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Top 2028 Contenders Gather In NY For Al Sharpton-Led Conference; In Rare Remarks, Melania Trump Denies Any Ties To Epstein; Can Democrats Win Back Rural America? Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 10, 2026 - 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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[12:30:00]

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D), PENNSYLVANIA: -- we stand for. About what our affirmative vision is, which can't just be about banging Donald Trump every day. It has to be about what we are going to do to make people's lives better.

GOV. WES MOORE (D), MARYLAND: Any of these people who are thinking about 2028, I need to see that you're taking 2026 seriously. I don't want to see you tell me about the 12-point plan or the five-year analysis or the -- No. What are you doing right now?

GOV. JB PRITZKER (D), ILLINOIS: We need to have our agenda and we need to make sure we pass it in a first year of a Democratic administration. And it needs to be bold.

I'll call it Agenda 48. Because the 48th President of the United States, who's going to be a Democrat, has got to have an agenda that's bold and gets passed right away.

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DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: It was funny to see Wes Moore saying, I don't want to hear about your plan. And then Pritzker saying, let me tell you, we got to have a plan.

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: I mean, look, there is a premium right now on trying to figure out what this party is going to be about in 2028. At the same time, they have the great uniter right now, which is the thing that they are all against, which is becoming more fruitful to be against by the day with the Iran war, without -- you know, with the Trump's approval ratings falling.

The uniting thing for Democrats to do right now is to focus on that, to focus on opposing Trump. But when you're trying to differentiate yourself from other people who are going to be running for President in 2028, you do need to kind of start crafting that agenda, start having more of a forward-looking thing. And I think that's what we're starting to see from cattle calls like this.

BASH: Yes. And just to add to what Kamala Harris said just this morning, she also said the status quo is not working. People want results, not bureaucracy.

ADAM CANCRYN, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, I mean, the big difference here that I kind of track compared to the last time we had an open Democratic primary, that last time was about, you know, policy papers and how specifically are you going to do these specific agenda items.

This is largely about vibes. It's about putting out that you are one different candidate. That you are going to have a plan that's bigger than Donald Trump, but also that you're not going to have -- you don't want to get into the weeds this early. You want to just kind of show that you have the energy and that also you can carry a crowd, you know, that Kamala Harris can prove she can still be a viable candidate on her own, you know, if she gets a chance to run a full race.

BASH: The energy and the fight.

MOLLY BALL, AUTHOR & POLITICAL JOURNALIST: That's right. I mean, look, I think this campaign is going to be a battle of ideas on both sides, right? I mean, that's the premise of the book I'm working on, so of course I would say that. But you have two parties that are in the throes of a massive identity crisis.

And I think to Adam's point, yes, these candidates aren't going to be talking about their white papers right now, but voters want to hear a vision. They want to hear a substantive vision. And I think they're going to want to be hearing more than just, you know, who do I find the most likable or the most anti-Trump for that matter.

BASH: All right, everybody stand by, because this is something that has pretty much everybody here scratching their heads. Why is the First Lady putting the Epstein scandal back in the spotlight? It's a question her husband may be asking as well.

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[12:37:42]

BASH: Seldom seen, seldom heard. First Lady Melania Trump is incredibly deliberate about her very rare public appearances. So it caught most of Washington off guard when she chose to formally address a very scandal, the very one that the Trump administration, her husband, has been trying to avoid and put on the back burner for months.

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MELANIA TRUMP, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end. To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice, Maxwell.

I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors. Give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress with the power of sworn testimony.

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BASH: And one person familiar with the matter tells CNN President Trump was aware his wife planned to make that statement. But the President himself told MS NOW he didn't know anything about it.

My panel is back now. Adam, I would ask you to explain what's really going on here. But the truth is nobody really knows what's going on and what prompted this.

CANCRYN: No, no. I mean, count me among the rest of Washington had no idea this was coming. Really, just out of nowhere, the timing is really odd. We're trying to transition out of a war, trying to refocus on the domestic priorities. And now this is kind of bringing everything back to Epstein, something that Donald Trump has been trying to get away from for months.

No indication of any, you know, coming investigations. There's new stories about to drop. Just really confounding something that, you know, folks both inside the administration, outside the administration didn't really seem coming and are now kind of trying to figure out like we are.

BASH: Yes. I mean, one of the things that we know about politics or really any public figure is if you see something coming and you know it's going to come out, you try to get ahead of it. But as you said, we don't have any -- it's not to say that there isn't, but we don't have any indication that that's what this was about.

[12:40:08]

I will say the people who are not happy with this are the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. A group of them put out a statement saying, "Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports and giving testimony. Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice." And they also say she's shifting the burden to survivors under political -- politicized conditions to protect those in power.

BALL: You know, it's a strange thing. She's always been such an enigmatic figure and so private and holds her card so close to the vest. But the clear implication of a statement out of the blue like this is that there is some kind of context for it beyond just these rumors that she brought up, which have been around for literally years, which she's already employed multiple defamation lawsuits to quash when they've been published in various places.

This specifically the rumor about her introduction to her husband, which wouldn't even be a scandal if it were true, right? She's talking about not being convicted of crimes, which is much more than she's ever been accused or suspected of or any rumor that I'm aware of.

BASH: Yes.

BALL: So very mysterious. But as you said, politically, just not the kind of spotlight that the administration wanted on an issue that they would prefer not to dredge up again. BLAKE: The -- I'm glad you brought the call for the hearing, which to me is kind of driving home the bizarreness of this. You know, to the extent you plan out these remarks and you consider what you're going to say and you kind of have a whole discussion about what this is going to be, you know, you might think about how that will land with the survivors to call for those hearings.

It doesn't seem to be that that took place at all here. They didn't seem to consult with the survivors before they came out and said, we want to have these hearings. And to me, that might point in the direction of this being kind of a haphazard thing that's being put forward by somebody who, you know, isn't out on the political stage too much.

You know, we hear from Melania Trump pretty seldom. And when she does come out, sometimes she does things that are a little bit strange. We're -- thinking back to the jacket she wore in the first turn that said, I don't care, do you? Which was a little bit weird, the timing of that because of some issues that were taking place at that time. So, maybe just kind of a weird thing that's happening right now, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of planning behind it.

BASH: And just to do a quick fact check or at least put some context around one of the things she said in that soundbite we played, where she said I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice Maxwell. These are just some examples of emails that came out in the Epstein documents. This is an exchange in February 2002 that Melania Trump wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell.

"Dear G! How are you? Nice story about JE in New York mag. You look great on the picture. Love, Melania." And then she responded, Ghislaine Maxwell responded, "Sweet Pea, thanks for your message."

And I just want to also say neither of them has ever been accused of wrongdoing.

We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much. But don't go anywhere because up next, can Democrats win back rural voters after decades of losing them? CNN's John King went to North Carolina to dig into what voters are actually saying about that.

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[12:48:04]

BASH: The North Carolina Senate race is one of the seats Democrats are really pushing to turn blue in this year's midterms. But they're going to need to win back the rural voters who have abandoned the party during the Trump era. CNN's John King went to North Carolina for his latest installment of All Over the Map.

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ED WINEBARGER, NORTH CAROLINA VOTER: Everywhere there's a sprout, that's where they'll produce a vine. JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ed Winebarger is a farmer and a chef. Family ties to this North Carolina land dating back 200 years.

Everywhere you look, key staples for his catering business. A hillside garlic patch. Tree limbs stacked along the stream.

WINEBARGER: Look at that.

KING (voice-over): A brilliant nursery for shiitake mushrooms.

KING: I got to the gym this morning, but this is good.

KING (voice-over): A visitor put to work. Early spring, the best time to borrow the fingerling potatoes. The fall harvest will be not long before the midterm election. And North Carolina has a Senate seat within reach for the Democrats. Plus maybe, just maybe, a House seat or two. But Winebarger sees the party as still missing a critical ingredient.

WINEBARGER: This right here, getting it under your fingernails. Democrats have a hard time with this. They can't show a connection to the working class.

KING (voice-over): Rural America is synonymous with Trump country. But Winebarger says Trump policies are making a tough economy worse. First tariffs, now Iran.

WINEBARGER: Everything is expensive. Inflation hasn't stopped. It's continuing. For supplies and now for fuel. Now we're at war. Transportation costs, fuel, machinery, equipment, labor, amendments, fertilizers, all more expensive.

KING (voice-over): The North Carolina success could help the Democrats make a good midterm year great. But it would require reversing five decades of rural decline.

[12:50:03]

Take a look. Here are 1,322 counties where at least 75 percent of the population live in rural areas. 50 years ago, 1976, Jimmy Carter carried 798 of the 1,322. See all that blue? And won 54 percent of the vote in them.

In 2000, though, Al Gore carried only 213 of the 1,322. His share of the vote in rural counties dropped to 37 percent. And in 2024, a rural red tsunami. Kamala Harris won just 79 of the 1,322 counties. And just 25 percent of their votes. The then and now is stunning.

KING: Here in North Carolina, that rural shift from blue to red looks like this. It's been 11 years since North Carolina was represented by a Democrat in the U.S. Senate. And the state's House delegation in Washington right now? Just four Democrats and 10 Republicans.

WINEBARGER: There's a lot of anger with the voting base. And America has traditionally gone after the angry candidate. They feel represented by that anger. Democrats need to do more to connect to rural America.

KING: Again, be skeptical. But even a modest rural rebound for the Democrats would greatly expand their map, their targets, the possibilities in this critical midterm year.

House races here in North Carolina, for example, and in places like Texas, Montana, Iowa, and elsewhere. And the party is hoping to find Senate pickups, U.S. Senate pickups. Where would they look? Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Montana, Iowa, and right here in North Carolina.

KING (voice-over): Marshall is along the French Broad River in North Carolina's 11th Congressional District. Hurricane Helene's floodwaters rose above this bridge and pummeled the town. Eighteen months later, yes, a lot of progress.

This was the American Legion post during our visit nine months ago, rebuilt with a patriotic new mural now. Sounds and signs of progress, but also lingering scars, lingering frustration.

KOREY HAMPTON, NORTH CAROLINA VOTER: It still feels slow. It still feels like we haven't seen the government step in in ways that are meaningful.

KING (voice-over): Tourism is the economy here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lean back. We're good to go.

KING: See you.

KING (voice-over): Korey Hampton's outdoor adventure company saw sales drop 40 percent last summer.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There for guide.

KING (voice-over): Hikers and campers, rafters and zip liners thought it best or safest to stay away.

HAMPTON: We all knew that that first season after the storm was going to be difficult, but we're hoping that this is the turning point for us.

KING (voice-over): But now a new worry.

HAMPTON: That folks are just not going to be as willing to travel. And on top of everything else that's happened to us.

KING (voice-over): You drive a lot if you live in a rural place like Marshall. Or if you want to get to and from a place like this for a family vacation.

The price of gas matters, especially if things are already tight.

HAMPTON: It's just terrifying. You know, we're helping a hundred of our staff put food on the table. And even they're thinking about can I afford a house? Can I afford health care? Can I get to work? I mean, that's going to make it even harder for us this season.

KING (voice-over): They say looks can be deceiving and they say one picture is worth a thousand words. So which is this? A recent Monday night in tiny Marshall. A packed fish fry for a local farmer running for Congress. Madison County voted 61 percent for Trump. Jamie Ager is a Democrat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're all thinking about our garden this spring, which is something that Mountain Democrats do -- grow a garden.

Josh Copus owns this hotel and restaurant. He went to college with Ager. Works his real magic in a ceramic studio on the outskirts of town.

KING: Why do Democrats struggle so much here?

JOSH COPUS, NORTH CAROLINA VOTER: I think we lost our way. I don't know. Like we got caught up doing something that didn't connect with the people in rural America. And that's why we need to run candidates like Jamie because he is of this place. Like he is our people. So I don't think it's a lost cause.

KING: The smart money and recent history says be skeptical when Democrats talk up their hopes here in North Carolina. Especially in this congressional district.

Donald Trump won North Carolina 11 with 54 percent of the vote in 2024. And the Republican House incumbent Chuck Edwards ran even stronger winning 57 percent.

KING (voice-over): But pain at the pump is just one sign of tougher times for Republicans. Even in these rural areas they have dominated in the decade of Trump.

COPUS: I get it. You know I know why people like voted for Trump around here because, you know, everyone feels like it's stacked against them but that hasn't changed. Like that -- I don't think any of those people are like oh we're doing better now than we were, because we're not.

[12:55:08]

KING (voice-over): 18 months of struggle and remarkable resilience. Seven months more until we learn if all the rebuilding here extends to the Democrats.

John King, CNN, Marshall, North Carolina.

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BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. Be sure to tune in this Sunday for State of the Union. I'll be talking to Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Mark Warner among other guests.

CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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