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Trump Holds Cabinet Meeting Amid Push To End War With Iran; Poll: 60 Percent Oppose Current Military Action In Iran; Trump Notches Another Win With Paxton's Runaway Victory In Texas; MAGA Favorite Ken Paxton Crushes John Cornyn In Runoff; Talarico: Paxton Is "The Most Corrupt Politician In America". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 27, 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]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: So, the Americans are benefiting, working today. We have the most working and we have 401(k)s at their all-time high, highest they've ever been and that goes along with the stock market, which is the highest it's ever been. Under my most favored nation agreements, this is something that I wish the media would talk about because to me, it's one of the biggest things ever to happen in our country, certainly as to medical.

Anything having to do with medical, because drug prices were delivering record-setting discounts on prescription drugs with price differences of 400, 500 and even 600 percent at the TrumpRx.gov. We recently added nearly one thousand low-class -- low-cost generics to the website, so we have drugs down 400, 500, 600 percent. Now you could say 80, 90, 70, 60, 50 percent if you want. There are two ways, it depends on the way you ask the question.

But a pill that would sell in Germany, or let's say in London for $10, we're selling for here for $130. And I got the countries to all agree, otherwise they would have had to pay big tariffs. I don't want to go into it, but I had some very interesting discussion. They said vehemently no. And then, when I said SRM, we're going to charge you 50 percent tariff on everything you sell into America. They said, well. Like we said, we'll say yes. And every single country agreed, and every drug company agreed.

So, we have most favored nations. So, we were paying the highest drug prices in the world, now we're paying the lowest drug prices in the world. So, that pill that I talked about would go from $10 to 20. The world is bigger than the U.S., hard to believe, but it's true. So, it's not like, you cut it in the middle, they just had to go up a little bit, but a little bit is a doubling of a price, so a little bit is a lot.

So, the pill would go from $10 to $20, and we'd go from $130 to $20, think of that. So, we would get, if you remember, some of you were at the news conference at my first term, where I got the prices down one- eight of a percent, one quarter one eight of a percent, my first term. And I'm so proud of it, because prices -- drug prices hadn't come down in 28 years, and I was the first one to do it. But now I'm getting them down not one-eight of a percent, I'm getting them down 400, 500, 600 or if you want to use it a different way, you could say 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, 50 percent, nobody's ever seen anything like it, and I got that through. Well, everybody knew it was taking place, but we paid the highest prices anywhere in the world. Now we're paying the lowest prices anywhere in the world, and the press refuses to write about it. I think it's the biggest thing for healthcare, you know, so much of it is prescription drug prices, and drug prices, and with them coming down the healthcare is going to come down very substantially.

We recently added nearly one thousand low-cost generics, too, as I said, that's, you know, one thousand drugs. And it's all on, and it's -- this was not a -- this was not given by me, this was given by Dr. Oz and Bobby, and I, you know, wasn't sure whether or not I loved the idea, but they said we want to use Trump, TrumpRx.gov is what it is, and it's the hottest site I think anywhere on the planet, from what I understand, Bobby, right?

It's really great, people are calling up and they're buying drugs for a fraction, for literally a fraction of the price. And it should be the biggest story. And on that alone, we should win the midterms. On that alone we should win the midterms, but the press doesn't talk about it. It's biggest thing to happen in the drug industry ever, maybe ever. And the press doesn't want to write stories about it.

We made the largest ever investment in U.S. military, $1 trillion and we're asking actually for 1.5 trillion for the coming year. And we have the strongest military anywhere in the world, as you know. You saw what we did with Venezuela, that worked out very quickly, and we're doing really equally as well with -- but again, people don't want to write about it.

With Iran, Iran is very much intent. They want very much to make a deal. So far, they haven't gotten there. We're not satisfied with it, but we will be. We will be either that, or we'll have to just finish the job. But their navy is gone, as I've said a thousand times. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Everything's gone, and they're negotiating on fumes, but we'll see what happens. Maybe we have to go back and finish it, maybe we don't.

Right now, I mean, you can speak to Steve Witkoff and Jared, they're doing a good job. But right now, I think it looks like they want to just make a deal. They want to -- they have -- I don't think they have a choice. They're just going back to the internet because they're getting clobbered. Their economy is in free fall. They have 250 percent inflation. Their money has no value. Their whole economic system is broken down. They thought they were going to outweigh me, you know, we'll outweigh him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms.

[12:05:00]

Look, what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand that they know that very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I'm doing that for the world. I'm not doing it just for us. And we've had great support from other nations, by the way. We don't need it at all, but we've had great support from other nations. The problem is, you always get the support when you don't need it. When you need it, you don't get the support.

With Operation Epic Fury, our warriors are ensuring that the world's number one state sponsor of terror never obtains a nuclear weapon and they won't. Under the leadership of Vice President J.D. Vance, very proud of this. The White House task force to eliminate fraud is waging war on waste, fraud, theft, and abuse, like nobody's ever seen before.

He looks like Eliot Ness. You ever see, Eliot Ness? I'm telling you, the guys that are up there (inaudible) standing behind. What a group of people. No, it looks like a movie. I'm going to make a movie out of it, I think. And they're finding billions and billions and billions of dollars, and I just said that's good. He said, you haven't seen anything yet. Just said that, and you know, he does really great. We'll have a balanced budget without having to do anything.

This is the kind of money they stole. They're crooks, they're thieves, and I hope that Todd is going to do a real job. These are crooked people, these are thieves. This isn't like a mistake. Just talking about one person, he got hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars for securing one man for taking care of one elderly man. He was a service. He got paid millions of dollars for taking care of one man. Total crook, they're all crooks.

The Somalians. What they've done to Minnesota, the Somalians, they crooked as hell, Ilhan Omar, crooked as hell. They're all crooks, and we got them. We got them. Now we're putting the clamps on, but boy, I tell you, that's an impressive group of guys that you have behind you. I was watching that, and a couple of very strong women too, but I was watching that last night. I said, 'I'm proud of you guys.

In two months, we've exposed tens of billions of dollars of defrauded taxpayer money, prosecuted numerous fraudsters, Todd, and stopped billions of suspicious payments, very suspicious. Oh, you haven't seen anything yet? Well, you see, I'm getting reports from Todd, from J.D. I've never seen anything like it. The kind of -- just hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen, and no other administration would do what we're doing. Just let it go.

Everybody was getting rich, and I think we have a chance to save social security without doing anything to it, by just -- the numbers of fraudulent people on social security. People that are 115 years old, 125 years old, getting payments. It's funny, I said, oh, do those payments get turned back? No, they accept him. Well, somebody's getting the payments, not a person that's 125 years old, but that's the least of it.

The numbers that we're finding out. We have great people in social security. We're going to make our social security so strong, so good that you never say anything like it. We're going to protect. I said right from the beginning, we're going to protect our people in social security. If the Democrats ever got in, you wouldn't have said social security would be bankrupt, people wouldn't be getting anything. Last week they took down two of the largest Medicaid fraud cases in Minnesota history, as well as the largest autism fraud case ever charged by the federal government. You saw that with millions of dollars just being stolen. Everybody had autism, everybody had autism. They said, it was incredible, actually.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: We're going to continue to monitor the president's cabinet meeting as he discusses a lot of the issues that he is hoping that Republicans run on in November.

Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash. And I have a terrific panel here to discuss some of what we've just heard, and we are going to continue to monitor and see what else the president says.

I do want to just focus on one of the things that he mentioned, and that is Iran. And he tied what happened last night in Texas with the runoff that he won because his candidate Ken Paxton won and beat the incumbent -- four term incumbent John Cornyn. And he tied that to the Iran war, saying that that's evidence that people actually do support what he's doing to try to make sure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon.

[12:10:00]

I just want to point out, as we discuss this, that it is now what, four days since the president posted over the weekend that an agreement has been largely negotiated with Iran, and then he said final details will be announced shortly. We still haven't gotten those details. Just now, he said that they are still negotiating, and that Iran is negotiating on fumes, but we'll see what happened.

We cannot underscore enough, despite what he said, how much the impact of Iran economically and militarily, but mostly economically, is having and will have in the next few months in these midterms. Ron?

RON BROWNSTEIN, BLOOMBERG OPINION COLUMNIST & CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, it's part of a larger issue of the president kind of conflating what's happening in Republican primaries with what's happening in the country overall. I mean, he is tightening his grip on the Republican Party, even as he's basically lost his grip on the rest of the country.

And as you say, you know, the public may have had questions about the war from the outset, about whether the -- weather, why it was being fought. There was really no effort made to explain to them. But it came home very tangibly in a way that you don't often see in these conflicts, through higher gas prices. And in our last CNN poll, I think it was 75 to five Americans said that the war was having a negative impact on their personal finance.

BASH: And as you're talking, we're putting up the average gas price today, $4.46, again that's average. We've seen, you know, a lot higher and some lower --

BROWNSTEIN: So, the idea --

BASH: You see that contrast with before the war, I'm afraid.

BROWNSTEIN: You know, Trump's argument is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and that is certainly a powerful argument to Americans. But unless you believe that the Iranians wanted a nuclear weapon to launch a preemptive strike on Tel Aviv, what was the point of it? The point of it was deterrence. Whatever now happens in the war, even if they never get a nuclear weapon, they have found a new form of deterrence in their control of the Strait and their ability to squeeze gas prices in the U.S. and around the world. And I suspect that most Americans in the end, however this ends, are going to feel that the benefits that not justify the costs.

BASH: And I just want to put up another newer poll, and that's from Fox News. The question is whether or not they support current U.S. military action against Iran. 60 percent, six in 10 oppose it.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST AND CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, that's the thing. I mean, wars rarely get more popular, and this one started out very unpopular. It's only gotten more unpopular. I was in Chicago this weekend, and everyone was talking about gas prices and grocery prices. We came into this situation as a country already grappling with high prices, which were in part caused by another Trump policy, which was tariffs.

And then on top of that you add these very high gas prices, which before Donald Trump was right to sort of argue that gas prices were pretty good, he talked about in the State of the Union. But I think in Chicago there was something like above -- they were like 550 or something like that, and usually these long lines at Costco, because Costco offers somewhat cheaper gas.

So, people -- this is people's lived reality every day. You know, I am sort of waiting to fill up my gas tank, you know, in hopes that the prices will go down. At some point, the president has said they will go down quickly. I don't think they will go down quickly, even if this conflict comes to an end.

BASH: The president did start this cabinet meeting by talking about the win that he had in Texas last night, even separate from Iran. He said last night was incredible, only not only Texas, but so many other places. The numbers were fantastic. What it does solidify, Leigh Ann, is the fact that he does, as you mentioned, have a very tight grip on his base, on the GOP base.

And let's just kind of look broadly. It wasn't just Texas, where he defeated the incumbent Senator John Cornyn. If you go back to Kentucky the week before, Thomas Massie, he -- the president worked very hard to defeat Thomas Massie with a challenger there and was successful. And Bill Cassidy, same thing. Bill Cassidy voted to convict the president in 2021 of -- after January 6, and the president was successful.

And then you see the five state senators, Leigh Ann, in Indiana, who said no, we're not going to go along with your redistricting plan. The president ran challengers against them and was largely successful. I just want to bring in something that you wrote, and how this is playing on Capitol Hill about Republicans.

They're perplexed, angry, and in some cases resigned to the conclusion that Trump cares more about himself than the midterms. When I asked one House Republican what the president was doing to help the party win in November, the member sighed. I don't think he's trying to.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Yeah. And so, that's the dichotomy of what is happening in our political system right now, where the president, as you said, Ron, absolutely has a very strong grip over the party. He has really, since he came on, since he was elected his first term, he has been slowly remaking the Republican Party in his image for almost the past decade, and he's been quite successful at it.

[12:15:00]

But now there is this extreme tension between members of Congress who want to win the majority, but also at least win as many seats as possible with the president, who is seemingly more and more interested only in what is playing into what is most interested -- what he is most interested in.

You know, at the end of that story, I quoted a senator on background who said, look, this is all avoidable as well. A lot of the things the president is doing is things that make him happy, but is hurting the party, trying to force the senate to vote on a billion-dollar ballroom, forcing a $1.8 billion slush fund on the American people and on politicians.

And so, this is, you know, I just talked to another source yesterday after I published that story and said that the break with the Senate is very extreme right now, and they don't know how it's going to turn out.

BASH: Patrick?

PATRICK SVITEK, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yeah. And I think Republicans are especially concerned with his seeming conflation of dominance of his party and success in primaries, with success in the midterm elections in November. We just heard that from him at the cabinet meeting, or a similar sentiment in Texas last night. The last time I checked, the turnout rate was 7 percent of registered voters. That is a very narrow slice of the electorate compared to the voters that Trump endorsed candidates in Texas are going to face in November.

BASH: All right, everybody, stand by. We're going to keep monitoring the president's cabinet meeting and also bring you any news that he makes at the White House. Plus, Democrats have not won a Texas Senate race since before their nominee, James Talarico, was born. Will he finally be the one to break the party's 40-year curse? And will Democrats spend what it takes to help him?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I've said throughout this race that I trust the voters of Texas, and they made their decision, and I must respect it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It was Senator John Cornyn, making clear he understands his nearly quarter century in the Senate will come to an end in January after Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, really crushed him in a Senate GOP runoff yesterday, it wasn't close at all.

Paxton won nearly two thirds of that GOP vote, but Democrats hope the big winner of the night will be their candidate, James Talarico, who they think has a shot at beating the scandal-plagued Paxton in a state that always seems very close, yet ends up being pretty far away for the Democratic Party, at least in the last four decades or so. Expect a lot of this talk over the next five months.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES TALARICO (D), TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE: Something just happened in Texas. The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate.

KEN PAXTON (R), TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE: My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated. He's even running a vegan campaign, whatever that is. Some people know him as Tofu (Ph) Talarico, some people call him Sixth Gender Jimmy.

TALARICO: I'm an eighth generation Texan. I've been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Only in Texas. What are you looking for as we begin this incredible matchup that we're going to see in this crucial state?

SVITEK: Yeah. I mean I'm seeing a lot of parallels already to the 2018 Senate election in Texas, when Trump was also in power, was his midterm under a Trump presidency, and Ted Cruz found himself in a closer than expected race with Beto O'Rourke. It was farther along in the cycle than the point we're at now. But nonetheless, Cruz saw that the Republican base was sleepy compared to the Democratic base, and so he tried really hard to rile them up with these very attention- grabbing attacks on O'Rourke at the time.

Maybe some of you remember them going after him for, you know, for swear words, for skateboarding in a part -- in a Whataburger parking lot. He called him a triple meat Whataburger liberal. All these kinds of very flashy attacks, and I see a lot of parallels to that now going into this general election.

BASH: Well, let's hear some of what you're talking about. These are just some of the attack ads already targeting James Talarico.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: And it goes on and on, Leigh Ann. They have a lot of material, really, on both sides, and I'm going to show the Paxton material in a second.

CALDWELL: Yeah -- oh yeah, both sides has a lot to work with. But an ad like that is really meant to motivate Republican voters who have been disaffected or upset with the broader political landscape and economic landscape to make sure that they come out to vote, and it could very well work.

[12:25:00]

We're five months before Election Day. This is going to be a very nasty campaign, an extremely expensive campaign, and ultimately Democrats and got the candidate they wanted to run against. They wanted to run against Ken Paxton, and even as damaging as those ad attacks against Talarico could be, Democrats are extremely confident that they -- that Paxton is even more damaged.

BASH: Right, because what we're not seeing in those ads are some of the pluses that Democrats think they have with Talarico, the fact that he is a pastor, he's somebody who leads with faith. Republicans are trying to cut that and blunt that with some of the other things that Talarico has said. Then there's Ken Paxton, and these are some of the things that John Cornyn was saying for months and months and months. Why Paxton would be a terrible Republican candidate.

Now he is going to be the Republican candidate. Attorney General Ken Paxton indicted on felony fraud charges. Seven high-ranking whistleblowers allege criminal violations against him. Texas A.G. Paxton impeached, suspended from duties, will face Senate trial, which he was able to win there. Paxton trial women in alleged affair, with Paxton plan to plead the fifth, doesn't testify. And then, of course, it is his almost ex-wife, Senator Angela Paxton, files for divorce over alleged adultery.

HENDERSON: Yeah, listen. I mean, I think GOP voters are used to voting for scandal-plagued candidates. I mean, they've done that with Donald Trump. They continue to support him. Listen, I think for Democrats to win, they're going to have to suppress the GOP vote. They're going to have to get some GOPers to switch sides and vote from --

BASH: Cornyn?

HENDERSON: Exactly, to vote for Talarico. They're going to have to get traditional Democrats to show up, and they're also going to have to register and turn out disaffected voters, which is very hard and very expensive. I do think that the criticisms against Talarico, you said they're aimed at GOP voters. I actually think they're aimed at traditional black and brown voters who are very religious social conservatives.

You know, it is great that he's a pastor, that he's a believer in the eyes of those supporters. But the idea that he has this odd interpretation of God that doesn't align with these traditional faith voters is going to be a problem with African American voters, Latino voters as well.

BASH: Such a good point. Let's look at all of these demographics. Thanks to Ron Brownstein, who likes to -- lucky for us, come with some of these numbers. And let's just switch over to another demographic, and these are whites without a college degree. Look, between 2018 which you were talking about, Patrick. It made up -- they made up 30 percent of the electorate in Texas, and it's gone down to 27 percent in the electorate. What does that tell you?

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, I agree. Patrick, I mean, 2018 has to be the baseline for Democrats to start thinking from, because it's their best performance, really since, I was there in 1990 when Ann Richards won for governor. That was probably the last race that was as positive for them. And if you think about what's changed in the state since 2018, that would be beneficial to Talarico, and what's changed in the state that would hurt him.

The biggest thing that's changed is the state is more diverse than it was. I mean, they've added three and a half million voters since 2018 and virtually all of them are non-white, and in particular, it's those blue collars, non-college whites who are the core of the Republican coalition who have been shrinking. The college whites have been staying about the same.

Second thing, Trump is weaker today than he was in 2018. You know, if you look back at that exit poll in the 2018 race, he had a 49 percent approval rating in the state. Now it's 45 in the University of Texas polling. And it is down particularly among white voters versus the non-college whites and the college white, and then you have all the Paxton baggage, right? So, look at that.

Look at -- I mean, look at -- look at his numbers among college- educated white voters -- excuse me, is 10 points lower now in the UT polling than it was in the exit poll, and even among whites without a college degree, its down, those non-college whites in Texas, not going to end up voting for Talarico, but some of them might be voters who stay home.

The problems that Talarico is that you can no longer count on the margins among minority voters that that Beto had in 2018. He won almost two thirds of Latinos. That's going to be hard to do. The rural white population has moved even more Republican. I'd be interested in Patrick's opinion on this, but it seems to me that Talarico today can be more easily pigeon-holed as a cultural extremist or liberal than the Beto of 2018 and Beto of 2018 was not seen as culturally liberal to the degree he was after he ran for president in 2020.

BASH: He was running more of a moderate.

BROWNSTEIN: He was running more of a moderate. So, you add all this up, Texas traditionally is somewhere around 10, 11 points to the right of the country. If there's a big Democratic wave and it's a double- digit Democratic environment. And you could see Talarico getting over the top, otherwise the math remains hard to put together.

SVITEK: Yeah. I think that's a good point, and it was -- it's kind of a double-edged sword for Talarico right now