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Trump Says He'll Nominate Blanche For Attorney General; Thune: "Hard To Say" If Blanche Has Confirmation Votes; Still No Projected Winners In California Governor's Race; New Poll: Sherrod Brown Up By 8 Pts. In Ohio Senate Race; Sources: Bolton To Plead Guilty Over Mishandling Sensitive Info. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 04, 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]

RABBI NAFTALI SCHIFF, HOLOCAUST EDUCATION SPECIALIST: These people have a resilience and a persistence and a drive to live. And I think that's a choice. In the same way it's a choice to do good or to do bad, to be selfish, or to live a life of giving and sharing and caring. So, it's also a choice when things don't go so great and they don't always go great for anybody in anybody's life to choose to get up again and keep living.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Rabbi Naftali Schiff, thank you very much. And a reminder to our viewers, Rabbi Schiff's book with Michael Calvin is coming out very, very soon. It's entitled Miracle: The Boys Who Escaped the Gas Chamber in Auschwitz. Thanks very much for writing this important book. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: President Trump wants his former personal attorney to officially be attorney general, but first, Senate Republicans must render their verdict.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Apparently, Todd Blanche's audition went pretty well because President Trump says he plans to officially nominate his former personal attorney and current acting attorney general for the job for real.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Instructing Dan and everybody else that's involved in that very complicated process, which is going to go, I think, very quickly, that we are going to make him permanent attorney general.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It may not go as quickly as the president hopes. He certainly can't rely on Democrats to confirm Blanche, and some Republicans are raising concerns over Blanche's eagerness to please his boss by pushing bounds and norms at the Justice Department. In just two months, as acting A.G., he made a deal to shield the president and his family from IRS audits. He initiated the anti-weaponization fund, which he now says will not move forward.

The DOJ launched investigations or secured indictments against many of the president's personal foes, like E. Jean Carroll, James Comey, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The department moved to dismiss convictions against Proud Boys and Oath Keepers involved in January 6, and he's issued subpoenas to journalists trying to get their sources. Those actions certainly endeared him to President Trump, but now he's going to have to answer for them when he goes to Capitol Hill for confirmation hearings. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said this morning that it's quote, hard to say if he can win confirmation.

I'm joined here at the table by a terrific group of reporters. Jamie Gangel?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: I wrote at the top of the page here, hard to say. I think that's all you need to know when John Thune is not with this, and he went on to say this is an environment where nothing is a safe or sure bet. Look, this is a real problem. There is no question that Donald Trump likes to nominate and appoint loyalists. This is the ultimate loyalist, his own former personal attorney.

But we are seeing Republicans, oh my goodness, they're stepping up and they're holding back. I think it's one other person, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who told our colleague Manu Raju, that he remains undecided about whether he will vote. I just -- you're seeing some coming out, but also the revenge.

BASH: And you just came from Capitol Hill. What are you hearing?

ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Yes, Senator Cornyn told me separately that he's got questions about Todd Blanche's role previously as the president's former personal attorney, right? Of course, Senator Cornyn and every other Republican voted to confirm Todd Blanche as the deputy attorney general.

I will say, though, it might not matter whether Republicans can confirm Todd Blanche to this job, because ironically it was Democrats who set the precedent that the deputy -- sort of secretary or deputy head of a cabinet agency can stay acting indefinitely, so long as their nomination is pending on the Senate calendar.

Now, Democrats tried this with Julie Su, who was the labor's acting labor secretary under President Biden, so it's called now the Julie Su precedent. Julie Su didn't have the votes to be confirmed for the top job, so she was able to stay there for a while.

BASH: I just want to underscore what you're saying here, and you wrote about it. We can put the headline up in your piece this morning for Punchbowl. What you're saying is that, regardless of the advice and consent role of the United States Senate, when it comes to nominees. It doesn't necessarily mean that Blanche will have to leave if he's not confirmed. DESIDERIO: Exactly. And they might not even have to put him through the Judiciary Committee because if Senator Tillis or Senator Cornyn, for example, indicate that there are no in committee, just one Republican no vote in committee will tank this nomination.

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BASH: Let's listen to a little bit of what Blanche has said, just this is April 7 about the possibility of President Trump making this permanent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: To nominate me, that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else, and I go back to being the D.A.G., that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say thank you very much. I love you, sir.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEUNG MIN KIM, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, AP: Well, I mean, that's again, that's him being the true, the ultimate Trump loyalist, and I will point out that the president did actually try to get him into other positions unrelated to the Justice Department position. Remember the time he was librarian of Congress for a little bit of time at some point last year, but I think that should Republicans try to put him through the procedural rigmarole, and obviously Andrew laid out ways that they may not have to do that to keep for Todd Blanche to stay in that job.

There's going to be questions about not only what the Justice Department has done, but also just the whole January 6 aspect, and that's going to really hang a shadow over the nomination process, because I think -- I think a lot of people look at this situation compared to Thom Tillis and how he handled the Kevin Warsh nomination for the Federal Reserve chair.

But Tellis never had a problem with Warsh as a nominee. He had a -- he had a problem with something that was related but separate. Blanche has done things and said things particularly related to January 6 that do make Republicans uncomfortable, and how he tries to rationalize that in front of Republican senators during his confirmation hearing, if there is a confirmation hearing, is something that's really critical.

BASH: Well, I'm glad you brought that up, because of all of the things that I listed at the top there, one of the things that is most frankly outrageous to some of these, especially those in, I guess we're now calling the YOLO conference, which is small, but important with the number of --

KIM: Tillis was a BOLO. That's a YOLO BOLO for him.

BASH: Nice. Well done, Seung Min. I'm going to talk about Thom Tillis and go to something that he said about Blanche. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): Keith or Todd or anybody going through Judiciary Committee has been pretty tight on January the sixth. They better not have said for one minute that the people that beat up police officers like these right down here were righteous people. You come even close to saying that you don't have a chair of get my vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And let's go into the not so way back machine, but this is one of those moments where I think everybody had a whoa, did he just say that sort of idea in their head, and this was in March of this year at CPAC. Todd Blanche was still the D.A.G., the deputy attorney general. And this is what he said before a group of some of the most ardent conservative supporters of the president that there is, it's a political event, CPAC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLANCHE: The attorney general, myself, every single day, seven days a week, are focused on bringing justice and it will come. And I know every single person in this room is saying themselves, why is it taking so long? Raise your hand if you're just thinking that. All right, I was basically right.

And here's the answer. Here's the answer. I want to talk about it. Here's the answer. For one, it's not taking so long. For one, we have already done more in one year than any administration has ever done before. If you look at what happened to the -- to the men and women convicted because of January 6, by 5 pm on January 20, every one of them was either pardoned or had their sentence commuted. OK. So, when folks say you've done nothing, I say, you have a very short memory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Again, this is somebody who wants to be the attorney general officially, who is just -- it's very clear that politics are not just separate, but they're very much integrated and ingrained in the way that the president and he see this role, not a surprise, but just an example.

PATRICK SVITEK, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Absolutely, and striking to see those comments, just, you know, several weeks ago, you know, for people like Senator Tillis, justifying or excusing the conduct on January 6 has been and continues to be a bright red line in looking at some of these nominees and some of these appointments.

And we mentioned Senator Cornyn earlier, Tillis, Cornyn, Senator Bill Cassidy, they're part of this more politically liberated Republican caucus right now, because they're no longer seeking reelection. Some of them, Cassidy and Cornyn have lost re-election to Trump-backed challengers, and that's, you know, and that's creating a really unique dynamic among Senate Republicans right now.

Trump is doubling down on these, you know, picking these loyalists for key positions at a time when his relationship with Senate Republicans is especially strained, and sure we're talking a lot about Cornyn and Cassidy and Tillis, but you still have more traditional independent- minded Republicans like Susan Collins, like Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell. And so, you know, this is a group in the Senate Republican conference that is going to be closely watched.

[12:10:00]

BASH: Yeah. And Susan Collins isn't just independently minded. She is somebody who is in the fight of her life.

SVITEK: Exactly, she is.

(CROSSOVER)

DESIDERIO: Trump has expanded that YOLO caucus.

BASH: Yeah.

GANGEL: Can we just remember the calendar? In November, three of those people will be gone, right? Susan Collins, you don't know yet, but Cassidy, Tillis, Cornyn gone.

BASH: Yeah.

GANGEL: So, and Trump goes on. He can bring it up in the next Congress.

BASH: Good point. All right, coming up. Sources tell CNN that former Trump national security advisor from Trump 1.0, John Bolton, will plead guilty to mishandling sensitive documents. Laura Coates will be here with her legal and political analysis. Plus, you're looking at live pictures of the Senate floor. There is a border security push that's quickly becoming a very important test of GOP unity and a test of some of the things that we were just talking about, of these Senate Republicans versus President Trump and his priorities. Stay with us.

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BASH: California may be the nation's leader in technology and innovation, but you wouldn't know it by how they count their ballots. Election day was Tuesday, and still only 56 percent of the votes in the governor's primary have been processed. Right now, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrats Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, are battling for the top two spots in advance of the general election.

Now, if this count looks familiar to you, it's because it's nearly identical to the one we showed you at this time yesterday. For California voters or political junkies like us, it's frustrating. But I just want to be clear, it is not unusual for California. It is not a sign of fraud. President Trump is using the slow pace to sow misinformation about election integrity, writing today, quote, there's big cheating by Democrats in California under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting delay?

My panel is back here. Patrick, as we discuss this, and just kind of put a finer point on it, not to say that it's not, as I said, frustrating and sort of inconceivable that it takes so long. It is not new. If you look at -- excuse me, past elections going back to 2010, Kamala Harris won after 22 days. 2018, 30 days for key House race with Valadao to be called L.A. mayoral race, Karen Bass was on the ballot. Then, it took eight days. U.S. House, third district, 14 days. 45th district of the U.S. House took 21 days.

SVITEK: Yeah. We tend to think California's not election day, but it's maybe election week or election month, but there are some reasons for that. But a big picture level, it's the most populous state in the country. They have a very expansive use of mail-in ballots, and they have Democratic leadership there that have passed laws in hopes of making it easier to vote over, you know, recent years in legislative sessions.

And so that leads us to where we're at now. I thought it was interesting that the Democratic governor there, Gavin Newsom, sent a letter to county election officials earlier this month kind of seeing this firestorm coming and saying, please make sure that you're counting every lawful ballot as quickly as possible.

And he acknowledged in that letter, you know, this lag time in between election day and when races are called in our state does lead to the spreading of mis and disinformation. And so, that just shows, you know, even Democratic leadership in California knows that this is an issue, and that it can be seized upon Republicans, including the president, like you just saw on the screen there.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, led by the president. This is the same dynamic that we saw back in 2020 when states took longer to vote. It looked like Republicans were doing better at the beginning, they tend to vote earlier, the votes tend to be counted, just culturally not even sure why tend to be counted first. And then once the votes that are already there legally are counted, it looks different.

KIM: Right. It's a feature, and I guess maybe a bug of the system that we have is because under the constitution, states get to administer their elections. This is why the president's executive order on voting a couple of months ago was so controversial because he really wanted to effectively federalize the system of voting, whereas it is really the states that administer their own processes.

And you know this is the -- you know, with its imperfections that we're seeing here, it is the state of California that has decided the system and that administers the system. I will add, though, that the frustration also can come with the slow -- the slower pace of counting when the House majority is at stake.

I know we think a lot about, you know, that we may not know who, I mean, not maybe -- not just in this coming election, but in previous cycles we've seen how we have really had to wait for that slow counting in California to see who controls the majority in the House. So that's where the frustration comes from, but you know, that is the system that we have. You do see frustrations like with Newsom and others.

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BASH: Let's move east, not to a primary, but looking ahead to a very important Senate race, and that is in the state of Ohio. And there's new polling out this morning from Fox News that is a big flashing red sign for the president and for the Republicans on the ballot in this very red state of Ohio.

This is the president's approval rating in Ohio. Right now, it is 42 percent -- 42 percent approval, and the disapproval is 57 percent. So, you are seeing a 15-point deficit there. And then in November, you see it was -- excuse me, 15-point deficit here. And then in November, the disapproval was 57 and 46 percent, and that is a 6 percent. So, this is really a big, big problem, potentially for the president.

DESIDERIO: Absolutely, and for Senator Husted, who's facing off against Senator -- former Senator Sherrod Brown, who has universal name ID in the state of Ohio. Senator Husted was appointed to the seat, obviously, which was vacated by now Vice President J.D. Vance.

But you know, I'm thinking back to a year ago when I was interviewing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer about the Senate map, which, by the way, at the start of this cycle was just going to be a disaster for Democrats in terms of the seats that are up, as well as the fact that Republicans start off with 53, right? And he was saying to me we're going to win the majority, we're going to win the majority, and I was like, OK, OK, buddy. We'll see about that.

And now a year later, we are a few months out from the election, and Trump's poll numbers have plummeted. Ohio is seemingly in play. Yes, Sherrod Brown was a great recruit for Chuck Schumer. But overcoming the sort of double-digit margin that Trump won by in 2024 would have been unthinkable in the midterms.

And so, Republicans look at this, and they not only directly blame the president, but they also think that they need to be talking and legislating more on these affordability issues, which right now, obviously, on the floor to the Senate, they're trying to get this ICE and Border Patrol funding through. And they have these distractions with the weaponization fund, you know, they might not be able to reauthorize FISA, which is a whole another topic. So, they want to get back to talking about these issues that voters are saying they care about, telling us they care about.

BASH: And I just want to put back on the screen the Trump approval rating in Ohio, and I have put my math problem on the right side of the equation now, so you can actually understand it a little bit better. There you go, it's over here, 15 and six. But I want to look at what you were just talking about, which is this key race here that could decide the Senate.

Again, this is a Republican state. This is why Chuck Schumer wanted Sherrod Brown to, even though he was defeated the last time around, to run again because he's a well-known quantity there. This is a snapshot in time. This is not an election result. This is a poll right now. GANGEL: Look to the point of Trump has helped the Democrats, no question about it. In the state of Ohio, I do think the Sherrod Brown of it all cannot be, you know, overstated. He has repeatedly done in Ohio what other Democrats haven't been able to do. I spoke to a Democratic leader this morning, though, who was very happy to talk about Ohio, but did not want to talk about Maine, where they really see a disaster.

DESIDERIO: That's a must win if we're talking about flipping the majority.

BASH: All right, coming up. Former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton is expected to plead guilty in a case involving sensitive information. More on that next.

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BASH: The breaking news this morning, sources tell CNN former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton will plead guilty to mishandling sensitive national security information. CNN's Laura Coates joins me now. Laura, first bring us up to speed on this case. How we got to this place.

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: This is a really important moment right now to think that he will plead guilty to something like this. Remember, he had been originally charged last year with 18 counts of either transmitting or retaining sensitive information through a grand jury. The investigation originally started, of course, under the Biden administration, continued later into the Trump administration as well, but he is known as a political foe of the president United States.

And then there was later a search of his home, where more information was uncovered, largely in connection to a hacking of his personal email accounts and beyond from an account tied to what they believe to be the Iranian government. And so, here we are waiting to see how the investigation was going to unfold. And now we're learning that he indeed will plead guilty to one particular count, noting that each of these different charges could have been a maximum of 10 years each, a very significant thing to think about, although the judge, until that judge signs off on it, it's all theoretical.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, and that's important. We've seen some examples, a very high-profile one during the Biden administration of Hunter Biden, where they thought they had a plea, and it totally blew up in the -- in the courtroom. Just going back to what you were saying about this investigation starting during the Biden administration. I think that's important because we, particularly on this show, and I know you do as well, put up on the screen all of the president's perceived enemies that the Justice Department either indicts or goes after or investigates. This is a different case. COATES: It is, and the phrases like selective prosecution, vindictive prosecution begin to roll off the tongue when you think about Letitia James and her assertions, or James Comey and his allegations

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