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Republicans Defy Trump Over $1.8 Billion "Anti-Weaponization" Fund; Trump Defends $1.8 Billion Fund After Bipartisan Resistance; Consumer Sentiment At Worst Ever Number In 70 Plus Years History; Today: Trump Campaigns In New York Rep. Mike Lawler's District; Poll: Disapproval Of Trump Economy Spikes To 71 Percent; New Book Chronicles Former Senator's 50 Plus Years In Politics. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired May 22, 2026 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- utterly stupid, morally wrong. Lisa Murkowski, the White House dropped a bomb. Ron Johnson -- I mean, Ron Johnson, who is not someone who speaks out against the President much. Somebody described it as a galactic blunder, and I think that's probably true. Wow.
To put an even finer point on it, if you didn't get it with those three, I want to read a quote from a Republican senator who is not named in Andrew's piece, "Our majority is melting down before our eyes."
ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: That was texted to me while Todd Blanche, the Attorney General -- Acting Attorney General, was trying to justify this anti-weaponization fund during a nearly two-hour meeting with Senate Republicans during which --
BASH: That was yesterday, right?
DESIDERIO: Right.
BASH: Yes.
DESIDERIO: During which 25, I was told, Senate Republicans stood up and made their concerns known. That is very rare for these types of meetings. It's usually like six to eight senators. You know, people talk about, you know, what they're working on, or maybe raise some complaints or issues with the leadership, but 25, that's half the conference.
And it underscores how politically toxic they view this issue. And then in the context of not only the President going after their colleagues, but doing so in a way that undermines their own majority, right? I mean, like, they all believe that Ken Paxton is the worst general election candidate against James Talarico, the Democrat. At least in the case of Louisiana with Bill Cassidy, a Republican is going to win that seat no matter what. Now, Texas is in play. Republican-affiliated Super PACs have already spent almost $100 million boosting John Cornyn in this primary and now this runoff. That money was just lit on fire. John Thune was trying to encourage the President to get ahead of this and endorse John Cornyn a year ago. He refused, and then he started dangling the endorsement as a way to push Thune to get rid of the filibuster.
BASH: That's right.
DESIDERIO: So this frustration is really mounting to the point where Republicans, Senate Republicans at least, are finally starting to choose their political survival over feel-teeth to Donald Trump. And I think they see the writing on the wall in this instance with how the polling is with the President and how they're going to -- that's going to be an anchor weighing them down.
BASH: Although, I am very curious as to how long that lasts and how much of a pushback there will be on other issues. This is like, as Ron Johnson said, a galactic blunder in that there's just so many things politically toxic --
TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Yes.
BASH: -- about this --
DESIDERIO: Yes.
BASH: -- fund.
MITCHELL: It was very -- I mean, first of all, I think we need to point out that most of these Republicans were in the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
BASH: Yes.
MITCHELL: They were attacked by the people that now could possibly go back and get money paid out of this slush fund, so I think they find it personally offensive as well as offensive to the law enforcement officers who protected them that day. But also I think, again, just the optics of things that Trump is doing it, making it worse and worse for Republicans who are going to be on the ballot this year, you know, the perception that he's focused on enriching himself and allies while gas is high, while people at home are worried about the rising cost of goods.
And then finally the perception that he basically sued himself, you know? He sued himself as an individual, but now he controls the government that he sued and therefore talks about, well, you know, I could have gone to trial and won, but instead I settled with myself for this really -- this fund that's going to help other people.
Like, it just -- there's no way to make it look good, and I think as much as Republicans try their best to give him what he wants. Even when they personally object, they try to find a way. Even the ballroom -- BASH: Yes.
MITCHELL: -- we know they don't want the ballroom, but they were going to try to do it.
DESIDERIO: That's at the bill. That's at the bill, yes.
BASH: But that's what I was going to bring up. I don't -- I mean, this is -- there are two giant issues that Republicans are really upset about, and the fund is probably the biggest --
MITCHELL: Right.
BASH: -- but not far behind that is the fact that the President wants $1 billion for security for this ballroom, and the Republicans skip town rather than give him the money that he wants.
TARINI PARTI, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: They're trying to push this off for now, whether it's, you know, even in the House, they left town and pulled a vote on the War Powers Resolution. Instead of really confronting the President head-on, they're trying to delay it for as much -- as long as they can, but for now, the ballroom security, as they're calling it, that part of -- that piece of the package is out.
They're also still trying to figure out how they're going to deal with this fund that we've talked about. And on the point of January 6th, a lot of these Republicans were OK with pardons for January 6th rioters. But when it comes to taxpayer-funded payouts, that's where they're choosing to draw the line.
BASH: All right, everybody coming up, President Trump is hitting the campaign trail today. He's going to a district he lost in 2024. It's Mike Lawler's district, and I asked him why he wants the President there. His response? When we come back.
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[12:39:44]
BASH: New in this morning, consumer sentiment hits another all-time low, thanks to the cost of living and sky-high gas prices. The survey data goes back to 1951, meaning, Americans are feeling worse about the economy than they did during the oil shock in the 1970s, the Great Recession, or COVID.
[12:40:04]
Those dismal economic figures come as President Trump travels to a swing district in New York to sell his economy and his tax cuts. The President plans to campaign with Republican Congressman Mike Lawler, one of three Republicans who represent congressional districts that Trump lost in 2024.
And my panel is here now. Let's just, again, give a little bit of meat to that and how unusual it is for the President to be going where he's going. If you look at Mike Lawler, the top graph there, Kamala Harris won by just half a percentage point. Mike Lawler overperformed her by a lot, and then the other district where a Republican is running for re-election, there are only three, the other one is going to be open.
Kamala Harris won by three-tenths of a percentage point in the PA-1, and Brian Fitzpatrick way overperformed. But going back to Lawler, again, I just want to read something, Tia, to you about what he told me about why he's inviting, given what you just saw, why he's inviting President Trump.
"Realistically, the people who absolutely hate Donald Trump and are voting in this election, they're not voting for me. So if Donald Trump is your issue, you're not voting for me. So of course I'm going to bring him here to get the base out. When he's not on the ballot, you've got to motivate the base."
MITCHELL: Well, that's an interesting quote, given the numbers you just shared. Because the numbers you share indicate that there are people who, at least last round, did not vote for Donald Trump, but did vote for Mike Lawler, you know? And so there are swing voters, and I don't know, particularly in this climate, with Donald Trump's approval rating so low, campaigning with him could turn off some of those same swing voters that were the Harris-Lawler voters of 2024. And that's the risk he's taking by campaigning with Donald Trump.
BASH: Yes. And he told me, I'm going to make my case to those people separately. The things that I've been doing, talking about salt and so forth, also told me that he believes that the way that his district is demographically based, it's a huge Jewish population, and he thinks that that will help with Donald Trump coming, and that there are many more working-class voters that will help him.
DESIDERIO: Well, the other congressman you put up on the screen, Brian Fitzpatrick --
BASH: Yes.
DESIDERIO: -- was the subject of Donald Trump's scrutiny just the other day.
BASH: Yes.
DESIDERIO: So he doesn't apply it evenly, and this goes back to why Senate Republicans are so upset about the John Cornyn snub, which is that, you know, this now makes it harder for them to win, to keep an already red seat in what is still, Texas, a red state. And so they feel like this is applied very unevenly, and in a way that only serves sort of the President's self-interest and how he's feeling in the moment.
But these are the majority makers for Mike Johnson --
BASH: Yes.
DESIDERIO: -- and for John Thune. Like, Susan Collins is on the ballot again this year in Maine, right? She's not going to benefit from Donald Trump going there and campaigning for her. She would never appear with him anyway. Donald Trump wouldn't go there because he's so unpopular in Maine.
BASH: What do you think about Lawler inviting Trump?
SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I am so fascinated by this, because if you recall back in May 2023, President Biden actually went to this district --
BASH: Yes.
KIM: -- invited the members in that area, just out of protocol. And Mike Lawler took him up on it.
BASH: He showed up.
KIM: I talked to him at the time. I was like, why did you take this invite? You're not -- you know, and this was a very -- starting a very heated election cycle. But he said, you know, as the President of the United States, you show up. And I also talked to Mike Lawler earlier this week, actually, at the White House picnic. I grabbed him when we were in the press pen. And I'm just like, tell us about your trip and why he's there.
And he right now gets the need to motivate the base --
BASH: Yes.
KIM: -- just like you -- just like he told you, Dana. And he sees that he -- you know, you can run on the policy for those swing voters, talk a lot about the tax law. You know, the White House gave out statistics saying that the refunds for New Yorkers are higher on average. Lawler told me about the tax refunds that his constituents have been getting.
And when I was talking to him at the picnic, he was wearing a red hat with a little salt shaker that said Mr. SALT. He wants to give the President one of those. And that's -- you know, so you run on the policy for the swing voters, for the independent voters, but then really try to motivate the base.
BASH: Right.
KIM: And that's kind of his key to victory.
BASH: And SALT, of course, has to do with a tax --
KIM: Yes, the state and -- yes.
BASH: -- yes, state and local tax that people in the state --
PARTI: And it might be -- and then unconventional political calculation on his part but also, Trump has left them with little choice.
BASH: Right.
PARTI: He wants absolute loyalty, as we've seen.
BASH: And I want to just pull up some of the latest polling. We've had a lot of polling this week. And this was just this morning from Fox News. And again, it gives you the backdrop of this campaign event and so many other campaign events. This is Trump's disapproval on the economy.
[12:45:01]
If you go back to this time last year, it was 56 percent. Just last month, it was 66 percent. And in one month, it's gone up to 71 percent. And one more bit of data that I want to show, this is Trump approval on the economy. First, among MAGA Republicans, 74 percent, which looks high, but it's actually, given how supportive they are of the President, it's not as high as it perhaps has been.
Non-MAGA Republicans, 36 percent. Independents, 58 percent. So non- MAGA Republicans are closer to Independents than the President's staunchest supporters, Tarini.
PARTI: Yes, we're seeing poll after poll showing that the President is hitting record lows in terms of his approval rating, specifically on issues that Republicans, and especially Trump, has usually done well on. The economy, national security, even immigration, the numbers are just going down.
So, you know, Republicans usually, for the party in power in a midterm election, the President recognizes that and tries to give people some distance, tries to say, you know, if you need to run against me, that's fine --
BASH: Yes.
PARTI: -- create some room between us, but he's not really doing that. So it's making it really hard for them to figure out how they're going to run in this economy, how they're going to run with this political climate.
BASH: Not only is he not doing that, he's literally doing the opposite.
PARTI: Exactly.
BASH: All right. Thank you all.
Coming up, from JFK to DJT. Lamar Alexander spent more than half a century in politics, and he has a new memoir out with some tough words about how his former Republican colleagues are handling this Trump era.
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[12:50:57]
BASH: Three terms as senator, two terms as Tennessee governor, two presidential campaigns, education secretary in George H.W. Bush's cabinet, not to mention time as the President of the University of Tennessee. And those are just some of the roles my next guest filled in nearly 60 years in public service.
When I first started covering him, he was often the man in the plaid shirt playing the piano.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now, Lamar Alexander is out with a new memoir, "The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump." And the senator is here now. So nice to see you.
LAMAR ALEXANDER, AUTHOR, "THE EDUCATION OF A SENATOR: FROM JFK TO TRUMP": Nice to see you. I think that was the Iowa straw poll.
BASH: I think so, too. We won't talk about how that ended up.
ALEXANDER: Well, I came in third, which was a surprise.
BASH: That's actually not so bad. That's right.
ALEXANDER: A surprise to most people.
BASH: So your first job here in Washington was you were an intern at the Justice Department under Bobby Kennedy --
ALEXANDER: That's right. I was a law student.
BASH: -- in 1963.
ALEXANDER: That was the summer. I walked outside late that in August at lunch. And I heard this big, booming voice over a loudspeaker. And it was Martin Luther King's I Had a Dream speech.
BASH: Wow.
ALEXANDER: So I started here with hearing the Martin Luther King I Had a Dream speech. And I left three days before the assault on the Capitol, January 6th.
BASH: So my question was going to be, is there any way to really encapsulate how much politics changed between those two events? I'm not sure you can even do it in a single paragraph, never mind a couple of sentences.
ALEXANDER: No. If you -- there are lots of facts about it. I mean, when I came back with Howard Baker in '67, senators lived here for the weekend. Their kids went to school here. They got to know each other over the weekend. More Democrats than Republicans.
Lyndon Johnson was calling Everett Dirksen every day to pass the civil rights bill. John Tower and Hubert Humphrey were having a brawl on the floor on labor policy, Republican, Democrat, and afterwards hugging each other. Howard Baker and -- a few years later, Howard Baker and Bob Byrd, the senators, both read David McCullough --
BASH: Republican and Democrat.
ALEXANDER: -- both read David McCullough's book about the Panama Canal, McCullough told me, changed their minds and worked together to get 67 votes to ratify it.
BASH: I mean, just that alone, having the sort of political freedom, let's be honest --
ALEXANDER: Yes.
BASH: -- because that's what it was, or maybe it was the backbone --
ALEXANDER: Well, it wasn't easy for --
BASH: -- the backbone.
ALEXANDER: Backbone would be a good word because it wasn't popular for Baker. He wanted to run for President in '80. Reagan was defending the canal. Some of the Republican senators said Baker should --
BASH: Yes.
ALEXANDER: -- quit his leadership job.
BASH: Well, Howard Baker, who is one of your mentors, I think it's fair to say --
ALEXANDER: Right.
BASH: -- had a backbone in another way because he helped push Nixon out.
ALEXANDER: But the big difference is this. If you want to --
BASH: Yes.
ALEXANDER: -- encapsulate it --
BASH: Yes.
ALEXANDER: -- with one symbol, it would be the arrival of the digital democracy in 2008 that drove all politics to the extremes and left people who are center left and center right without anyone to vote for in a general election.
BASH: I mean, now that you've had time away, is there any prescription or is it just the way it is?
ALEXANDER: Well, you can work hard. I mean, I have -- I was here for President Trump's first term --
BASH: Yes. ALEXANDER: -- and we did a lot of things on the Great American Outdoors Act, for example, and other things. But I think probably the thing to do is to use social media, to tame social media, and try to get more people into the primaries so that only the people who vote for people who want to make a speech and shout and curse and say extreme things, if they vote, if that's all that votes, that's what you're going to get. But if a broader number of people vote, you'll get different nominees.
BASH: When you ran for president in 2000, you dropped out of the race. During that time, in that speech you gave, you had a pretty prescient warning for where American politics were already going back then, talking about money and celebrity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[12:55:11]
ALEXANDER: If there were something we need to change in the process, and I'm not here today to make any kind of excuses about it, it would be to make it less reliant on money. It's become more of a media money contest.
If we're not careful, we'll end up with a race between only the rich and the already famous. I mean, we might have Donald Trump versus Cher, might be what we could look forward to in 2004.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: I mean, wow.
ALEXANDER: Well, I had lost the presidential race. George Bush was doing really well --
BASH: But the fact that you talked about Donald Trump, I mean, Cher obviously --
ALEXANDER: Yes, it was 1999 --
BASH: Yes.
ALEXANDER: -- was when that was.
BASH: Yes. I mean, that was a long time ago.
ALEXANDER: So I miscalculated his arrival by about 12 years. I said it would be 2004. He came 12 years later.
BASH: Yes. In the book, you weigh in on the events of January 6th, which you mentioned. You say, quote, "Trump undermined the United States Constitution and assaulted one of the most hallowed precepts and practices of American democracy, the peaceful transfer of power after an election. The President then ignored pleas to stop the rioters until it was too late. If those actions do not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor, I don't know what does."
Now, you were not there.
ALEXANDER: No.
BASH: You'd already retired and you were not in the Senate when it came time for the trial. But you didn't say this back then. And you were somebody with a lot of sway with your then former colleagues. Do you wish you had?
ALEXANDER: No. Well, I was gone by then.
BASH: Yes, but still.
ALEXANDER: I was home. I've said it now, that's what I believe. I would --
BASH: But the vote was then not now.
ALEXANDER: I wouldn't say then. I wouldn't say today how I would have voted then, that'd be very disingenuous and so --
BASH: But did you feel this way then?
ALEXANDER: I probably did. I probably did, because when I went back to the Capitol two days after the assault on the Capitol, my stomach turned when I saw the shattered glass, the damaged doors. And I knew that that was a wrong thing.
I mean, George Washington said that the most important election in our country was not the first one, but the second one, the peaceful transfer of power from one to the next.
BASH: That's right. That's why he gave that famous address. Real quick, we're almost out of time, but I have to ask about redistricting. And do it in the sort of way of your biography.
You convinced the board of your alma mater, which is Vanderbilt University, to desegregate back when you were a very young man. Given that, do you agree with the Supreme Court that there's -- it's not necessary to follow what was the Civil Rights -- the Voting Rights Act, I should say, of 1965 that made sure that there are majority- minority districts?
ALEXANDER: Well, you're right that I've been out front on civil rights --
BASH: Yes.
ALEXANDER: -- for 60 years --
BASH: So it was the Supreme Court, right?
ALEXANDER: -- but that was because I didn't think race should be a factor in the admission of students to Vanderbilt or any other thing. So I don't think race should be a factor in drawing districts. I think the gerrymandering we've seen in the last two or three months is really bad government, but it's constitutional, and it's gone on since 1812 when Jerry himself was governor of Massachusetts.
BASH: OK. I think we're out of time. I have a lot more to ask you, and I will later. And I appreciate you being here. So great that you wrote this, and I am grateful that you came on to share it with us.
ALEXANDER: Thank you, Dana. Good to see you.
BASH: Thank you, Senator. You too.
Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.
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