Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump's Fed Chair Pick Grilled On Interest Rates, Fed Independence; Tillis Demands DOJ End Powell Probe To Vote On New Fed Chair; Trump: I'd Be Disappointed If Fed Doesn't Cut Rates Under Warsh; Vance Still In Washington With Pakistan Departure Uncertain; Carlson: I'll Be "Tormented" For A Long Time For Helping Trump; Today: Virginia Votes On New Map That Could Net Dems Four Seats. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired April 21, 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]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Loyalty test. Will President Trump's fed chair pick serve the U.S. economy or the White House?

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

Right now, President Trump's nominee to run the Federal Reserve is making his case to the senators who will or will not vote to confirm him. Kevin Warsh, what he is saying is that he will be politically independent. He says, he won't be swayed by demands from President Trump to cut interest rates and says he never promised the president that he would do so. It's one of the main issues Democrats are grilling him on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JACK REED (D-RI): Do you suspect that he chose you because you indicated to him that you want to cut rates?

KEVIN WARSH, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIR NOMINEE: Senator, I don't know the reason for the president's choice, but I can tell you what I've been writing about for 15 years, and what I said to the president, which is --

REED: You're going to cut -- I'll cut rates if you give me the job.

WARSH: No, that's not what I said, Senator. Now, the president, as you might know, much like virtually all presidents I've either known or studied, presidents tend to be for cutting rates. I think the difference is, President Trump expresses it quite publicly, without surrogates or subterfuge, but presidents want lower rates, but Fed independents up to the Fed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: The hearing is still ongoing, as you can see there, Warsh is really pretty secure in his votes to get confirmation, but the question right now is whether or not he will be held up or blocked. Republican senator -- Republican senator, Thom Tillis, says he will do just that, unless the Justice Department drops a criminal probe into the current chairman and somebody who the president very openly disdains, Jay Powell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): The problem that I have here is that we had some U.S. attorney with a dream or assistant U.S. attorney, thinking it would be cute to bring chair Powell under an investigation just a few months before the position was going to be open. And let's get rid of this investigation, so I can support your confirmation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here at the table. Phil Mattingly, I know you've been listening to the confirmation hearing all morning. What's your main takeaway?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: My main takeaway -- look, there's actually a lot you can get into that's really interesting, related to the Fed balance sheet or communication going forward. How he's thinking about the institution, or his approach to it? The only thing that matters is what you were just listening to from Senator Thom Tillis.

As you noted, Republicans have the majority, Republicans including Thom Tillis, vigorously support this nomination. Think extraordinarily highly of Kevin Warsh, even economists, former Fed officials who disdain what they've seen from President Trump are Democratic nominees from the past who are no longer serving. Say, explicitly, Warsh is qualified for the job. He's exactly the type of person you would want to be picked for the job. Tillis is not moving.

And I think if you take one thing away from this hearing up to this point, Tillis gets up to his five-minute Q&A with the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, or the proposed next chairman of the Federal Reserve, and says, I don't have any questions for you. You sit there and chill out, relax, because you're about to get lit up by the Democrats, which is very true.

And they proceed to spend the next five minutes systematically dismantling the absurdity of what the Justice Department has pursued. Over the course of the last couple of months, there's been talk behind the scenes of, all right, maybe 10, we can get Tillis to move or maybe we can try a procedural route.

BASH: And it's their allegations. We've seen no evidence of this. The allegations that they did something --

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: Related to overspending on a renovation tied to the headquarters, which Tillis laid out very explicitly. And other members of the committee on the Republican side, including the Chairman Tim Scott, have said repeatedly, they've seen no justification for any investigation. The cost overruns are because of asbestos, because of how old the building is.

And Tillis has made clear, he's a no period end of story. There's no moving him. A discharge petition is procedurally not a road. I'm going to take us all down, but would be very, very complicated and hard to do. And the kind of big point here is they can't get this nomination out of committee without Thom Tillis. They can't get it out committee. They can't get it to the floor.

BASH: Thom Tillis, who is retiring and has new -- no, you know what's to get anymore.

MATTINGLY: He's YOLO Tillis.

[12:05:00]

BASH: He's YOLO Tillis. And just going back to Warsh. He's, I think, fair to say, kind of a normie Republican. He was -- as a Fed governor, he certainly has shifted his stance on monetary policy a little bit, at least he appears to have on interest rates. He worked for George W. Bush and so forth. So, he's somebody that that even more traditional Republicans would see a familiarity with.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST AND CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. And listen, in the questioning, particularly by Elizabeth Warren, she's trying to figure out, sure this might be a normie Republican on paper, but under the power and persuasion of Donald Trump. Does he change his mind, right? She questioned him about the election in 2020. She questioned him about whether or not there's any economic policy that Trump has advanced that he disagrees with, and you know, she didn't get satisfactory answers.

And so, that is what is underneath all of this. Can the Fed maintain its independence, or will this candidate, who, as you said is qualified, has the backing of lots of Republicans. Can this candidate, if he's approved, actually try to maintain that independent reputation that the Fed has.

BASH: And then, as President Trump is want to do, I think, like they click an hour before Warsh went before these senators for his confirmation hearing. The president did an interview in a place where, you know, people who focus on the Fed are watching on CNBC. And he was asked the question about independence and specifically about interest rates. Listen to that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover): Will you be disappointed if your new Fed chair, if he gets approved, doesn't cut rates right away?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (voiceover): I would. I want Kevin. I think Kevin is great. He's really -- he's central casting in a true sense, OK. I think he's going to do a great job. Yeah. If there's -- I've been -- I've been in favor of interest rate rises to stop inflation. I think it, sort of, is effective. But there's one thing, and you -- nobody ever talks about it but me, unfortunately, so I'm sure it's not correct. But I think it is. We should be -- we should have the lowest interest rate in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH DAWSEY, POLITICAL INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: What was the fascinating interview in that sense, and also, Joe Kernen, one of the host was like repeatedly, almost pleading with the president to say, let's drop the investigation into your own bow, so you can get your guy approved. He's asking him over and over and over, and he's kind of leading him, and the president's like, no, no, no, no.

We think that he calls him too late in this interview. He says, we think too late maybe has potentially been stealing money, which is, you know, no allegations, this has not been proven. And Jenna Bush (Ph) office, the U.S. attorney's office, you know, has escalated this even in recent days, sending two of the prosecutors to the -- showing up on site at the Federal Reserve, according to my colleagues reporting to do sort of their own reconnaissance work on site, right? So, they're not backing away.

So, what you're going to have to see the president is there's nothing he wants more than Jay Powell to leave his Fed chair, right? He says, if he doesn't leave at the end of his term, if he doesn't leave the board, I can fire it, x, y, z. But till it seems kind of unstable here, unless something big changes, and Trump is going to have to decide how much is he willing to tolerate letting this go away, to get Powell out.

And also, with these interviews, I mean, Trump needs to be clear across the government, not just of the Fed, right, but he wants say, and how things work. He wants say, the Department of Justice, he won't say our regulations are done. He's shown influence of FTSE, FCC, all these other semi regulatory agencies. He views in his world. I'm the president. I'm the chief executive. I want everything in the government to sort of report to me. You see him go after the Supreme Court with the tariffs, right? And so, here's what you see is, of course, they should follow my lead on the interest rates. I'm the president.

BASH: Yeah. Let's listen to a little bit of that interview where he was pushing, still very hard, on this investigation, on Jay Powell, who, by the way, was his pick in the first term.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): Somehow, we have to find out how this can happen. It's not the first time. How does this happen? Did the contractor make three $3.5?

JOE KERNEN, CO-ANCHOR, SQUAWK BOX (voiceover): If the banking committee can take it over --

TRUMP: I can't imagine that too late is taking money on construction. I can't, but it's possible. But we have to find out. Why is a job that should have cost $25 million costing billions and billions of dollars?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And we should say there is no evidence of kickbacks.

MATTINGLY: I'm just asking questions.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: It's possible, though, just tossing that out there, don't see it's a key point. There's always this interesting moment where the president has interviews and people who the president likes or thinks highly open. And Joe Kernen is one of those people on CNBC, try to lead him to the answer.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: You've seen Sean Hannity do it often as well. We're like, I'm just going to keep asking this question, and eventually we're going to get there, because the solution makes a lot of sense. In this case --

[12:10:00]

BASH: And give me the solution. I'm saying it out loud. All you have to do is say --

MATTINGLY: I'm going to ask you in six different ways to try and lead you to the water, my horse.

BASH: He doesn't want it.

MATTINGLY: And I think the critical thing that Joe Kernen was getting at, which is the critical thing you've heard from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, in which Tillis has reiterated over and over and over again, is there is an off ramp here that gets you everything you want. Jay Powell to leave on May 15. He has two more years as a governor, even after his chairmanship.

The expectation is, by precedent, he would step down from that. He may stay, just to be a thorn in his side. If he doesn't, he would probably -- if you wrap up the investigation and drop it, you get your new chair. Jay Powell doesn't stay on as governor. Everything the president wants is sitting right there for him. He just won't do it.

HENDERSON: But one of the things the president wants is to punish and embarrass people who don't toe the line. And I think in some ways, you can look at this investigation, there's no evidence, there's no evidence of wrongdoing. He's there implying that this guy is a thief, right? I mean, he wants to tarnish this guy's good name because he didn't do what the president wanted him to do, which was to lower interest rates.

BASH: All right, everybody stand by. Coming up. Vice President J.D. Vance, he's now heading to the White House. It's not clear when he's going to depart for Pakistan for peace talks with Iran. The question still is whether Iranians will be there to meet him. And what you see there are campaign signs all over Virginia, because it is voting day in Virginia, a redistricting referendum there. And the question is going to be for them, how is the map going to be drawn in Virginia? But ultimately, for everybody else who controls the House of Representatives?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: We are still expecting Vice President J. D. Vance to leave for Pakistan for peace talks with Iran. Right now, he is still in Washington, set to take part in White House meetings. When or if he is going to leave is still unclear. If there is no deal, a fragile ceasefire will expire tomorrow night. And yet, this morning on CNBC, President Trump said, the war has already won.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): We totally won the war. We have totally beat them militarily and otherwise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voiceover): I want to make -- I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed. I have all the time in the world. I want to make it, not a good deal, I want to make a great deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Josh Dawsey, the war is won, and yet, he wants to make a good deal, translate.

DAWSEY: I don't know that I can translate, other than. The president has truly been frustrated in recent weeks that he's not getting -- he and the military aren't getting enough credit for how much they've done to dismantle the Iranian military and the navy and what they've done. But this war, according to public polls, is not very popular, right?

And a lot of his advisors have been pushing him to look for a way out. We have to have a way to get the Strait open, oh, pardon me, we have to have gas prices to go down significantly. Because, you know, the mid-terms are coming up, a lot of folks are feeling the heat on that. And there's a lot of pressure you feel inside the White House when you talk to people about finding a way to get out.

So, the president is never going to say, you know, this isn't going well publicly. He's going to say, look at all we're doing, and look at the stocks, and look at this, and we've totally won. But you're also seeing a lot, a lot of the internal angst about, you know, how do they extricate themselves from this prolonged conflict was dominating the headlines, dominating everyone's attention, causing some public erosion and support. I mean, they're looking for a way out.

BASH: You -- we talked on the show about your terrific story over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, and we talked about your anecdote about why and how the president got to the point where he posted something about Allah in Truth Social. But there's something else that I want to drill down on, a great anecdote in here, and I'm going to read it.

This is during the capture while these two airmen were captured behind enemy lines. Trump demanded that the military go get them immediately. But the U.S. hadn't been on the ground in Iran since the government's overthrow that led to the hostage crisis, and they needed to figure out how to get into treacherous Iranian terrain and avoid Tehran's own military. Aides kept the president out of the room as they got minute by minute updates because they believed his impatience wouldn't be helpful, instead updating him at meaningful moments.

DAWSEY: Yes. So, what we're reporting there is that all day on Saturday, the day before Easter, senior White House officials, military officials, everyone caught into the Situation Room. And the president was out shed about finding these guys, and he turned to his aides and said, go get them right. They're two troops. They're down in Iranian territory, but he's not in the Situation Room, and he's not with them. And it's not.

I think that they -- I've seen some folks on Twitter and on the left say, oh, all of these different theories. It's more presidents an impatient guy when he wants something done immediately. When he is in the mood to have something his way, he wants it done immediately. And so, they left him out of the room because I think they were trying to, you know, they knew this was going to take a long, long period of time, but they were going to be fits and starts.

Obviously, the planes went down at one point in the sand, and they couldn't get them, you know, up. They, you know, the guy crossed 7000 feet up in the mountain, the guy who they were looking for. I mean, there were all sorts of treacheries --

[12:20:00]

BASH: They don't want to be distracted by his patience.

DAWSEY: -- to do here, and they wanted him to get sort of regular updates for not to be in the room, for every single particular --

BASH: It's a very telling anecdote. Let's go back to where we are right now, which is, you know, a holding pattern still. But just talking about what the president has said, we did in the past, like day or two, as he tries to continue to push the narrative of the war is won and everything is going to be fine.

These are statements that the president of the United States has made that are just not accurate. Vance would not join the second round of negotiations. Well, we'll see. Maybe they'll pull him, but that's not the plan right now. Vance was heading over to Pakistan on Monday. It's Tuesday, he didn't go. Strait of Hormuz is completely open, and Hormuz Strait situation is over. We all wish. Iran agreed to turn over its enriched uranium. Iran's military is gone.

HENDERSON: Yeah. And listen, some of this is him trying to make the markets respond and respond positively, and some of this is him trying to move the negotiations along. I think, unfortunately, some of this has angered the Iranians, right? This idea that, you know, they've turned over their enriched uranium, for instance, or agreed to do that. That is a huge sticking point, as is the Strait of Hormuz.

So, this is a president. I mean, some of this feels like deja vu all over again, like the days just run together of him trying to bend the world and bend this war to the way that benefits him on social media and giving all of these interviews. You know, he's on the phone with a reporter every other day, making some of these proclamations that turn out not to be true.

BASH: Can we talk about Tucker Carlson? Because the breakup between he and the president has now reached another level. Let's watch what Tucker said on his show yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, "THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW": It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind. Or like, oh, this is bad. I'm out. It's like, in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me, and millions of people like us, for the reason this is happening right now. We'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional. That's all I'll say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: He's talking about his support for President Trump, which he effectively is saying, he regrets.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting turn about from the Republican National Convention when he was a primetime speaker and delivered like a 45 minute off the cuff. Again, no notes just about how this was the greatest option that anybody and any voter could want. And he has a very significant following that is vigorous in their support for him, and that support overlapped pretty directly with President Trump during the campaign. And I think Trump campaign officials would acknowledge that that certainly wasn't hurtful in any way, shape or form. That was only helpful.

I think the big question that I've had throughout kind of the splits through various parts of the MAGA universe, sometimes they can be overstated. Sometimes we try and read too much into them, but on Tucker Carlson specifically is the number of times they've kind of toggled back and forth between -- look, I'm kind of out of the circle now. No, now I'm back in it. And then, all of a sudden, he shows up at the White House for an oil executive event and he's standing right next to --

BASH: Well, he was there like five days but what --

MATTINGLY: Yeah. And so, like, I don't necessarily read that much into it because for whatever reason, whatever he says publicly, he can still eventually get the president on the phone. I think the biggest question right now is the frustration that Josh was alluding to nationally with the war, the frustration for younger voters who the idea, many of them very shaped by the experience of -- experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, thinking we were lied to or we were misled. And what the kind of, I guess, durability of that frustration or disappointment will be coming into electoral seasons ahead.

BASH: I mean that's the key question. You're exactly right. OK, don't go anywhere. Coming up. It's a vote that could determine who controls Congress in November. We're going to go live to Virginia for one of the last redistricting fights.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Voters in Virginia are deciding today whether to redraw, redraw rather its congressional map, and it's a decision that could determine which party wins the House this November. If the democratic gerrymander passes, it could give the party four additional seats. Now it's all part of the nationwide redistricting effort, one that Republicans, prompted by the president himself, started last year in Texas.

I want to get straight to CNN's Arlette Saenz, who is at a polling station in Manassas, Virginia, which is inside the proposed seventh congressional district that has been redrawn to look like what is being called, the lobster. I guess, oh, yeah, I see the lobster there. Arlette, we just showed everybody the lobster. Now we get to see you. What are you seeing so far?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, there's been a steady stream of voters from both sides on this redistricting effort throughout the day. As Virginia voters are set to decide whether they will support the redrawing of congressional maps in the state. This is a state ballot measure, but it has widespread ramifications for the national stage.

As Democrats could potentially net up to four seats here in Virginia. President Donald Trump last night, rallied his supporters, trying to urge them to vote against the measure, calling it a democratic power grab. But Democrats in the state say that they are simply following up on what President Trump and Republicans did, beginning down in Texas last summer.

But take a listen to a few of the voters we spoke to earlier today about how they are feeling