Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

New Trump Comments Raise Concerns About Integrity Of Midterm Votes; Trump: GOP "Should Say, We Want To Take Over" Elections; DOJ Suing At Least 24 States To Access Full Voter Rolls; Spending Deal In Jeopardy As Two House Republicans Vote No; Deadline Hits For Clintons To Accept Terms On Epstein Testimony. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 03, 2026 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:00]

NICK PAPPAS, FIELD DIRECTOR, NFL: Weve added two studs like a cleat on the bottom. It's about twice the weight, falls from the same height, but ultimately gives us a representation that is much like the athlete. We can test all of our stadiums with these devices and actually quantify the amount of traction available at any given time. Rotational traction, so twisting of the cleat and translational traction. So, a sliding of the cleat.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT : Essentially putting a cleat into the ground or testing rotation and movement.

PAPPAS: Correct.

GUPTA: And these tests are applied at 60 individual points all over the field, while no two fields will ever be exactly the same, the hope is they might at least start to feel that way to the players. Do you think that we're going to get to that point where you look at 30 NFL stadiums and they basically all have a uniform surface?

PAPPAS: I do in the last 10 years, we've seen helmets change dramatically, and that's really improved their safety. I think you're about to see the same thing happen in the surface industry.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: And Dr. Gupta, thank you very much for that report.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Inside Politics with Dana Bash starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: President Trump calls for a federal takeover of U.S. elections. It's not just what he's saying, it's what his administration is trying to do.

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

We are only 272 days away from the midterm elections. OK, I know. In another year, there would be little question not about who would win, but what would happen on election day. What it would look like, every state and county would organize the election count the votes. It's meant to be a decentralized process. That is literally how the founders of America wanted it when they wrote the constitution to prescribe it that way.

The president, President Trump, he of course, remains fixated on debunked claims about voter fraud in 2020. Says he wants it to change. Just listen to what he told right-wing podcaster and a former member of his administration, Dan Bongino. He was the deputy FBI director. Listen to what he said when they were discussing undocumented immigrants illegally voted. Now voting, I should say, that's not true. But listen to what he said after that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (voiceover): These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, we want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and they're counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn't win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, just to put a finer point on it, 2024 there was an audit of Georgia's voter rolls. And it found that of the 8 million registered voters, 20 were non-citizens and just nine had actually voted. So that's nine out of 8 million.

I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here. Isaac, I want to start with you about this whole question. And I'm going to get to a lot of the specifics to sort of explain the point I made at the beginning of the show is that it's not just about the fantastical things that this president says. It's watching what the administration does. What is your sense as somebody who has covered politics for a long time?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: The president is serious about this. Look, he -- we know that he objects to elections that he didn't win. We all saw what happened on January 6. There is not really a through line to all of his complaints, other than he doesn't like when he doesn't win. He said, when he was running in 2016, I'll accept the results of the election.

If I win and if I don't, we'll fight. He said, in '16, we saw what happened in '20. We see that it's continued throughout. His concern is never about how things actually go if it were then maybe in 2024, when he insists that things were rigged. He's only focused on how he says it was rigged against him, and not of other people who are on the same ballot on the same day, and they won or lost their elections.

His focus is just, why don't I have more wins? And he has some powers that are there through being president, and some that he wants to claim and push this forward. And there is a lot of concern in a lot of places about this, whether it's saying to the people in Minneapolis, we will pull out the ICE troops if you give us the voter rolls or things that started. If you remember last year when Gavin Newsom announced his ballot proposition about chairman, there were ICE agents circulating outside of that. People are very, very concerned.

BASH: Yeah. And just to kind of put a finer point on what the Founding Fathers said in that pretty important document called the constitution. This is Article 1, Section 4. The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators.

[12:05:00]

Now, Congress has done that several times. The Voting Rights Act is maybe the most important. These are some of the things that the president has said about elections. I should have used the National Guard to seize election boxes in 2020. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. When you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election. And then he reposted conspiracies on the 2020 election. This is just last week involving Italians, China, CIA, FBI, Switzerland and Dubai.

And Steven, this is what you wrote in another terrific piece this morning. You wrote, when Trump makes election threats, it's best to believe him.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR REPORTER: Right. So, we're looking at this cycle of election threats through the prism of what happened in 2020. It was about this time six years ago that the president started talking about, well, there could be fraud. You know, democratic states aren't able to fairly administer elections. So, there's the mechanisms of trying to put together an infrastructure and personnel that are willing to follow the president's instincts here

And there's the act of almost preparing the electorate for the idea that an election that the president loses would not be a fair election. And to lay the groundwork for, if not legal challenges, political challenges, the election. But you read out Article 1, Section 4 there, it does not mention the president.

BASH: Correct.

COLLINSON: And the reason it doesn't mention the president was because the founders were worried about a, ultimately all powerful, autocratic executive taking over the mechanisms of the elections in the states in a way that would fracture the whole purpose of the constitution, the idea that you don't have a central king like figure that administers the politics of the rest of the country.

BASH: Yeah. No, exactly. And then more on looking at what the president -- what his administration is trying to do. And this is really one of the most critical things that we've talked about a lot on this program, but it's directly related to the comment that he made yesterday.

His DOJ is trying to get the voter rolls from every state in the country, and they're looking for really specific personal information, social security number, driver's license, date of birth, sort of, as an expert said to me that the trifecta of what could end up as identity theft. But that's not where he's going here. He's trying to get information on all voters.

There were 11 states that have said yes, Republican led states, and you see them there. The DOJ is suing 24 states, including some red/purple states, but mostly blue states, for not complying with this. And it is those who are not complying are not doing so because of the aforementioned Article 1, Section 4 in the constitution, that they have, constitutionally no reason to have all this information about voters across the country, other than the concern by a lot of these states to overreach.

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, AP & CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And that is notable that some Republicans and Republican leaning states aren't complying with this order. And that's given hope to some Democrats who do see these kinds of potential obstacles and dangers down the road, that there are conservatives who do realize the role of the states and not the federal government in administering an election.

I would note also too this morning that Senate Majority Leader John Thune was asked about these nationalizing elections comments, and he said, no, that is not what I believe. The constitution says it is the states that do this. But you know, within this context, it is really notable to see just how states and Democrats are gearing up for sort of shenanigans, or what may happen in terms of the administration's actions surrounding the elections, particularly if Republicans don't do well.

Senate majority -- or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told my colleagues in an interview that he already has senators and lawyers, looking at a lot of contingency plans if, you know, if Trump tries to, you know, screw things up, in Schumer's words. And we know the state of Minnesota. Other democratic states are planning similar things regarding personal information and access to the polls. And that's a lot of, you know, break glass in case of emergency planning that we're seeing from the states right now.

BASH: And I don't want to lose sight of what went on last week in Georgia -- in Fulton County, Georgia. The Director of National Intelligence, somehow, someway, was at the FBI raid executing a search warrant for 2020 ballots in Fulton County, which, of course, was the epicenter of the president's unproven allegations of election fraud.

[12:10:00]

She just sent a letter to the top Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, explaining her presence, and she said it was requested by the president and executed under her statutory authority. And that she also confirmed our reporting that that she facilitated a phone call between the president and the FBI agents. This is not normal. This is not normal in any way, shape or form.

DOVERE: Yes, it's not normal. It seems to be violations of procedures that are in place. And I think importantly here, when -- if you go back to the days after the 2020 election, there was that famous quote of people saying, oh, the president is just having trouble accepting that he lost. Just let him get through it. And then we saw what that led to with January 6.

Now we have not just the president here, but many administration officials who are very actively supporting his efforts and facilitating all sorts of things that are meant to raise questions with it. And I think importantly also there are -- it's not just what happens on election day, it's what happens with -- all the way this will go through. We had just a couple months ago when the speaker of the House would not seat a member of Congress who had been elected in the special election. He said it was because the shutdown was going on at that point.

But that raised questions for people of what would happen if maybe he or others could say, well, there were questions with elections. What if the margins are really tight after the midterms. And there are a couple seats that will decide Republican or Democratic majority. These are things.

And of course, after January 6, after the riot happened, there were hundreds of members of Congress, Republicans who still voted to say that they had trouble with the election. So, that's the mindset that is going through here.

BASH: There's so much to unpack. We're going to stay on this story aggressively here on this show. Up next, breaking news. The deal to end the shutdown. It may be in jeopardy as we speak. We're going to go live to Capitol Hill after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: We're following breaking news on Capitol Hill. The deal to end the government shutdown is now in jeopardy. CNN's Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill. Manu, what's going on?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Hanging by a thread that is really speaker Johnson's life in this razor thin Republican majority where nothing is guaranteed, even as something as significant as reopening the federal government. Just an hour ago or so, the speaker was extremely confident that he had the votes to be -- for this critical first step to take up the larger funding package to reopen much of the federal government, which has been closed since Saturday.

But he has seen defections in his ranks, and he can only afford to lose one Republican vote on a party line vote since all the Democrats have voted no. And he has lost two Republicans at this moment, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, someone who typically votes against Republicans on spending issues. And is, of course, no fan of President Trump.

And Congressman John Rose, who is a bit of a surprise, a Republican from Tennessee who is running for governor of Tennessee. And in large part this has to do with the demands that some of these conservative members were making just yesterday, calling for action on a bill to require proof of citizenship and require voting ID when voters go to the ballots and cast their votes in the elections.

That bill is called the SAVE Act. They have been demanding action the United States Senate on this issue. The Senate Majority Leader John Thune has previously indicated, he plans to bring this for a vote, but some have been pushing for much more aggressive efforts by Senator Thune to bring this to the floor.

Now, Rose seems to be objecting to what Thune told reporters earlier this morning, where he didn't go nearly as far as what the conservatives had hoped in trying to force this SAVE Act bill to the Senate floor. And Rose put out a tweet saying leader Thune is already backtracking what he reportedly told some House Republicans that if we reopen the government, he'd keep his word and bring the SAVE Act to the floor. House Republicans must hold the line and refuse to fold on something as fundamental as election integrity, the SAVE Act belongs on must pass legislation, and this is a must pass bill.

So, right now, Dana, there are several Republicans, four Republicans in the more conservative camp, who still have not voted on this piece of legislation. And there is significant arm twisting going on right now where the Republican leaders are trying to flip John Rose or trying to make sure those four Republicans don't break ranks.

And I could bet Jon that Donald Trump, who has been heavily involved in trying to get the votes, is on the phone with some of these members right now. So, the vote is still open. They could probably, potentially still get there. But again, once again, things in limbo in the Republican led House. Dana?

BASH: Yeah. And as you've been speaking, Manu, two of those four Republicans who hadn't voted, have now voted with their party. Thank you so much. Please keep us posted, Manu. Back here at the table point. I mean, if any one of these House Republicans understands the leverage that they have, right?

KIM: Right. I mean, how many times as Manu who said things are in limbo, the Republican led House in the past couple of years? But right, I mean, it is remarkable to think about, but that the Senate has a bigger margin in their majority than the House does, which is why it gives you know, someone like John Rose, who is a backbencher congressman. Obviously, he's running for governor, so he has that political imperative. It gives them this much power.

[12:20:00]

BASH: Yeah.

KIM: I'm sorry.

BASH: No, no, go.

KIM: And it's -- we also have to remember that passing the government funding bill even though it is an important task, in the broad context of things, this is supposed to be the easy part. When you get into the actual policy negotiations over what you want to do with the DHS funding bill and the policy changes that Democrats want to ICE a border patrol agents. That is the hard part. And if this bill passes, even if a bill passes today, you have two weeks to figure out really complex policy changes that would in any other congress could take months to figure out.

BASH: And we have to also underscore that what is happening right now, what you're seeing on the screen. The only reason why it's even possible that, or I would say probable, that this procedural measure is going to pass, and ultimately the parts of the government that are shutdown will open, is because the president worked the phones. Worked the phones hard, trying to get Republicans to vote yes on a funding bill that they don't like because he doesn't want another government shutdown.

DOVERE: Yeah. To achieve the most basic function of Congress, which is keeping the government open. This is how much effort it takes. And I think the other part of it is, I think, how many -- it just becomes so routine that we get to these crisis points and the shutdowns that I think most people around the country probably don't even realize that the government has been shut down since last week, right?

BASH: Yeah.

DOVERE: But we are living through times where people want the government to be more responsive to dealing with things that are going on in their lives, and we see that the government can't even do the most basic thing that it's supposed to do.

BASH: And just take a step back about what this is all about at this time. And it's about the fact that Republicans are back on their heels on how this administration is carrying out immigration enforcement in the interior of this country. And Democrats are demanding not now, but that they have in the next two weeks, a series of changes, like body cameras, removing masks, tightening warrants, things like that.

And I just want you to listen to Carlos Gimenez. He is a Republican from Florida. And the way that he is talking about this issue is very telling as to where Republicans are politically and then, therefore, policy wise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): We've been warning the administration about the enforcement that's been going on. We thought that there should have been a course correction a long time ago. I don't think we should have been focusing on people that have been here for a long time, grandmothers, et cetera, that happened to be in a neighborhood when you were doing an enforcement action. I think that that was a mistake, and I think it's coming back to haunt us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It's pretty big. COLLINSON: Yeah. The two killings in Minnesota may not have yet changed immigration policy in the way the administration is pursuing it, but they've certainly very much scrambled it. It seems like even the president understands that he has to give something here. I think the problem is, is he may be willing to show a change in the optics, but the enforcement is such a key part of the administration's policy, the persona of President Trump.

And it's very important to certain people inside the White House, is that long term, are they willing to pull back to save the Republicans politically, or are we at a point where they're going to use their power now and do whatever they can to fundamentally change the shape of the country? That's the kind of tension.

But it looks like you're going to have paralysis in the next few weeks on Capitol Hill. You've got Republicans who don't want to vote necessarily to ease up enforcement, got Democrats in the Senate under massive pressure. It seems that the Democrats in the Senate and the Democrats in the House aren't even necessarily on the same page on all of this. So, it's very hard to see how something concrete gets done.

BASH: All right. We're going to keep watching what's happening on Capitol Hill, or, as you said, isn't happening on Capitol Hill. Up next. Could we now see public testimony by Bill and Hillary Clinton on Capitol Hill? Why the former president, former secretary of state and first lady, why did they do a 180? And what will it mean if they do testify and make a deal about coming to talk to Congress about Jeffrey Epstein?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: And there is even more breaking news on Capitol Hill, where Bill and Hillary Clinton are trying to avoid a contempt of Congress vote, which would likely pass with bipartisan support. There is an 11th-hour decision that they made to back down and actually say that they will testify about Jeffrey Epstein. It was met with additional conditions by the GOP congressman, chairman of the committee that is in charge here, James Comer.

So, where do things stand right now? CNN's Annie Grayer is following all this. What's the answer to that? Where are things?

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: So, Dana, House Oversight Chair James Comer, gave the Clintons a new deadline to respond to terms for a deposition, which would be an in-person deposition that would be filmed in February and also have a transcript. And I'm told from sources that the Clintons have responded and have given two dates in February to appear for depositions, but they've also suggested that these appearances could be a public hearing.

Now that is not what Comer had made clear about in his ask. So, we're waiting to see if Comer actually responds to the terms that the Clintons laid out.