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Both Sides Dig In Ahead Of Last-Ditch White House Meeting; Soon: Top Congressional Leaders Meet With Trump At White House; V.P. Vance: "There's Certainly Going To Be More Indictments"; Trump Says There's No "List," But Urges DOJ To Look Into Rivals; Oregon Sues Trump Admin. Over National Guard Deployment; Right Now: Trump- Netanyahu Meeting On Peace Deal. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 29, 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 HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, the ultimate White House double header. Right now, President Trump is inside that building, holding the first of two high stakes negotiations that will have major repercussions, both at home and abroad.

Plus, power play. The Trump administration announces plans to send troops to one of the bluest cities in one of the bluest states in the country. Democrats have already launched a legal counter strike, but can they stop the president? And we're standing by for a news conference on the deadly attack on a Michigan church. Officials there may have new details on the killer's motive.

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

The breaking news. This moment, the president of the United States is behind closed doors with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crucial talks. Nearly two years after the barbaric Hamas attack inside Israel and the devastating retaliation inside Gaza.

The Trump administration is trying to persuade Netanyahu to get behind its 21-point peace proposal. It would end military operations and release the remaining 59 hostages, including some 20 believed to still be alive, held captive in Gaza almost two years. It's going to be an incredibly hard sell by President Trump, and not only his -- this is not the only meeting he is going to have that is going to be very tough today.

This afternoon, he's going to sit down with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for their first meeting on the government funding fight. In fact, their first meeting at all since President Trump took office, but there are only 36 hours to go until a shutdown, and neither side appears willing to budge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): We're heading into the meeting to have a good faith negotiation about landing the plane in a way that avoids a government shutdown but does not continue the Republican assault on the healthcare of the American people.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: So, just to be clear, there's not going to be any negotiation at this meeting. This is just going to be you and Thune and Trump telling Jeffries and Schumer, we're not giving you anything.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Look, I'm not going to get in front of the president and tell you what he will do, but I have talked with him, you know, a couple of times, even yesterday. And I'm telling you where his head is. He wants to bring in the leaders to come in and act like leaders and do the right thing for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters. Abby Livingston, I'm going to start with you. You have your ear very close to the ground on what's happening in Congress. What are you hearing about this crunch time and the strategy, particularly by the Democrats, as they barrel towards what looks like it could be a shutdown.

ABBY LIVINGSTON, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Well, I don't think this meeting could be any more consequential, and it may not be the minutia that's discussed. But if you'll recall, in late 2018 Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had that meeting, and that was a pivotal moment in her future speakership. That's when she turned the curve in the burnt orange coat and sunglasses.

And so, I think as cliched as it is, the optics are imperative. What I am curious about is both sides seem to have project confidence that they're going to win the politics of this, but I don't know anyone who knows how this is going to end, and I think that's a very hard projection to make at this point.

BASH: That's such a crucial point. Look, the sort of conventional wisdom based on, unfortunately, lots of shutdown threats and then actual shutdowns that we've all covered for many years now is that it's the party in charge that gets the blame. I'm not so sure that would happen now, but we do have the Democrats being pushed so hard, Shane, by their base to fight, fight, fight, fight. And in some ways, I think in many ways, that's what this is about, listening to them.

[12:05:00]

SHANE GOLDMACHER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah. I mean, I think you saw that clip of Hakeem Jeffries, and while, if you're on Capitol Hill, you hear him speak. I think most Democratic voters across the country have been saying they don't actually see their leaders fighting for them. They don't see them engaged in a fight. And so, for Jeffries, this is his first meeting with President Trump and Schumer--

BASH: Is it -- can we just stop for one second. I mean, it's that kind of incredible, like -- and we're not talking about first meeting this month, first meeting since Donald Trump took office, like, ever. GOLDMACHER: Yeah, ever. And by the way, Schumer's first since he's been president again, right?

BASH: Yeah.

GOLDMACHER: So, Trump hasn't even needed to sit down with the Democratic leadership for anything. And so, I wouldn't say a meeting is a concession, but that's what they've gotten at this point, and they may not get much more, right? The president's been pretty clear in the Republican leadership. They don't want to give anything. They are saying, we just want to keep the government open. That has more traditionally been the democratic tact.

BASH: Yeah.

GOLDMACHER: We want to keep the government open. You got to vote for this clean bill. Now it's the Democrats are saying, actually, we have some conditions that we need met in order to get our votes. But I do think the idea of a fight is so important for Jeffries and for Schumer, who are getting this push back from their base and even from their membership, saying, you can't just keep letting Trump run over us and ignore us and ignore all these different issues, where we want to stop him. We need to draw a line somewhere and this is the somewhere.

BASH: Let's listen to what the democratic minority leader, obviously, democratic minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said over the weekend and Majority Leader John Thune.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (R-NY): Everyone knows that you need a bipartisan negotiation to get this done. The American people do. But third, there is going to be huge pressure on Republican senators, congressmen, and even Trump, to do something about this horrible health care crisis.

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): We can have that conversation, but before we do release the hostage, set the American people free, keep the government open, and let's have a conversation about those premium tax credits.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, there are several things that Democrats are demanding in exchange for their votes to keep the government running, but the most, the biggest is healthcare subsidies and extending the subsidies because they believe, first of all that it's important for people who need those subsidies in order to get insurance through the Obamacare exchange. To get them, they don't expire until the end of the calendar year, but they want to start fighting for it now.

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And they want to reverse the Medicare cuts that the Republicans made, and they have made that the center of this fight so far. But to pick up on Shane's last point about the importance of this fight, even if it's just for optics, for Hakeem Jeffries and for Chuck Schumer. I think the question is whether or not Democrats are going to be happy with this tactic.

The president certainly doesn't seem very worried about the looming shutdown. He is, you know, off tweeting about everything else, even though the speaker said that he wasn't going to get ahead of him in what this negotiation or what this meeting is going to look like.

So, it's very clear that both sides are entrenched. It's unlikely. It doesn't look like it, at least for now that they're going to make any sort of deal. In the middle of that are thousands of federal employees, the American people, government subsidies that will come to a halt, government services that will also stop as a result of this shutdown. And if they don't make a deal by tomorrow at midnight, it's yeah, that's what's going to happen.

BASH: Abby, I want you to listen to something that really struck us, and that is a comment from Steve Womack. He is a Republican from Arkansas, and here's what he said on Friday to POLITICO. If you are a Democrat, even just like a mainstream Democrat, your predisposition might be to help negotiate with Republicans on a funding mechanism. Why would you do that if you know that whatever you negotiate is going to be subject to the knife pulled out by Russ Vought? Somebody gave him truth feeling.

LIVINGSTON: I mean, that's the actual quiet part out loud. And you know, anyone who's been around the Hill for any amount of time knows that it runs on trust and assumptions that, you know, folks will follow through on their word. And so, when Democrats have seen these claw backs, it's been extremely destructive to that.

And one other thing is, just keep an eye on Virginia. It may not be representative of the rest of the country because it has such a high proportion of federal workers, but that may be the most immediate political consequence we see to this, even though we don't quite know where this is going.

BASH: And real quick, because of the fact that there's a governor--

LIVINGSTON: The gubernatorial rights, yes.

BASH: Yeah, which, that's such an important point. We are going to -- people will do a segment just on that tomorrow. You're still -- you're still a great producer, Abby Livingston. Coming up. One former FBI director indicted, could another be next?

President Trump suggests the Justice Department should investigate the successor to the guy he fired in the last term, James Comey, who he's now very supportive of an indictment. That happened just days after Comey was charged. Is it hard to keep straight? Yes, it is, but we're going to make it all make sense to you. Next?

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BASH: It could be tough to differentiate politics from law enforcement in the Trump administration, where pressure to prosecute perceived opponents is out in the open, active military are deployed to blue cities against the will of local Democratic leaders.

Here's Vice President J.D. Vance on Fox. He's warning of what may come next after lack -- last week's extraordinary indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: Well, there's certainly going to be more indictments coming over the next three and a half years of the Trump administration, but we're always going to let the law drive this stuff, and the facts of the case, and not political motivations, which frankly makes us so much different from the Biden administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back. This also is another reminder of how different this Trump administration is from the other Trump administration because what we heard from Republican leader, Republican Congressman after another and Senator, is support for the fact that DOJ is indicted James Comey. And an insistence that it is just being done through the legal system, and kind of blowing off the fact that it was the president of the United States himself who, just five days before, put on Truth Social to his attorney general that she should do just that.

GOLDMACHER: I mean, I think you're making an important distinction, which is that it's not Trump, but his allies and even his vice president who are saying that this is within the legal system. But that's actually not what the president's saying. The president's been pretty clear. He wants these people prosecuted. He's not making a legal argument that we need to investigate George Soros, a legal argument that James Comey needs to be indicted, or Christopher Wray, or Letitia James, or a whole slew of people.

He's saying, these are the people I think committed crimes. I don't know what the crimes are yet. I don't know what the specific schemes are, but like, we should be looking into them, and we should be investigating them or prosecuting them, and I think that's a really big difference, right? In the first term, he wasn't so explicit about basically ordering this and then having an administration that was--

BASH: Right. For he was, and then when people told him no, he eventually backed off, and said, OK, fine. And yes, we are talking about James Comey. But there are other -- there's a very long list. And I'm going to put it up. It is not an exhaustive list of people he perceives as his enemies, some who have very much been open about their dislike for him politically.

Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, who is a member of the Federal Reserve, Jack Smith, John Bolton, George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Mark Milley, John Brennan, Chris Wray, Chris Krebs, Miles Taylor, these are all examples, not a whole list, but just examples of people who are in his political cross hairs. PAZMINO: Yeah. And I can tell you from speaking to people here in New York, in the case of the state attorney general -- the Attorney General, Letitia James, for them, it's not a question of if, it's only a question of when. They are expecting some sort of indictment or charges to come out because they know that the state attorney general is very much on Trump's retribution list, and he's made it clear through his social media posting.

When we hear from him talking about the people that he wants to essentially get back at. I mean, there's really no other way of interpreting than that -- that other than using the power he has now directing his Department of Justice to take action, which is exactly what he did a few days ago when we saw it materialize in the indictment of Comey.

BASH: And Comey is going to be a test case, because it is true what the Republicans said to a person is true that it was not the president or his allies who formally indicted. It was a grand jury. It is also true that I'm not a lawyer, but anybody who has even had any connection with the legal system will tell you that pretty much a grant and get an indictment on a ham sandwich. That's the sort of joke about a grand jury.

And it's going to play out through the justice system and through the court in the eastern district, and we're going to see the impact of what the president says. And you know, perhaps that will help determine what happens with the rest of the people on the president's list.

LIVINGSTON: What I found fascinating in the last few days, since the Comey indictment, is the fact that famed former prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald is joining him as an advisor. And my question on that circumstance and given the context of seeing so many law firms fold to President Trump. Is this a one off because James Comey happens to know many, many former prosecutors who are very talented lawyers, or do we see more individual lawyers step up and help defend some of these other folks?

BASH: It's a really good point. Let's turn to another area where the president is using his executive power in an unprecedented way, and that is the federal troops that he said he is going to send to the City of Portland at the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem.

I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary troops to protect war ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists. I'm also authorizing full force, if necessary, of course, thank you for your attention to this matter. Listen to what Dan Rayfield, who is the Oregon Attorney General, said this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN RAYFIELD, (D) OREGON ATTORNEY GENERAL: Ground ourself and how our president gets his facts, and he does that through social media. He doesn't do that by picking up the phone and talking to real people on the ground. He got to look at what's really going on in a city before you start trying to make these bold statements, and frankly, misleading the American people and starting to normalize the use of our U.S. military in American cities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:20:00]

BASH: Shane, what are you hearing from your sources about this?

GOLDMACHER: I mean, I think that Democrats have been concerned not just about Portland, but there's escalation all across the country, right? You saw there was talk about doing this in Chicago and the Governor, J.B. Pritzker, pushed back on it. There were troops deployed in California. There were troops deployed in Washington, D.C. And these are all democratic jurisdictions, democratic cities and states.

And it's a concern not just for the specifics of Portland, but the specifics of, can a president send troops that are not trained for this particular purpose. And now with that posting, you're talking about the use of full force, right? Like, you know, these are steady escalations in his aggression and his use of troops for -- in some ways he's making a political point.

BASH: Yeah. And two things, and we're going to take a quick break. The political point is really key, because he has been talking about Portland for years, since the Wall Street protests. And second, again, this is going to be a legal test because D.C. kind of doesn't count, because he had jurisdiction. This is a blue state and a blue city where they are going to sue, and we're going to see what they say about the constitutionality of this.

All right, coming up. Can President Trump strong on Prime Minister Netanyahu into accepting a Gaza ceasefire and returning hostages. If not, will the president of the United States turn on his on again, off again friend Netanyahu. And we are standing by for new details about yesterday's horrific attack on a Michigan church. Police may have more to say about the killer's motive.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: You're looking at live pictures of Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. They are testing out the mics, because any moment now, we are going to hear an update from officials on the investigation into the horrific shooting at a church there. So far, at least four people are dead. We're going to bring you that as soon as it happens.

But first, President Trump is sitting down for a high stakes meeting as we speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The president says a deal to end the war is likely the Prime Minister offered this assessment of a possible peace deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Finalized yet, but we're working with President Trump's team, actually, as we speak, and I hope we can -- we can make it a go because we want to free our hostages. We want to get rid of Hamas rule and have them disarmed, Gaza demilitarized, and a new future set up for Gazans and Israelis alike, and for the whole region.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Joining me now to discuss this and more is Republican Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. Thank you so much for joining me, sir. Nice to see you. I do want to start with that meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. What's your level of hope or confidence, whatever word you want to use, that this broad peace deal will actually happen?

REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH): Well, this is one where President Trump has really leaned in, both in this relationship and in his support for Israel, both for, you know, as he has defended Israel when Iran has attacked it directly, in providing direct support to Israel, and in also attacking Iran directly, and in making sure that he has a very strong relationship directly with the prime minister.

So, as the president has made, you know, seeking peace a very strong tenant of his second term. This certainly is one where, of course, he has high hopes that both with his personal relationship, his strong, you know, personal commitment to Israel and his personal commitment to peace that he might be able to achieve a deal here.

BASH: And is there a point at which you think that if it doesn't happen, which everybody believes, hopes that it will, for, you know, for everybody, for humankind, that the president will have to do something that he hasn't done so far, which is break with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

TURNER: Well, I don't think it's an issue of break, but certainly, it's an issue of pressure. In this instance, we certainly have seen where the president has led. I think he has, you know, provided both support for Israel, support for the prime minister, but at the same time, he hasn't been hesitant to show where there is a difference, a gap between his view and the prime minister's in direction and where they need to go. And I think certainly you're going to see that today as he tries to, you know, lead in the direction where he thinks the prime minister needs to go in order to be able to achieve a peace deal.

BASH: Let's look at another place on the globe where there is a very hot war that the president said he hoped to make peace and hasn't been able to do so yet, and that is Ukraine. You just returned from a congressional trip there. First, what did you learn that you're bringing back to your colleagues, including your party leadership?

TURNER: Well, you know on the ground in Ukraine that the story is much more encouraging than what you hear in Washington, D.C. The Ukrainians are, you know, it's not just the resiliency of the Ukrainian people and not just that the fact that if they continue to fight both, you know, inspirationally and the technology that they bring to the table.

What they have done with drones and anti-drone technology. There are cutting edge technology that they bring to the front line and how they have held the Russians at bay.

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