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The Final Stretch: Trump to Hit 7 States in 7 Days; Jackson Defends Telling Collins to 'Shut Up' During Debate. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired October 19, 2026 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:00:06]
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Today in the chat, it's 15 days until the midterms and President Trump is back on the campaign trail. Are voters losing their enthusiasm for this president?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With everything that's going on in -- in our presidency and, you know, money just going skyrocketing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Plus, a grieving military husband confronts J.D. Vance. Could this moment become a bigger problem for the vice president?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOEY AMOR, WIDOWER OF NICOLE AMOR: There's a failure in the leadership, how this administration is going to start holding those leaders accountable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: And Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed pushes back after being questioned about his loyalty to America. Is his Muslim faith being used against him?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABDUL EL-SAYED (D), MICHIGAN SENATE NOMINEE: But what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn't?
TOMMY TEEPELL, AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. Here is where we begin: fifteen days until election day.
The president is in full campaign mode. This week, he's going to hit seven states in seven days, all crucial to the GOP keeping control of the Senate.
Now, he starts tonight in Kansas, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. And yet it's in play.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think I've ever voted for a Democrat senator.
MANU RANU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You haven't? This will be the first time?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: First time.
RAJU: And it's because of Adam Hamilton?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. And I'm -- I'm just sick of the Republican Party.
RAJU: Are you worried that Hamilton could actually win this race?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, he could, because we have a bad reputation in this state of electing liberal governors and things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: As Trump's own approval rating hits a new low, 33 percent, there are concerns about if he can actually turn out voters.
New reporting from Reuters showing that Trump is blaming senior aides and questioning if his midterm strategy is actually working.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: You have to get out and vote. That's why I'm doing this. I don't need to do this. I could sit home. I already won. Somebody said, good luck with the election. I said, no, I already won.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Today in the group chat, Sara Fischer, CNN senior media analyst and senior media reporter at Axios; Tiana Lowe Doescher, political commentator at "The Washington Examiner"; and Kurt Bardella, co-host of Politicon's "Party Lines" and senior comms adviser for the Texas Democratic Party.
So, as we mentioned, the approval rating right now sits at 33 percent, which means 66 percent of people are saying no bueno. They are not into what Trump is selling.
I want to play for you something in Kansas. Manu Raju was asking people about the race there, and someone talked about the war. And he was speaking with Marshall, the opponent there, and I want you to hear it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ROGER MARSHALL (R), KANSAS SENATE CANDIDATE: I want this war to be over as quickly as possible. I don't want to lose any soldiers, any more soldiers. Like Eisenhower, I hate war. I hate war with all its brutality, stupidity, futility. I want this war to be over as badly as anybody does. I hope we can find a very quick end to this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: This is coming up more than once, Tiana. The war.
TIANA LOWE DOESCHER, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, "THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER": The issue is Trump not seeing it through. Right? The war was not lost by Trump starting it. The kinetic victories were unparalleled, right? We gained complete air superiority. We --
CORNISH: But that's not what he said on the campaign trail.
DOESCHER: Correct.
CORNISH: So why aren't Republicans talking about it like that?
DOESCHER: Because no one wants to contradict right now the Pentagon, which is laying in wait. Right?
Trump is saying, Oh, I'm not going to do any more bombing until after the midterms, when really -- when it became an electoral albatross for Trump -- and you see it both in the financial markets and in the polls -- was when he thought he could make a deal with Iran, which is an irrational actor.
And frankly, I wish Republicans were more willing to affirmatively defend going in and saying, it's time to finish the job --
CORNISH: OK, so here is Trump --
DOESCHER: -- rather than to assume the IRGC will make a deal.
CORNISH: -- on Saturday in Kentucky, making this promise to voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If the Republicans win, the Department of War will be investing $100 million in the pharmaceutical company, Antheia, to revitalize a gigantic drug manufacturing facility in Winchester, Kentucky. That's a big one.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:05:06]
CORNISH: I noticed it's "Department of War," because getting anything through Congress is probably virtually impossible.
Do those kind of promises, though, make a difference? To say help is on the way? Help is on the way, if only you vote this way.
KURT BARDELLA, CO-HOST, POLITICON'S "PARTY LINES": No, because no one believes these promises will actually happen. I mean, this is the guy who stood on stage at the midterm convention
in Dallas and said, Everyone's going to get a $5,000 check if you elect Republicans in the election.
You don't see any Republican on the campaign trail in a competitive race running on that promise, by the way, because no one believes it's actually going to happen.
DOESCHER: Also, it's inflationary.
BARDELLA: And this is -- it's, yes. A, it's not going to happen.
CORNISH: I'm not sure they're worried about that.
BARDELLA: There's no way for it (ph) to happen. They don't believe in that.
CORNISH: No.
BARDELLA: But also, this president is being checked against promises and expectations he's already made.
The problem with the Iran War is the president himself said this is going to be done quickly. This is going to be an annihilation, and we're going to win this thing in a week, and we'll never have to talk about it again.
He said this is a regime that's actually more reasonable to negotiate with. And it turns out now they're saying, well, they're actually crazy. You can't -- you can't reason with these people.
Everything he says is a contradiction to what he said when this conflict started in (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
CORNISH: Well, I just want to come back to Kansas for a second. Right now, no clear winner. OK? It's 45 percent to 45 percent when we look at the polls. That's a "New York Times" poll from late September.
And then when you actually look at the issues that are important to them, to be honest with you, it's the economy, right? I don't see Iran War up there. Six percent foreign policy. The economy.
Tell me why, on the economy, the thing the president has felt most confident about, and the thing that voters gave him a chance on, is the thing that is a bit of a train wreck right now.
SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: Which is the economy, is what you're saying?
CORNISH: Well, people's feelings about it.
FISCHER: Yes.
CORNISH: Because some people say the economy is pretty good. If you have a 401(k) and you already own your house, and you're 70 years old, it's amazing, right? If you have stocks. If you don't, you're somewhere else.
FISCHER: Yes. I mean, the story of our lifetime, not just this presidency, is that the middle class has been bottoming out, right? So, you have a bigger lower class, and then you have a smaller amount of people who are taking on more and more wealth.
And in states like Kansas, you're more likely to see people who are in that bottom low class of people who -- lower-income-level class of people who are not feeling it the way that people might be in some of these coastal states where there are still swing state problems.
I think about Pennsylvania being a really good example there. Some of the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, high household incomes, swing -- swing counties. That's not necessarily the case in places like Kansas. So, that message is not going to resonate as well.
You also have to think about places outside of the big cities that are much more fuel-dependent. These are people who need to be driving, often long distances, to get to their jobs. They also are more likely to work in places like farms --
CORNISH: Yes.
FISCHER: -- where you're going to have access to diesel fuel problems. So, all of those messages around the economy might not resonate.
CORNISH: So, each policy choice is affecting -- and I just want to show people --
FISCHER: Yes.
CORNISH: -- the battlegrounds as we head into the break here. These are places that are, frankly, most affected by a lot of the president's policies, whether it be tariffs, whether it be fuel, whether it even be cuts in terms of healthcare.
FISCHER: Yes, and can I say something about this map real fast? Because President Trump is hitting seven of these battleground states. It's not reflective of some of the other issues in the House. And President Trump cannot get to a lot of those states.
I keep bringing up Pennsylvania, which is a critical, critical place for him to be.
CORNISH: And is not in there.
FISCHER: And he is not going to be visiting, because he just doesn't have enough time at this point to hit every place he needs to hit.
CORNISH: All right. Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, we're talking about Republicans facing tough questions from voters. So, can they convince people to give them more time to bring prices down?
Plus, a grieving military husband puts J.D. Vance on the spot. How the vice president responded. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:13:08]
CORNISH: So, the vice president has been out there trying to save his party's majorities in Congress. He's also on the defense for the Trump administration's unpopular war with Iran.
So, at the CBS town hall, the vice president was confronted by the widower of an Army Reserve soldier who had been killed in an Iranian attack in Kuwait.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMOR: Mr. Vice President, my wife, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, gave her life on March 1, 2026. I am damn proud of my wife.
Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that.
There's a failure in the leadership, and I want to know how this administration is going to start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we -- that we honor and that we love.
J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: If there were failures -- and I don't doubt there were -- I just -- this is literally the first time I've heard of this, is this conversation.
I want to understand what we can do better and what those soldiers are seeing, because the -- part of the problem with this job, this job is an amazing honor. But you live in a bit of a bubble, and sometimes information doesn't filter -- filter up to me.
And I promise you, I will take every single failure extremely seriously and will work on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK. Group chat is back. I wanted to talk about that answer, because the vice president has talked about his own military service. He did, I think, six months in Iraq directly. He was a journalist.
But five people died on March 1 to a drone attack on this Kuwaiti base. And I was surprised to hear him be like, First I'm hearing of it.
FISCHER: To say you live in a bubble, that will be something that lives on and is clipped for a long time, if he continues to run for office.
It is so exemplary of this idea that people have of politicians in Washington who just sit on a gold throne and make decisions that don't actually impact people. He should have never said, you just live in a bubble.
[06:15:06]
But for J.D. Vance, what's interesting is he is not the person that President Trump sends out to do a lot of these diplomatic negotiations, right? That is Marco Rubio. That is Steve Witkoff.
CORNISH: Yes. Although for Gaza, allegedly, at one point, Vance was involved in that.
FISCHER: He's not the person who everyday Americans typically think of as being the administration's proxy on the war. So, use that to your advantage. Be the person who is keeping themselves at an arm's length from this war, because you're not the person who is being sent out at every point.
CORNISH: Well, I think --
DOESCHER: Can I counter that?
CORNISH: Hold on one second. I think he is arm's length.
Again, Master Sergeant Nicole Amor served 20 years in the Army Reserve when she was killed in Kuwait on March 1, along with six other soldiers.
I want to add one other thing. Somebody said, Hey, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan said this about the war, talking about the economic impacts of the war.
And so, Vance had an opportunity again to talk about what the Trump policies are. Here's how he responded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: Fundamentally, we are where we are. And you have to -- in my view, I'd like to know what is Abdul El-Sayed's solution for the problem that we have right now? It's easy to criticize something that happened seven months ago.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOESCHER: Whenever J.D. Vance says "fundamentally," that's his tell that he doesn't want to be talking about the topic. Right?
I'm going to counter this. J.D. Vance has made it abundantly clear, through his proxies, that he does not support his president. And that is the problem.
Again, the war was going very, very well in the first month. If you look at March, all the kinetic successes we had.
But point out the real risk that Iran was not only the fact that this is a regime that said, "death to America," but had killed Americans.
CORNISH: But all fair, you're saying and not things he's saying, So again, I --
DOESCHER: But -- so -- and I understand. No. So -- So, the second --
CORISH: Who are the proxies? Do you mean people -- sources in stories, or what do you mean by that?
DOESCHER: Sources in stories; top, you know, people like Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation; his -- Vance's top backers.
Vance should distance himself from people who try to speak on his behalf and instead point out not only the real national security threat of the Iranians, but also the fact that we were all paying a premium for 50 years on Iran's control over oil markets.
CORNISH: So, right now, voters don't agree with you. Seventy percent of the country disapprove of the war with Iran. The reason why we're talking about this today is because every Republican on the trail has got to change their minds.
So, Kurt, let's talk about what Democrats are saying, because I don't know if they have a solution. Honestly, I haven't heard one. This is what Abdul Sayed was asked about. This is what he's saying in Michigan to voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EL-SAYED: We're going to call a war powers resolution and end their capacity to continue this war. And then we are going to put it in the hands of our diplomats, who had addressed the issue in the first place under the Obama administration, and move toward a place where we can get back to the kind of agreement we had.
More war is not solving anything. It's getting us deeper into this quagmire. And I think it is time for us to actually try for the kind of peace that we had that had been negotiated under President Obama.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Now, there have been multiple war powers resolutions, so I don't know how that is an advance. What do you hear in that answer?
BARDELLA: I hear him saying, listen, this wasn't our war. We didn't start it. And clearly, there's no end in sight. There's no solution. And it's not been defined for the American people. What does victory look like?
Again, you just said we talked about successes in March. This thing wasn't supposed to even last until March. When the president announced this conflict, it was going to be quick, done --
DOESCHER: He said peace (ph).
BARDELLA: -- absolute. Yes. And -- and here we are, though, in November, still talking about the conflict.
The expectations the American people had was a president who campaigned on no more wars, ending conflicts. And now we have just the opposite of that.
He promised to lower gas prices. They've gone up, in part because of this conflict.
DOESCHER: But how does --
BARDELLA: And they didn't plan for it.
DOESCHER: -- renewing the JCPOA and giving, you know, the ayatollah -- wherever he is, if he's actually alive -- how is giving him more pallets of cash going to open up the Strait of Hormuz?
BARDELLA: Well, I think the point Democrats are making is this wasn't a problem. The strait was open before this war started.
DOESCHER: Not a problem when you had Iran funding Hamas, which also murdered American citizens on October 7th. Was it not a problem when the Houthis were bombing the Red Sea and closing American shipping ways?
CORNISH: I think the issue is, because all those things you're describing are happening right now.
DOESCHER: Yes.
CORNISH: Also, due to policies, it's not clear to the voter what is going to get them there.
So, after the break on CNN, we're going to talk about this moment that a voter actually asked Abdul El-Sayed. It goes to his background. He asked Sayed if he disavows the Muslim Brotherhood.
But first, sorry, not sorry in Maine. Troy Jackson not apologizing after telling his opponent, Sulan [SIC] Collins -- Susan Collins to shut up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:24:03]
CORNISH: Last week, Senator Susan Collins blamed Troy Jackson for a heckler who had interrupted their debate. So, he told her to shut up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Collins, I'm so sorry to interrupt.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sorry. Somebody's interrupting. We'll have our security deal with that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm terrified. I'm terrified.
A.I. data centers are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our water. COLLINS: So, this is obviously one of Troy's supporters.
TROY JACKSON (D), MAINE SENATE NOMINEE: Oh, shut up. I did not -- I didn't. I don't even know that kid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: "Shut up. I don't even know that kid," he said. He tells CNN he's not sorry about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Do you regret saying that?
JACKSON: No. You know, she said that it was a Troy supporter. I mean, she accused me of setting that up. I had no idea who it was.
What I'm not going to be is, you know, talked down to by Senator Collins. I'm not going to, you know, be accused of things like that, you know? So, I'm not -- I'm not going to apologize for that now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:25:02]
CORNISH: OK. Group chat is back. I wanted to talk about this, because instead of it being kind of like, hey, yet another uncouth moment in our terrible politics, it's turned into a conversation about how Troy Jackson has treated women more broadly in the past.
So, I want to play for you an exchange, where Dana was actually asking some questions about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Some Republicans are saying that there were stories when you were in the legislature of women who were -- I don't know about talking down to them -- but you were sort of aggressive in your tone, and that this is another example of that.
JACKSON: Some Republicans have been spending millions of dollars attacking me and my family, making untrue claims, things that they had to take off the air. And so, it doesn't surprise me that some Republicans would be making any claims.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Kurt, let's talk about this. If you're trying to win women in Maine, is this the candidate? And is this the kind of question you want that candidate answering?
BARDELLA: I think -- I worked for the former senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe, back in the day. I'm going to tell you something. In Maine, this is nothing.
I mean, I'm sorry. You're talking about lobster fishermen, softwood lumber folks. This is -- the way that he said it, he didn't say it in a malicious, mean, overbearing, you know, horrible way.
CORNISH: But they open the door --
BARDELLA: You accused me of something.
CORNISH: -- to people saying, some people say; there are rumors. There's a conversation about how you --
BARDELLA: Sure, and it's rich for Republicans to say that, by the way, when they stand by every day, cheering on Donald Trump, who says horrible things to women almost every day, especially in the briefing room.
DOESCHER: But did Susan Collins? She voted to convict him.
BARDELLA: So, you know. But again, like when you say, I'm going to accuse you of something on a debate stage without having the facts, and it's patently false. There's nothing wrong with saying, "Oh, shut up, come on. You've got to be kidding me."
CORNISH: I think one of the things that's the context here also, and maybe you were going to say this.
FISCHER: Graham Platner, right? You come from this race where there's this undertone of political or sort of the way that the previous candidate had been treating women was honestly why he got booted out.
CORNISH: In his personal life, yes.
FISCHER: In big parts of this. So, I think there's an undertone of that, that anything that triggers that sentiment in this race is going to get blown up really big.
CORNISH: Right. And why does that matter? Because so much of the electioneering against Susan Collins in Maine has been around her votes that Democrats say have diminished abortion rights.
DOESCHER: Which is ironic because Susan Collins is, by the vote count, the most moderate member of the Senate. Right? This is someone who voted --
CORNISH: But to single-issue voters, only one vote matters, and that is for Brett Kavanaugh, for example.
So, what I'm saying is, can this last-minute conversation about how he treats women counter what she's been dealing with, which is to say, Susan Collins, you haven't been good to women.
DOESCHER: Of course it can. This is the longest serving woman in the Senate, right? Someone who voted against confirming Amy Coney Barrett; someone who has voted against a lot of President Trump's signature legislation, including, you know, the ones that included pro-life stipulations for federal funding; and someone who voted to convict Donald Trump.
You cannot run against Susan Collins like she is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
BARDELLA: Yes, but you can say, you know, I wish you were as concerned about women's rights in America as you were about this word "Shut up. Because on your watch, women's rights have gone backwards in this country. And it's because of her vote for Brett Kavanaugh.
FISCHER: I also think there's a weird decorum thing at play here. I especially just watched Troy Jackson with Dana Bash there.
Dana is in a very, you know, clean-cut blazer. He's in more relaxed clothes, leaning on his knees. And I think that is emblematic of what this race has always been, which is Susan Collins is a very sort of tight-lipped, professionally appearing person.
And then all the candidates that have come before her on the Democratic side are -- you know, one is like a lobsterman, right?
CORNISH: Yes.
FISCHER: Now you have Troy Jackson. It's painting a picture of the very poised woman and the very outspoken sort of new political outsider and newcomer. And I'm just curious, for Maine voters, that's about --
CORNISH: I was just going to say for Maine, what does that mean?
FISCHER: Yes. Because Maine voters, it's a very different type of place. I think they gravitate towards some of those more off-the-cuff political outsiders.
BARDELLA: I've been in Lewiston, Bangor, Portland. Like Troy Jackson looks a lot more like Mainers that I've seen than Susan Collins does.
CORNISH: Or rather, you don't --
DOESCHER: But who delivers?
CORNISH: Yes.
DOESCHER: Who delivers more for Maine? Susan Collins --
CORNISH: Which is her argument.
DOESCHER: Part of -- I'm sorry. As women we know sometimes we need to put on the blazer, button it up, get down to business.
And you know what? It's not always nice. We know in D.C. how the sausage gets made. It's not pleasant.
But she has exerted so much control over the Republican Party in a way that has delivered real results for Maine.
FISCHER: That's the tension. The person who I feel represents Maine, the person who's getting things done for me.
BARDELLA: Well, Mainers see higher prices, higher tariffs hurting them. The relationship with Canada. Softwood lumber is a big issue up there. LIHEAP subsidies.
It's not looking great in terms of delivery, and that's part of the problem right now.
CORNISH: Well, right now she is down just a bit in the polls. It's a very tight race, one everyone is going to be watching.
Straight ahead on CNN, we're going to talk about those voters who were on the fence. We're going to ask them what matters more. Is it the high prices? Is it just fears of Democrats winning?
And later on CNN, France's president is calling for calm after violent protests over the weekend. In the next hour, what these demonstrators are demanding.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
