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GOP Pressure On Florida To Redistrict After Dem Win In Virginia; U.S. May Take Stake In Spirit Airlines In Return For $500M Lifeline; Hegseth Fires Navy Secretary In Middle Of Naval Blockade Of Iran. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 23, 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 ANCHOR: The GOP is counting on Florida to regain an edge before the midterms. Will Governor Ron DeSantis deliver? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and Inside Politics.

Florida, Florida, Florida. We start this hour quoting the late, great Tim Russert, back in 2000 when the Sunshine State was at the center of the political world. Florida is not exactly a swing state it once was like not at all, but it is about to be ground zero for the midterms, with a special legislative session set for next week that could end with a new GOP gerrymandered congressional map.

Now, Governor Ron DeSantis is under a lot of pressure to respond to what happened this week in Virginia, where the Democratic governor got through a gerrymander of her own. Voters approved that on Tuesday. Republicans now view Florida as their last chance to regain an edge in the redistricting wars, President Trump set in motion last summer.

Now if you look at the states that have acted so far, Democrats could end up with a one seat advantage. Now, Democrats are warning that a Florida gerrymander could actually backfire on them and put GOP incumbents in danger. Here's how Governor DeSantis responds to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): This guy, Jeffries, popping off in Washington, about Florida. He wants to be Speaker of the House. I will pay for you to come down to Florida and campaign. I'll put you up in the Florida governor's mansion. We'll take you fishing. We'll do all this stuff. There's nothing that could be better for Republicans in Florida than to see Jeffries, Hakeem Jeffries everywhere around this state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Here is Jeffries this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): A big victory in Virginia, and we're going to keep the pressure on them in Florida. The Trump Republican gerrymandering scheme has failed. Why? Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK, that's a quote that John Berman is going to give you the Genesis to right now, but I do want to start with you, John and just put up on the screen some of what we're talking about, because it's a lot of maps, a lot of numbers, a lot of seats that could potentially move around. Let's just start with Florida, where it is right now.

Democrats have eight House seats in Florida. Republicans have 20 of them. And if you kind of look at that up against the bigger picture of the map and redistricting efforts from coast to coast, this is the mid-decade redistricting efforts started by President -- President Trump. This is if Florida actually happens, it could give Republicans a net two before the votes even happen in November.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, which is a lot less than the five they thought they were getting from Texas alone when this all started. Look it's either a wash (ph) plus one, plus two, and it's pretty rich that President Trump and the Republican Party now needs to go hat in hand to Ron DeSantis of Florida, the president, sort of Republican frenemy who ran in the primary against him.

And you could see Ron DeSantis in that clip, I think, relishing the moment a little bit, saying, oh, now you want me. Now you need me. Now you need me to jump to the rescue here. But look, you know, redistricting and gerrymandering is -- is an art, not -- not a science. The votes have to come from somewhere, and there are a lot of Republicans incumbents in Florida right now not happy with the idea of their voters being pulled from their district to run in some of those other swing districts that they want to pull from the Democrats there.

So -- so we'll see what happens here. And that quote was from Mike Tyson.

BASH: I heard you saying it so I wanted to give you the opportunity.

BERMAN: Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face is what Mike Tyson says.

BASH: I just want to say this is why John Berman has won Jeopardy like a million times. Abby, let me read, just to sort of pick up on one of the points that John was making, a quote from a Republican consultant in Florida.

According to Alvarado, Democrats will still have eight safe seats, the same as now, while seven seats will become tossups. Even a map designed to just protect at-risk Republican incumbents would likely make every Democratic seat safer, leaving Republicans to defend three competitive seats.

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Translation, Democrats will feel stronger, and the Republicans who you're trying to draw more seats for could be more vulnerable.

ABBY LIVINGSTON, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: The first rule of redistricting is, don't draw a map that will backfire. And for instance, the Texas map that was drawn in 2021 was drawn for a cycle like this to protect Republican incumbents, to spend as little as money as possible to protect these seats. And so what Trump has pushed the party and Democrats have done in response is to take a maximalist approach, which will spread the Republican voters thin, and that endangers Republican incumbents.

And that is also happening on top of a collapse of the Hispanic vote in Republican parties, which is a big issue in Florida. And so this is nothing but a gang war where one side wants two and the other side takes two.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, very, very well said. John also mentioned DeSantis and the rich notion and the sort of the drama playing out right now about whether or not DeSantis is going to do this, and the pressure that is or is not, coming privately and publicly from the White House, including from people who -- the Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who has a comp -- I think it's not even, I don't know if you would want to say Frenemy. I mean they have a complicated --

BERMAN: I think the FR is on it.

BASH: Yeah, they worked -- Susie Wiles worked for and with Ron DeSantis for a while, and then broke and was and is still with Donald Trump. James Blair, who's the political director, or at least was until a couple days ago, he's in charge of politics in Trump world right now, also from Florida. Listen to the way that he kind of tried to dance a little bit around the question of the pressure on DeSantis when I interviewed him yesterday.

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JAMES BLAIR, RUNNING TRUMP'S MIDTERM POLITICAL OPERATIONS: I think that Ron DeSantis has drawn the maps before. If he chooses to go forward, he will draw them in a way that is compliant with the law, and we'll see what happens.

BASH: That was a definitive non-answer.

BLAIR: It's the best answer I got.

BASH: How come?

BLAIR: Again, I just think that I would not want to presume what the governor is going to do. I don't talk to the governor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I mean, look, one thing that strikes me too is that is where the Trump administration and Trump officials in Trump World decides that they don't want to impose their will. I mean, just -- just the fact that it was a non- answer is super, super telling. But also, look, I think -- I think even both sides are lost in the sauce a little bit here of redistricting, because yes, it started in Texas.

We've had the tit for tat, back and forth. But when you look at even the Virginia margins, one thing that was super interesting was the yes vote was less than what Kamala Harris won the state by, and much less than what Governor Spanberger won the state by. Not to say that, obviously they got the result they wanted. Courts will work it out moving forward.

But that appetite for pure politics, which redistricting and gerrymandering in a mid-10-year-cycle, clearly is, it's a war to this point, doesn't quite seem to have the appetite when prices are still going up because of the war, gas price is still going up with no sign of return.

BASH: That's a good point.

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, REPORTER, NOTUS: Well, this is the major challenge of this whole thing. Is that this was supposed to be a two pronged attack. It wasn't just draw the lines and we're going to be safe, do whatever we want. It was supposed to we're going to fight history. History, you see the incumbent president loses seats in the midterm election, we're going to protect our incumbency a little bit, and we're also going to be popular at the end of the year.

That's not happening for the Republican Party. That's their major problem. When you talk about Democrats, you know, I interviewed Suzan DelBene, (inaudible), a bunch of times throughout this entire year about this redistricting and kept saying to her, aren't you freaking out about this redistricting? And she kept saying no, because, like, we're just going to win.

Our party is doing well, voters are going to come our way. And you know, that's her job to say that. But it is true that where we sit right now, she was right, that like those -- those swing -- those -- those pink districts are much more in trouble now because of the fact that the public is not that into MAGA anymore, and that's a big problem that even more than redistricting failure that's happening so far.

BASH: And let me just back that up by playing what her Republican counterpart, Richard Hudson from North Carolina, who's in charge of getting Republicans elected to the House, the exchange he had with Manu Raju.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Was it a great decision to start this fight in Texas last year?

REP. RICHARD HUDSON (D-NC): Well, it's not up to me to decide, but what I can tell you is, what Virginia is doing is illegal, according to the courts. It's now time for the state Supreme Court to affirm that and end the madness.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was this nine month exercise worth it?

HUDSON: It's not for me to decide that. Wasn't my decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: You could almost have watched that with the sound off, just looking at his body language and knew exactly what he was saying.

LIVINGSTON: Generally, the NRCC chair is intimately involved in redistricting, and so that's important to remember, but it's also just the -- there were a lot of Republicans who didn't want to do this a year ago who saw this coming. And I had one text me from Texas this week, and he said, you know, you can look at this and see who was just wanting to go along to get along.

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BASH: Yeah. All right, everybody stand by. Coming up, it's the least popular airline in America. So why is the federal government considering a bailout for bankrupt Spirit Airlines, and why are prominent Republicans so unhappy about it? Plus a wild scene in the West Wing, last night. The ousted Navy Secretary showed up because he couldn't believe he'd actually gotten fired.

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BASH: A bailout for Spirit Airlines is almost ready for take-off. Sorry, John. An attorney for the budget airline just told a bankruptcy court judge that they are in talks with the federal government. This just happened, and they are in talks for a $500 million bailout. That deal could be announced sometime today.

President Donald Trump hinted at the deal to save the financially troubled budget airline earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Spirit is in trouble, and I'd love somebody to buy Spirit. It's 14,000 jobs, and maybe the federal government should help that one out. You know, I tell my people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Our Business Senior Reporter, Dave Goldman joins our excellent panel. Dave, can you put this in a little bit of context about, first of all, how -- how rare this is, and second of all, we're talking about, again, just, happened in this court, $500 million of taxpayer money?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah. I mean, it hasn't happened for over 20 years that we've had a liquidation of an airline, and that's what Spirit faces right now. And so if Spirit goes out of business, think about all of the fares that it's keeping lower just by being in existence right now. Because what did American, Delta, United, all of those larger airlines do to compete with Spirit, they started doing Basic Economy, right?

Those are the really cheap fares. It's not for everyone, but for people who want cheap flights, they can get those because Spirit exists. Now, it's a hated airline. People do not like flying Spirit. We know that from all kinds of customer data, but it's important that it exists, and that's why the government is probably so concerned about the fact that it might not be able to exist. And you don't need to take my word for it, Spirit has said we think that we might not be able to exist as a company.

So, you know, it was the case before the Iran war, but now we have jet fuel prices doubling over the past few weeks, and so Delta said that's going to be $2 billion of cost just for the past month. United said it would cost $11 billion for United if jet fuel prices stay the same over the course of the year. The biggest profit they've ever made was $5 billion in a year.

So this is an extraordinary situation for the big guys. For a little regional airline like Spirit, this is life or death, and unless they get that money, it's probably death.

BASH: Let's listen to the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN DUFFY, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: The question will be, can we do anything to save Spirit and make it viable, or would we be putting good money into a company that inevitably is going to be liquidated?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So you have to really kind of be hearing Tea Party talk in that answer. And those of us who speak that language and are fluent in that, you can hear it. And just to underscore, let's look at what two Republican senators who have that sensibility have said about this possible bailout.

Ted Cruz, this is an absolutely terrible idea. The tarp corporate bailouts were a huge mistake, and the government doesn't know a damn thing about running a failed budget airline that the admitted -- Biden administration killed.

OK, Tom Cotton, if Spirit's creditors or other potential investors don't think they can run it profitably, coming out of its second bankruptcy in under two years, I doubt the U.S. government can do it either.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, I mean, it's no surprise that Republicans don't like this, right? I don't know that a lot of Democrats would like this. Either it's --

BASH: Elizabeth Warren said some similar things.

GOLDMAN: Taxpayer money going to rescue Spirit Airlines, which, as I mentioned, is not a well-loved airline. BASH: Well, let me just pull up, you know, you keep saying that, and

we'll just pull up the data. This is from a Harris poll from Axios 2025 ranking of corporations, this isn't just airlines. These are just like corporations. It's 100 out of 100.

GOLDMAN: Hey, the Trump administration -- the Trump Organization, beat it though.

BASH: There you go. There you go.

GOLDMAN: Listen, I mean, when you have to figure that people are not going to like this, and that's why they're -- Sean Duffy is talking the way that he's talking, but the fact that the administration is in advanced discussions with them, I think, shows that they understand that if they let it die, then that could be worse.

And what's really, really interesting is that Spirit had made this argument about four years ago, and it had tried to merge with JetBlue and the Biden administration said, no.

BASH: Yep.

GOLDMAN: Right. And now is it regretting that decision?

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BERMAN: It's the 14,000 jobs, I think that Donald Trump, who doesn't have any of the orthodoxy issues that Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, other Republicans have, I don't think that President Trump necessarily has that set political ideology. I think he sees 14,000 jobs, which David pointed out, could disappear, really, in the snap of the finger there.

And I think that jobs creation and unemployment is a major concern for this administration every month as they head into the midterms, because it's one of these economic measurements, has really been going great for them consistently.

BASH: No, it's true. Abby?

LIVINGSTON: It just strikes me that this is a tsunami of prices jumping on right ahead from the summer travel season. I mean, I'm just curious where you see that?

GOLDMAN: Yeah. I mean, we've already seen United cut about 5 percent of its flights. Delta says that it's going to raise fares. We just had Southwest report today. They said to expect higher fares in the summer. If you haven't booked yet, you should book now.

BASH: I just want to say I booked on Southwest this morning. I almost got sick (inaudible) how much it was. All right, everybody stand by because it is Take Your Child to Work Day, including on Capitol Hill, where our Chief Congressional Correspondent had two deputies with him. 10 year olds, Sanjay and Sonya (ph) Raju and they, of course, helped him do what he does best. Hound members of Congress. Sanjay had a pretty tough question about what we're discussing, the Spirit bailout.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANJAY RAJU, CNN DEPUTY CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Should the U.S. government be bailing out Spirit Airlines?

REP. MARK ALFORD (D-MO): I don't think it's the government's job to get in the business of owning an airline.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I mean Apple meet tree. Love that so much. Like father, like son. Thank you so much for getting that important reporting, Sanjay. Another top military leader ousted while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is trying to explain this because he forced the U.S. Navy Secretary out of his job while the U.S. Navy and the rest of the military is at war. We'll explain after a break.

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BASH: U.S. Navy Secretary John Phelan was ousted from his position yesterday amid rising tensions with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Hegseth believed Phelan was moving too slowly on ship building reforms, and apparently was irked by his close relationship with President Trump. Phelan and his wife raised millions of dollars for President Trump's campaign. My panel is back. Evan?

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: Well, I mean, this is a remarkable story, because you think about this idea of being in that MAGA circle, that Mar-a- Lago circle, and to be sort of pushed aside like this by Pete Hegseth, who a person who has been kind of at the President's good side, bad side, flipping around, all in the time of war. This is not a great look, I think, for this White House right now.

And I think it's a very interesting thing to look forward to in terms of what the President will do in a situation like this, when one of his major donors is sort of being pushed aside. He tends to be very friendly to them. So I wonder if those phone calls will still be taken now that he's out of the Navy.

JIMENEZ: Well, I mean, two things jump out at me. One, obviously, the U.S. naval blockade is still ongoing. Everything is really moving at a knife's edge in terms of negotiating, not just Iran- U.S., but Israel- Lebanon cease fire talks picking back up again too. So from a stability standpoint, is this the right move?

But also, I was talking to a member of the House Armed Services Committee a few days ago, and one of the things that concerned him was sort of about military readiness for the military overall, based on how much we're invested in Ukraine, in Israel, if something happens in East Asia, for example, does the military have the pat -- the capacity in the way that that is optimal to respond to another conflict if it were to arise?

So I think those are the two things that I'm sort of looking at in this dynamic, and how that changes, sort of the current operational capacity. BASH: And John Berman, just the drama of how this happened. Our White

House team has some terrific reporting. I'm going to read you some of it. At least two White House staffers told Phelan the decision was Trump's, the official said, but Phelan still sought confirmation from the president himself or someone close to him, coming to the White House grounds and looking for officials in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with whom he had relationships, asking if they had any information, the official said.

Phelan then asked to meet with Trump and went to the West Wing lobby, the official said, and Trump met with him briefly, confirming that Phelan was out of a job.

BERMAN: It's really incredible. Pete Hegseth told him more or less, he was fired, and then Phelan said, I need to get a second source here. He basically went to --

BASH: The Commander-in-Chief.

JIMENEZ: Mom says, no. Ask dad.

BERMAN: I mean, it really is incredible. I mean, kudos to him for having the confidence to go, check his sourcing there. The one thing that's interesting is that, you know, the war in Iran is unpopular, right? In the polls, most people don't approve of what's going on there, but all the polls do show they approve of the job the military is doing and carrying it out what they don't like is happening.

And I do wonder if this level of disarray inside the Pentagon, if that might start to have an impact there on voter perceptions, and whether or not they'll start to sort of question the efficiency of the whole operation.

BASH: Well, on that note, this is not a dismissal in a vacuum. Maybe these are different reasons. I mean, each dismissal has a -- has its own set of reasons, but it's not in a vacuum.

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