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Now: Jack Smith Testifying On Trump Investigations; Smith Defends Secret Subpoenas For Lawmaker Phone Records; Jack Smith: "I Will Not Be Silenced" By Trump's Threats; AOC: Big Tech Chiefs Want To "Make Sure None Of Us Have Jobs"; Beshear Reflects On How Faith Drives His Politics In New Book. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 29, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Why is the GOP focusing on old battles when the election is about what comes next?

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

You're looking at live pictures of former Special Counsel Jack Smith, fielding questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about his investigations into President Trump. We're hearing about classified documents, 2020 election lies, and the January 6 attack on the Capitol. That day has already been mentioned more than 20 times, and Smith is defending his decision to dozens of felony charges against President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Remember, this is all happening five weeks before an election, with dozens of Republicans across the country locked in competitive races. Not so sure they want their party relitigating the president's old grievances when they could be addressing what's driving voters right now, like the rising cost of living.

CNN's Evan Perez is on Capitol Hill following all of the developments in this hearing. Evan, senators, or at least some of them seem to be trying to get new information out of Jack Smith. Is that happening?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: No. You know, I think much of this hearing is not so much about getting new information from Jack Smith as much as it is about reframing what happened during the Jack Smith investigations, reframing what happened on January 6 itself, the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and of course the classified documents investigation. And part of the work here behind me just a few minutes ago, Senator Ted Cruz had a -- had a poster board, listing the number of Republican entities that were being investigated or that -- or were subpoenaed. Their records were subpoenaed.

Well, you know, the issue here is that the president was trying to overturn an election, and of course, the people he was communicating with, and people like Rudy Giuliani were communicating with, were of course Republicans. They weren't talking to Democrats. That's the reason why those records were sought. Here's an example of the -- of the kind of exchange you have between Republican senators and Jack Smith about the work that went on during that investigation. Listen?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): You saw the phone records of a bunch of U.S. senators, right?

SMITH: We saw the toll records, non-content records.

KENNEDY: Any Democrats or just Republicans?

SMITH: If President Trump had reached out to Democrats, to further--

KENNEDY: No, but I'm just trying to get the facts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And so that's the sense -- that's sort of like the type of exchanges we're hearing today, Dana. Because you know, I think senators want to make this about the records that were sought. Again, there was no content from those records. It is the typical way investigations are done.

BASH: Yeah. And hanging over all of this is the fact that the current Trump Justice Department is investigating Jack Smith and other Trump perceived enemies, political enemies. How is that playing into Smith's testimony, particularly given the fact that he knows that these Republicans are trying to catch him in a contradiction that they could use against him to claim that he perjured himself.

PEREZ: Yeah, look. I mean, I think that is very much part of the influence of what's happening behind me. Jack Smith is limited on talking about the classified documents case because the report -- that part of his report the volume two is still under lock and key because Judge Aileen Cannon down in Florida has said that that cannot be released. So, he cannot speak about some of the things that he did in that investigation. And as you pointed out, he is also still under investigation by the current Justice Department, which believes that there might have been a vast conspiracy that stretches from 2016 to 2024 and that's one of the cases that they've been pursuing behind the scenes, Dana.

BASH: Evan, don't go anywhere. I want to bring in our colleague Nia- Malika Henderson and also Marianna Sotomayor to talk more about this. I want to play a little bit of what Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary, said at the top of the hearing.

[12:05:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): This is the result of the President Trump's campaign, aided and abetted by many congressional Republicans, to whitewash the history of the 2020 election and the January 6, insidious attack on this Capitol building.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Nia, starting with you, just sort of again, kind of on the politics of where we are right now in this election cycle. I personally have talked to Republicans, even those who are publicly, you know, gung-ho on pushing on Jack Smith and pushing on January 6 issues privately. People even around them say this is not what voters want.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST: Right. Listen, it's not even clear that it's what Republican voters want, right? I mean, the idea here, you know, if you're the president or Republicans there is that, you know, you play the same old hits and you get the MAGA crowd dancing again, right, and voting for the Republicans who are on the ballot. The problem now is affordability has moved ahead in terms of some of those animating issues among the MAGA faithful.

You know, if you are sort of fighting the last war as a party, it is usually a losing gambit, right? Voters want to look forward. They want to see promises fulfilled, right, in terms of affordability, in terms of making their lives better. There's so much anxiety across the country about prices, obviously about AI, for instance, about data centers. So many other issues Trump what we're hearing today.

And also, one of the takeaways I think from this hearing is if you at least listen to the Democrats and listen to Jack Smith. I mean, Jack Smith's statement was Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation, right? I don't know that that is necessarily what Trump and Republicans want to have out there right now as they're trying to get voters, particularly independent voters to rally around Republicans and this president.

BASH: That's right, which is a big part of why you have seen President Trump lead the charge to try to disqualify Jack Smith, call him partisan, despite the fact that there's no evidence of that as Evan can tell us as well. I mean, he's a career prosecutor with no political skin in the game. And just on the whole question of perjury traps, there was a moment, Marianna, where the Republican senator from Missouri, Eric Smith -- Schmitt rather tried to catch Jack Smith in either a lie or something that looked untoward on face value, didn't go as Senator Schmitt planned. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I'm sure of that.

SEN. ERIC SCHMITT (R-MO): Did you ever meet Nathan Wade or Fani Willis in your time as special counsel?

SMITH: No.

SCHMITT: What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior-Hawks game on February 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair. I don't think, you know, that we have this stuff.

SMITH: Yeah.

SCHMITT: So, I'll give you a second to process it, so you don't, you know, perjure yourself.

SMITH: You just took it down really quick. If I could look at that again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, here's what happened. It was actually a text exchange about Jack Smith going to an Iowa Hawkeyes game. So, this is, of course, to see the phenom Caitlin Clark play basketball at the University of Maryland. It had nothing to do with what Senator Schmitt thought he was really nailing Jack Smith on.

MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Yeah, that is correct. And it was a moment where everyone who was paying attention and watching and in the room were like, what is he trying to say here? What is the point that Schmitt is trying to prove? And you know, this is one of those moments where, as much as Senate Republicans today are justifying this hearing, as you know, them trying to provide oversight, well, this just adds to I think the perception already in the public that hearings are just get out of hand.

They're not serious, and it really doesn't add to that argument of that Republicans are trying to make that this is an opportunity for them to talk to Jack Smith and try to nail him on potential contradiction. Democrats today at varying points have brought up the fact that Jack Smith had been willing to testify, not just this year but this entire Congress, raising the question as to why Republicans want to do this in the final week before the election.

[12:10:00]

And as everyone has more or less pointed out, there is a lot of speculation as to why. Like, Republican voters aren't talking about this, and Republicans could make the argument that they really need to gin up that base, make sure that those voters turn out, but this is already an issue that's been baked one way or the other, especially among like the MAGA faithful.

BASH: Real quick, final thought, Evan.

PEREZ: No. Look, I mean, I think I was like -- it was like watching a Three's Company episode. Dana, you and I might remember that television show, but it was literally -- it was the whole premise was just false, and then it was like, oops, never mind, right?

BASH: Well, maybe they'll all get a drink at the Regal Beagle afterwards. Thank you, guys.

PEREZ: I hope so.

BASH: Don't go anywhere. Coming up. How do Democrats crack the red state code? My next guest is a governor and potential 2028 contender who's done just that twice. Plus, we have new CNN reporting on the hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars Republicans plan to spend in a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator in 38 years. Could that Texas tab cost the GOP elsewhere?

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: It's been almost two decades since Democrats held a majority of the nation's governors' mansions. This year, the party is hoping to recapture that majority with a number of toss-up opportunities to flip Republican-held governorships. Leading that operation is the head of the Democratic Governors Association, Kentucky's Andy Beshear, a Democrat with a personal track record of winning a red state. He's laid out his approach to politics and how his faith informs his work in a new book, Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country.

Governor Beshear joins me now. Thank you so much for being here. I want to get to your book in one second, but I want to start with the fact that in Washington, leaders from top tech companies are arriving at the White House as we speak for a Trump summit on AI. If you were in that room, Governor, what would you tell the leaders about what needs to be done, and what do you think the government's role should be?

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): Well, thank you for having me on, and let me first acknowledge a profound loss here in the Commonwealth. Yesterday, we lost a state, Trooper Hayden Phillips, 28 years old, would be 29 tomorrow. In what should have been a routine traffic stop, shot and killed, leaves behind a wife and three young kids. So, anybody watching who wants to be helpful to that family, the Kentucky State Police Foundation has set up a fund in his honor, and we're going to do everything we can to wrap our arms around that family.

If I was in Washington D.C. today, I'd look at each of those AI tech leaders and say we have to get this right. The stakes are far too high, and we are all better off by having significant federal oversight in the development of AI. It offers the opportunity to do some incredible good. It could potentially wipe out every genetic disease in our lifetime if you pair it with CRISPR. But it also could cause significant job displacement and major national security issues, so we absolutely have to get it right and that's what I'd be pushing.

I would also tell them that the United States would directly engage in talks with China. We were able to negotiate treaties with the Soviet Union during the Cold War that prevented any additional nuclear proliferation, and we ought to take the same approach here. The stakes are simply too high. BASH: I want to play what your fellow Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this weekend about the AI tech leaders and risks of this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): In an environment of AI, they want to wipe out all of our livelihoods. They want to make sure none of us have jobs, and they want to keep all the spoils of those riches. What they want is for all of us to not be able to do the basic thinking that we are capable of today and be reliant on a machine for the most basic questions and tasks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Is that when you see it? Do you think this is just about billionaires trying to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, wipe out everyone else's livelihood, to use her words?

BESHEAR: Well, I think there's some of those billionaires who don't care about the rest of us, and there are some that that do. What I know is that AI is coming, and we have got to be responsible in how we manage it, the oversight that we provide. Recognize that we can cure certain forms of pediatric cancer and never have to tell a family ever again that there's no other treatment or that there's no cure, but at the same time, it could profoundly change our world in negative ways. So, this doesn't just get to be a black or white issue, it's one that we've got to get right.

You know, and the other thing I think I'd do if I was in that room is look at the tech leaders and say, we got social media wrong, and tech has lost a lot of trust because of that. This is the time to get this part right because whether you're a billionaire or not, you're still living in this same world that could be threatened by this technology.

[12:20:00]

BASH: So, what does that federal oversight look like? A regulatory board? Have you thought about the right way to do it?

BESHEAR: Oh, I think it's got to be significant oversight where the federal government can bring in people as knowledgeable as we need. If we try to do this on a state level, 49 states could do it the right way, and the one that didn't could cause all the problems we're trying to prevent. I think we need to think about whether or not oversight could include folks embedded in these companies, so that we know exactly what's happening, and so that the oversight is fair and equal amongst all the companies.

BASH: I want to turn to your book. It is about your faith and how it influences your politics and your policy making. You open the book with a pretty harsh judgment of your party, the Democratic Party. You write, it is unthinkable that we, as a country, and the Democratic Party in particular, have all but ceded faith and basic morality to a modern-day Pharisee. The modern-day Pharisee you're referring to is, of course, President Trump. When did Democrats cede basic morality to the president? What do you mean by that?

BESHEAR: What I mean is, we have a president that is willing to stop food benefits during a government shutdown, saying aloud that starving Americans are good leverage. The exact opposite of that miracle of the fishes and the loaves, where in a place of scarcity, Jesus made sure that everyone had enough. We have a president that walks out after Erika Kirk, in the toughest of moments, gives voice to the golden rule, saying she forgives even her worst enemy. And Donald Trump comes out and says, no, no, I hate them.

We have a president who says, you're not supposed to love your neighbor, but your neighbor is the enemy from within. He uses faith to manipulate, to divide, sometimes to foster hate, and that's the exact opposite of what faith is about. I mean, Jesus had the chance to be the Prince of Power, and he chose to be the Prince of Peace. The teachings in the Bible should unite us and not divide us.

And let me just say, I talk about my faith because it's my authentic why. It's why I'm willing to deal with the toxicity of politics and fight for a better world. I don't try to impose it on anyone, and I'm not trying to write it directly into law. That's called Christian nationalism, and I'm against that. But whatever it is that pushes us to be a little kinder to each other, to want good things for our neighbor, that's what we should be giving voice to.

BASH: And you explain that in your book, talking about your faith and how you use it to connect with voters. You say, when I made the decision to run for public office, I was going to be myself. That meant I was going to talk about things that are important to me, and nothing is more important to me than my faith and my family. Politically speaking, Governor, do you think about the way that candidates who have a strong faith but are not Christian can do that?

Look at Michigan Abdul El-Sayed is running. He would be the first Muslim senator. We're putting up a recent poll in the Washington Post. 45 percent of voters said they would not vote for a Muslim to be president. 20 percent say they wouldn't vote for somebody who is Jewish.

BESHEAR: No, I think that expressions of any faith are positive if they are authentic. In this post-pandemic politics, people care more about the why than the what. When you can look at an Instagram video of people talking directly to you, they want to know what drives you, how they can trust you to do the right things. I mean, look at Donald Trump, who told everyone he was going to bring down costs. And what has he done? He's made life that much harder.

He said he'd keep us out of foreign conflicts, and we get in them over and over, and are now stuck in what appears to be a forever war that has diesel at $6.50. So, Josh Shapiro talks about his faith in such a true and authentic way. And I think people are just looking for what drives you to be good, to fight for people like me, to make my life better. And so, I support any candidate talking about their faith or just their values and their experience.

Amy Acton, who's going to be the next governor of Ohio, talks about how she was homeless with her brother. But a woman on her way to school fed her breakfast every morning, and that's what she's trying to pay forward. Those are the types of things that Democratic candidates need to be talking about are our true and authentic why.

BASH: Yeah. And listen, I think what you're saying is it makes sense politically in a lot of ways. But I guess my just candid question to you is, is it easier for you to put forward your authentic why when it is -- your faith is, is the Christian faith, especially in a place like Kentucky, as a Democrat, where that definitely helps you. And in other places and other religions, it might not be as easy.

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BESHEAR: It may be, but people can see what's real and what's not.

BASH: Yeah.

BESHEAR: They can -- they can see your actions. They saw how Donald Trump held that. Bible, suggesting he hadn't held one before, and certainly had not read it. And so, I think it is a test of authenticity and so whatever your faith is or your values, I think being authentic about it builds trust in people more so than, than it can harm any candidate.

BASH: Yeah. Well, I hope -- I hope you're right because that speaks to the good -- to the good in everybody. Governor, thank you so much for being here. Again, your new book is, Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country. Governor Andy Beshear, thank you.

Coming up. I will speak to a Republican senator fighting to hold his seat, one his party used to count on. And next, we just told you some of the biggest names in AI. They're heading to the White House this hour. How will this go for the president and Republicans so close to an election?

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