Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Soon: Trump Travels To FL To Talk "No Tax On Social Security"; New Poll: 61 Percent Say War In Iran Is A Mistake; Hegseth Claims Ceasefire Pauses War Powers Deadline; GOP Could Target 37 Democratic Seats Across The South; Trump: Tennessee Gov. Will "Work Hard" To Redraw Maps; Is The MAGA Coalition Cracking In Ohio?. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 01, 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]

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Dr. Majid Fotuhi is a neurologist and a neuroscientist who believes there are basically five pillars for improving brain health, exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress reduction, and brain training. And he says it doesn't actually take that long to start seeing results.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MAJID FOTUHI, NEUROLOGIST: It turns out that 12 weeks seems to be sufficient amount of time to see objective improvements in brain functions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: So, remember this, your brain is not destined to decline. And you can hear more about how to optimize your health and chase life wherever you get your podcasts.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Thanks to Dr. Sanjay Gupta. We always learn a lot from him. Appreciate it very, very much. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Vietnam level opposition as the war in Iran hits 60 days, a new poll shows the backlash is surging. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

You are looking at live pictures of the White House, where President Trump, any minute, will leave and he's going to go to the villages in Florida, a massive Republican leading retirement community. It's in the central part of the Sunshine State. Now the plan is to push his no tax on Social Security. Idea, that's a proposal that he wants everybody to be listening to.

But look at what you see on the screen, which is what people are seeing as they drive down the road everywhere in this country, generally speaking, $4.39 a gallon. That's the national average of a gallon of gas, and it is the highest price in four years, jumping $0.09 overnight and $0.33 in only a week. And then there's this, a new poll showing 61 percent of Americans who say the war in Iran is a mistake.

This is a new poll out this morning from the Washington Post and ABC News, and it notes that it is about the same as the wars in Iraq and Vietnam in polls taken years not weeks after they began.

I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters today as we wait for the president to leave. John King, I, you know, listen, when I hear any comparison to Iraq and Vietnam, I say, hold on a second. For so many reasons, there's so many differences in those, it would take the whole hour to describe them. But when you're talking about the way that the public feels about this. That's the context, and that is what these pollsters were trying to get at, and it is stunning.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is stunning. It was opposition to the Iraq war that allowed the United States to elect its first African American President, Barack Obama. That opposition was so fierce, the American people said, we want big change. We want dramatic change. That is what you feel when you travel the country.

Look, the president wants to sell, no taxes on Social Security. Republicans in the midterm elections are trying to sell. You know, remember, we cut your taxes on overtime and tips. They cannot break through because whatever little you got for that, you're paying at the pump for most people out there. The president said this would be quick. It's past 60 days. The president said, yes, gas prices would spike, but he would get out pretty soon and they would come down. They went up again overnight.

So almost everything the president has said repeatedly, Iran has agreed to give up its nuclear materials. Iran has not agreed to give up its nuclear materials. So, so much of what the president has said has simply been proven by the days and days that pass and by the facts to simply not be true. So politically, this has become, at least in the moment, you're right. You cannot compare it. You cannot compare long term to Vietnam, a long term to Iraq. We'll see where we are down the road. But politically, this has become a disaster for him. He's not on the ballot. It's a huge disaster for his party.

BASH: I mean, I said that we can't compare it because, you know, Vietnam, obviously there was a draft Iraq and there was boots on the ground. Iraq, there were boots on the ground. None of that is happening right now. But interestingly, the president and even this week on Capitol Hill, the defense secretary is making those comparisons, unsolicited.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Operation Epic Fury has delivered a decisive military results in just weeks. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, as the president has pointed out, all took years. How long we were in Iraq? How long we were in Afghanistan? How long we were in Vietnam? Iraq took how many years? Afghanistan took how many years? And they were nebulous missions that people went along with. This is different. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, he's absolutely right about the timeframe, but what the public is seeing is a sour on this war far before what happened in those wars.

TARINI PARTI, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: I think that's an interesting choice to try to compare this war with those for exactly the reasons we've talked about. But the biggest problem for the president is, and this comparison adds to that is that they're still struggling to explain what they're doing to the American people.

[12:05:00]

They don't understand why the administration is doing this war, what is going on, and they're just not making this case effectively to the voters. And we're seeing that in this polling. It's not just Democrats who are against the warm, it's independents. It's a good chunk of Republicans as well. And this is just going to continue to get worse if the president continues these actions in the Middle East.

BASH: Yeah. And there are lots of discussions -- about discussions, even this morning. There's clearly a hope that this thing finds a way to end. Problem is, this president is learning that not everything is Venezuela, not everything is in his first term, killing Soleimani, a terrorist that was kind of quick, quick and one and done, that the enemy gets a vote.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I constantly think of something the president himself said fairly early on in the opening weeks of this conflict. Talking about the Strait of Hormuz, where he said, it takes two to tango. And I think about that just about every day when you look at the current environment, and you look at the state of play, of things, and the president can't will this to conclusion on his own.

If he doesn't want to expand the military operation, he can't force it to conclusion on his own. And that dynamic there, that tension point between what has been, I think you talk to military officials and former military officials, even those critical to this administration, what they were able to accomplish during the air campaign was, without a doubt a success in every form of how you would map it out, I think.

The reality is, though, there are constraints to what you can accomplish. The bigger problem right now is the economic reality that is speeding along and accelerating by the day, which dovetails with the political reality, which is, there is no resolution to the most important piece of the economic puzzle here, which is the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It's actually closed even further because of the U.S. blockade, on top of the Iranian blockade.

And until markets, and more importantly, I think downstream producers especially, have a sense of when it's going to end and how it's going to end, and then start the process of getting it back open, which is going to take months and months. The economic pain is only going to increase and accelerate. BASH: And let's go back to that. I'm going to put back up the gas prices today and what they were just, you know, yesterday and earlier this week, you see. John, you spend a lot of time traveling around. We're going to talk about your recent trip to Ohio later in the show. But how much do you hear about this from voters as you talk to them.

KING: All the time, all the time. So, Trump has had this firm grip on rural America for a decade. If you live in rural America, what do you have to do? You have to drive longer distances. Sometimes it's 25 minutes to the gas station. So, here you're spending -- you're spending $4 a gallon just to go pay $4.20 a gallon. The gas you bought a week ago, that was four, you know, four bucks. Now you're driving to spend 4.20 on it.

If you live in rural America, you might have a farm, or you might have equipment on your land. That takes diesel fuel, that's even more expensive than that. Fertilizer additives for the soil, that's even more than that. So, if you just -- if you overlay that, look, this is pain for all Americans, right? My job is to cover politics. You should overlay that with, you know, a state like Texas, where there's a competitive Senate race. A state like North Carolina, competitive Senate race. State like Ohio, competitive Senate race. State like Iowa, possibly governors and a Senate race in several congressional districts.

What do they have in common? They are rural, largely rural. People are driving and spending more money. And so even if they get the idea that Iran is a threat, they have not heard from their commander in chief a clear plan. And this is the mistake Trump makes all the time. He says it will be fast and it will be easy. Inflation coming down will be fast and easy. It was just sleepy Joe. Iran, it's going to be a few days. We'll be fine. We're 60 days and counting now. So, his own words get him in trouble.

BASH: Real quick. You mentioned 60 days. Phil, today is 60 days since his conflict began. There is a dispute whether or not the clock paused when the ceasefire started. But it matters because of the War Powers Act, which says, within 48 hours, the president must notify Congress. Within 60 days, Congress must authorize the use of force or military action must be terminated.

MATTINGLY: Clever and creative lawyering is not necessarily a new development when it comes to the War Powers Act. In fact, most administrations don't believe it's constitutional in the first place. I think my takeaway from it is beyond like, eyebrow raise, like, oh, this was how they were going to get around it.

Now we understand and lawmakers, unless they all of a sudden have a complete kind of change of face in the Republican majorities aren't going to do anything about it. More important thing is you can pause the legal clock however you want to. The political and economic clock are accelerating, and that's just the reality of this moment for them, and that's something that they're going to have to address sooner rather than later, no matter how they try and get around Article 1 versus Article 2. BASH: All right, coming up. We are going to go deep Inside Politics and look at the map wars this week. Will Republicans hold the line or redraw it the way President Trump wants? We're going to bring you all the new developments. Plus, imagine having the man who would become pope over for dinner. Well, I'm going to speak to a Vatican reporter who's been there and done that.

[12:10:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: A core part of the Republican midterm strategy to overcome frustration with the Trump presidency is to squeeze out as many changes to the Congressional map as possible before voters even start voting. And on that, they end this week with a substantial ray of sunshine. The Supreme Court ruling gutting the part of the Voting Rights Act that requires congressional maps to be drawn to ensure minority representation. And in Florida, where the president will soon head, the state legislature approving a map that could net the GOP four seats there this coming November.

[12:15:00]

My panel is back now. And Phil Mattingly, I just want to kind of put up on the screen, so we can table-set for this discussion. What the southeast looks like with regard to the Congressional map? And you see it there. Obviously, the red is Republican seats, and the blue is Democrats. And well, it says, there you go -- excuse me, it's not just the southeast, because it always -- it also has Texas, but it's the south. Democrats have 37 seats in this area, and it doesn't seem like a lot, but if you look at the way that they vote presidential elections, you know, these are mostly red seats.

And so, the question is, what is going to happen in some of these states that are saying, OK, thank you Supreme Court. We're now going to change the maps, so that we don't have to have a guaranteed, let's say, you know, we'll look at some specifics guaranteed democratic state because it has to comply with the Voting Rights Act, which says, we must have representation in the U.S. Congress.

MATTINGLY: Every place, every district possible, where they can squeeze two current sitting members into one. And particularly, I think Louisiana is a great example of this African American majority communities into single districts, they will do that. And I think that's just the reality. And everyone was transparent about it on the Republican side before the Supreme Court ruling. They have certainly moved very quickly after.

And I think the kind of big picture political that I think we are all thinking about is the margins are so narrow right now, and just the back and forth on the redistricting battles up to this point, which have still somewhat remarkably beyond the fact they've spent so much money that I can't -- to this moment get my head around it.

It somewhat remarkably ended up as a wash up to this point, as we still now have another couple that are hanging out there, and these are the types of moves that could potentially shift things one way or another. But I think more broadly and more historically, you're starting to consult -- the idea is to consolidate districts and basically map out members that are explicitly democratic in majority African American communities, which everyone knew was going to be the result if the Supreme Court took this path.

BASH: So, let's drill down just on a couple of these southern states that the president is pressuring to make the changes after the Supreme Court decision. The president put up this morning that he had a conversation with Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, wherein he stated that he would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw in the congressional maps of the great state of Tennessee.

And then, if you look at what we're talking about here in Tennessee, the unconstitutional flaw that he's discussing is this, it is totally red. And there is one democratic seat that you see in the far western -- southwest part of the state, which is Memphis. Memphis, Tarini, is 60 percent black and over 75 percent non-white or bi-multiracial.

PARTI: We're in this political climate right now where, like, the makeup of districts just doesn't seem to matter because the president is putting so much pressure on Republicans in states like Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina to amend their maps. He wants to be able to have these additional seats in this midcycle redistricting to give him an edge in the midterms.

And he was not expecting Democrats to come out and do this tit for tat thing that they have been doing in the past. Democrats have not been as aggressive in pushing back on Trump's efforts. And what we've seen in the last two years is they're ready. They're raising a ton of money. They're doing their own midcycle redistricting in a way that has surprised Republicans. And now they really have to go out and try to gerrymander even more and as much as they can do.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, in Georgia, which is another state that the president is hoping, changes the maps now. The governor there, who is not unfamiliar with the wrath of the president, talking about Brian Kemp, if he and when he defies the president said, voting is already under way for the 2026 elections, but it's clear that this requires Georgia to attempt new electoral maps before the 2028 cycle.

[12:20:00]

So, we'll see what happens in Georgia. But let's talk about Florida, because these are kind of two different issues that are colliding into one. Governor Ron DeSantis had already this week started pushing the redistricting plan in the state legislature, which they hope will give them four additional seats.

KING: They hope it will give them four additional seats. There are some Republicans down there voicing concerns, just as Republicans in Texas did that beware. Beware. What is your math based on? In Texas, math was based on 2024 when Trump and Republicans had this giant surge among Latino voters. Texas Republicans drew a map, they said would be plus five. I'm going to argue with you, based on today, that might not be true. It might be plus four. It might be plus three. So, if Florida, if you draw these districts, what you're doing is, yes, you're drawing the, you know, drawing districts to essentially split the Democrats. If you put the Tennessee map up, there used to be one of those blue seats in Nashville.

BASH: Let's put it up.

KING: What they did was they split Nashville into three, and they spread it into Republican rural districts around it. So, you can do it. The computer technology today, the data technology today, they can literally tell you the people. They can count up an apartment building if they want to, to split the Democrats and the Republicans because they have so much data to do it.

The question is, does the electorate change under your feet when you do that? So, number one, we're going to see. Phil is right. It's a wash right now. Tens of millions of dollars spent, essentially a wash. If they get four Republican seats out of Florida, be a little skeptical. But so maybe the Republicans have a plus four heading into election day, that's not going to be enough to keep the House. That's just simply not enough math with the president's popularity where it is right now.

But what this guarantees is to see all those southern states. You know, Louisiana is going to try to do it now. They actually suspended a primary that are supposed to be in what, two weeks to try to redraw the House seat. Some of these other states are going to do it in 2028. So, this fight is going to carry over into a presidential cycle. And then Illinois, New York and Colorado, blue states are going to say, OK, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, you do that. We're going to do it again. It's ugly, it's unseemly, and it's not going to carry on for yet another cycle.

In the short term, the Republicans are trying to maximize their advantage. I do not believe, based on the president's numbers and my travels, they can do enough before the election day to save the House but they're going to try. And they're going to create a climate that just continues this. Call it chess, call it ugly throughout 2028 now.

BASH: All right, everybody standby, because Ohio was once a reliably swing state. Now it is a reliably red state, at least since the Trump era began about a decade ago. But as you see there, John King visited the Buckeye State and found that change may not be permanent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For eight years, there were Trump signs on every corner. There were flags. You couldn't go to a grocery store without seeing those red MAGA hats. I challenge you to find one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: They used to say how Ohio goes, the nation goes when it came to presidential elections. But in the past decade, Donald Trump turned the historically purple state ruby red. But as CNN's John King found in his latest installment of all over the map, there may be some purple cracks emerging heading into this year's midterms.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (voiceover): And I love Ohio. Will never let you down, I swear, I promise.

KING (voiceover): Four days. They're all heading off to vote. 900 miles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go, that's much better.

KING: Red Sox might need a backup catcher.

KING (voiceover): And one giant question. Is Donald Trump's MAGA coalition cracking? Entering Ohio, the Mahoning Valley. Gritty, blue- collar, union, reliably Democratic for decades. No more.

KING: People like this, places like this, are part of how Trump has changed America. Ohio changed from a competitive purple state to a Trump red state because of the magic of his coalition here. But as we head into the midterms, the jobs he promised are not here. The revival in American manufacturing he promised is not here.

KING (voiceover): Chris Anderson is the Mahoning County Democratic chairman. His midterm bet? Enough Trump voters will be part of electing Ohio's first Democratic governor in 15 years, and part of flipping a critical Senate seat from red to blue.

CHRIS ANDERSON, MAHONING COUNTY DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN: They got conned by a con man.

KING: You're the Democrat, so you're supposed to say that. What do you see that tells you that things are different?

ANDERSON: I mean, drive around Mahoning County. You know, for eight years, there were Trump signs on every corner. There were flags. You couldn't go to a grocery store without seeing those red MAGA hats. I'd challenge you to find one.

KING (voiceover): It's true, these are hard to find now. Maybe a clue, but hardly enough to answer the, is MAGA cracking question. This is Local 1112 United Auto Workers, Lordstown, Ohio. Ground zero in the local debate about trusting Trump. General Motors made cars here for five decades. Thousands of good union jobs. But the Lordstown plant closed in 2019, despite a first term Trump promise, it would stay open.

Foxconn built this new factory on the GM site, but its workforce is non-union, and the factory is mostly idle now as the company decides what's next. Nearby, another new factory sold as Lordstown's new hope. Ultium Cells, a joint EV battery venture between General Motors and South Korea's LG Electronics.

KING: How many guys are working in that factory now?

ROB SWAUGER, OHIO VOTER: Right now, all of production is shut down. 1,460 of us, I think there were, were all laid off on January 5, officially.

KING: And you don't know until when?

SWAUGER: Don't know until when.

KING (voiceover): Rob Swauger leads the campaign committee at Local 1112. Everyone here remembers when Trump told them not to sell their homes. And later when he said new jobs would replace the GM jobs. The Union endorsed Kamala Harris.