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State of the Union

Interview With U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; Interview With Rep. Riley Moore (R-WV); Interview With Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Aired 9-10a ET

Aired November 09, 2025 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:00:25]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Texas two-step. After smashing Election Day expectations, California's governor takes his show on the road.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): I get why you say don't mess with Texas, but also don't poke the bear.

TAPPER: What does his fight with President Trump say about the Democratic Party's future and his own? Governor Gavin Newsom joins me exclusively.

Plus: ground stop, American travelers in a tailspin, as the shutdown hits a new record.

SEAN DUFFY, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Let's spare controllers and reduce the pressure.

TAPPER: While the Trump administration goes to court over food stamps, how much worse could things get? Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is next.

And paying the price? After his party's election losses, President Trump tries to pivot.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Affordability, they call it, was a con job by the -- by the Democrats.

TAPPER: As Americans struggle with necessities, can the president convince them we're on the right track? Our political panel breaks it down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, D.C., where the state of our union is grounded. This morning, as Americans try to check in for their flights or plan for Thanksgiving or for hundreds of thousands of air traffic controllers and TSA agents and other government employees try to put gas in their cars or pay their rent or childcare, or for 42 million Americans who rely on food stamps, try to buy groceries, it is a state of anxiety, if not panic.

But as American misery rises and the pressure builds on the president and Congress to end the record-long shutdown, it's not clear right now that either side is willing to budge, as, yesterday, President Trump rejected Democrats' push for an extension of subsidies to help pay for skyrocketing health insurance premiums for voters, while Democrats are feeling emboldened to stick it out after Tuesday night's elections, which offered them a new path out of the political wilderness.

One standout winner, in particular, California Governor Gavin Newsom, who took on a tit-for-tat fight against President Trump over redrawing congressional maps. And Newsom won, energizing Democrats and sparking speculation about Newsom's next moves.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. AL GREEN (D-TX): I'm here today because he is a future president of the United States of America.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I spoke with Governor Newsom yesterday afternoon in ruby-red Texas, where he was taking something of a victory lap and offering this taunting message to the state's Republican leaders, as well as to President Trump: Don't poke the California bear.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: So, behind you are the flags of the United States, Texas and California. California, I get. United States, I get. Why are we in Texas?

NEWSOM: To thank everybody for being part of this remarkable Tuesday that really galvanized and energized people, mobilized them all across the country, not just in relationship to Prop 50, which I was here to thank them for, but I think just the energy that the delegation from Texas brought to the Democratic Party, to democracy as a whole when they stood up and pushed back against Greg Abbott and Donald Trump's overreach.

And I really think, in many ways, that was the beginning of this comeback. This was the beginning of sort of a resurgence of energy. And you have seen it, the No Kings rally. You saw it obviously with the outcomes, not just in Virginia and New Jersey, but in Mississippi and Pennsylvania and Georgia and elsewhere.

And I wanted to make sure that they knew how important they were. TAPPER: So you're saying that the legislators, the state legislators,

leaving the state for two weeks, starting -- protesting, denying the legislature a quorum for this unusual mid-decade redistricting that President Trump wanted them to do, that was the impetus? That gave you the energy and the idea to do what you did in California?

NEWSOM: Just go back in that moment. I mean, we were hand-wringing. You guys were coming out with a poll, on top of NBC polls, we had 27 percent. We had a high water mark of 33 percent approval, the Democratic Party.

It was primarily because Democrats were so upset about Democrats. It was a demoralizing time. And had they not asserted themselves, had they not shown up in California and in Illinois and other states, had they not called this out with a kind of clarity and conviction to really sort of underscore this moment, yes, I don't know that we'd be in the position we're in today.

And, certainly, Prop 50 would not have been inspired, because this -- again, what was happening here, the phone call that I got from Gene Wu is what launched this entire process.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: That's the House minority leader here in Texas.

But let me just -- let me confide something in you, OK? When you came out and you announced Prop 50, to say nothing of the merits of it...

NEWSOM: Yes.

TAPPER: I'm generally -- I like independent commissions, OK?

NEWSOM: Yes.

TAPPER: But beyond my own personal views...

[09:05:01]

NEWSOM: Yes. Yes.

TAPPER: ... when you came out with this, I thought, well, he's -- that's a big swing. I don't know what's going to happen politically, just as a political move. The polls were against you.

NEWSOM: Yes.

TAPPER: Schwarzenegger was against you.

NEWSOM: Yes.

TAPPER: Good governor groups were against you.

NEWSOM: Yes. Yes, that's right.

TAPPER: And, ultimately, it didn't -- I didn't know it was going to be...

NEWSOM: I mean, the first poll was 38 percent, just to underscore that, and, again, because I, like many, agree with you, support independent redistricting.

But you can't do it state by state with one hand tied behind your back. You can't unilaterally disarm as other people are not playing by the rules. Donald Trump and Republican governors across the country, governors not just in Texas, but you're seeing what happened in Missouri. You see what happened in North Carolina, obviously, what's going to happen in Indiana likely, and then Florida.

They're not screwing around. They're consolidating power. And we were sitting there. And I think Donald Trump did not expect what Californians did. He thought we would just -- we would try to win an argument by writing an op-ed, maybe express disdain and concern about the country.

I don't expect...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Well, that is the Democratic Party of...

NEWSOM: Yes, of old. And I think that's the bottom line. And I think this moment, what happened on Tuesday, represents a new moment, clarity, conviction, purpose, energy, on our toes, not on our heels, a resurgent Democratic Party.

And it's a party that understands what's at stake for our democracy as we go into the 250th anniversary of our founding fathers. And I think that kind of momentum and direction is, I think, really going to enliven people in the next year.

TAPPER: Do you think that's part of why we are now in a government shutdown?

I mean, just -- House Democrats voted against the government funding bill. Senate Democrats continue to vote against the government funding bill? Now, I understand why. They're doing so because they oppose the Medicaid cuts. They're doing so because they want the Republicans to extend the Obamacare subsidies. Insurance premiums are about the skyrocket.

So I understand why, but Democrats are the ones keeping this government shutdown going. Do you agree with the strategy?

NEWSOM: Well, I don't -- the bottom line is, the president of the United States canceled a meeting with the two leaders. Because of public pressure before the government shutdown, he decided to have that meeting.

He didn't invite you and others in, which, for Donald Trump, in and of itself, is remarkable. He just instead sent out a TRUTH Social with Trump 2028 hats. And then he went golfing that weekend before the shutdown, shortly thereafter. He had no interest or energy into avoiding this government shutdown.

He has no interest or energy to end it today. He's the president of the United States. As someone who's an executive, chief executive of a state larger than 21 state populations combined, the fourth large economy, you have a responsibility in that role to convene, to bring people together.

That's why there's a government shutdown, period, full stop. What the Democrats, though, have done -- and I give Jeffries and Schumer tremendous credit -- is, they have galvanized people of all political stripes, rural, urban, suburban, on the issue that defines so many problems in so many ways and so many days, and that's health care and the anxiety people are about to feel, with 100 to 388 percent in California, up to 388 percent increase in premiums and costs.

So I think they have been right. But Donald Trump needs to act like the president, not just be president. He needs to do the job.

TAPPER: So there are a lot of repercussions for this government shutdown. Obviously, air travel is a mess. And then SNAP benefits, food benefits, food stamp benefits, for 42 million Americans, as we sit here, the Trump administration is fighting a court order to tell them to pay out full SNAP benefits.

Vice President J.D. Vance called the judges' ruling that the U.S. needs to pay, that the Trump administration needs to pay these SNAP benefits, he called the ruling absurd. He said the administration is -- quote -- "not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge."

Now, I know that's -- five million Californians receive SNAP benefits.

NEWSOM: Five-point-five. And the difference is, in California, they were fully restored in my state through November.

That said, they obviously have not been in the vast majority of states. But think about the state of mind of the vice president. How do they -- how do they honestly -- how do you square the circle when you go to a prayer breakfast? How do you square the circle, I mean, Old Testament, New Testament?

Well, what's the fundamental thing that connects every -- I mean, from John, to Matthew, to Proverbs? It's this notion of hunger, feeding the poor, the sick, the tired. It's not an option. It's central to advancing God's will.

I mean, the fundamental point that we'd be using -- because this is what it's about, and the federal government said it in the lawsuit, that they want to use it as a bargaining chip, a bargaining chip to end this shutdown. That's shameful. It's never happened in U.S. history.

And I appreciate the governors, the 23 A.G.s that stepped up and sued. And we have won those lawsuits. Now we need to win the heart and mind of the president of the United States, not just the vice president of the United States, to do the right damn thing. TAPPER: So, Prop 50, whether that was part of a longer-term campaign

for you, because, obviously, you're thinking -- you have acknowledged you're thinking about running for president possibly in 2028. You haven't made any decisions. You're focused on the midterms. I know everything you're about to say.

[09:10:18]

But whether or not the decision was influenced by that at all, what about the response to the decision? Has that changed your calculus at all?

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Because it does seem like Democrats see fight in you. And a lot of them seem to be, at least the ones we just saw upstairs in Texas, like the fight.

I mean, Congressman Al Green introduced you as a future president of the United States.

NEWSOM: Yes, very generous words.

Look, with humility, let me say two things. I disagree marginally with the premise of your question. This is the Election Rigging Response Act. This was not a fight we chose. This is a fight we felt was important to fight. Proposition 50 was never on the docket, was not part of the agenda.

For me, though, it goes back further, goes back to the federalization of the National Guard. Now, I want to remind folks it's not 200 or 300. In California, it was 4,000 National Guard were federalized; 700 active-duty Marines were not sent overseas. They were sent to the second largest city in the United States of America.

We kicked off the campaign, and Greg Bovino came out and Border Patrol and tactical units at the Democracy Center to quite literally intimidate people from walking in. The clarity, the understanding, the sort of fundamental, visceral understanding of this moment became crystal clear in June.

And so this is an extension of that. And I think more and more people are waking up to what's going on. And I said it up there. It's not about the rule of law anymore. It's the rule of Don. He's picking and choosing, deciding which court decisions he agrees with. He's quite literally running an extortion racket, and not just with universities like UCLA and others in California, but he's doing it with law firms.

He's doing media organizations. He's doing it with some of the most well-heeled and powerful corporate leaders. You're seeing state capitalism, not just crony capitalism. What is the one thing everything has in common? The tariffs. The tariffs for him are about leverage and about the game that he's advancing.

Ultimately, that inures to his personal advantage and his family's advantage as well. It's all happening in plain sight. And so, for me, I have more clarity as it relates to this moment. Prop 50 was part of that. The outcome was meaningful. The outcomes all across the country, I think, just give us more confidence as we move into the future.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Coming up: Newsom took on a fight against President Trump that many people thought he could not win. So, what is Governor Gavin Newsom going to do next? Stay with us.

Plus: Will your flight this week or next be canceled? The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, joins me live ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:21]

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

President Trump is skipping the worldwide climate conference this week, and you will never guess who the top-ranking U.S. official will be who's there instead.

More now of my interview with California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, including on his own political future.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: After here in Houston, you're heading to Brazil for the U.N. climate conference. You will be the highest-profile or the highest- level U.S. official, because the Trump administration is not sending anyone.

Are you standing in for the president or are you just representing California? What is your role?

NEWSOM: Standing in for my kids and grandkids, for common sense, for our economic future. Climate risk is fundamentally financial risk. It's a cost of living issue.

Ask anyone in places like the coast of New Jersey or down in Florida. Ask folks in Louisiana or in my home state, California.

TAPPER: With the wildfires.

NEWSOM: What -- get insurance. Your insurance has been dropped. The premiums are going through the roof. That's a housing crisis in the making. We need to talk about that issue more.

It's also about competitiveness. China is going to clean our clock. They're flooding the zone, dominating in the automobile industry across the zone, in Asia and European Union, number one exporter into Mexico. And we have got legacy companies that have doubled down.

GM, with all due respect, sold out to the Trump administration and literally is trying to recreate the past, as these guys are sprinting to the future. It's not just about electric vehicles. It's about the technology stack. They're dominating in batteries. They're dominating increasingly in softwares.

They're producing three times more automobiles than the United States of America, China. And they are dominating the supply chains and manufacturing. This is a real crisis in the making. It's not just about the hots getting hotter and the dries getting drier.

And so that's going to be my focus, financial risk, cost of living and competitiveness.

TAPPER: When you referred to President Trump in one of your tweets or one of your staff's tweets as a beta...

NEWSOM: Yes.

TAPPER: ... as a beta male -- no, just let me finish the question.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: Just let me finish the question.

There is a big debate and discussion right now about masculinity in America.

NEWSOM: Yes. Yes.

TAPPER: Professor Galloway has this new book out talking about what a man is, what a man should be. There's all these questions and hand- wringing among Democrats about what is the reason that we're losing the male vote, and not just white men, increasingly Latino men, increasingly African-American men, not majorities, but they're heading, they're trending conservative.

[09:20:01]

NEWSOM: Well, let me back up.

I'm really proud of the work we're doing with Richard Reeves and others. Scott Galloway has been a rock star in this space. We have leaned in. California did an executive order. We've got a whole team working on the issue of the crisis of men and boys. The suicide rates, the dropout rates, the suspension rates are off the charts.

You're going to see graduation almost 2-1 women in four-year colleges in a few years. This is a crisis. A 30-year-old young male is doing worse than his parents did, first generation in history. And, obviously, college graduates now are having the worst employment opportunities in history.

So Trump has done nothing, to your question, literally nothing, for men and boys. And you're 100 percent right. It was multiethnic. It wasn't just white men. And you saw it in the manosphere. You saw it in podcasts.

TAPPER: Young men too.

NEWSOM: You saw young folks that were -- they were attracted to this notion of strength. And he exuded that, strong and wrong versus weak and right.

Here, we are trying to win -- that's why Prop 50 was so important. That's why asserting ourselves, getting back on our toes. That's why -- be more clear in terms of communication, in narrative matter. But now they're completely disenfranchised.

And I say this as a Democrat. We need to own up to the fact that we ceded that ground. We walked away from this crisis of men and boys. Trump saw it from an electoral opportunity to exploit it. But he's done nothing to deliver in terms of results to address those anxieties, which are real.

And I say this, by the way, as a husband of a wife who did a documentary called "The Mask You Live In" about masculinity and expressed these concerns as trend lines 15 years ago. This is an issue our party needs to address. We can't afford from an electoral perspective to lose, but we -- these folks.

But we also can't on the basis of our values and what we claim to care about and represent. And I say that on behalf of women that need better men as well.

TAPPER: So, I have an 18-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son. Where is the Democratic Party able to access my son?

He is gaming. He's on YouTube.

NEWSOM: Yes.

TAPPER: He's listening to podcasts.

NEWSOM: Well, may have heard me on "Fortnite Friday" on the gaming platform, may has seen me down at TwitchCon in San Diego a few weeks ago. He may have listened to Charlie Kirk podcast that I did.

Why did I reach out to Charlie Kirk for my first podcast?

TAPPER: I don't know. Why?

NEWSOM: Because he was organizing these kids. He understood their grievance. Trump weaponized it. Charlie was organizing around it. People weren't aware of what Turning Point USA was.

I talked to so many Democrats that said, who's Charlie Kirk? I said, well, your son knows about him. You may even know this guy Peterson. He may even know who this guy Andrew Tate is. But I hate him. I said, I get it.

But these guys -- so something big was happening. And we were short -- we were slow to recognize it. And that's quite literally why I started to illuminate this and wake folks up, but also not just illuminate, to do something about it. It's a real issue. Democrats need to understand it, not as a zero sum issue, but an issue that defines not just our politics, but I think defines our families, our relationships, defines the culture in this moment.

TAPPER: When are you going to make a decision officially about 2028?

(LAUGHTER)

NEWSOM: I just need -- third time you have pushed me on this.

(CROSSTALK)

NEWSOM: I'm impressed. I respect that. I actually respect it.

TAPPER: I cited Al Green. I asked you about the prop. And now I'm just saying, when will you make a decision?

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: It's a -- that's a perfectly reasonable question. When will you make a decision? After the midterms?

NEWSOM: Of course.

TAPPER: After the midterms.

NEWSOM: But it's not -- it's not my -- it's, do you meet the moment? Do you have a big enough why? Do you have a what and a how, you actually can accomplish something?

TAPPER: Do you have a why?

NEWSOM: That's -- you have to -- you have to find that. You have to meet that moment. But that's years, two years from now, years from now.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Biden in 2020, bring back normalcy. Trump in 2024, bring down prices.

NEWSOM: My gosh.

Well, I will tell you what, I mean, one thing I will say, has nothing to do with me, but I think it has everything to do with all of us is, we have got to deal with the issue of our time, that we have to democratize this economy if we're going to save democracy.

You just can't -- you can't have 10 percent of people owning two- thirds of the wealth in this country. You can't have that 30-year-old that's doing worse than his parents' generation for the first time in U.S. history. And so those are fundamental issues that were obviously present in this election on Tuesday.

And Donald Trump got it for a moment and now is defensively suggesting he's solved it. Ask the folks on Amazon paying 12 percent more. Ask the folks at Target paying 5.5 percent more or at Walmart 5.3 percent more. Ask you and me that went down and get coffee today, 18.9 percent more than a year ago.

Look at the cost of a pound of beef. Donald Trump said he would make us wealthier and healthier. We're poorer and sicker. And I don't want to see that sickness extend to ending our republic and our democracy as we know it, particularly in the 250th anniversary of our founding fathers.

[09:25:02]

TAPPER: Governor Gavin Newsom, thank you so much for your time, sir. Appreciate it. Good to see you.

NEWSOM: Thank you. Good to see you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: And there's much more of my interview with Governor Newsom. You can see it tomorrow on "THE LEAD."

We discuss affordability concerns in California, homelessness, whether he has any regrets about going all in on the Biden reelection campaign. That's tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. Eastern, only on "THE LEAD."

Coming up: More than 1,000 flights were canceled yesterday, 1,000 more today, and it is only going to get worse.

We're going to talk to the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, about his plan next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

[09:30:00]

Yesterday, major airlines canceled more than 1,400 flights here in the United States. Another 1,000 have already been canceled today. And it's about to get worse, with air traffic controllers set to miss their second full paycheck this week.

Joining us now to discuss is the secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy.

Secretary Duffy, thanks for joining us.

In addition to those cancellations, more than 6,000 flights were delayed this weekend, sometimes for hours and hours. How much worse do you expect this is going to become this week? What are travelers in for, assuming there's no end of the government shutdown?

SEAN DUFFY, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Yes, so, first off, yesterday, Jake, 18 of 22 controllers in Atlanta didn't show up. We had 81 staffing triggers throughout the national airspace yesterday. That means controllers weren't coming to work.

To answer your question, it's only going to get worse. I look to the two weeks before Thanksgiving. You're going to see air travel be reduced to a trickle. We have a number of people who want to get home for the holidays. They want to see their family. They want to celebrate this great American holiday.

Listen, many of them are not going to be able to get on an airplane because there are not going to be that many flights that fly if this thing doesn't open back up. We have controllers who, again, are making decisions to feed their families, as opposed to come to towers or TRACONs or centers and do their jobs.

And I want them to come to work. The problem is, they're confronted with real economic problems. The answer is, vote to open up the government and then have your debates, have your conversation. I think that's the best way and best approach to get America back operational.

TAPPER: Yes, just to make sure for people -- make clear for people who don't understand the reason the air traffic controllers are not coming into work, some of them are just overstressed, but also some of them have to -- they're taking jobs with Uber Eats or Lyft or whatever because they have bills to pay.

They have -- some of them are being evicted. Some of them have childcare issues. They have to put gas in the car.

So you talked about Thanksgiving. Do you have any sort of numerical idea of how many Americans will not be able to be with their families for the holiday because of this?

DUFFY: I think the number is going to be substantial.

Again, you look at the trend line, Jake, and it's only gotten worse as we have gone through the shutdown. We're day 40 now. And we saw the largest number of outage of controllers was on Halloween, the 31st. Those numbers were 61. Yesterday, it was 81.

And the controllers that I have talked to said, a lot of them, we can miss one paycheck. They told me that virtually none of them can miss two paychecks. And so they're going to be confronted with the idea of, as you mentioned, going to get a side job, a second job to make ends meet, to put food in the table, put gas in the car, to pay their rent.

And a lot of these controllers who are young, Jake, they don't make a lot of money. They're just getting into the business of being an air traffic controller. So, they make less than $100,000 and they live in a really expensive place. They're the single income earner. And they have a kid or two at home. It's very challenging.

Another problem I have too is, as you know, I'm short air traffic controllers. I'm trying to get more air traffic controllers into the towers and be certified. But I'm about 1,000 to 2,000 controllers short. And so I paid experienced controllers to stay on the job and not retire.

I used to have about four controllers retire a day before the shutdown. I'm now up to 15 to 20 a day are retiring. So it's going to be harder for me to come back after the shutdown and have more controllers controlling the airspace.

So this is going to live on in air travel well beyond the time frame that this government opens back up.

TAPPER: Is it still safe for Americans to fly, the ones who are able to actually get in a plane that takes off?

DUFFY: Yes, so we're working overtime to make sure that it is safe to travel.

And so if we have staffing triggers in locations in the American airspace, what we will do is, we will slow traffic, which means you will have delays, and then airlines might cancel flights. You saw that we -- we're going to reduce traffic by 10 percent. We have reduced it by 4 percent right now.

Next Friday, it's going to be at 10 percent to reduce the pressure on controllers. The problem is that, as I try to reduce the pressure by lowering flights, I have more controllers that keep not coming to work. And so the pressure goes back up again.

And so I'm critically aware of that pressure, of rising risk and trying to take that out of the system.

TAPPER: Yes.

DUFFY: And, again, I -- that's our job. We're working with the safety team at the FAA to make the best decisions that we can to keep travelers safe.

Secondarily, I do care about the gridlock. I do care about people getting home to see their families or to go to a funeral or to -- they might have a job that they have to go to. I care about that. But my primary concern is the safety of the traveler.

TAPPER: Yes.

DUFFY: And that's why you're seeing the mass gridlock in aviation.

TAPPER: Now, you say these cuts are necessary to alleviate pressure on the system.

The Democratic leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, he basically suggested this was a political stunt. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): How much more transparently political can you get? This isn't about safety. It's about politics masquerading as safety. The level that they will go to putting the American people in discomfort and worse is unprecedented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:35:15]

TAPPER: Now, one thing that Democrats point to is, the last government shutdown, which lasted 35 days, these steps were not necessary at the time. Can you guarantee that not one part of this decision is rooted in any

way in a desire to pressure Democrats to vote to open the government?

DUFFY: So, I don't know how many families after the DCA air crash that Chuck Schumer talked to, but I talked to the families, because the FAA in the last administration, they didn't look at the data, that we had near misses between helicopters and crosswing airplanes.

And had they looked at the data, they would have taken those helicopters out of the river. And I'm looking at data with the safety team. I didn't tell the safety team to bring this recommendation to me. They actually saw it and they brought it to us. So we have loss of separation in the airspace. Those numbers are going up.

More ground incursions. I have more complaints coming into the FAA from pilots who are saying that air traffic controllers are not as responsive, they seem stressed or they're not using the appropriate language because they're under pressure.

So I look at that data that came from the safety team, and the trend line is going in the wrong direction. So I need to take action and make sure that we keep people safe. And, again, Chuck Schumer hasn't seen it. This is not politics. The only one playing politics is Chuck Schumer, who's kept the government shut down.

He's voted 14 times to make sure we don't pay air traffic controllers. He voted 14 times to not open the government up, and he's encouraging his Democrat colleagues to do the same. So the only political play here is Chuck Schumer. The safety team looked at data, made a recommendation to me, and it's a hard decision, but that's what we have done to keep people safe.

By the way, Jake, I have done all I can to make sure I minimize disruption. That's what the president has done too, saying, I don't want to see disruption for the American people. Pete Hegseth, secretary of war, texted me yesterday and said: "I might have some air traffic controllers. If you could use them, I'm going to offer them to you."

Now, I don't know that I can, Jake, because they're not certified in the airspaces that we need them. But, if I can, I'm going to use them. Everyone in this administration, at the direction of President Trump, has said, minimize the pain on Americans.

So this is not political. This is strictly safety. And I'm doing what I can in a mess that Democrats have put on my lap. And now I'm trying to keep the American people safe and keep airplanes flying.

TAPPER: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, thank you so much for your time, sir. Really appreciate it.

DUFFY: Thanks, Jake.

TAPPER: New signs President Trump is on edge after Tuesday's election losses. He's blaming his own party. Are they listening?

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:42:15]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Affordability, they call it, was a con job by the -- by the Democrats.

If you look at affordability, which they campaigned on, they lied, because they talked about, oh, prices are up. No, no, prices are down. The reason I don't want to talk about affordability is because everybody knows that it's far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe Biden.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

Voters just sent a clear message. They are not happy with the state of the economy under President Trump. Is he listening?

My panel is here to discuss.

And, look, just as a factual matter, CNN's Daniel Dale did a fact- check on the price of groceries from January to September. The price of coffee is up 15 percent. A lot of that's the tariffs. The price of beef is up 14 percent, bananas up 7 percent, also the tariffs, cake 6 percent, candy 4 percent, salad dressing 2 percent.

In your home state, are people think -- do people think the prices are going down?

REP. RILEY MOORE (R-WV): Well, I have noticed you didn't mention eggs. That was something that was a consistent talking point, obviously, with the Democrats, the price of eggs. Look, prices are going down.

TAPPER: I eat a lot of other things besides eggs.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: The prices are going down. The president is absolutely correct on this.

TAPPER: I just read you the statistics.

MOORE: Well, you're talking about candy and things like that. But you all were talking about eggs for a very long period of time and some of these other commodities.

Now, a lot of that is driven by energy prices, right? Because all these things travel on rail or truck or what have you. As energy prices start to come down, as American energy gets unleashed in this country, which President Trump has been so focused on, you're going to see prices continue to come down.

Now, the president is right, though. We do need to focus on affordability in this country. That's something that we need to pivot to.

TAPPER: That's not what he said. He said: I don't want to talk about affordability. Everybody knows it's far less expensive under Trump than it was under sleepy Joe.

MOORE: No, when he's talking about...

TAPPER: It was a con job by the Democrats. So...

MOORE: Yes, when he's talking about affordability, particularly in health care, and he did just talk about that here just recently, instead of giving a giveaway to the insurance companies, we should -- why don't we help the American people actually sit in on this.

(CROSSTALK)

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I mean, it's a very difficult job. I appreciate the congressman kind of getting caught in this pretzel this morning.

However, like, electricity prices are actually going up. Everybody will tell you, average Americans will tell you that the price of groceries are going up. I just got a text message from one of my friends in Denmark, South Carolina, who told me that he needed help because he wasn't getting SNAP benefits and prices had gone up.

He wanted me to help him. He wanted me to help him.

MOORE: Well, the reason he's not getting SNAP benefits is because the Democrats have kept the government shut down.

SELLERS: He wanted me to help him make sure that he could put Thanksgiving items on his family's table.

And so what I'm saying is that you have pressures from both sides, which most Americans are feeling. You see these prices are rising. They're steadily increasing. Congratulations on eggs, but these prices, other prices are rising. And then people don't have money in their pockets to afford to be able to buy them.

TAPPER: What -- you're a pollster. What is the view of the American people on prices, on affordability, on the economy, how it affects them?

[09:45:04]

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: People still feel like prices are not going down yet.

And there was a period of time where there was a lot of frustration with Democrats. Democrats found out the hard way that you can't just tell voters, no, no, no, no, no, we promise prices are great, we promise prices are great, if they're not.

They got hit at the ballot box in 2024 pretty hard with that. Republicans may find out the same lesson in 2026 if voters have not come to a different conclusion. Now, there's still time. There's still time for that to turn around.

XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

SOLTIS ANDERSON: People, I think, gave President Trump -- said, OK,we're going to give you a couple of months to get your arms around this. But whether tariffs wind up helping or hurting, whether his policies on energy wind up helping or hurting...

HINOJOSA: Yes.

SOLTIS ANDERSON: ... he will be held accountable for that one way or the other.

HINOJOSA: Well...

TAPPER: Xochitl, you're a Democrat. I want to play an ad for a Republican. This is Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York who's running for governor of New York. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NARRATOR: Kathy Hochul made New York the most unaffordable state in the nation, crushing families with sky-high taxes, unaffordable rent, soaring energy costs and record high grocery bills. Elise Stefanik will make New York affordable and safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So some Republicans are getting the memo on affordability.

HINOJOSA: Yes, it's smart.

And I will say that Donald Trump has not learned the lessons of Joe Biden. Joe Biden used to go out and say, our economy is great. No one felt it. That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing. And it's exactly why Joe Biden and Democrats have lost over the years.

I will say, though, on the affordability message, Democrats, I will say there is not a lot that they are on message about, but affordability is one of them across the board where I do think that campaigns got that message.

And now you're seeing Democrats win or overperform 90 percent of races this year because they are talking about costs. And people are feeling, just like Kristen had said, they feel that costs are not coming down low enough. And that's exactly why they voted for Trump, and he just hasn't delivered.

TAPPER: Let's talk about the shutdown, because you just brought up the SNAP benefits. And, Congressman, there is a move in the House and the Senate to talk

about ways to change the Obamacare subsidies that the Democrats want to extend. They say that's the reason for the shutdown, why they're voting to not open the government, why they're not voting to open the government.

Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican colleague of yours, working with Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi, talking about doing that, but making modifications to these subsidies, having more means testing of it, et cetera, more direct payments, instead of to insurance companies.

Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio said something similar on Twitter the other day, not the exact same thing, but the same neighborhood. Is there a possibility of a compromise afoot?

MOORE: So that's actually not what I have been hearing as of this morning.

What people are talking about -- and I'm on the House of Appropriations Committee -- is moving forward on the minibus with a C.R. tagged to that, not, not putting in ACA tax credit extensions. That's what we're talking about right now. That vote has been pushed. They were supposed to vote today. They're going to vote tomorrow.

GOP's going to conference today on that and push -- and see if they can push that minibus forward with Senator Murray, who has been negotiating this with Thune and the other appropriators right now. So I think what you could see is a partial full funding. We got MILCON, VA, leg branch, ag, which takes care of your SNAP benefits that the Democrats have denied the American people now with the shutdown.

And so then we can bring that back and fund those three bills, and then start to go through the rest, defense, labor, aid, so on and so forth, and -- but C.R. probably until mid-January.

HINOJOSA: Well, it was -- first of all, it was Donald Trump who actually denied the SNAP benefits. He's the one that went to the courts and asked them not to move forward with that. And that is why people are not getting their SNAP benefits right now.

I will say, Democrats put a compromise on the table that they didn't want to put. This was -- there were people on both sides that did not -- they're not OK with Chuck Schumer's compromise essentially of extending ACA subsidies for a year. But that's what a compromise is. Not everybody gets what they want.

And so it'll be interesting to see, what is the endgame here with Republicans? They have yet to put anything on the table to where it would reopen the government and allow people to get paid again. And I'm just not -- I don't know if there's an end to that.

(CROSSTALK)

SOLTIS ANDERSON: They have. They put a clean bill on...

(CROSSTALK)

MOORE: What we put on the table was, we put a clean C.R. on the table. That's what we put on the table.

SOLTIS ANDERSON: What I think is happening with the politics of this that are so fascinating is that, in government shutdowns over the last 20 years, it has been Democrats who have said, we need to pass a clean bill, we need to pass a clean bill, Republicans are holding hostages.

And the fact that the tables are turned here, I think, is what is causing the polling to be this stalemate where there's a slightly greater number that think Republicans are responsible, but earlier on in the shutdown, I think the pain threshold for both parties was, they thought, eventually, voters were going to blame the other side, so let's hold the line.

SELLERS: But that's not...

SOLTIS ANDERSON: I think, as flights start getting canceled for Thanksgiving, I think as people stop being able to put food on the table for Thanksgiving, that pain threshold is going to rise and the impetus for compromise will rise.

[09:50:03]

SELLERS: That's why that talking point falls flat about the 14 C.R.s in the past that Democrats have voted for, because something transformational happened prior to this government shutdown, which was they passed this horrible piece of legislation...

HINOJOSA: Right.

SELLERS: ... that they now have to call the Big Beautiful Bill Act.

TAPPER: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, yes.

SELLERS: So what happened when they passed that piece of legislation? Health care premiums are going to skyrocket because of their ill- timed, unprepared lack of foresight on a piece of legislation.

(CROSSTALK)

MOORE: Ill-timed? They are literally the ones that put the expiration date on the ACA tax credits for right now.

SELLERS: That is why those health care premiums are rising. That is why this is different than any time before.

And you know what? If we open the government and the prices continue to skyrocket for health care, that's on them. That's not on Democrats.

TAPPER: Thank you all for being here. Really appreciate it.

Has President Trump's view on shutdowns changed? We're going to travel back in time. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:55:29]

TAPPER: Back during the 2013 government shutdown under President Obama, then-private citizen Donald Trump had many thoughts on the responsibilities of a commander in chief when the government is not functioning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You have to get everybody in a room. You have to be a leader. The president has to lead. He's got to get Mr. Boehner and everybody else in a room, and they have to make a deal. And you have to be nice and be angry and be wild and cajole and do all sorts of things, but you have to get a deal that's good for everybody and good for the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: That was seven days into what would be a 16-day shutdown.

This current shutdown under President Trump has lasted 40 days. It is the longest in American history, and there is no end in sight. President Trump this weekend is in West Palm Beach, Florida. He's not doing what 2013 Trump said a president should do. He's not getting everybody else in a room and making a deal and being a leader, as he said. He's golfing.

Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us.

"FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts next.