actually having to sit and have a conversation in which I'm like, which one of these is worse? It's all bad.
RUBIN: That's right.
CORNISH: And why are people unable to say it's all bad?
HAYS: And why aren't we talking about affordability? Why aren't we talking about lowering the cost of healthcare? I just don't understand.
CORNISH: OK, that's a -- I knew you were going to bring up health care subsidies.
Yes.
(CROSS TALK)
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: I mean I will say, in the -- in the annals of political moments, it has come to my attention that my tattoo is --
CORNISH: Right, not ideal.
MCMORRIS-SANTORO: That's pretty much one of the best ones I've ever -- it's like the VP-est (ph) thing I've ever seen in my life. So, it's not great. He has a lot of problems here. But this sort of general conversation of like, well, I guess he's done. We really just don't know anymore if that's true.
RUBIN: No, we don't.
CORNISH: Yes.
RUBIN: And I've got to tell you, from the American Jewish perspective, I've worked in Jewish politics much of my career. This is a swing and a miss.
[07:00:01]
This does nothing to assuage Jewish voters' concerns. Now, it may only be 1 percent of the voters in Maine. And maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he's speaking to a constituency out there he thinks gets excited about anti-Semitism. We're seeing that grow on the left and the right. Seeing political value in attacking Jews. Maybe there's something to that from his perspective. I hope not. The Democratic Party, we stand for more than that, but I fear that he is opinion up this can of worms.
CORNISH: Yes, and it -- but it will be interesting to see, what does it mean to try and rehabilitate ones image in the age of Trump.
DUBKE: Yes.
CORNISH: In which many things are pretty OK. Good morning, George Santos.
I want to thank you guys for waking up with us.
DUBKE: (INAUDIBLE), George Santos.
CORNISH: I'm Audie Cornish. CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.
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