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Inside Politics
Democrats Win Across the Country in Sweeping Trump Rebuke; GOP Leaders Look to Tie Congressional Democrats to Mamdani; Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Tariffs, Executive Power Case. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired November 05, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:34:18]
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': Democrats are doing something they haven't done in a while, celebrating, celebrating big after sweeping all the key races in the first major test of President Trump's second term. Here's how the Governor's elect in Virginia and New Jersey summed it up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABIGAIL SPANBERGER, (D) VIRGINIA GOVERNOR-ELECT: In 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship.
(CROWD CHEERING)
SPANBERGER: We chose our commonwealth over chaos.
MIKIE SHERRILL, (D) NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR-ELECT: Here in New Jersey, we know that this nation has not ever been, nor will it ever be ruled by kings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:35:00]
BASH: President Trump responded to the blue wave earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't think it was good for Republicans. I don't think it was good. I'm not sure it was good for anybody, but we had an interesting evening and we learned a lot. I thought we'd have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented and what we should do about it, and also about the shutdown and how that relates to last night.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: My panel is back. David Chalian, I don't remember ever hearing Donald Trump even come close to eating crow. I'm not saying he ate crow, but he came closer than I've ever heard in that soundbite. DAVID CHALIAN, CNN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF AND POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Or at least he thought the Republican Senators he was talking to should be eating some crow.
(LAUGH)
CHALIAN: If that -- if he was not willing to step up to eat any, he clearly realized his party does have a problem here on the shutdown.
BASH: Right.
CHALIAN: And he was tying that -- in the days before the election, he's been urging them to change the filibuster rules and --
BASH: Yeah.
CHALIAN: He's been seeing this shutdown as a real political problem. There is no doubt that that was an overlay of what happened. But, so too has been the last 10 months of Trump's second term. That also is a major overlay of what was happening. And voters were responding. And we ask, Dana, we say like, was Trump a factor in your vote in New Jersey and Virginia? Now for roughly half of voters in those states, they say, no, he wasn't a factor. But when he was a factor, it was two to one in opposition. He drove a lot of the Democratic turnout --
BASH: Yeah.
CHALIAN: -- that we saw yesterday.
KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yeah, Dana, I mean, your point about the way the president is accepting or deflecting blame, I think one of the biggest differences between Trump and other presidents is that he is more than happy to blame his own party as long as it's not him, right? It's not -- he -- that's why what he said about the shutdown was so remarkable where Democrats had a great night. If anything, they've been handed the opportunity to dig in farther on that. They've been essentially told keep fighting. The president could have dug in as well.
BASH: Yeah.
HUNT: But what I was hearing from sources, Republicans were like, this is going to mean that people are going to start to give, they're going to --
BASH: Yeah.
HUNT: -- start to figure out a way out of this.
BASH: OK. So maybe the right way to say it is that he didn't eat crow, but he served it to them for breakfast.
(LAUGH)
BASH: Zolan, nice to see you.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, nice to see you as well.
BASH: This isn't just about the governor's races or the mayor's race in New York or even Prop. 50 in California. This went so wide and so deep way, way, way, way down ballots. Virginia, the blue wave went to the State House. In Georgia, two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission were flipped. Three Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices were retained. In Connecticut, Democrats scored big municipal races and they flipped Republican seats.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Right. It was down ballot. And in those big races we were talking about, particularly for the mayoral race in New York, you also saw record turnout that we haven't seen in decades. This was especially somewhat surprising to me, just when I look at the conversations that I had with voters during the last presidential cycle, particularly younger voters. You would pick up on a certain almost malaise, like a sense of almost people giving up on the democratic system, giving up or questioning whether their vote actually amounted to something.
Now, I mean, look, in many cases, like the tough part now begins for these people that have run these campaigns. But I think you can still have a takeaway of whether it was the frustration with Donald Trump, the broad coalition building, or a focused message on affordability rather than the existential topics that people may not be able to digest. People resonated and they went to the ballot box. They were actually moved and motivated to cast their vote. And that was something that based off the last election, I think particularly for the Democratic Party, was a concern.
BASH: I'm glad you mentioned young voters, and I want to drill down even more on the demographic and talk about male voters, ages 18 to 29, and look at the way that they came out according to our exit poll, David. Mikie Sherrill, 57 percent, Spanberger in Virginia -- it was a long night -- 56 percent.
(LAUGH)
BASH: Mamdani, 68 percent. And then compare it to 2024, nationwide, 58 percent for Donald Trump.
CHALIAN: Yeah. And again, nationwide is not these bluer --
BASH: No.
CHALIAN: -- places, right? So, there's some of that, but I mean, Mamdani courted this cohort of young men. I think he won him by 40 points against Andrew Cuomo, again, inside that very blue territory. But it is still revealing. This is young men, Latinos. These are demographic groups that Donald Trump made gains in and powered him to really, I mean, New Jersey was a place where he had narrowed his loss to just six points last year because of Latinos, young men and the like, that he made gains with.
[12:40:00]
And you just saw last night, those gains were not permanent with Donald Trump not on the ballot and after 10 months of this term, that was given back to the Democratic Party.
BASH: And in terms of the 10 months of this term, one of the factors that could be a good data point that is instructive is the question of Trump's immigration enforcement, whether it has gone too far. This is a question asked of Latino voters. 76 percent of Latino voters said yes in Virginia, 59 percent in New Jersey.
HUNT: Yeah. And I think this is really telling because this issue, the issue of the border, Trump was clearly winning on, right? And Joe Biden was clearly losing on that issue. But to have this kind of a swing and to really get our first sort of sense of understanding of what the optics of this are really going to mean, the \sort of basic truth it seems in American politics -- and David, you've covered so many presidential elections -- is that the electorate in general isn't really hugely comfortable on either extreme, right?
BASH: Definitely.
HUNT: And that's true in the big picture, and it's also true for these smaller issues.
BASH: Thank you for setting up this point. I want to bring up with you, Zolan, because the NRCC, the Republican Committee in charge of trying to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives, they have already -- they're already out with a new ad. Something tells me maybe they had it on the shelf --
(LAUGH)
BASH: -- and they are painting -- well, watch what they're saying about Mamdani.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now the socialists are celebrating. They call it progress. We call it chaos. Bureaucrats instead of doctors, social workers instead of cops, this is the future House Democrats want. And your city could be next. Stop socialism, stop Democrats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: They say it's going to be playing in 49 battleground districts.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Oh, they've been ready. I mean, you've also seen the president talking about Mamdani, not actually at the breakfast, today which was interesting. But, they've been ready, right? They -- you're going to see Republicans and Democrats watching now Mamdani's moves here after this election win. You're going to see Republicans trying to attach him to the -- and basically say he's the face of the party.
BASH: Yes.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Right? I think there's also another interesting reaction coming from Republicans today, whether it was J.D. Vance's post on social media where he said, I'm paraphrasing, but we need to focus on the homeland, domestic issues. There's been a little bit of some friction developing in the MAGA base over the White House's attention to overseas issues.
BASH: Really interesting.
KANNO-YOUNGS: -- and what they campaigned on of America First. And I think it's interesting that these candidates that won, they all focused on affordability in the country, right?
BASH: Coming to a New York Times article near you. All right, everybody stand by. Thank you so much. Don't go anywhere. Jamie Raskin will be here to talk about the Supreme Court and last night's election.
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[12:47:32]
BASH: At the Supreme Court, oral arguments just concluded on the most significant economic case to reach the high court in years, a challenge to President Trump's use of emergency tariffs. It's also a landmark test of the president's attempt to see what the limits are of his executive power. So far, it seems the Trump administration is facing some deep skepticism from several justices, at least that's how it sounded in some of the early arguments. Listen to one exchange.
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JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: Can you point to any other place in the code or any other time in history where that phrase together "regulate importation" has been used to confer tariff imposing authority?
JOHN SAUER, SOLICITOR GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, as to regulated importation that was held in TWEA, so obviously, and that's --
BARRETT: OK. OK. So an intermediate appellate court held it in TWEA. But you just told Justice Kavanaugh that wasn't your lead argument, that your lead argument was this long history of the phrase "regulate importation" being understood to include tariff authority.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Joining me now to discuss this and more is Democratic Congressman, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Nice to see you. Thank you so much for coming in. I know you listened to a good deal of these arguments.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN, (D-MD) RANKING MEMBER, HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Yes.
BASH: What was your takeaway?
RASKIN: Yes. Well, from my perspective, a great night out in America in the elections was followed by a great oral argument in the Supreme Court. BASH: Why?
RASKIN: Where -- because even conservative justices like Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett and the Chief Justice himself, Roberts, expressed serious skepticism and warranted skepticism about the argument that the president either has natural constitutional powers to impose tariffs whenever he wants, or he's deriving that power from IEEPA, the Emergency Economic Powers statute, which no other president had ever used before for tariffs, which doesn't mention tariffs and which specifically mentions other powers that the president does have.
So, I think they were really testing the credulity of the court and most of the justices were not willing to go along with that. And I think politically, the landscape has shifted so much that a lot of Republicans are hoping that the court strikes it down because the tariffs are such a nightmare economically and politically.
BASH: Shifted so much like since last night or because of the impact, as you say it, of the tariffs?
RASKIN: Well, yeah, last night -- the last night obviously --
BASH: Yeah.
RASKIN: -- helps liberate the court to do the right thing here.
BASH: Really?
RASKIN: But, well, look, Trump is losing, he's plummeting in the polls.
[12:50:00]
His tariff argument is ridiculous. No president has ever before tried to unilaterally assert tariffs of like 50 percent.
BASH: When I say really -- I'm sorry, I want -- my really was based on the court. I know this is probably a very ridiculous question.
RASKIN: Yeah.
BASH: But I'm going to ask it anyway. Because we know that the court, they're human beings and they pay attention to politics. But --
RASKIN: Yeah.
BASH: -- isn't this kind of thing supposed to be just like basic constitutional questions? Not about what politics are?
(CROSSTALK)
RASKIN: If it were, it would be -- if it were that, if it were just calling balls and strikes, as Roberts once said, it would be a nine- zero humiliating defeat for Donald Trump here because they're just finger painting on the constitution and on the statute. No other president has ever attempted to do this before. And remember, he's doing things like imposing a 50 percent tax on Brazil because he doesn't like the way they're treating Bolsonaro in the criminal justice system. It's got nothing to do with trade. We've got a multi- billion dollar trade surplus with Brazil and he's just throwing that out there.
And what I'm saying is that the justices are aware of this completely arbitrary and random manner that Trump is using the tariffs, and they understand that it's helping to tank our economy and hurt small businesses. So, I think everything is lining up for a massive repudiation of this claim that he can just impose a hundred percent tariffs one day on China if he wants, and then take them away the next day if they do something nice with him.
I think South Korea gave him some kind of golden crown or something.
BASH: Crown, yeah.
RASKIN: And then he lowered their tariffs. I mean, that is monarchist mercantilism. That is not the American system of free trade, which is limited by virtue of Congress's power --
BASH: Yeah.
RASKIN: -- to impose tariffs.
BASH: But we did hear --
RASKIN: We've got the power to do it.
BASH: We did hear one of the justices, and I'm not sure which one of the few who seemed like they were grasping for arguments to support the president saying, well, Congress, effectively -- I'm paraphrasing -- Congress doesn't really do its job anymore.
RASKIN: Well, that's true under Mike Johnson. I can't dispute that. But, Congress has repeatedly imposed tariff tables and tariff regimes. And that's because we have the exclusive power to impose taxes. We've got the exclusive power to regulate commerce both domestically and internationally.
BASH: As a constitutional expert. And I should note that you have taught constitutional law. Do you still teach?
RASKIN: I still teach it. They're not listening anymore.
(LAUGH)
RASKIN: But I'm not in the classroom, right?
BASH: OK.
RASKIN: I'm in Congress.
BASH: OK.
RASKIN: But I spent 25 years doing that. BASH: So, do you think that what we're hearing today is limited to tariffs or the kind of skepticism about presidential power could also be related to other ways that the president is aggressively using that power?
RASKIN: Today's oral argument indicates that the conservative justices may finally be willing to put the brakes on Donald Trump's utterly runaway arguments that he can do whatever he wants under Article II of the Constitution. Look, Article I says Congress has the power to declare war, not the president. Right? Not Tulsi Gabbard, not some Signal chat group, Congress. The representatives of the people were given that power by the framers because the framers did not trust kings because they were constantly plunging their people into wars of conceit and vanity and imperial advantage, and all of those old relics of feudalism.
Congress has the power to regulate commerce and to impose tariffs and impose taxes, not the president. What's the president's job? To take care that the laws are faithfully executed, the laws passed by Congress.
BASH: So, one of -- let's talk about last night. Obviously, it was a very big night for Democrats across the board, down ballot. One of the ways that the president is not happy about it, he seems to be blaming Republicans. He -- Kevin Liptak, my colleague at the White House is reporting --
RASKIN: Well he's right about that.
BASH: -- is reporting that he is -- he wants them to get something done to change their ways. One of the things that he has been talking about for the last couple of days more intensely is getting rid of the filibuster. That's actually something that you wanted to do when Joe Biden was president and things weren't getting through the Senate.
RASKIN: Yeah. Look, we don't need --
BASH: Is that an area where you agree with them?
RASKIN: We don't need a procedural fix at this point. We need the Republicans to recognize that there's a healthcare crisis they've imposed on the country. Millions of people are facing the loss of their health insurance because of the skyrocketing premiums under Trump and the end of the ACA tax credits. We need to restore those credits and we need to restore millions of people to Medicaid that were thrown off when they passed $1 trillion cut to healthcare in America while they gave $1 trillion tax break to the wealthiest people. That's why we're seeing a clean Democratic sweep across America.
[12:55:00]
BASH: So then, you wanted the filibuster to be ended when Biden was president. But now, no?
RASKIN: You know, I am not in the Senate, so I've got no say in that. BASH: Yes.
RASKIN: Right? And I would just say they need to come to the table, reopen the government, restore the healthcare of the people, save the SNAP benefits of the people. We're talking about 41 million people that Trump and his team were just willing to throw to the wolves in terms of their food benefits in the month of November. Luckily, Democratic attorney generals went to court and shut them down. We got two rulings on that.
So, people understand the class war that Trump is waging against the vast working middle class in America. And that's why you're seeing these results across the country.
BASH: Jamie Raskin, nice to see you.
RASKIN: It's great to see you.
BASH: Thanks for coming in.
RASKIN: Thank you so much.
BASH: Appreciate it. And thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after a quick break.
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