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Inside Politics
Trump Backtracks on Deadline for Ukraine to Accept Peace Deal; Trump Lashes Out at NYT Over Article About His Shorter Days; Indiana Republicans Reverse Course, Will Consider Redistricting; Thanksgiving Dinner Tab Scrutinized Amid Affordability Debate. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired November 26, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: -- on china. So with sanctions, you can always ratchet up higher --
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR ANALYST: Yeah.
NICHOLS: -- and that is what Republicans want to do. And we'll see if there is a -- I suspect, there is going to be more of the dance.
CORNISH: Also nerding (ph) out if discharge petitions are the new black, like is this the way to actually get something done? Like, I'm going to be curious to see if someone else tries it. You guys stay with me. Next, we're going to have a report about President Trump's schedule, and why people talking about it caused him to lash out.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CORNISH: It seems "The New York Times" has touched a nerve with President Trump, a new story analyzing Trump's schedule since January found that the 79-year-old has fewer public events, fewer domestic trips, and shorter days in the Oval Office compared to his first term.
[12:35:00]
President Trump lashed out at "The Times" this morning. In his social media post, he says "The radical left lunatics are in the soon-to-fold New York Times did a hit piece on me that I am perhaps losing my energy despite facts that show the exact opposite. There will be a day when I run low on energy, it happens to everyone. But with a perfect physical exam and a comprehensive cognitive test (that was aced) just recently taken, it certainly is not now!"
He also found a way to insult the reporter of the story, calling her "ugly inside and out." The panel is back. I want to talk about this because reporters in Washington, it was just they were so embroiled in this idea of age with Biden, who's reporting on it, who's not, and it started with this kind of story.
BURGESS EVERETT, CONGRESSIONAL BUREAU CHIEF, SEMAFOR: Yeah. And the volcanic Democratic reaction to it is being mirrored by President Trump right now. I mean, this is a less taboo subject than it wasn't because of all that President Biden went through, but it's still very sensitive for the subjects. And for President Trump in particular, projecting more energy than Joe Biden was central, essentially, to winning the 2024 election and the implication from this article is age is catching up to him in the same way.
CORNISH: Yeah. They try and bring a lot of data. At one point, they talk about his total official appearances, by their count, decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events of that year. And for that same period, he's appeared in just a thousand. A thousand is pretty good but they're keeping track.
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And we saw this type of reporting come out during President Biden's administration as well, analyzing exactly what time of the day he was getting up, when he was holding events. I think that because of everything that happened during Biden's four years in office, that has raised a lot of concerns for not just people who are working with the president, but for voters. And they are more closely scrutinizing what a president looks like as he's trying to perform these duties of commander in chief as he gets older. And so I think that they are -- that what happened with Biden has really renewed or drawn a sharper scrutiny on the subject of age that will carry on probably not just to President Donald Trump --
CORNISH: Yeah.
SAENZ: -- but to others if there are other older presidents.
CORNISH: And we should say what's interesting about this is it's not just them saying, well, Biden was old and now Trump looks old. They go specifically after the people around him. And I want to read this quote to you. It says, "The people around him are similar to Biden's age. They would talk as if we're living in a little bit of a fantasy world. Trump in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors have created this fiction about his health to hide the hard cold truth that he is at 79, one of the oldest people to ever occupy the office." This feels like the sensitive thing here.
NICHOLS: Yeah. Look, he's the president, President Trump, President Biden -- so I'm glad you sort of raised that point. He's in a position now of proving a negative, which is to say I'm not old, or like, and it is just exceedingly difficult to do. It's also hard for reporters to sort of prove or make, like really land the blow that the president has lost a step. So how do you go around that? Well, I mean, people did it, my colleague Alex Thompson did a great job covering the Biden administration. He -- I think he was the first, I'm going to give him credit right now for being the first one. Now he's definitely the first -- was the first to really scrutinize Biden's schedules.
We're seeing "The Times" do that with Trump. It's one way into the story. What you really need is the private schedules. You need to know when the president is going to bed, how much -- remember, the executive time story?
EVERETT: What the executive time in (inaudible).
(CROSSTALK) NICHOLS: Like the Jonathan Swan story from Trump 1.0. That's like, again, we're playing assignment editor here, but like it's Wednesday before Thanksgiving, that's what you want to get.
CORNISH: But it starts with just one or two stories, right?
NICHOLS: And observations matter, right?
CORNISH: Yeah.
NICHOLS: Like, the observations matter. I think the point that Burgess made is that the Biden folks were so sensitive and this sort of anger on this is an echo of it. There's also a fair amount of blowback as a reporter that wrote some of those age stories on reporters during Biden.
CORNISH: Yeah.
NICHOLS: Where you would -- where you would be, somewhat attacked for questioning whether or not Biden was fully up to the job or whatever the implication was. But clearly, this has gotten under the president's skin. We'll just -- it just requires more reporting. But a lot of it, as it was with Biden, it's in the public. You can see him.
CORNISH: Yeah. But also he relies on still talking about Biden in that way. I think even at the Turkey thing, he was talking about the auto pen. So, the idea that someone would move him into the same category while he's still actively still talking about it, probably is not ideal for Trump.
SAENZ: Yeah. I mean, repeatedly, President Trump will always bring up sleepy Joe, old Joe. He put up that picture in the colonnade of all the presidents instead of President Biden's picture. It's a picture of an auto pen to suggest that he wasn't fully capable or running the ship --
CORNISH: Yeah.
SAENZ: -- at the time. But for Trump, I mean, you saw that he took a very personal attack towards the reporter. That's also something that we've seen him do.
[12:40:00]
(CROSSTALK)
CORNISH: Yeah. But we didn't actually call her a farm animal. So I think that this is the age of, you know, propriety.
I want to turn to another topic. Indiana Republicans said they'd stand up to President Trump's redistricting demands. But today, new signs that they may be giving in.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CORNISH: To redraw or not to redraw, that is the question facing Indiana Republicans. Just days after GOP leaders in the State Senate bucked President Trump's demand that they gerrymander the congressional map, they may now be reversing course.
[12:45:00]
The State Senate President now says the Chamber will meet on December 8th to vote on a redistricting proposal. Although final passage is still not assured. This is the latest in a series of fights playing out across the country as both parties vie for control of the U.S. House.
So my panel of reporters is back. One of the reasons why I want to talk about this is because whether it is Russia or some of these other issues, you see these glimmers of Republicans here and there who are like, not so fast. I'm not sure we want to do this. The example here is the speaker pro tempore in the Indiana State Senate. He says, "I'm sorry, Mr. President," he was saying he told to Trump, "We think there's another path forward to get you what you need. And that is by finding a good candidate, instead in the congressional district number one and getting behind the person there."
So saying like, there's another way to do this, which is just do politics.
SAENZ: Yeah. I think that Rodric Bray has been a really interesting figure in all this because he doesn't feel that the votes are actually there in the State Senate to move forward on redistricting. But what we're seeing play out, the fact that the House is going to come back and now is forcing the Senate's hand and the Senate will be coming back, and this is President Trump at least using his muscle to push them to at least have a vote.
CORNISH: Yeah.
SAENZ: The question here is going to be --
(CROSSTALK)
CORNISH: Doesn't need two separate phone calls I think, we have in the notes. Yeah.
SAENZ: Yes. And I think the issue here is, is the state Senate actually going to vote to pass these maps? It seems like the governor is in favor of that. The house is in favor of that. But is Rodric Bray right? And does he actually not have the votes or in this process, is Trump going to draw out those votes (inaudible)?
(CROSSTALK)
CORNISH: Yeah. And Trump is already posting about it, of course, saying I'm so glad to hear the Indiana House is stepping up to do the right thing, and talking about this as a kind of grassroots movement somehow.
(LAUGH)
NICHOLS: Maybe it's grassroots when you water from above and you fertilize from above and you direct --
EVERETT: Vice president going there.
NICHOLS: Yeah. And you direct the Texas legislature did in pretty strong terms. Look, this is trench warfare. For every response on the Republican side, there's a response on the Democratic side. We don't know how this is all going to shake out in large parts because the courts have yet to weigh in. We're expecting the Supreme Court to weigh in on this state out in Texas that likely becomes -- will arrive before December 8th, which is their filing deadline. That's when we'll get a first hint on how the court feels about all this.
My general take on redistricting is it seems like there's a consensus that it's OK to do it once a decade. Now, you can be kind of aggressive, but not too aggressive. But it seems like there's almost like a gentleman's agreement on how aggressive you're going to be. But we get in the mid cycle redistricting and everyone's like, oh dear, not acceptable. Right? And that's -- and I think which is (ph).
(CROSSTALK)
CORNISH: Well then, oh dear, let me introduce you to "The Atlantic." Here is their headline, --
(LAUGH)
NICHOLS: Yes.
CORNISH: -- which says, "Welcome to the Gerrymandering Apocalypse." America is quickly moving toward a system in which tens of millions of blue-state Republicans and red-state Democrats effectively have no congressional --
NICHOLS: Yeah.
CORNISH: -- effectively have no congressional representation at all.
NICHOLS: And here's the knock-on effect on that. And this is what concerns serious members of both parties, is that the candidates that are going to get elected are going to be more partisan and they're not going to be serious legislators.
EVERETT: Yeah.
NICHOLS: And they're not going to come to Washington necessarily to cut deals, to find common ground.
CORNISH: Right. We've already seen a taste of that.
NICHOLS: And it will just be -- and Burgess was sort of making this point off air. But the House will start looking more and more like the Senate after Sinema and Manchin, which is to say that there will -- the parties will both get more progressive and more conservative and it'll be harder for deal making.
CORNISH: But Burgess, this is not something that's just acted upon us as voters. I mean, is the argument that somehow you're being disenfranchised when this happens? Does that resonate with people?
EVERETT: Look, I mean, a lot of these states are already gerrymandered. I think like you go to a state like Maryland, I think Republicans already feel like they're disenfranchised there. They only hold one House seat. They obviously have a larger share than one out of eight people in Maryland or Republicans. So I think there's that argument in a bunch of red and blue states already.
I think one thing that I think the Indiana Republicans have in the back of their mind is you can't aggressively gerrymander and go too far. And so if President Donald Trump's approval ratings are too poor and it starts splashing all across the country on Republicans, you could lose some of these seats that you've redrawn because you've taken these diluted safe seats and spread all these voters out. And so that's called a dummymander. And I think that that's something that Republicans who have been through these wars --
CORNISH: Hold on, it's called a dummymander?
EVERETT: Correct.
CORNISH: You've heard this before?
EVERETT: I am such a nerd about this --
(LAUGH)
EVERETT: And so there -- so there's --
CORNISH: Yeah.
EVERETT: -- a political risk to doing this.
NICHOLS: Yeah. That's the great irony of this, right? Is that you're setting up for trench warfares, fighting seat by seat. And what you're -- you potentially are doing, if you go the dummymander route is that you set up the possibility of a wave election. And so, because if you cut too close to the bone and try to get too aggressive on some of these seats you're taking, and then you have an unpopular president, you have midterm elections that have much bigger swings.
So one potential, and I don't think it'll be this cycle. I think this cycle, we're still --
EVERETT: Yeah.
NICHOLS: -- in sort of trench warfare.
EVERETT: I agree. I agree with you.
NICHOLS: But eventually, demographics change --
[12:50:00]
CORNISH: Yeah.
NICHOLS: -- state politics change.
CORNISH: Yeah, I was about to say, I think Democrats learn that demography is not destiny.
NICHOLS: Yes.
CORNISH: And so making these kinds of changes to these coalitions can have some real effects. Let me turn to something else because we've been hearing about Thanksgiving tariffs, maybe. Up next, a reality check on how the president's economic policies are taxing your meal.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:55:00]
CORNISH: How much does your Thanksgiving meal cost this year? Well, depends on who you ask.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal, this is the greatest, is 25 percent lower than one year ago.
25 percent reduction in cost for Thanksgiving between Biden and me.
Thanksgiving this year will cost 25 percent less than Thanksgiving last year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK, that's one take. But here's another.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ADAM SCHIFF, (D-CA): Meals this year are going to cost you 40 percent more. If you opt for beef instead, that's going to be 15 percent more. A side dish like sweet potatoes, that's going to be 37 percent more.
REP. SYLVIA GARCIA, (D-TX): It's all about the tariffs. A lot of the vegetables, no matter what you add to your menu, will be slightly more expensive if they're fresh.
SEN. PATTY MURRAY, (D-WA): Don't be surprised when your receipt comes out much more than you remember.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: And of course, you probably have your own opinion, right? You've been out shopping. Well, CNN's Matt Egan does have some data for us. And Matt, just first help us understand the numbers. What would we even look at to get our arms around this?
MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Audie, a lot of this really does depend on who you ask, where you live, and maybe most importantly, where you shop. And there's some truth to both sides here, but also some cherry picking of the data as well. For example, in that clip you just showed, President Trump continues to tout the 25 percent cut to the Walmart Thanksgiving basket. And look, yes, it's true. Walmart has cut its prices by 25 percent from last year.
But what's also true is that Thanksgiving basket from Walmart, it's also smaller than last year, right? Last year was 15 products. This year, it's 21 products. Other way around this year, it's 15 products. Last year is 21. Also, the basket contains fewer of those more expensive name brand products and more of the more affordable store brand products as well. So, that's another factor here. And also, another thing that we should just be thinking about is the fact that Walmart felt the need to cut prices by 25 percent in the first place.
That really speaks to all the pressure on lower-income and middle- income consumers right now. Now, Democrats are saying that turkey prices are up. And on a wholesale level, yes, turkey prices are up. However, Walmart says that their retail prices on their Butterball turkeys, they're the lowest in six years. And the American Farm Bureau says that retail prices on turkeys are down because a lot of the stores are doing heavy discounts to lure all of us shoppers into their stores in the first place.
Now, a lot of this depends on where you live. The American Farm Bureau says that here in the northeast and also out west, a meal for 10 on Thanksgiving is averaging around $60. But in the -- elsewhere in the country, it's around $50. Now, look, I just don't think that we should get lost in this debate over Thanksgiving dinner because it's not really a great proxy for the cost of living in the first place. The reality is that President Trump promised to lower grocery prices immediately. And that was never realistic because it's just not the way that inflation works.
Here we are a year later and clearly grocery prices are up. They're not down.
CORNISH: It's also worth pointing out that we have heard some noises about perhaps rolling back some tariffs. I don't know if that's actually come to pass. What can you tell us?
EGAN: Yeah, Audie, listen, as the debate has shifted to affordability, right, the administration has taken action by rolling back tariffs. Yes, some of the tariffs that they themselves imposed, they're shielding some agriculture imports from tariffs including, coffee, fruit, dozens of other products as well. Now, the good news is there's some new research out that shows that these tariff rollbacks will help lower some costs, right? Bananas 3 percent, nuts and coffee by about 7 percent.
Now, the catch though is that's only if the stores share the tariff savings with consumers. And that's a big if because we know that stores, once they've raised prices, they don't really like to lower them. But let's just assume they share all of those savings with all of us consumers. Well, the Peterson Institute says that that's going to save consumers, but only barely. Right? $35 in savings because of those tariff rollbacks, that is just a drop in the bucket when compared with the estimated tariff cost of $1,700. $35 in savings, $1,700 in increased cost. This would be like if your landlord raised your rent by $200 a month and then to make you feel better about it, handed you a gift card for $35, right?
It's like, OK, thanks. But it doesn't really do anything. And so, I do think this is another example of the disconnect between the reality and the rhetoric on prices, right? The president says there's no inflation. Clearly, there is inflation. The president says the grocery prices are down. They're not. They're up.
CORNISH: Yeah.
EGAN: Tariff rollbacks, they could help a little bit on the margin. But again, Audie, it's really just a drop in the bucket.
CORNISH: And we know that people are more than willing to share on social media how they're feeling about these things. Thank you so much for being with us.
EGAN: Thank you.
CORNISH: And thanks for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts right now.
