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Inside Politics

Trump Allies Aim To Topple Indiana GOP Lawmakers Who Defied Him; The Atlantic: Trump Is Focused On Becoming One Of History's "Great Men"; Ben McKenzie: "Cryptocurrency, It's Pretty Stupid". Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 04, 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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[12:30:17]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: They are among the few Republicans to say no to President Trump, and tomorrow they may pay for it with their political careers. I'm talking about seven GOP state senators in Indiana who refused White House demands last year to redraw the state's congressional map. They're facing Trump-backed challengers in tomorrow's Indiana primary, and a deluge of ads like this one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Soft on skin. Soft on bottoms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Soft on China. State Senator Greg Walker betrayed Hoosiers by voting to let ChemChina own Hoosier farmland, putting us at risk. And Greg Walker was soft on redistricting, voting against President Trump to protect liberals in Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: State Senator Pro -- excuse me, State Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray led the opposition to the redistricting plan. He's not up for re-election, but could still lose his job leading the Senate.

Senator Bray joins me now. Thank you so much for being here.

OK, so you've obviously been in it. You're working very hard to help your fellow incumbents. Who do you think voters are going to end up deciding to go with? The incumbents who defied the President on redistricting, or the GOP challengers the President is backing to take them out?

RODRIC BRAY (R), INDIANA STATE SENATE: Well, obviously, we'll see. An awful lot of money has been spent over the last several months on this issue. Interestingly, though, it hasn't really been about redistricting. They've tried to -- that really -- that issue hasn't come to the front, at least very often.

Our -- my colleagues in the Senate have a fantastic story to tell about Indiana's economy and opportunities that we have here, and we're trying to sell those. But it's hard to push back against the amount of money that has come in from outside the state. I would say maybe $9 million has now been spent on those races you just referenced from outside the state of Indiana.

BASH: And I just want to make it crystal clear to our viewers. We're talking about money not from Democrats, and not only from Republicans, but Republicans who are supporting the wishes of President Trump, who are trying to -- who is trying to take out your fellow Republican colleagues.

BRAY: Well, that's correct. And, you know, primaries are tough. It's always a family fight any year, and so they're always challenging. This one is one of a different flavor, though, because typically you see a primary opponent come from inside the district, somebody who just wants the state to run a bit differently.

Maybe there is some issues that were either voted for or against during the senator's last term, but they're homegrown issues. That's not what this is. This is really driven from outside the state of Indiana, mostly in Washington, D.C., and the money is coming from outside of Indiana as well.

BASH: You say in Washington, D.C. Just to put a finer point on it, it's obviously coming from the President himself, and it's been personal towards you. He said he would work tirelessly to, quote, "take you out." He called you a total rhino who betrayed the Republican Party and that he's coming for you like no one has ever come after you before.

As I said, you're not on the ballot, but the President and his team want the Republicans who are running to promise not to reelect you as president pro tem. Is he going to be successful?

BRAY: You know, we'll wait and see. And with regard to the issue of my being president pro tem or not, you know, I stand for election within the caucus every two years for that. Frankly, the honor of my life to have this position, I've had it since 2018.

At any point in time, our caucus and the Senate in general could decide they need another leadership. If that's the case, I'll humbly move forward and move aside and let somebody else do that. But -- so, you know, whether our caucus and the Senate selects me come the end of this year, in November, it just is what it is, and we're going to try and continue to conduct ourselves the best way we can and run Indiana to the best we know how.

BASH: I understand you're saying it is what it is, and the voters are going to go to the polls tomorrow, but do you have a message --

BRAY: Right.

BASH: -- for the President who is making this race and these series of races so tough for your incumbent Republicans, as you say, from the outside, not from the inside? BRAY: No, I don't have a message for the President. I've had a number of conversations with him about this issue, and he expressed to all of us that it was important, and he's the President of the United States. So if it's important to him, it's important to us. The bottom line is we decided that, as a caucus, we were fairly evenly split, but we decided, ultimately, that it wasn't the right thing, it wasn't the right way for Indiana to move forward.

[12:35:08]

You're never guaranteed a result to get, say, a 9-0 congressional Republican delegation in Indiana, but this issue does breed an awful lot of cynicism, and we have an abundance of that in the nation already.

BASH: A lot has changed in the redistricting battles since December, since you all made that decision. In Virginia, Democrats voted to gerrymander their state, or voters approved a Democratic plan to counter GOP gains across the country. The Supreme Court ruled that efforts to eliminate some majority-minority districts is OK in a handful of states.

If you had a do-over on Indiana's redistricting vote, would you do it the same way?

BRAY: You know, Indiana's going to do the way -- do things the way Indiana needs to do them. We're not going to base that decision on other states, including something like --

BASH: So no regrets?

BRAY: -- California (ph). So, no, no regrets.

BASH: OK, State Senator Rodric Bay, the President pro tem there in Indiana, thank you so much for being here. Robert Bray, I should say, Rodric Bray. You are going to have a very big day tomorrow, and maybe you'll come back, no matter what the results are.

BRAY: Yes, I hope so. Thank you. Nice being with you.

BASH: OK, you too.

And coming up, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, new reporting from Michael here, and The Atlantic magazine on the historic figures President Trump is now comparing himself to.

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[12:41:12]

BASH: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, a senior White House adviser, tells The Atlantic's Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker that the President has lately been comparing himself to some of the most consequential and well-known figures in history.

They spoke to multiple Trump insiders for their new piece, "The YOLO Presidency," and write, in part, "'He's been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live, the confidant told us.' 'He wants to be remembered as the one who did things that other people couldn't do because of his sheer power and force of will.'"

This is such a great piece, Michael. It's really fascinating. What was your takeaway from the people you talked to?

MICHAEL SCHERER, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Well, you know, one of the mysteries of this term we've been talking about all program is why is the President behaving in a way that other presidents at this point in their presidency do not behave? He's doing things that clearly are hurting him politically, they're clearly hurting his party, that are going to have huge effects in the midterm elections.

And so we were asking about that, and that's sort of how we came upon this. And the answer is, his advisers say, one, he feels freed from politics. In a way, he -- this is, you know, the -- he's basically a lame duck at this point, he wants to accomplish as much as he can. He feels he has a hot hand, that things are just going his way, there's sort of like an inevitability around him.

And also, he is now talking about himself in these much grander terms. And it's not that surprising when you think about it. I mean, like, we have an Oval Office that looks like it was designed by Louis XIV.

We have an arch being constructed maybe across the Potomac, you know, that looks like something a Roman emperor would do. We're going to have a UFC fight that's like gladiatorial combat to celebrate the America's 250th anniversary. And so that's the direction he's moving, that's sort of the headspace he's been in.

BASH: And I'm going to read another quote from your piece. "His focus now is on doing something more enduring with his influence. Trump worries about being perceived as a lame duck president. The same ally told us that Trump now cares more about his successor, believing that a Republican president loyal to him will help ensure that his actions are not immediately reversed."

So you have that, and then you have what you were just mentioning.

SCHERER: Right.

BASH: The fact that the legacy that he is trying to imprint firmly on this country is physical. And we can put some of the examples up of some of the things he's already done, renaming lots of buildings and trying to build things in his name and image, Michael.

SCHERER: Yes, and if you look at that list, a lot of that is reversible. I mean --

BASH: Yes.

SCHERER: -- the next president, and assuming he's a Democrat, can come in and rename the Kennedy Center just as easily as Trump renamed --

BASH: Yes. SCHERER: -- the Kennedy Center. But, you know, going to war with Iran and possibly taking out their nuclear program for a generation is something that lasts, is something that sticks. Building an arch on the river is something that could stick. I mean, he talks about the entire Western Hemisphere being remade, basically reset. He talks about, you know, global resets.

And, I mean, if you go back to those people he compared himself to, you know, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Caesar, those are all global reset moments in human history, or at least Western history. You know, they were very disruptive people, they were very disruptive and controversial at the time, but their legacies actually changed the way the Western world thought about itself going forward.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and I would say, I mean, one of the fascinating things, you talked about the war in Iran that we don't cover enough is that a lot of these hawks who wanted him to attack Iran, they sold it as this will make you the ultimate peace president, right? This will cement your legacy.

Because what you do if you take on Iran is you're cutting the head off the snake, they fund all the terrorists. That was part of his decision that he made because he thought that it would elevate him.

[12:45:05]

And, again, given what you said, the hot hand, he thought he could actually do it and do it quickly and then also be praised for that.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And for -- in Michael's great piece, Trump saying he could do this or an adviser saying he could do this because of his sheer force of will, it's also a lot of these things are an apparent violation of law, too, whether it's renaming the Kennedy Center, taking over the golf courses in D.C., or bulldozing the East Wing of the White House, which is tied up in court.

BASH: All right, everybody. If you feel kind of not sure about cryptocurrency, turns out you're not alone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what's taking off is Bitcoin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's money.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's cryptocurrency.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop saying cryptocurrency. I don't know what that means.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me just, like, look.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Up next, I'll talk to Ben McKenzie, the director behind the new documentary "Everyone is Lying to You for Money."

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[12:50:21]

BASH: My next guest wrote the book "Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud." But you may recognize him from something else.

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BEN MCKENZIE, DIRECTOR, "EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU FOR MONEY": At the age of 24, my career started off with a bang when I was cast as Ryan Atwood, the brooding bad boy on "The O.C." When it finished, I moved on to the gritty cop drama "Southland."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Southland" is a terrific show. But I'm curious, do you still get fans of "The O.C." that come up to you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got to talk about "The O.C." a little bit.

MCKENZIE: OK.

All right, so I was still sort of that guy from "The O.C."

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BASH: His latest project is based in part on his book. It's a documentary called "Everyone is Lying to You for Money."

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone is lying to you for money.

MCKENZIE: Cryptocurrency. It's pretty stupid.

I have a degree in economics. Surely I can figure out this crypto stuff.

The cryptocurrency industry represents the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been lied to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Ben McKenzie, thank you so much for being here. It's great to talk to you. And it's really interesting that you began this documentary six years ago, in 2020. And that seems like light years before where we are now because we now have the most crypto-friendly administration in history that is in power. More crypto money is being spent than ever before.

It's even happening in places that we care about on this show, which is politics. It looks like voters aren't as invested, though, in what you're trying to sound the alarm on as they should be. MCKENZIE: Well, yes, there's an asymmetry in the intensity of interest. There's a very small cohort of people that are really into cryptocurrency. If you look at the polling, it's about 5 percent or 6 percent. And there's another 10 percent that are sort of playing around with it.

And then there's 84 percent of the country that's never bought any cryptocurrency. And the majority of them, the majority of the country, are skeptical of it. All they hear about is crime and lots of people losing money. And occasionally certain very colorful people on the inside making a lot of money.

And so, the real question is how do we galvanize -- for me anyway, is how do we galvanize the majority of the population, allow them to confirm their suspicions about crypto via this movie perhaps, and get them to understand that this is actually, unfortunately, yet another thing that we have to care about these days and that it is actually quite dangerous for all the reasons that you pointed out.

BASH: I love the way that you phrase that, yet another thing that people have to care about these days, because I think that's part of the answer to my question about why people aren't up in arms. You mentioned the data that most people in this country, the vast majority, are not involved or invested in it. But it's also, people are really tired. There are a lot of things to worry about.

MCKENZIE: There are. And I guess if there's any, you know, sliver of hope here, crypto really is tied to so many things that so many Americans care about, particularly the corruption that we're seeing on full display at the White House. You know, the amount of money that the Trump administration, Trump family, excuse me, has made via cryptocurrency is really staggering, billions of dollars in less than two years.

And I think people are really upset about that. In a strange way, as bad as I think it is for the world, that amount of money has clarified for many people what they already perhaps suspected, that crypto is rife with frauds and con men.

BASH: You mentioned, President Trump, that crypto token that he's put out is facing some backlash. Prior supporters told Politico, F this coin. The value of the coin has plummeted since the President took office, but the Trump family has still profited from it, as you alluded to. Even Joe Rogan insinuated the coin is a cash grab.

What do you want people to think about or to know when it comes to the Trump family's closeness as it relates to the industry itself?

MCKENZIE: That it's representative of many dynamics that you see throughout the industry. The insiders profit at the expense of everyone else. So to use that example of the meme coin, the Trump family, I believe, has made approximately $300 million or something off of that meme coin. And yet the price has dropped 96 percent.

[12:55:01] So you can do the math, but the overwhelming majority, almost everyone has lost money except for the Trump family. I think that dynamic is repeated throughout crypto over and over and over again. It's an insider's game, which is, of course, incredibly ironic because crypto is supposedly a reaction to the excesses of our regulated system. But in fact, it's far worse. It's a rigged game, and most people are going to lose.

BASH: Yes, that's such a good point. It is. The irony is, I guess, irony isn't dead. I should also say that the White House press secretary, when asked about the meme coin in the past, said the President is, quote, "abiding by all conflict of interest laws that are applicable to the president."

MCKENZIE: Good for her to say that.

BASH: Ben McKenzie, you have done a lot with that economics degree, I'll tell you. Thank you so much --

MCKENZIE: Thanks.

BASH: -- for coming on.

MCKENZIE: Thank you.

BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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