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Inside Politics

GOP Wisconsin Gov. Candidate Tom Tiffany Escapes Sinking Plane After Emergency Lake Landing; New CNN Analysis: North Carolina Most Likely Senate Seat To Flip; Kansas GOP Sen. Marshall Faces "Shame On You" Chants When Asked About Suing Patients Over Medical Debt; Johnson Appeals To Trump For Tech Leaders Meeting On AI Guardrails; AI Safety Becoming Major Topic On Midterm Campaign Trail; Never Trump Republican Lays Out How To Beat Him In New Book. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 14, 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]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: The road to 51 is taking a turn. We have brand new CNN ranking of the top nine Senate seats most likely to flip.

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

There are 50 days until the election, and we are tracking the races, candidates, and stories that could shift the balance of power here in Washington and across the country. Here's what's on our midterm radar. We start with a harrowing Saturday night on the trail for the Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor.

Tom Tiffany was flying home from a campaign event when his small single-engine plane suddenly lost power, plunging the congressman and his pilot into a pitch-black lake. Luckily, they both escaped the sinking plane with minor injuries that only required stitches. Here's how Tiffany described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TOM TIFFANY (R-WI): As we went to our final approach, the plane lost power, and Len said to me, we are going down. Pull your seat belt tight. We are just really fortunate. We're really fortunate that God was looking after us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now to a potential financial game changer in the fight for Congress. After months of stockpiling hundreds of millions of dollars, President Trump is putting his war chest to work. The Trump affiliated super PAC is pouring nearly $80 million into ads, targeting 15 crucial House races and six Senate contests. This cash infusion widens an existing Republican edge, according to ad impact data. The GOP is now outspending Democrats in nearly every major Senate battleground with just weeks to go. Turning to Alaska, where Republican Senator Dan Sullivan was caught fishing for an answer during a debate about fish. Check out what happens when Sullivan appears to miss a question while sitting next to his Democratic challenger, Mary Peltola.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries adequately consider impacts on subsistence users, salmon migration, habitat, and indigenous ways of life.

SEN. DAN SULLIVAN (R-AK): Yes or no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Peltola is reeling in the moment on social media, writing, happy to help Dan, and Alaskans deserve a senator who knows where they stand? And today, J.D. Vance is hitting the campaign trail in Kansas. You heard that right, Kansas. The vice president is campaigning in a state, Republicans have not lost in the Senate race since 1932.

Vance is hoping to boost the incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, who's in an unexpectedly tight race against his Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton. If Republicans need vice presidential reinforcement in Kansas, a state Trump won by 16 percentage points just two years ago, let's just say their midterm map is likely getting a little too close for their comfort.

And this just in, we have brand new CNN rankings of the Senate seats most likely to flip in November. Here's the list of the nine races most likely to change parties based on CNN reporting. Number one is North Carolina, where Democrat Roy Cooper is the frontrunner to replace retiring Republican Thom Tillis. Maine is the next most likely to flip from R to D, and then comes Michigan, a pickup opportunity for the GOP.

I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters today, including Arlette Saenz, who did this analysis for us. Arlette, nice to see you. Tell us more.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're 50 days out from the midterm elections, and control of the U.S. Senate is really up for grabs. You have Democrats trying to go on offense in these red leaning states, and Republicans are trying to make some headway in just a very few amount of blue held seats. Now North Carolina remains number one. I know we'll be talking about that a little bit later in the show, and then you have these two true toss ups in Maine and Michigan.

And our polls last week really gave us a clearer insight into where those races stand. In Maine, you have the race really hinging more on negative perceptions of the incumbent senator Susan Collins and President Trump, rather than her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson. And in Michigan, it's really the candidates' positions that are driving voters' decisions, with about 50 percent saying that they believe the Democrat Abdul El-Sayed is too liberal in this contest. Both of those races are still incredibly close, which keeps them at the top of our list.

[12:05:00]

Now, I want to go down to New Hampshire, which is now number six. That has moved up two spots in our list because of some of the polling that we have seen recently, showing that the Democratic standing in that state has started to slip a little bit. The most recent University of New Hampshire polling has shown that there is no clear leader in that contest between a former senator, John Sununu, and Congressman Chris Pappas, the Democrat. But just in April, Pappas was up several points over Sununu, so that is one where Pappas even himself has been warning about some of the alarm bells in that state.

Then we have Texas, which is still at number seven, and that's because of Talarico's wide lead when it comes to advertising in the state over the summer months. But now we're really seeing the GOP start to spend big in that state, and they're waiting to see whether that could potentially tilt it more into Paxton's favor.

And then Iowa kind of moved to number eight because of the movement in those other races, that's still very competitive. The state's Democratic nominee for governor could actually help the Senate candidate there as well. So really, this is a snapshot in time. It can certainly change over the coming weeks as we have just 50 days till the midterms.

BASH: And we have that with the news that we reported at the top of the show, Manu, which is the money and everybody was waiting to hear from the president and his political team about MAGA Inc. and all that money, and now, as expected, they are spending it. What does it tell you about where they're spending it?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, look, the Republicans in this late stretch, they have the money advantage. They're spending a lot more, pretty much in every other -- every state from here until election day, other than in Georgia, because to me this whole thing is, you know, I agree with those rankings because all those states can flip, but they can also flip the other way because they're all so close.

The Democrats have a path to the majority, but a very narrow path, and each of these races can shift by two or three points. So, you know, once perhaps Maine goes one way, perhaps Michigan goes another way, or maybe the Democrats have a great night because of the way the environment is, and that they end up eking out a victory by two points here, two points there, and two points there that we've seen in other wave elections.

That means there's so much uncertainty in these final 50 days, which explains why the Republicans are spending just an enormous amount of cash to try to shore up their position because anything could change the tide in some of these critical races. Structurally, Republicans still have the advantage, though the map is still -- the red states the Democrats have to win in. Iowa is a complicated state. Alaska is going to be a complicated state, and they have those purple states that they have to hold on to, like Michigan and New Hampshire. Structurally, the Republicans have the advantage, but the environments behind the Democrats at this moment.

BASH: And just part of that structure is money. Just Texas, for example, the ad reservations right now spending the GOP groups $78.9 million, Democratic groups $15.7 million. I mean, that just kind of tells you everything you need to know about the imbalance in money, but also the structural advantages that you were talking about. Jessica, you do this over at Cook. How do you see the map and the rankings that we have today?

JESSICA TAYLOR, SENATE & GOVERNORS EDITOR, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT: I don't -- I think they're pretty accurate with what we are seeing at Cook. One thing I would just note on some of the money in Texas is the Republican money is not going as far as some of the Democratic money because the ad rates for super PACs right now are double what they are of the candidate rate in Texas and stuff. So, Talarico still has a lot of money. I expect more Democratic money to be coming in there.

New Hampshire is one that I'm hearing some concern about. I think basically all of these races right now are margin of error races. And if you're looking at, is it the money or the message? Right now, I think it's Democrats that have the message advantage as we are going into these final 50 days that the environment is on their side, that they have an economic message against the White House, that the White House is really not seizing, and but the money is what the Republicans have.

So, is the enthusiast -- will Republicans be able to close the enthusiasm gap that they have with this money? I'm still a little skeptical because I think that overall, if this is a message about against the president, as we saw in your polling last week in that main Senate race. I was really struck by almost half of the voters that said that that their vote is a vote against President Trump. That's not good for someone like Susan Collins, even though she has overcome difficult environments before. If this is a referendum on President Trump, we heard President Trump last week saying, pretend I'm on the ballot. Democrats are welcoming that.

BASH: Manu, can we talk about Kansas for a minute --

RAJU: Sure.

BASH: --where J.D. Vance is going today? You know, if you would have told me that the Republican vice president was going to go to Kansas to help shore up an incumbent Republican senator in Kansas. I would have told you, you were smoking something and it's happening. And I just want to put a couple of things out there before we talk about it.

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First of all, a story in the New York Times last week, I believe, and this is part of the issue that's being used against Roger Marshall, the incumbent Republican, who's a doctor, sued 700 patients for debts. 81 were arrested. Now he's a senator. So, the story here is about just that. That as a doctor, the patients who couldn't pay, he sued, and then actually they were arrested for missing court dates and beyond. This was part of the issue that came up in a pretty intense debate that we saw -- that played out at a Kansas State Fair. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROGER MARSHALL (R-KS): Those are common, common business practices. We would go a year before we would ever send somebody over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So that was Marshall. He was debating Adam Hamilton, his Republican -- excuse me, his Democratic opponent, and that was the crowd that was at the State Fair, not very happy.

RAJU: Yeah, not a good moment for Roger Marshall. Look, this is a -- this is -- speak this -- that story speaks of the affordability issue that we're seeing all across the country and clearly playing out in Kansas. And then you add all the agricultural concerns, the tariff concerns, the beef imports, all the rest happening concerns among farmers that we're seeing playing out in other states, clearly happening in Kansas as well, and then the dynamics too in Kansas.

Remember, just a couple of election cycles ago, that big abortion rights referendum, the abortion rights side won overwhelmingly in that state. The Democratic governor won there in that cycle as well. So, there's -- it's not -- they're not as in the wilderness in some of these red states. Democrats are -- as they are in other red states, so maybe they can pull off an upset. I'll be more curious if we actually see money being spent there beyond just, you know, Vance or big surrogates going campaign there.

BASH: Arlette?

SAENZ: Yeah. I think that that's going to be the big question is how much the Democrats will want to invest in a state like Kansas. Both parties say that this is really on the bubble, one of those states that they're watching very closely, and if they are starting to feel more bullish about chances there, you could see real investment starting go into the state (Ph).

BASH: All right, everybody, stand by. President Trump says the only AI guardrail America needs is a smart president. The speaker of the House told my colleague Jake Tapper, maybe something more. The debate heading straight to the 2026 campaign trail. And later Sarah Longwell, who's been inside the minds of swing voters for a decade, her new book and her message to both parties.

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BASH: President Trump is making his campaign message on AI very clear. I'm going to read part of a lengthy post he put up this morning. Quote, the only control or guardrails that AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ! president, and the U.S.A. has that in spades! The Trump administration has stopped AI people from doing bad or potentially bad things.

People and things in quotation marks like Dario Anthropic, who is now pretending to be a perfect little angel, and we will continue to do so. We already have tremendous criminal and regulatory power over these companies. There is a sick conspiracy going on against AI and data centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. Whoever wins, AI wins. No guardrails.

We'll listen to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson just yesterday on State of the Union here on CNN about why he's appealing to President Trump for a meeting with all tech leaders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We need to get them all in a room at the same time and agree on what the guardrails are. That's the only way to do this. If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI. We will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Manu, you know there is congressional inaction, which is just --

RAJU: Every day.

BASH: --every day, a day that ends in Y. And then there is this issue, which feels different because it is different.

RAJU: Yeah, and it's been in action for years. I mean, they've been talking about this for years. They've had task forces, they've had meetings, they've called in industry leaders, and they've done nothing. There's been no real consensus, no real push, no real leadership to try to pass any sort of bill to try to get Washington's hands on it.

One, yes, there are divisions about what it looks like. Two, lawmakers don't quite understand what it is on how to actually set the rules of the road and the parameters. So as a result, it's much easier to just let things fester. But now we're reaching a point where the public is clamoring for action. Data centers, one big issue, has become a major issue on the campaign trail. Republicans are trying to figure out how to deal with that.

A lot of Democrats have weaponized this on the campaign trail effectively, and the question is going to be -- because they're all going to be asked this question when they come back into session today. The House and the Senate, and the House is leaving town at the end of this week, and the Senate's only in town for a few more weeks. They hope they can do something to show the public that they're acting, but they're nowhere near real action.

BASH: And obviously, the backdrop of this is what's happened just in the past few days, which is the head of Anthropic, Claude, and other AI platforms had a very lengthy open letter saying he's concerned and wants to have regulation, and there have been some whistleblowers as well.

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TAYLOR: Yeah. I mean, I see this as such a cross-partisan issue that it is not a Republican issue. It's not a Democrat issue. It is -- I'm seeing it popping up in governors' races, and really, Trump is outside -- out of step with where his party faithful are with this, with where the activists are with this. You see people like Ken Paxton that has come out for data centers.

You know, there's just -- I'm seeing so many ads right now about funding and who's getting money from AI, who's getting money from data centers, and it is just something that is animating the base right now. And so, I think that's why you see that they want lawmakers to do something, and I think Johnson is right on that.

BASH: Listen to a couple of the Democratic candidates for Senate, including incumbent from Georgia, talking about it over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABDUL EL-SAYED, (D) MICHIGAN SENATE CANDIDATE: A public agency focused directly on the safety of AI, and there need to be AI no-gos. AI shouldn't be able to deny you healthcare. It shouldn't be able to deny you a job. It shouldn't be able to fire you. It shouldn't be able to fire a weapon.

SEN. JON OSSOFF (D-GA):A capable president would move swiftly to secure and reassure the American people, rush inspectors into frontier labs, fortify the nation against bioterrorism, demand legislation from Congress and lead the world toward an AI treaty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Arlette?

SAENZ: Yeah. I think the one thing that's been interesting, we've really seen a lot of focus on the data centers, which power these AI industries. But it'll be interesting to see around these conversations within the last week, if that's really going to push candidates like we just saw without Sayed and Jon Ossoff to bring up AI regulation more going forward.

The way that we've heard President Trump and many Republicans talk about AI is really through this national security and competition lens, where they're trying to say we have to beat China, keep up with China, but there are huge societal and economic ramifications from AI as well, and that is something that we could see pop up on the campaign trail over the next 50 days.

BASH: And listen to the former president who was on the campaign trail. He was campaigning or fundraising with Hakeem Jeffries talking about AI.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who would you trust the least to provide accurate information? Mohammed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The company building it. They're going to push it straight to your face.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The government. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't trust the government, and I don't trust the company either.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My political representatives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why, why those, Tanya?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sometimes they've taken kickbacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And at least -- be at least likely to trust the actual data side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That was not Barack Obama, obviously. Those were Michigan voters. Those were swing voters. They voted for Joe Biden, and then they voted for Donald Trump. And you heard the way they felt about it. They don't trust anybody.

Now I will read you what President Obama said last week. If I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas. Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation. This is him talking to Hakeem Jeffries very clearly.

Just on that vibe, if you will, POLITICO went to a meeting of top Democratic strategists to talk about crafting an AI strategy. And during that meeting, Morris Katz, who is working on a lot of Democratic campaigns said, if Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer stood together tomorrow, hand in hand, and said, give us the majority, and the first thing we'll pass is the data center moratorium, we would pick up more seats.

RAJU: Yeah. Maybe, perhaps, but the tech lobby is very powerful, and perhaps that's one reason why we're not going to -- maybe see that coming from the Democratic leadership. We'll see when they come back, they'll be asked those questions as well. But they spend a lot of money in campaigns, and this is a critical moment where they could unleash the floodgates. There's a separate issue dealing with crypto that bill is waiting action in the United States Senate, and the Democrats are concerned if they block that bill. What it may mean for their prospects in some key races like in Ohio. So, it's a lot easier said than done.

BASH: Yeah, that is for sure. All right, everybody, stand by. How do you eat a metaphorical elephant? Sarah Longwell spent a decade finding out, and she has a road map for Democrats. Are they following it? Well, she's going to be here next to talk about her new book and maybe answer that question. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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BASH: My next guest is a Republican strategist turned anti-Trump media mogul. She's spent the last decade listening to focus group after focus group of swing voters to figure out how to win them back from President Trump's Republican Party and keep them. In her new book, How to Eat an Elephant, Sarah Longwell lays out her prescription for how to change minds, not based on her political preferences, but based on what actual swing voters have told her over and over again.

Sarah, thank you so much for being here. Congrats on this book. The main thesis is that public sentiment is everything. Democrats, you make very clear, are getting their asses kicked on the communications front. So, what is your prescription for changing that?

SARAH LONGWELL, HOST, "THE FOCUS GROUP" PODCAST: Well, the book's 330 pages, so there's not just one prescription. There's a lot of different prescriptions, right? There's -- there are things to do on the policy side. There are things to do on the communication side, but I think the