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Inside Politics
AOC Takes Progressive Campaign To Rural New York; Anthropic's CEO Dines With Trump At White House; Bill Gates: AI Could "Cause A Billion Deaths"; White House To Host AI Leaders Amid Warnings Of Doom; American And Canadian Voters Discuss Visiting Other Country Amid Trade War; New Era Of Panda-Diplomacy Between Beijing & Washington. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired September 28, 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]
GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- blue Democratic city that has, in the past, elected progressive candidates, including its most recent mayor, Mayor Sean Ryan, who Ocasio-Cortez met with during her visit.
But also, most recently, there was a very competitive three-way primary in which Adam Bojak, the DSA candidate, won, and he's on his way to win the general election. So this is being noticed not just by moderate Democrats, but also by Republicans, who are pointing to both AOC's visit, the rise of the DSA here in New York City, and in places like Buffalo, as evidence that the party is simply going too far left.
Ocasio-Cortez focused on the key messaging we've been hearing from her and other DSA members recently, right? Affordable health care, universal child care, and a livable living wage. Those were her key points, and I think we're going to see much more of this in the next -- in the near future, especially as she claims to be focusing on making sure that more voters come out ahead of the midterms.
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Gloria, thank you so much for that reporting. Appreciate it.
Certainly powerful enough to create or cause a billion deaths. I'm going to say that again, powerful enough to cause a billion deaths. That was what Bill Gates said in a warning about an existential risk associated with AI. But will that move Washington? More on that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, thanks for having me, Michael. I may have been alarming in my recent interviews, but I want to assure you that if we can pressure lawmakers to create guardrails, we will be able to stop me.
(END VIDEO CLIP) [12:36:21]
BASH: That was Saturday Night Live spoofing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. 24 hours later, the real Amodei was -- kind of see the resemblance there -- he was at the White House for dinner with President Trump. We don't know what they discussed or what they ate, but perhaps this warning yesterday from Bill Gates was on the menu.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER: AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths. There's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: I mean, some stark warnings there. There are people who are leaders in the AI industry who totally disagree and think that this is doom and gloom, completely overwrought. But it's politically potent enough for the President, who is in the overwrought category, to agree to have this big summit tomorrow.
SHELBY TALCOTT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, SEMAFOR: Yes, which is really interesting given that he has been so staunchly against sort of any guardrails, right? He has a very one-track mind when it comes to this, which is America needs to be the best, we need to beat China, and so therefore we need to essentially let people do whatever they want to do when it comes to AI.
But while we don't know a lot of information about how last night's dinner went, my colleague is reporting that the Anthropic CEO is going to be at the lunch tomorrow as well. So if that gives you any indication, it must have gone well enough.
But one thing I find interesting is, you know, I don't think the President's opinion on this is a 110 percent, right? Because I think oftentimes when he gets into the room with certain people, like the Anthropic CEO, he had dinner with him last night, he's going to see him tomorrow as well, his mind can be changed to a certain extent.
So I wouldn't be shocked if at the end of the day, in the next few weeks and months, his position maybe shifts a tiny bit towards having some guardrails. I don't think that he's going to go all the way to, you know, where the Anthropic CEO wants to go. But I think oftentimes the last person to speak to Trump sometimes that ends up being his position.
BASH: Jeff, listen to what the House Speaker said this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: This meeting tomorrow has been a long time coming in my view. I've talked to the President about it several times. He's the only one that has the gravitas to be able to pull them all together. The frontier labs are the ones that know the most about this, and so we've got to have them involved in the conversation about what those supposed guardrails look like.
I'm going to resist the siren song that Bernie Sanders called to, you know, impose strict limits in moratoriums. I think that's the wrong approach.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's not just Bernie Sanders. I mean, of course he is. Senator Sanders is calling for this, but it's actually, this is one of those rarer issues where the President's on the opposite side of public opinion on in terms of a populist sort of issue here.
So I think you're right about his pivot, and clearly they want to show that a month before the midterm elections they're on this, they're talking about this. But I think the bottom line is when we look at the stock listing there that was on the side of where Speaker Johnson was, NVIDIA was at the very top of that.
The leader of NVIDIA is very much on the opposite side of this, and President Trump talks about him constantly, Jensen Huang, and he believes that it should be guns blazing full speed ahead. So he has a lot of different voices in his ears, but it's clear --
TALCOTT: It's also --
ZELENY: -- that voters are concerned about this.
BASH: Yes.
TALCOTT: And NVIDIA is also invited to this --
BASH: That's right.
TALCOTT: -- lunch tomorrow, so it'll be really interesting to see -- there's going to be very different opinions in that room.
[12:40:04]
BASH: So in sort of the macro level, Stephen, it's -- is humanity going to be destroyed --
STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER: Right.
BASH: -- which is kind of big. But in the short term, it's the politics of affordability, because it plays into anxiety about jobs and about whether people are going to lose their jobs because of AI.
COLLINSON: Yes, and it's all about costs as well. People are seeing their power bills go up.
BASH: That's right.
COLLINSON: They're worried about the access to water from these data centers. I think it's interesting because Bill Gates is basically arguing that it would need some cataclysmic event to galvanize action to do something about this. You know, one example that springs to mind is 9/11, which led to, for example, things like extra airport security, which in retrospect seemed like a no-brainer, but no one thought of at the time.
But sometimes Washington actually gets stuck behind the politics of a big issue. You can tell out in the country that the attitudes to AI are changing. Sometimes that can drive an undertow of political momentum that the people in Washington have -- you know, who lead us, are the last to actually understand.
If you have a new Congress comes in that believes it was elected partly because of public concern about AI, that is going to change the politics of this, and it's already, we know, it's going to be an issue running into the 2028 election.
BASH: Yes, very well said. Thank you all.
Don't go anywhere. What happens when you get a bunch of American voters together with Canadian voters to talk trade? CNN's John King went All Over the Map to find out.
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[12:46:01]
BASH: President Trump's trade war with Canada does not appear to be ending anytime soon, adding to Americans' economic woes, including in states with must-win Senate and House seats, never mind governor's mansions.
CNN's John King spoke to voters in the U.S. and Canada about the real- world fallout of the political back and forth between President Trump and Prime Minister Mark Carney.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Is it fair to say, Toby, that, you know, President Trump -- set the policy aside for a second -- he thinks sometimes this helps him politically, and it seems pretty clear that Mr. Ford and Mr. Carney, at times, think it helps them politically, too.
TOBY, VOTER: Sure, yes, I think Premier Ford really falls for what you called snark. You know, basically, we're just being chirped, and we're used to being chirped up here. We play a lot of hockey, we chirp each other all the time, so we don't, we care about that very much.
But hey, let me say this, Prime Minister Carney's polling at 66 percent right now. He's very popular with Canadians. I think Trump is around 30 percent.
But I want to go back to that Lake America thing again. That, I mean, that to me was, I thought it was pretty funny. I mean, people are going to call the lake whatever they want to call the lake. I couldn't believe that our media spent four days on that, covering this Lake America thing. Meanwhile, at the same time, the EPA was reducing pollution restrictions for industry, they were reducing protections for gray wolves, all this other important stuff was going on while we were talking about the name of a lake, which people can call whatever they want. It's Lake Ontario to us.
But I think there's a lot more important things going on than the snark. I don't know how President Trump conducts himself in private meetings, but I do think that we're falling for the snark kind of hook, line, and sinker.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: John King is here. So John, the voters you spoke to, the American voters, are in key battleground states, Maine, Michigan, and Iowa, and they do a lot of important business, or they did, with Canada.
KING: All of them affected by trade, all of their economies already in the volatility of high prices, the volatility caused by the Iran war, and then the volatility caused when he escalated the trade war with Canada again. So in the Maine Senate race, people up there say this is hurting the Republican incumbent Susan Collins.
She has said she disagrees with the president on this one. This is one where she has stepped out and said I think he's wrong on this one, but it impacts the race. Michigan, Mike Rogers, had a more nuanced position saying I don't like everything the President does, but there is a reason sometimes for tariffs.
Shannon was the cattle rancher in Iowa there. She's gone through this early on the Trump administration. She was happy with tariffs because he was protecting American beef. Now he's letting in foreign beef and escalating a trade war with Canada.
So on the American side, yes, it is more economic uncertainty and volatility, which is not good for Republicans. On the Canadian side, it was interesting. President Trump has made everybody a trade expert, by the way. Everybody has to study these issues because of them.
Darryl, the top left of that screen, is out in British Columbia. He's more conservative. He says he gets what Trump is doing. He doesn't like how he does it, but that the Canadians do protect their banks, that they do protect their telecom industries, and that it's not a fair relationship. So it was -- it's a feisty and interesting debate, but everybody on both sides of the border gets it.
BASH: Another key economic sort of driver for a lot of these northern U.S. states is tourism --
KING: Right.
BASH: -- Canadian tourism into the U.S. Let's listen to your conversation about that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KING: Let me ask the Canadians first, would you travel to the United States under these circumstances? Some people have said that, you know, you should -- Canadians should personally boycott the United States to show their displeasure with Trump. Would you go that far?
TOBY: Yes, I have no plans to travel to the U.S. 78 million Americans voted for Trump, it's -- which is a substantial amount. I have no desire to go into a country that's willing to do us harm like this.
KING: Peter?
PETER, VOTER: Well, no, I'm not going to go. No, no. I have no need to, and we are not treated very well here at the moment. So, no, I will not be going.
KING: Darryl?
[12:50:06]
DARRYL, VOTER: I've been to the U.S. four times this year already. I don't think us will have any effect on these larger global issues. You know, it's cold in Canada in the winter, and I want to go somewhere warm.
KING: That's flip the question. Joseph, Shannon, Brenda, any hesitation about going to Canada?
JOSEPH, VOTER: Well, for me, me and my wife, we always go to Niagara Falls. And we actually had canceled a -- we canceled our -- we normally stay at the Caesar Palace. We have canceled because of the trade war. So, for me, you know, if things escalate, we're not spending our money there.
SHANNON, VOTER: My husband actually got his passport specifically so we can go to Canada this year.
KING: OK.
SHANNON: And look at cattle.
KING: Look at cattle.
SHANNON: And --
KING: Oh, so it's preventable (ph) for work. OK.
SHANNON: And purchase and import cattle.
KING: Will that cost you more money now?
SHANNON: Probably. Brenda?
BRENDA, VOTER: So just back on tourism from Canada, Maine is very dependent on Canadian tourism, and it's been an absolutely terrible year. Our tourism dollars are down more than half. So there's been a big, big impact here. As for me, we spend a lot of our time enjoying the northern cities, whether it's Montreal or Quebec. So, yes, we'll be there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Tourism down more than half --
KING: Yes.
BASH: -- in Maine.
KING: -- In Maine and Vermont, you hear that complaint a lot. In Michigan, Minnesota, for example, as you move across the prairie states, again, in places where, as you noted at the top, there are a lot of key races there. It's, you know, is this the biggest economic impact? No. In some of those border communities, maybe.
But it's another piece of the President doing something that has hurt his party. He might think he's right in the long term, but it's hurt his party. The most interesting part there was some tension between the Americans and the Canadians.
Way back at the beginning of the year, when Trump first started this and I traveled, everybody was like, everybody on the Canadian side was like, this is about Trump, not about you. We love Americans. We don't like him.
There is beginning to be --
BASH: Yes.
KING: -- a little bit of a, hmm.
BASH: Yes, when he noted how many millions of people voted for Donald Trump --
KING: Yes.
BASH: -- that was very telling.
KING: Yes, you pick it up.
BASH: Thank you.
KING: Yes.
BASH: Keep it coming. It's really very educational.
KING: I'll go to Canada anytime.
BASH: All right. Thank you so much.
Up next, bear with us as we get an update on China's newest ambassadors to the U.S., Ping Ping and Fu Shuang. We're live at the zoo in Atlanta after a short break.
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[12:57:15]
BASH: Right now, two new ambassadors are settling into America. Giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang. They arrived yesterday after a long 8,000-mile trip from China. They are the newest diplomats in a long tradition between Beijing and Washington. The two will call zoo Atlanta home for the next 10 years.
CNN's Ivan Rodriguez is there in Atlanta. How are they adjusting? And will we get to see them anytime soon, Ivan?
IVAN RODRIGUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Dana, the giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, are settling into their new home. As you mentioned, it was a long journey, a 15-hour flight from China here to Atlanta, 15 hours in total. And visitors are going to have to wait a little bit until they can officially meet these giant pandas because they're currently going through a routine quarantine, which zoo officials say will take about one month.
Now, zookeepers want to ensure that this transition for both Ping Ping and Fu Shuang goes smoothly because eventually they're going to want them to grow a family, but they're going to have to get to know each other first. So we even have a little bit of a dating scenario going on here.
Maybe love is blind. Who knows? They're going to meet each other for the first time here in a little bit inside of zoo Atlanta. But, look, I mean, there's a lot of excitement here outside. We've gotten the chance to speak with many people saying that they were sad when the pandas left back in 2024.
They're excited to see them again shortly, hopefully soon. There's still not even a set date. Zoo officials have put on to when they'll be on display for the public. But take a listen here to what the president of zoo Atlanta had to say in terms of how these pandas are adjusting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAYMOND KING, ZOO ATLANTA PRESIDENT: They're doing great, really meeting all our expectations. I would say Ping Ping's probably the rock star. He has already settled in like he's been here for weeks. She's taking a little more time to get adjusted, but it's as we would have expected.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RODRIGUEZ: China also arranged for several veterinarians and breeders to make that trip from China here to zoo Atlanta to ensure that transition goes smoothly as well. The team at zoo Atlanta and the Chinese team have held, quote, "many online and offline meetings to carry out in-depth exchanges on upgrading and the transformation plan for this new venue that zoo Atlanta built for these pandas." Dana?
BASH: Yes. And that was sort of part of the interesting thing about this visit for 10 years is it's not just about hosting the pandas, it's about deeper attempts at an exchange, a diplomatic exchange.
RODRIGUEZ: Absolutely. And when we think about to when this all began, we have to go back to 1972 after President Nixon's first official visit to China. That's when the Chinese government sent those first two pandas to the U.S.
Now, the name Ping Ping, one of the the giant pandas, that was actually the name of a panda that was sent to the Soviet Union back in the 1950s. So there is some history there as well.
BASH: You get the assignment of the day, Ivan. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us all about those adorable pandas.
Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts right now.
