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Inside Politics

Trump Repeatedly Blames "Radical Left" After Kirk Killing; Gov. Cox "Conflict Entrepreneurs" Seek To "Radicalize" Us; Right-Wing Figures Target Private Citizens For Charlie Kirk Posts; Bessent: U.S. China Reach "Framework Deal" On TikTok; FBI: Recovered DNA Evidence Matches Suspect In Kirk Killing. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 15, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Today on "Inside Politics," ratcheting up the pressure, not lowering it. In the wake of the horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk, President Trump is rallying his MAGA base against the left while turning a blind eye to the far right's role in generally political violence that is rising.

Plus, TikTok boom, the Trump Administration says it's reached a framework deal with China to keep the popular app running in the U.S. We don't yet know whether or not the plan addresses pressing national security threats.

And New York governor Kathy Hochul is endorsing Zohran Mamdani for the Big Apple Mayor, other top New York Democrats are still waiting on their support for their party's nominee.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics."

Right wing activist Charlie Kirk is dominating the news and the psyches in Washington and really all around the country Republicans are mourning, a man who was at the center of the MAGA movement. Democrats are worried about rhetoric coming out of the White House, blaming them for the killing, threatening retribution.

Really, across the country, there are a lot of people are scared about violence becoming a regular part of American politics. Let's start today at the White House with CNN's Kristin Holmes. Kristin.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Dana certainly seems when it comes from the White House that this idea that there would be some kind of call for unity or some call to tone down the temperature that, that moment has passed and that it is clear President Trump is going to continue to blame the left.

We heard in a brief phone interview with NBC over the weekend, President Trump's in the same breath said that he wants the nation to heal but then added that he -- they were dealing with a group of radical left lunatics, and they don't play fair. President Trump then stepped it up again when he was asked by

reporters if there'd be an investigation into some of these left groups or liberals. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The problem we have is on the left. And when you look at the agitators, the -- you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that's the left. That's not the right.

REPORTER: Will you plan on investigating?

TRUMP: We'll see. We'll be announcing. They're already under investigation. You know, they're already under major investigation. A lot of the people, that you would traditionally say are on the left.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: And, of course, the data we've asked questions as to what exactly he means by that. What does he mean they're already under investigation? We had heard him in the Oval Office saying that anyone who might be associated with this kind of language would be under investigation, but it's unclear what's actually happening in terms of whether or not they have brought some kind of investigation or if there was something ongoing.

And I do want to say, though, you know, here at the White House, this is still deeply impacting the administration. Just a second ago, Vice President JD Vance sat down to host Charlie Kirk's podcast and do a celebration of his life. So they're still feeling it here on the ground as well.

BASH: Yeah. Of course, they are, understandably so. Kristen, thank you so much for that reporting. I'm joined here by three other terrific reporters, CNN's Manu Raju, Alayna Treene, also of CNN, and Hans Nichols of Axios.

Manu, it's just -- I think I've had a lot of people asking me, you know, what does this mean and what's happening with our political leaders? And I think Peter Baker of the New York Times and others really kind of nailed it over the weekend by -- and I want you to weigh in on this as well -- that Donald Trump is not constitutionally, small C, set up to ratchet down the pressure.

It's not who he is. It's not who he ever was. He is somebody who -- whose instinct is to do just the opposite. That's just on the politics. And then if you work in the fact that he is, as Kristen said, very upset, mourning somebody who was very close to him, it's making for a cocktail of something that we haven't seen with regard to presidential leadership certainly in our lifetime.

[12:05:00]

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: His response to crises depends on the moment, depends on the person it's happened to, and it's been basically, if it's a Republican or someone who is aligned with him, he has a much different response than if it's a Democrat. Sometimes he doesn't respond to that at all.

And you're right. He does not he's not a consoler in chief. There's -- the way George W. Bush handled post 9/11, go saying Islam is not a religion of war, it's a religion of peace, trying to ratchet down anger towards Islam. And there's Trump putting -- directing the blame at the left. Even before we even knew who the suspect was, he was doing just that. That's who he is.

You know, and the question is, you know, we are in a moment really of a time where we're seeing violence play out across the political spectrum. I mean, there were two Minnesota lawmakers who were targeted. One, sadly, assassinated at our home with her husband this year, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, at his house burned down. We didn't hear much from the President when that happened. A totally different response this time.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah. I mean and I think the point as well is rarely have we ever seen an administration, and not just the President, but all of his top aides, the Vice President included act or react to a moment like this in such a deeply personal way.

And that's what I think to me has been so striking to see the way that they you know, he ordered flags to be flown at half-mast. He is going to honor Charlie Kirk posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I mean, these are things that are a very different response to what we've seen in other cases like this.

I think part of it too, and the one thing that I really do want to get answers on, the White House has not been clear in my questions on this, is what he means when he says we're going to go after these leftist organizations. I mean, obviously, that that quote that, Kristen referenced of the President saying that is not unifying rhetoric.

But we did get a little bit of clarity, I think, and this is what my what White House officials are telling me in my conversations with them is look at what Susie Wiles, the White House Chief of Staff said last week, which was essentially, this could be baked in into a broader anti-crime crackdown that they are working on, particularly as it relates to violent crime. But no one has any answers on what that actually means or what that could look like.

BASH: Yeah. So there's that, and then there are, voices that are notable in the Republican Party because they are voices, maybe solos, not a not a chorus, like the Governor of Utah, who on Friday at the press conference when they were talking about the investigation took a moment to, discuss and plead with people to calm down the rhetoric. Steve Bannon took issue with that.

Yesterday, I interviewed Governor Cox and got him to react to Steve Bannon basically attacking Cox for trying to lower the temperature.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. SPENCER COX (R-UT): Mr. Bannon is angry and rightfully so. And, I'm not saying we have to just sing Kumbaya and hold hands. What I'm saying is we actually should disagree. I think Charlie represented that better than anyone. Charlie said some very inflammatory things, and some in some corners of the web, that's all people have heard. But he also said some other things, about forgiveness.

Look, there are conflict entrepreneurs out there who benefit from radicalizing us, and I'm not one of those. I don't know that that's particularly helpful. But he is right at this. We need to find out how this happened, and we need to stop it from happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANS NICHOLS: Oh, you're seeing voices of calm throughout the Republican Party. Speaker Mike Johnson has been sort of leading on this, asking people to take a beat.

BASH: That's true. That's true.

NICHOLS: The challenge for Johnson and for leaders in the Republican party is that their rank and file, in some cases, get pretty angry, and they are expressing some mis-anger. So every time a leader sort of asked to tamp things down and cool, they sort of let passions cool a little bit. There's another member that will come off and say something it's a little bit more on the inflammatory side, and that's really a challenge for the congressional leaders at this moment.

They're also dealing with very practical concerns that Senators and lawmakers have about their own security. And I suspect we'll see a lot of that this week as members are wondering what kind of funds they can use to protect themselves and how they can keep themselves safe, and that's a bipartisan issue.

BASH: So there is, you know, the idea of fighting crime combined with there's so many different factors and layers of this moment that we're in, combined with the fact that Charlie Kirk had enormous reach, particularly with young people. I mean, you saw this weekend, major sport -- sporting events take the time to pay tribute to Charlie Kirk, which is not something you even sometimes see for Presidents or elected officials, never mind somebody who is, you know, a well-known conservative activist.

And then there are the people who, not just online, but in the White House, Stephen Miller, in particular, who has been very forward leaning about the fact that they want to go after political enemies because of this.

[12:10:00]

Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, posted this. "Pay attention, something dark might be coming. The murder of Charlie Kirk could have united Americans to confront political violence. Instead, Trump and his anti-democratic radicals look to be readying a campaign to destroy dissent." And what are we talking about here, Manu? We're talking about if you look really anywhere on any of your social media platforms, you are going to see examples of conservatives making lists of people who maybe are just everyday Americans, some who are working for schools or for local governments who -- there's a spectrum of people who reacted in a cheering way to Charlie Kirk. There's some who were clearly just completely out of bounds saying anything positive about the murder of a 31 year old man is disgusting.

And then there are those who just posted their feelings about it, and maybe it wasn't that disgusting. But look at what Reuters is reporting, and they did a review of screenshots and comments posted to the to a site, which is compiling all of these. Again, some featured jokes, some featured celebrations, others were just critical of the far right figure and explicitly denouncing violence.

But this is something that -- this is kind of what Chris Murphy is talking about. And the question is, where does that lead us?

RAJU: Well, look. I mean, this has been -- the pattern of this second term of the Trump Administration is to go after their critics. So that I tamp down on dissent, and those comments from Stephen Miller in the wake of all this were pretty striking. I mean, he was going after one group after another targeting George Soros and the like as well, of course, who's a big Democratic donor.

So it's very clear that -- concerns that, I guess, Chris Murphy's voicing is that, will they use this as a pretext to go even further in that retribution campaign? And Stephen Miller's comments suggest that they will. You know, just to the point, though, I mean, you can be -- you know, there is a lot of anger, as Hans was saying, from the rank and file.

BASH: Yeah.

RAJU: From the GOP. But, you know, a test of leadership too is to have to tamp down that anger and to say that, look, violence happens on both sides, on the right and on the left, and none of it is good. We should stop at all of that. And that is just simply not the message from the White House.

BASH: And I just want to just use just facts here, about some examples of violence that happened against those on the left. One we've talked about a lot, which is, and you just mentioned, the murder of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband. Senator Mike Lee, put up something on social media, "Nightmare on Waltz Street." Waltz, referring to the governor of Minnesota.

Now was he celebrating the murder of a democratic lawmaker? No. But he was mocking it. This is a sitting United States Senator from Utah. It took him a long time. He finally did delete it after he was -- got complaints from his colleagues from Minnesota.

Paul Pelosi was doing nothing except sleeping in his bed, and he was almost killed by somebody in a politically violent act with a hammer in his home. Afterwards, we saw a lot of Republicans again, not cheering it necessarily, but mocking it.

Don Junior had a post-up for a week that had -- you can just look at it now. "Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready." What did they say about this at the White House, Alayna?

TREENE: Look. I mean, clearly, what we're hearing from the President, I think a lot of officials are trying to take their cues from him. They are trying to paint this as if it's only violence on the left, which is clearly just not true.

And I think to Hunt's point into what you are all saying about the anger among break and file, there is so much anger in the White House. It was very quick. I remember the day that the shooting happened, in my conversations with people in the White House, there was that shock, there was that disbelief, the grief. It very quickly turned to I'm angry. We need to hold people accountable. And there needs to be some reckoning here. And that is where the messaging is going. This idea that they need to target left wing organizations as the President is saying.

Now, of course, when they see these images, they know, yes, there is violence on both sides, but they are trying to kind of repaint the narrative that it's mostly on the left, which again is just not. Not true.

BASH: Yeah. And, again, I think that we need to say again, we understand they're angry. They have every right to be angry and to be mourning and to be sad. We just we have to get information about -- more information about who this person is, and it's still an open question about culturally where we are right now with all of this.

Don't go anywhere coming up. Speaking of our culture, TikTok appears to be off the chopping block. The Trump Administration says there's a deal with China to keep the app operating in the U.S.

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BASH: The Trump Administration says it has a plan to keep TikTok operating in the U.S.. The Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent isn't divulging many of the details on what he calls a framework deal.

But President Trump posted this on Truth Social rather. "A deal was also reached on a certain company that young people in our country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy. We'll be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one. My pink people in our country very much wanted to save. They will be very happy. We'll be speaking to President Xi on Friday. The relationship remains a very strong one."

[12:20:00]

My panel is back. This is really important for all of our children and Manu.

TREENE: And Manu.

RAJU: I just joined TikTok.

BASH: But there are so many unanswered questions that are really critical. National security -- U.S. national security, and what about those algorithms?

NICHOLS: And ownership. I mean, right? It's going to be U.S. ownership, but do we know who it's going to be, what the price is going to be? This reminds me of pretty much every trade deal, and there have been dozens that the Trump Administration has done since in Trump 2.0, which is to say they announced too much fanfare that there's a deal, and then we find the details out later. And sometimes we find out that there isn't actually a final deal.

So on this one, I mean, has anyone checked with the Chinese embassy? Has anyone checked with the Chinese side if they've confirmed that they actually have an agreement in principle or framework or however they're couching it? This does put more pressure on that Xi-Trump phone call on Friday. And then the, you know, the question that we're all kind of chasing is when the two of them meet, and that is going to be an interesting.

BASH: And that and that's a factor --

NICHOLS: Absolutely

BASH: -- in this framework of a deal because that's really what the Chinese want. They were totally dug in on not selling, on not doing -- making any of the changes that the U.S. wanted, and now they're apparently not dug in.

TREENE: Yeah. Well, there's a couple parts of this because there was a proposal that, you know -- and it essentially, I remember reporting on it back in April, and this was before the tariffs on China -- the original tariffs before, you know, all the back and forth went into effect, which was that a couple of private, equity firms, VC firms, places like Oracle, Black Stone would have some sort of investment in U.S. operations in TikTok.

From my conversations leading up to this, people are saying it should resemble a potential deal, look something like that. But the reason it fell apart was because, you know, we went into this trade war with China, and that really angered them. Now, though, there's a difference.

Now it's not just tariffs that are in, you know, in play as you mentioned, but it is this idea of having them sit down. We know I've reported that, the President is going or as at least as very much expected to go to South Korea next month. There have been very serious discussions with the Chinese about having them sit down on the sidelines of that APAC Summit in South Korea.

But what China really wants is to have the President sit down with Xi in China, and those talks are also happening. There is a possibility the President could add a China trip to do this. And so that's what is really kind of getting in the way of all of this.

Now this deal isn't going to be finalized, we're told, until Trump and Xi actually get on the phone on Friday, so a lot could still fall apart by then, but that is the key to what they want.

BASH: Everybody has domestic politics, including --

TREENE: Right.

BASH: -- Xi. So if he says, look what I got for this. I've got the U.S. President coming to China.

RAJU: Yeah. I mean, I would say the other thing that's so remarkable about this whole situation is this, this exemplifies how far Donald Trump has stretched the power of the executive branch and perhaps illegally in a lot of ways too. Because Congress passed a law to ban TikTok. It forced ByteDance to sell TikTok, otherwise, it cannot use it in any domestic platform. The Supreme Court upheld that law and Trump had an executive order saying, we don't need to enforce that law.

BASH: Yeah.

RAJU: And he has allowed -- been allowed to do this for months, probably in direct violation of what the Supreme Court's saying, but bipartisan majorities in Congress is saying, and there's been very little peep out of members of Congress about this as well.

BASH: The President has been, sort of back and forth on TikTok because of -- for the same reason everybody is, frankly, because of the national security concerns versus the fact that he reaches a lot of people and his son, Barron, tell tells him all the time how important it is.

Let's just go back in time. This is August 6, 2020, during Trump 1.0. The United States is an executive order then. "The United States must take aggressive action against the owners of TikTok to protect national security."

Now, again, whatever this framework is --

NICHOLS: Yeah.

BASH: Could very well have a national security protection in it.

NICHOLS: Yeah.

BASH: We don't -- we just don't know yet.

NICHOLS: Right. Look, campaign wise, politically, TikTok is pretty clear that it helps Donald Trump. I mean, you see this with individual offices in -- on the House and the Senate where the official offices aren't on TikTok and the campaign account is on it, so they can broadcast to their to their supporters and try to win converts.

Donald Trump likes TikTok as a political tool. I think that should be a factor in everyone's discussion about where this is going to go next. And if -- the other factor, this is that Donald Trump can always change his mind. And, I mean, doesn't it look quaint that 2020 quote on TikTok? I mean, there have been, like, six iterations of --

BASH: I know.

NICHOLS: the President's position on TikToks. Democrats have changed too. Right?

BASH: Absolutely.

NICHOLS: Biden was against it, then Biden got on, or his campaign got on.

BASH: Yeah.

NICHOLS: So I don't -- I don't even know where everyone is on it. Maybe --

RAJU: Yeah. I mean, Biden signed that into law, and then they were campaigning on TikTok.

BASH: Using TikTok.

RAJU: Yes.

BASH: No question. Everybody is all over because it's so popular, and they have to deal with the way that those two things are colliding.

[12:25:00]

Everyone stand by. Up next, FBI Director, Kash Patel, is putting out their new evidence, he says, links the suspect in Charlie Kirk's death to what actually happened, what investigators are learning from the online presence of the shooter, and why some are scrutinizing Patel's, quote, unquote, "transparency."

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BASH: We expect to see official charges tomorrow against the 20