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Inside Politics
Trump: "I Don't Think There's Been A Term Like It"; Woman Pulled Out Of Car By ICE Details Her Experience; DOJ Civil Rights Chief Details Investigation Of Church Protest; Trump Calls Protesters At Minnesota Church "Insurrectionists"; Iowa Trump Voters Offer Clues Ahead Of Midterm Elections. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired January 20, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- happened this year. He lost Marjorie Taylor Greene, who then just left, because she said that was what MAGA was supposed to be. So far, it doesn't seem like that is sort of sprinkling down to the roots of MAGA. They're still with him. But we'll see.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Very much so. You just played that. And in our most recent poll that John was talking about, our polling director, Jennifer Agiesta (ph), took exactly his verbatim words and put it into a question to the American people about whether or not he made progress on these promises or if things got worse.
Being a peacemaker and a unifier, 25 percent of Americans said he made progress. Forty-seven percent of Americans said he made things worse. So, yes, MAGA is still with him. But on that promise, the American people are saying he didn't accomplish that.
And by the way, that's true of all the promises from his words verbatim in that speech that we tested. The plurality of people on each one we tested said he made things worse versus making progress. And I think this will be -- this is the story for him, right? Yes, his base is fully committed. There's no doubt about that. But if you are a Republican on Capitol Hill whose name is on the ballot this year because Donald Trump's is not, you're concerned a bit more broader than just where the base is.
BASH: And it's -- yes. And it's about not just, I think promises -- made promises kept, it's about where he has chosen to put his focus.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. Yes. Yes. And that's been from the very beginning, that Americans began to believe that he was not focused on their lives, on improving their lives. And in some of the polling, it shows that most Americans don't think he gets what their lives are like and certainly hasn't improved them. And that's why we see his marks on the economy, his marks on the cost of living so low, because Americans are still grappling with grocery prices and high rent prices and affordability among -- around health care and everything else. BASH: We're going to sneak in a quick break.
Up next, a disabled Minnesota woman dragged from her car by federal agents. She spoke to our colleague Laura Coates. We'll play you some after a quick break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:36:41]
BASH: We're hearing for the first time from Aliya Rahman, the woman ICE officers dragged from her vehicle while she shouted that she was disabled and trying to get to her doctor's office. Here she is with our colleague Laura Coates.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALIYA RAHMAN, DISABLED WOMAN DRAGGED OUT OF CAR AND ARRESTED BY ICE: I think even someone who doesn't have the kind of auditory processing challenges I do would not know what to do with the sentence move. I will break your f-ing window. And then back and forth between move, get out, trying to open my door, more threats of breaking a window, which I don't understand the functional purpose of. And I -- it's not a warning, it's a threat of violence that really shouldn't be packaged with an instruction.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: And our panel is back here. John, you've been out a lot around the country. I just wonder if what you're hearing, even from Trump supporters, matches what we're seeing in our polling, which is not a lot of support.
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Too far. Too far. Donald Trump had a mandate when he won the election to have pretty aggressive immigration actions, including aggressive deportations. The American people were fed up. But -- and it's a very important but, I would capitalize it in boldface this but, even Trump supporters, when they watch this stuff, say it's too much.
And so I do think in the language, you just heard the woman there yank from her car. You're going to see in Democratic ads this fall, I'm not going to repeat it here, the language used by the ICE officer who shot and killed Renee Good. And then there was another one captured the next day. You don't want to end up like that. Bleep, bleep, bleep.
Suburban women decided the 2018 election because they thought about the 5:00 a.m. tweets and all the chaos of the first Trump term. And they said, we have to run our families' lives. And this is just over the line. It's too much. It's too much.
I think that is -- that's a common theme in our poll. That even people who support the president here, support the president there, think, whoa, you're over the top here. I do think there are -- you know, again, the president had a mandate to fix the immigration system. The American people would support orderly deportations of people who are here illegally.
There would be a debate about, do you have to commit a crime? You know, what's -- where's the line, I think, would be a fair debate in our public. But the tone and the tenor, the repetitive nature of this, they're not one-offs anymore. It's not a one situation. And, you know, and a lot of people have empathy for people in law enforcement.
They have very stressful jobs. And so, you know, you can't -- they're for the grace of God, right? But when you see it again and again and again, I think the tone of this, given where key elections are decided and given there are a lot of reluctant Trump voters who said, I want the border closed and I want a better economy, but I don't want that stuff again, that this is too far.
BASH: And what you are going to see here, because we're going to show you everything, but you're almost surely seeing exclusively on conservative media and in conservative algorithms is something else that happened in Minneapolis yesterday. There was a church service where protesters made a point of going to this church service and using that as a staging area for, you know, making their -- the fact that they're not happy with ICE known.
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Yes.
[12:40:04]
BASH: And this is one of the things -- so far, maybe the thing that the Trump Justice Department is looking into whether federal laws were broken there. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: ICE out!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ICE out!
HARMEET DHILLON, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: The attorney general reached out to me about this yesterday when I was on an airplane. And before I landed, we'd already scrambled the jets and gotten prosecutors assigned to this, as well as reached out to the FBI and had agents assigned and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis assigned to this. So there are already several law enforcement officials working on this as of yesterday evening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CALDWELL: So it's a battle of narratives for sure. Republicans are going to focus on that, that, you know, protesters, liberals are -- don't respect ICE officers, federal law enforcement. They don't even respect your Sunday church service where you're at. But I will say that the images that ICE has been very aggressive in promoting themselves, as John said, looks like it could start to backfire.
On Capitol Hill, you know, I reported over the weekend that the Democratic leadership are thinking about a probe, or they're quietly thinking right now about a probe into DHS Secretary Kristi Noem starting their own investigation, regardless of what Republicans want to do, because they think that the politics are much better for them on immigration. The border is closed. Trump took that issue away. And if they win back the majority, they want to be ready really on day one to have some sort of accountability and oversight of this DHS.
BASH: Yes. And now they're also blaming and going after, and since the end of last week, threatening to or pursuing prosecution of the Democratic governor of Minnesota, the mayor of Minneapolis, ICE, the social media post that they put up on Sunday. "Tim Walz and Jacob Frey are responsible for whipping these mobs into a frenzy and allowing them to run rampant. We won't be deterred."
This is specifically about the church protests. And I should say that Walz has said that he does not support protesters --
HENDERSON: Yes.
BASH: -- interrupting houses of worship.
HENDERSON: And possibly our former colleague, Don Lemon, too, who was there as a journalist filming what was happening there. The complaints that the protesters have is that they say that a pastor at that church is cooperating with the ICE agents who were there.
I think average Americans simply don't understand why they're there and why it's getting so out of control. To think about Barack Obama, he deported like 3 million people and no one got shot in the face. And you didn't, you know, see people getting ripped out of cars. And so that is the problem.
This is a -- an administration that likes to govern through image, through image of strength, right? And we've seen that particularly with DHS and some of these apprehensions. But as you know, John has said, Americans believe they've gone too far. And Democrats --
BASH: Yes.
HENDERSON: -- don't even really need to message very much on it because they can just see it on their televisions.
CHALIAN: Although, as you see, Democrats could also, even though that may be wise advice --
HENDERSON: Yes.
CHALIAN: -- they also can easily form a circular firing squad amongst themselves --
KING: Right.
CHALIAN: -- sort of debating the future of ICE and --
HENDERSON: Yes, yes. Apologize, yes.
CHALIAN: -- how that created political problems for them a few years ago. HENDERSON: All right. We're going to have to take a break. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Don't go anywhere, John.
Roads (ph) to Washington tend to begin in the great state of Iowa. So how are Iowans rating the president's ride so far? John King goes there next.
And as we go to break, some more iconic images of President Trump's first year back in office.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:48:23]
BASH: History in Iowa favors Republicans and increasingly Donald Trump. So how do Iowa voters see Trump 2.0 one year in, especially with several consequential state elections looming? CNN's John King went back to where the road usually begins in Iowa.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KING (voice-over): A new year and a new election cycle.
BETSY SARCONE, IOWA VOTER: What I'm really happy with is that Donald Trump is not OK with the status quo.
CHRIS MUDD, IOWA VOTER: We need to win in November because I think they're going to try to impeach him.
KING: You're open to voting for a Democrat?
SHANEN EBERSOLE, IOWA VOTER: Of course. I wish that Washington could get along like House.
KING (voice-over): And we begin in Iowa again.
KING: This was our first group, August 2023, when we started All Over The Map. Our first big question was, could Donald Trump come back after January 6th? Did he still have his grip on the Republican Party?
So why are we back now? He's been back in the White House for a year. And that one-year anniversary happens to coincide with January of a midterm election year.
KING (voice-over): First stop, the Ebersole cattle farm, Rural Kellerton.
KING: How are you?
EBERSOLE: It's good to see you.
KING: How are you doing?
KING (voice-over): Calving season before election season.
EBERSOLE: And then they'll calve in a pasture just like this. They're all of our old mama girls.
KING (voice-over): Shanen Ebersole speaks politely but plainly. There are signs of Trump's Austrian (ph).
EBERSOLE: We definitely have choices. We can say calm down. We can say talk nice.
KING (voice-over): Ebersole was a Nikki Haley supporter, but reluctantly backed Trump in the end. Three out of five is her first year grade. The economy feels a little better, and illegal immigration is way down. But Trump's big Argentina beef bailout didn't feel so America first, nor does talk about somehow taking Greenland.
[12:50:05]
EBERSOLE: I don't agree with that in any way, shape, or form.
KING: So that's not what you voted for?
EBERSOLE: No.
KING (voice-over): Ebersole's take on Washington, Trump picks too many fights. And people in Congress, she says, worry too much about money and power, and too little about family farmers or finding compromise.
EBERSOLE: There is a lot of that. You know, you don't have to walk through it. You have to wade through it because it's like knee deep in your neck of the woods.
KING (voice-over): She says that frustration includes her Republican congressman, Zach Nunn.
KING: OK, cows, raise a hoof. Who thinks Zach Nunn's doing a good job in Congress? Nobody.
EBERSOLE: I could probably agree there. That is one call that I might make.
KING: You're open to voting for a Democrat?
EBERSOLE: Of course. I think that you have to vote for the person that best meets your goals.
KING: The 2026 midterm stakes here in Iowa are enormous. The state is picking a new governor, a new United States senator, and all four of its House seats, of course, are on the midterm ballot.
There's two ways to do this. You do it the fancy GPS thing, or you do it the old-fashioned way. And you know what? I like old school.
KING (voice-over): Next stop, Des Moines and its fast-growing suburbs.
SARCONE: There's that saying, Trump was right about everything, and that's kind of how I'm feeling right now.
KING (voice-over): This breakfast conversation, our sixth visit with Betsy Sarcone, dating back to August 2023. Her shift, beyond dramatic. A DeSantis, then a Haley voter, said she would vote for Joe Biden if Trump won the Republican nomination. But she changed her mind.
SARCONE: I think Biden probably changed me more than Trump. I think watching nothing be done, you know, for four years about an open border.
KING (voice-over): Now she gives Trump an A-minus, loves the immigration crackdown, just closed a big real estate sale, and thinks the economy is picking up.
Sarcone laughed at Trump's 2020 election fraud claims when we first met. Another big change.
SARCONE: I'm starting to question the election of 2020, right?
KING: He lost the election in 2020.
SARCONE: I don't know.
KING: He lost the election in 2020.
KING (voice-over): The suburbs revolted against Trump in his first midterm, and Democrats are banking on it again. But Republicans don't have to worry about Sarcone. She likes Congressman Nunn and loves that her daughters can use a school choice plan passed by state Republicans.
SARCONE: They've done a lot of great things for us in Iowa.
KING (voice-over): East now, 120 miles from Des Moines to Columbus Junction, Louisa County is rural, a tiny piece of Iowa's most competitive congressional district.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, I'm Jill (ph).
KING: Hey, it's John. How are you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice to meet you.
KING (voice-over): Local Democrats held this potluck to begin their midterm organizing. They know the math. Donald Trump won 70 percent of the county vote last time.
KING: Pressure bother you or pressure excite you?
MICHELE PEGG, LOUISA COUNTY DEMOCRATIC CHAIR: Pressure is pressure. You're kind of like a little duck out here. You kind of paddle like hell underneath and smooth sailing on the surface. That's what you have to do.
KING (voice-over): Michelle Pegg is the new county Democratic chairwoman, eager to register new voters, happy to knock on doors with Trump flags. In the end, though, she says Democratic candidates need to win back rural voters who feel forgotten. PEGG: If you want the office, you have to sway the voters. It's how your message is packaged. And can you get out here? I mean, there's beef farmers. Go down a rural county. Go down a highway. Go down a gravel road. Go down a Class B road. Knock on a door.
We'll see how it goes.
KING: Thank you. Merry Christmas, everyone. Thank you.
KING (voice-over): One more stop, 140 miles north.
KING: Two of Iowa's four House races were blowouts back in 2024. This is Shell Rock in the second congressional district. The Republican margin of victory here was about 63,000 votes in 2024. In the fourth district out in western Iowa, it was more than twice that.
But two of the districts are pretty competitive. In the third district in southwest Iowa, the Republican incumbent won by just shy of 16,000 votes. And in the first district, just south of here in eastern Iowa, the margin was tiny, 799 votes.
KING (voice-over): Midwest Solar is installing the new panels on this Shell Rock car dealership. Chris Mudd is the CEO and a Trump guy from the beginning. On the drive out, a new twist to a familiar conspiracy.
MUDD: I think this election fraud, I think information is going to come out on that. Maybe Maduro is going to be able to offer some information about some of those things that happened in 2020. Like I told you long ago, I believe that the election was stolen from him.
KING: This is one on which we disagree.
MUDD: Yes.
KING (voice-over): Business took a hit when Trump killed Biden clean energy incentives. But high electricity prices are driving sales now. And Mudd's support of Trump is unflinching.
MUDD: My life is similar, OK, but my optimism is greater because I believe the things that Trump is doing are good for our country.
[12:55:02]
KING (voice-over): Mudd's gut tells him Trump's support is down just a bit. He knows Republicans struggle when Trump's not on the ballot. He's nervous about 2026, even here.
MUDD: I am a Trump guy, but I am concerned about we need to win in November. You know, we need to -- because I think they're going to try to impeach him. And it's going to cause havoc for the country.
KING: 99 counties.
KING (voice-over): It was Iowa that launched Trump on his 2024 comeback. Now, Iowa gets a big say in whether even Trump country wants a midterm reset. (END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: Donald Trump won 94 of those 99 counties just a year ago in November 2024, a little more than a year ago, so be skeptical about the Democratic prospects. But I can tell you, Dana, Republican Trump voters say they're considering voting for Democrats. The suburbs will be key in Des Moines and one of those congressional districts.
And then you saw me in Louisa County. Can Democrats begin to claw their way back in red rural America where they've just been punished in recent years? They think they have a chance.
BASH: I love hearing from all of these individuals who you've been going back and seeing for years now. Thank you so much for that.
Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after a break.
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