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Inside Politics

GDP Growth Is Up, Consumer Confidence Is Down; Poll: 70 Percent Say Cost Of Living Where They Live Is Unaffordable; Trump Quick To Blame Biden For Bad Data, Take Credit For Good; Supreme Court To Decide Critical Cases On Executive Power; Former White House Usher Reflects On Serving 7 Presidents. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 23, 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]

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: -- that the mood on Main Street got even darker this month. Consumer confidence falling for the fifth month in a row. Confidence hasn't been this low since April. And what really stands out to me is when you zoom out. Look at how much lower consumer confidence is now than it was back in early 2020 before COVID-19.

OK, so how do we make sense of this? Well, first off, GDP is kind of an abstract thing, right? People don't necessarily feel it, but they do feel high prices. And while some prices have gotten cheaper over the last year, you look at eggs down 13 percent, milk got cheaper as well. Gasoline prices have been under control.

Other things are getting more expensive. Look at electricity, natural gas, car repair, ground beef. This is the biggest year-over-year increase for ground beef since 2020. And coffee prices have also surged. And the other aspect of affordability is job security.

And we know that this period of high GDP has not been accompanied by a hiring boom. Look at this, the unemployment rate, it started this year at 4 percent, now it's at 4.6 percent. So look, big picture, Manu, yes, the economy did grow rapidly this summer, but people are not going to love this economy until they feel like, a, their paychecks can keep up with those higher prices, and, b, until they feel like their jobs are safe.

Back to you.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: Matt Egan on the complex economy, breaking it all down for us. Thank you so much.

My panel is back here in the room. And, you know, in politics, it's about vibes, not just about data. Matt was sort of getting to that there. And just look at the questions in the NPR -- recent NPR poll. Economy's working well for you personally, that's the question. Just 39 percent of the American public says yes. 61 percent say no.

Cost of living, where you live for your average family, is it affordable? Just 30 percent of the American public say it's affordable. And that's the political reality here for the President. Yes, good numbers here, but people are not necessarily feeling it.

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes, and this could be politically perilous going into a midterm election year. And we've heard from congressional Republicans talking more about affordability, trying to have a better message to sell to people about how that -- the Republican Party is helping them out.

I do feel like we're kind of back to 2022. I remember being on the Hill, and at that point in time, it was President Biden saying, the economy is great, everything is fabulous. And Hill Democrats were screaming --

RAJU: Yes.

SOTOMAYOR: -- saying, oh my God, but I'm at the grocery store, and my constituents are saying everything is so expensive. And they did blame that disconnect from the bully pulpit saying everything's fine, voters saying, no, it's not. It led to the House majority to flip then in 2022.

RAJU: How do they message this? Because obviously Trump has got the biggest megaphone in the world, and perhaps not surprisingly, this is what he's saying on Truth Social today. "The success is due to good government and tariffs because of my tax bill, the great big, beautiful bill, and tariffs. Investment is setting records. The Trump economic golden age is full steam ahead. You haven't seen anything yet."

Always curious at what he chooses to capitalize in these posts, but --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

RAJU: -- yes, that's a totally different discussion. But to Marianna's point, he's saying everything is great.

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

RAJU: Trust me, things are great, and you're going to feel great.

KIM: Right. And in that post, he specifically credits tariffs for the state of the economy. Now, if you look at the Consumer Confidence Report, consumers blame tariffs for how they feel in terms of high prices. So there's another disconnect there.

But, you know, again, President Trump is facing the same conundrum that President Biden did, where they do have good, top-line macroeconomic numbers, but they are really struggling with connecting on a microeconomic level. And President Biden, like Marianna said, did the whole, you know, messaging of the economy is actually great. And the -- and this president does it in his own way, except in just a much --

RAJU: Yes.

KIM: -- more forceful fashion. His -- and in terms of, you know, feeling empathy or feeling sympathy for those consumers who are continuing to struggle with high prices, that's something that we don't see too much from this president because he's focused on really trying to force this -- or trying to push to voters that everything is great, everything is fine, everything will be fine.

RAJU: Yes. The bad stuff is because of Joe Biden --

KIM: Right.

RAJU: -- the good stuff is because of me.

KIM: Right.

RAJU: Can that message work?

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Probably not, but I think this does show that the extraordinary resilience of the U.S. economy. President Trump has taken aim at the global trading system. He's gone against the advice of pretty much every economist in tariffs, but the economy is still growing. OK, that's not shared across the board, but that at least gives him reason to hope that he can ride this out.

What I find is fascinating is that that volatile mix of figures that Matt showed us is going to be the leitmotif of the midterm elections. Everyone's going to have something to argue, but for all the elections I've covered over several decades, they've all been about pretty much raising up the middle class. Voters are voting for economic change.

RAJU: Yes.

COLLINSON: It never gets delivered. That explains the rise of populism --

RAJU: Yes.

COLLINSON: -- and why voters are very -- they're not just happy -- unhappy with Trump's economy, they're unhappy with the U.S. economy --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

COLLINSON: -- through years and years and years.

RAJU: Yes.

[12:35:13]

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: And it feeds into the sense that --

RAJU: Very quickly.

DOVERE: -- people have that some people are doing really well, but me, my own economy, my own grocery bill, electricity bill is higher, and I feel it in all those ways --

RAJU: Yes.

DOVERE: -- that are really dangerous.

RAJU: Exactly. And dangerous politically. We'll see if that actually happens.

All right, next, the big cases on the Supreme Court's docket dealing directly with the President of the United States, coming up.

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RAJU: It may sound like a cliche to say the Supreme Court faces most consequential term in recent history, but you could make that argument right now. Looking at a case though that directly deals with just how powerful a president should be. In that case, this term may be truly one of the most consequential, if not the most consequential in recent memory.

[12:40:14]

Joining the table to discuss it all is CNN Supreme Court Analyst, Joan Biskupic, who knows the Supreme Court better than pretty much anybody, so I'm so grateful that you're here. Take us through what you expect in the coming weeks and months. How significant is this moment?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Sure. And I'm going to reinforce what you said. We have big cases all the time, but they've been mostly on the culture wars like abortion and, you know, LGBTQ rights. But this has to -- this term is all about the relationship among the branches and the consolidation of power by the executive.

And the Roberts Court has been really pushing that for years, and now it's all coming to fruition in the age of Donald Trump, giving him even more power. And let's just start with one that I think our viewers are most interested in is the tariffs, because it's costing billions and billions of dollars that's going into the U.S. Treasury, but that's costing consumers and retailers. And that one was already argued.

And the question is whether Donald Trump rightly invoked an Emergency Economic Powers Act that's supposed to be used for national emergencies in the foreign relations sphere. And that law, dating to 1977, had not -- never been used for tariffs. It had been used for economic sanctions, not tariffs.

And actually, the President has the right to impose tariffs, but he's supposed to be working with Congress. And this time, he tried to do it by himself.

Lower court judges said he overstepped his power, and the justices, during their oral arguments a few weeks ago, suggested that the government was going to lose. But I actually think this is a much tougher case than it appeared on the surface. And we haven't gotten a ruling yet, even though the administration was pushing for an immediate ruling, saying billions of dollars have been collected.

And if we're going to have to refund that money, we need to know. So, Manu, I think that's one that we'll actually see a ruling -- RAJU: Was it sooner?

BISKUPIC: Sooner rather than the usual June.

RAJU: What does your gut tell you about that case?

BISKUPIC: Well, the administration is expecting it by January.

RAJU: No, no, in terms of where it ends, how you get your rule. I know you can't predict the Supreme Court.

BISKUPIC: No, no, because this one --

RAJU: But what you'd got?

BISKUPIC: -- sitting in the courtroom, I actually thought it was a closer case than a lot of people who said, the government's definitely going to lose. I think if the government loses -- and it could very well lose, because Trump is really pushing the boundaries of this 1977 law -- I think the Supreme Court is still going to say, he has the power to impose tariffs, he just has to do it another way. And I think that they're going to give him some leeway in terms of some of the refunds, if they go that way.

RAJU: What are the other big executive power cases of that?

BISKUPIC: OK. So the next one I want to say is one where I think definitely the Trump administration is going to win across the board, and that is the power to fire the people who oversee these independent agencies and who are members of boards like the Federal Trade Commission. These are watchdog agencies that, you know, are fighting against unfair trade competition, antitrust issues, environmental concerns, protections for consumers.

These are people who traditionally have been appointed and for set terms that a new president cannot disrupt. And Donald Trump wants to disrupt that. And John Roberts and fellow conservatives for years have felt that it was important for the President to not just have the power of appointment, but the power of removal.

And this case involves a woman who was fired before her term was up at the Federal Trade Commission. This is Slaughter v. Trump. I think we have a card for that.

RAJU: And very quickly, though, before we go to break, this Voting Rights Act case could impact future elections, a huge case. Will it impact the midterms, do you think, this year in 2026?

BISKUPIC: It depends on when it comes. If the justice -- you're talking about the Louisiana case that talks about kind of the breadth of power and the remedies under the Voting Rights Act and iconic 1965 law -- if the justices rule by January in this Louisiana case, it's going to open the door to a lot of different states quickly changing their rules in time for the midterms. If the justices hold on to it, which maybe they actually will because of dissension behind the scenes and don't issue it until later in the spring and or even June, it will not impact it in midterms.

RAJU: Yes. Huge, huge --

BISKUPIC: Yes, right.

RAJU: -- implications on so many different levels.

BISKUPIC: And we need to talk about birthright citizenship --

RAJU: Exactly, birthright citizenship.

BISKUPIC: -- which they're going to do too.

RAJU: Exactly.

BISKUPIC: Yes, yes.

RAJU: Exactly, which will be plenty of time to talk --

BISKUPIC: Yes, we will.

RAJU: -- in the months ahead. Joan Biskupic, thank you so much for breaking those cases down.

And when we come back, I'll talk to a former White House chief usher about all those recent renovations to the historic building. And his fondest memories for more than 30 years serving seven presidents.

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[12:48:50]

RAJU: Every (ph) president from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush knew the name Gary Walters. He spent decades at the White House as chief ushers. Now he's sharing new stories in a new book, "White House Memories: Recollections Of The Longest-Serving Chief Usher." I spoke to him recently about all of these.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: You write about so much about how your job was just really all- encompassing. There's an example of you learning during the Bush to Clinton transition. You have to switch the White House soda from Pepsi to Coke, for instance, among these other things. What about some of the tasks, small and large, that you had to learn on the job? Tell us about those and things that you found interesting while you were doing those tasks.

GARY WALTERS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF USHER: Well, they were pretty much universal for the upkeep of the White House as a, first of all, home of the president, and the second thing was the site of official events, as you stated, state dinners and receptions and various things. Just learning the ways that each president and first lady wanted to operate the White House.

It's their home, and we have to take their lead and adjust to what they want. And we had a marvelous staff of 90 people who were real, true professionals and can make that adjustment.

[12:50:07]

And little things, you know, they say, don't let the little things bother you. Well, when you're the chief usher, that's not the case. You need to do those things.

RAJU: Who would you say was the most demanding of the presidents that you served?

WALTERS: That's a hard question to answer because I was dealing with their home and I dealt more with the first ladies in that aspect. But the presidents were all wonderful to me. I had a good relationship with all of them.

Obviously served both Democrats and Republicans and the resident staff serves the presidency, not the individual president. And on inaugural day, we say goodbye to one family and say hello to another within a matter of five or six hours.

RAJU: You recall all of the Christmases you helped plan. Because during holiday season, the White House is a beautiful place, of course. It's always a beautiful place, but all the decorations and the like, you have a number of holiday photos here that viewers can see on their screen. Talk about some of your memories that stick out during holiday time at the White House.

WALTERS: The activity level is constant from -- we begin to plan for the Christmas decorations each year very early on. When I met with Barbara Bush in February, right after the inaugural had taken place at the end of January, we were walking one day and I said, Ms. Bush, it's February, but we need to talk about Christmas.

And she looked at me and said, Christmas? I haven't even found out where the restrooms are yet at the White House. What are you talking about Christmas? But it takes a planning effort through the entire year.

Concept is presented to the first ladies or they have their own ideas of what they want to do as far as decorations go. And once that decision is made, then we start moving on.

Different administrations have wanted to include things from around the country, children's decorations from across the country. Mrs. Barbara Bush had her knitting club and -- or needlepoint club, I should say, in Texas in her church, the Saintly Stitchers, one year that did the decorations and -- for the main tree in the blue room.

And it just is a yearlong process. The chief floral designer is the one that pretty much coordinates it along with the social secretary and the first lady. And my job was to stand back and make sure that things were put in place to allow it to go forward and be carried out throughout the season. And then of course, once we're decorated, we have all those Christmas parties that everybody's familiar with.

RAJU: And you also talk about the pets, the first pets. You had to deal with a lot of the first pets.

WALTERS: We did.

RAJU: What was that like?

WALTERS: One of my favorite things when I was a police officer in my first five years at the White House was seeing President Nixon and his dog, King Timahoe, wonderful Irish setter and Millie's puppies, when they were born at the White House. In fact, when I talked to Barbara Bush before inauguration, but after the election, they were coming into office.

And I said, Mrs. Bush, one of the questions I asked, I said, what do you want us to do on an inaugural day for Millie? And she said, you don't have to worry about that because she's not going to be coming home for a couple of weeks. She said, she's off to our friends in Kentucky getting married. Well, it's about six weeks later, we had puppies at the White House.

RAJU: Well, there you go. Now we're seeing so many other changes to the White House under President Trump, whether it was the Rose Garden being paved and now the demolition of the East Wing. What were your feelings like when you saw the East Wing being demolished?

WALTERS: Well, my first recollection was the fact that I met my wife in the East Wing. She was the receptionist in the East Wing for the Nixon and Ford administration. And so I have wonderful feelings about that building. But all the presidents that I served, they all talked about having a larger venue to entertain.

When they go overseas, they're in castles and various large facilities. And they all talked about that. We put up -- we were constantly putting up and taking down tents in the South Ground where the presidential helicopter usually lands. So there's always been talk about that.

Going back in history in 1905, when the West Wing was built, there was a tremendous same kind of thing that's going on now on the East Side where they tore down conservatories and greenhouses and a small stable that was there. And that allowed the West Wing to be built. So this is an extension of that.

There's always something in construction --

RAJU: So it sounds like you're not too, because a lot of people are upset when they see that -- those pictures of the East Wing being demolished. It sounds like it didn't seem to grate on you too much.

WALTERS: I look back at the history of what goes on, it has gone on over the years at the White House. And it's something that future presidents are going to be very happy that they have something like that.

[12:55:08]

RAJU: So how would you compare because Trump has come in and made very clear he wants to make a bunch of changes. I mentioned that, you know, we talked about this -- the ballroom and the Rose Garden. How does that compare to the presidents that you served and the changes that they made to the White House? Did they go as far as Trump? Did they go further? Was it about the same? How would you characterize that?

WALTERS: I think each president makes changes to suit their desires. They follow along the -- a pattern that they may have established in their prior history, their life. And they do the things that make them comfortable. And that's part of the White House.

As I've always said, the White House belongs to the president of the United States and his family for the four or eight years that they're there. And it's their home. It belongs to the American people, obviously, but it's really their home for that period of time. And that's what I try to portray in the book.

RAJU: Can you say which was your favorite president to serve?

WALTERS: No.

RAJU: Right, right.

WALTERS: They were all wonderful to me, and I had opportunities. President Carter introduced me to the Pope -- when the Pope came. And I met probably in just a cursory way all of the heads of federal government, I mean, governments, foreign and domestic. I --

RAJU: Yes.

WALTERS: -- had a wonderful ride.

RAJU: Wow. What a wonderful tale. What a wonderful career. And thank you so much for sharing it. Thank you for coming in. Really appreciate your time.

WALTERS: I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a very quick break.

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