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State of the Union
Interview With Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ); Interview With Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA); Interview With National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett; Interview With Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA); Interview With State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI). Aired 9-10a ET
Aired September 13, 2026 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): A.I.-mageddon? Three A.I. competitors say we must slow down to protect humanity.
DARIO AMODEI, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, ANTHROPIC: The world has to work together.
TAPPER: As President Trump shrugs off any existential concerns.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't have any.
TAPPER: Is our government ready? House Speaker Mike Johnson is next, and then a Democrat calling for action, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego.
Plus: seeing red. With stubborn inflation numbers and spiking oil prices...
TRUMP: It's going to take a little bit longer than the midterms.
TAPPER: ... ahead of a key decision this week, is the president on a collision course with the Federal Reserve? Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett is ahead.
And check, please. With 51 days to go, President Trump is taking his pitch on the road.
TRUMP: Five thousand dollars for every adult.
TAPPER: With their majority on the line, do Republican candidates agree?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is getting nervous to even open our computers. Extraordinary news this weekend, as three A.I. moguls come forward to
say we must slow down the progress being made, amid serious concerns about the danger A.I. could pose to humankind.
OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk from xAI now say that they agree with Anthropic Dario Amodei, who told CNN this weekend in a cable news exclusive that the world must work together. And he has a message for leaders in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMODEI: My message here to people and the governments who represent them is, you do have power here. You have the ability to regulate this technology. You have the ability to vote on how this technology is used and how this technology is developed.
Showing this caution in building the technology is one step, but it can't just be a voluntary thing that we're doing. The government needs to play a role as well, and our elected representatives need to play a role as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Joining us now, House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for joining us.
So, these tech leaders, they're begging, they're begging for Congress and the president to step in and provide some guardrails, instituting a global slowdown in developing A.I. models, pushing independent auditors, making rules of the road.
Frankly, they seem terrified. Do you think A.I. as it is right now poses an existential threat? And are you going to heed their request?
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Hey, Jake. Great to be with you.
We are heeding their request, and we are also calling upon them to do responsible things. And let me explain that. I have been speaker for almost three years. We started working on this almost immediately after I was handed the gavel.
One of the first things I did was put together an A.I. Task Force in the House, a bipartisan group with an equal number of members on both sides of the aisle, that worked deliberately over a long period of time to debate and deliberate and research what the best way there is to go to put guardrails, some safety on -- in place to make sure that A.I. doesn't get out of control.
Now, here's the thing. At the same time, there is an obvious corporate responsibility, that the people who are creating these models have to have to ensure that their products are safe. There was a -- I commend to your reading -- David Sacks, who is the A.I. czar in the Trump White House in this term, put out a great post last night on X.
And he explained, look, the guys that are calling for this are the ones that are pushing the frontier. If they want to slow that down, that's fine. But we also at the same time have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium. It's got to be done right, safely, wisely.
But we -- in order to solve that equation, you need a lot of bright minds around the table. So, Jake, here's what I'm proposing. I think the leaders and the providers of all these platforms, the guys you named and a few others -- there's about seven or eight people who are in charge of this -- they need to come together in a meeting with us and sit down and figure out what the right balance is.
We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that's the challenge. It's national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe.
TAPPER: Yes, but they're calling for that to happen as soon as possible. They're conveying this urgency. They're conveying fears. They want a consistent set of rules of the road for everyone.
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So, when are you going to invite these moguls, these A.I. experts to Washington? I mean, it sounds to me like they would -- they would come tomorrow or Tuesday.
JOHNSON: Yes, but, Jake, here's the problem. I've been meeting with all of them individually since I became speaker, I mean, regularly. I've visited with all these guys.
The problem is, they all have a different prescription on what they say the regulation is supposed to be. The problem is, they're all competitors. Each one of them wants to maintain an edge over the others. What David Sacks is saying in his post that was just published late last night is that they need to take personal responsibility first.
And 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 A.I., we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American.
So we've got to have balance. We've got to have steady hands at the wheel. I'm one of the ones calling for the summoning of this meeting, and I will be pushing that myself, because it is a top priority. But we don't need everybody to panic right now.
We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past and make sure we're doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation. We have to do both things simultaneously.
TAPPER: I promise you nobody is going to accuse Congress of racing to do anything about A.I.
(LAUGHTER)
TAPPER: We've been covering this for years.
JOHNSON: Fair enough.
TAPPER: And I just promise you that's not going to happen.
I mean, one of the things that's so terrifying is, in July, OpenAI technicians were shocked to find out that their A.I. agents, these bots or whatever, were communicating secretly with each other and plotting an attack on a different A.I. platform called Hugging Face.
This is why Amodei wrote in his letter -- quote -- "Left unchecked, A.I. could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all."
Some of the ideas being floated include a federal kill switch, the creation of a federal A.I. regulatory agency, mandatory government approval of frontier A.I. models before they're released. Is there any of that you think that you could possibly support?
JOHNSON: Maybe all of it. And those are great ideas.
But if you compare this to the other big technological advances like nuclear power and nuclear war and all of that, nuclear bombs, it took decades to put together all the oversight and regulatory boards and the international partnerships and all of that. We don't have that much time here.
So there is a sense of urgency about it. We are looking at it carefully, and we have been, and Congress is a deliberative body, Jake. It takes a while to do that. And Congress needs to catch up. But the problem is, I'm telling you again, the guys who are raising the alarms right now all have very different ideas on what the guardrails should be.
There's no consensus among them. And Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know all the ins and outs of it. So this has to be a partnership with the industry itself, with the corporations that are doing this, and with the policy and lawmakers. And that's a very complex thing to resolve.
If we overstep it, I'm telling you again, Jake, it could be a national security threat for every American. So we have threats in both -- both sides of this, and we have got to do this in a very thoughtful, deliberate way, and we have to do it with urgency. And I'm committed to that, as everybody else is.
TAPPER: Well, how urgent? I mean, do you want this meeting to take place this week?
JOHNSON: I'd do it, yes. I'd do it tomorrow. We have got to summon everybody together. I have talked to the president about this as well. They probably should be summoned together at the White House.
And I think we need to go in a big room, close the door, and sort this out. And I will be the one pushing it, forcing it, because I know all these guys individually. Again, I have talked with them. They have expressed their concerns.
And I always say to them, you have to do your part, of course. You have a corporate responsibility to make sure your products are safe. And they're the ones pushing the envelope. And for them to cry out for us to stop it, this is a partnership. They have got to be responsible on their own side.
TAPPER: Let's turn to the midterms, because President Trump is proposing to pay every American adult $5,000, but only if Republicans keep control of the House and the Senate.
For that $5,000 check, doesn't the president need Congress to act? And are you going to carry out his wishes?
JOHNSON: I would assume, yes, he'd need Congress to act, and that's a creative idea.
He launched it at the -- at our convention and got a lot of people excited. Of course, the devil's in the details. We have to figure all that out. But I think what he was articulating there, Jake, is that he's saying that, if you want more money in your pocket, you have to keep Republicans in charge.
Why? Because we're talking about the record of achievement. Look at what we have done since President Trump took over, Republicans have had control of the House and Senate. We got the largest working and middle-class tax cut in U.S. history. The average taxpayer in my home state of Louisiana, where I'm sitting this morning, has more than $2,900 in their pocket they didn't have to send to Washington because of our policies.
They also have in additional take-home pay an average of $8,000 per filer. By the way, 97 percent of tax filers got a tax cut this year. We cut taxes on tips and overtime, Social Security, all those things. And we put in pro-growth policies in the -- in our Working Families Tax Cut, the Big Beautiful Bill, so that job creators, entrepreneurs, and risk-takers can add more jobs.
[09:10:17]
So, wages are going up. The pathway out of poverty is being broadened, widened for more and more people, and we have reshoring of American manufacturing and jobs. By the way, at the same time, as we talked about at the convention, we also have the lowest violent crime rate in 126 years, the lowest number of illegal aliens crossing the borders in over a century, and the largest decline in prescription drug prices in 60 years.
A lot of great stuff for us to run on, and that's why we're bullish about this midterm.
TAPPER: That's not what the public thinks about the economy, as you know; 65 percent disapprove of President Trump's...
JOHNSON: Yes, that's why we had to have a convention to remind them.
TAPPER: Well...
JOHNSON: Yes, the mainstream media doesn't tell the truth, and that's why we have to do it.
TAPPER: I mean, we have covered everything you just talked about, but 65 percent of the American people disapprove of the president's handling of the economy, and they're dealing with, -- and this is the truth -- soaring gas prices, climbing mortgage costs. Inflation is up. Consumer prices are 3.4 percent higher than last year.
Are you telling people out there that, if they agree with you on your view of the economy, they should vote for Republican, and, if they disagree, they should vote Democratic?
JOHNSON: No, I'm telling everybody they need to vote Republican because it's better for their family, for their security, their liberty, their opportunity, and their pocketbook.
You're talking about inflation, right? It's 3.4 percent right now. It's too high, and we're working every day to bring that down. A lot of that, of course, as you know, is related to the Strait of Hormuz and the unresolved situation there, which we're working on around the clock, and I think we're going to be in a new phase of that.
But, look, compare to the last administration. Compare to what Democrats have done. At this point in Joe Biden's presidency, inflation was 8.2 percent. Right now, it's 3.4 percent under Trump. It's too high still, but we have got to bring it down, because the Biden/Harris administration brought us to a 40-year high in inflation, 9.1 percent.
I wish we could flip a light switch and reverse all that overnight, but it takes time. But the Democrats have voted against you having more money in your pockets. They voted against the largest tax cut in U.S. history. And with their vote, they would have given you the highest tax hike in -- ever in history, over $5 trillion in December of last year, had we not been successful on the Republican side.
They also voted against the Trump Accounts. They voted against all the incentives that are putting more money in your pocket. So this is a simple question that every hardworking family has to answer. Which one is better for my team?
TAPPER: So...
JOHNSON: The Democrats right now, Jake, as you know, are being taken over by the insurgent Marxist socialist left, and they want more government, which leads to higher taxes and less money in your pocket and less freedom for you.
So this is a contrast election between common sense and crazy. And I like our chances on that.
TAPPER: When President Trump took over -- it is true that inflation had that 40-year high under Biden/Harris, but when President Trump took over, inflation was 3 percent. Now it's 3.4 percent. And one of the reasons, as you noted, is the war in Iran for higher
prices. Another reason are the president's tariffs. So why should the American people not hold President Trump and the Republican Congress accountable for this economy, given the fact that the two biggest drivers of inflation right now have nothing to do with Biden; they have to do with Trump tariffs that Congress supports and Trump's war in Iran that Congress supports, Republicans in Congress?
JOHNSON: Well, look, I take issue with everything you just said.
It's not Trump's war in Iran. Iran is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, and they were within weeks of having a nuclear capability, a nuclear bomb. That had been an objective, preventing that, from every administration for 50 years. They came this close, and the president had to act, he did not have a choice in the matter, to keep Americans safe.
Now, that's done. Operation Epic Fury was an epic success, but now we have got to resolve that, of course, because the Strait of Hormuz is not stabilized for commerce, and that's what's making gas prices too high, and, by extension, groceries, because of the fuel cost and transportation costs.
All that will come to a close, we believe, soon. You heard the president's sound bite at the opening of the show. He thinks right after the election, in a short time frame, we can get that done. Why? Because we're going to have the assistance, I believe, of allied nations and NATO partners and Arab states in the region, who have a bigger stake in the Strait of Hormuz being open for commerce even than we do.
I think everybody assists to make sure that happens. And, at the same time, we make sure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. That would be a danger to every single American. That's what the president has been pursuing.
TAPPER: I think Vice President Vance might have a different view of the war, but that's between you two to chat it out.
I want to ask you about this $5,000 check thing, because Republican Congressman Ralph Norman, who's vice chair of the Freedom Caucus, he said that the $5,000 are a bad idea. He told "The New York Times" -- quote -- "We're $40 trillions in debt, and to make the $5,000 check dependent on keeping the House, I think, is problematic, and I don't know where the money comes from."
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Where would the money come from? We're already $40 trillion in debt, and this would put about $1.3 trillion additional onto that debt for your kids and my kids to have to pay off.
JOHNSON: It's a new, creative idea. The president debuted it at the convention. We have had zero time, of course, to process that, deliberate, discuss it. As you know, I got to build consensus every day on everything. But we applaud the president for thinking outside the box. He's the
president, probably the strongest in that regard of any we have ever had. And, of course, we're worried about our fiscal stability and the nation's debt. We have plans to reduce the debt. In fact, it's not just rhetoric. It's record.
I mean, look what we did. In the Working Families Tax Cut, the Big Beautiful Bill, we cut $1.6 trillion in wasteful government spending. That's the largest spending cut in the history of any legislative body on planet Earth. So we put our money where our mouth is.
Now, Commerce Secretary Lutnick said just 24 hours ago or so in an interview that what they have in mind is that, if there were $5,000 checks, it would not be added to the debt, it would not be added in the deficit. This would be tariff revenues.
The way they think about it is like a business, right? As the president said himself, when a corporation makes money, the shareholders get a dividend. And he thinks of the American people as shareholders in this American dream, and that's what they're talking about.
So, look, it's one idea among many...
TAPPER: Yes.
JOHNSON: ... to continue the trend of putting money in the pockets of hardworking Americans. We will process it like we do everything else.
TAPPER: And tariff revenues are about $330 billion, not $1.3 trillion. And, obviously, Americans are paying those revenues. But I understand it's devil is in the details.
I want to ask you. You talked about some of the more extreme DSA-type candidates the Democrats have. Republicans have some candidates like that on their own. For instance, Brandon Herrera, he's a House candidate in Texas. You have endorsed him. You have fund-raised him for him.
He's a -- before he started becoming a congressional correspondent, I mean, congressional candidate, he's a YouTuber, and he has said some offensive, sexually explicit, crude things about women and children.
Here's a little bit of what he said just three years ago. And I want to warn viewers that this language is pretty gross.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRANDON HERRERA (R), TEXAS CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Just because you let somebody cream-pie you doesn't mean I have to give a shit about your political opinions. The fact that you kept your cum trophy doesn't make you any less wrong about the dumb shit that you say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: That's him disparaging moms. He's also in a video testing a Nazi era submachine gun. He called it the -- quote -- "original ghetto blaster." You see him goose-stepping to a Nazi marching song in a podcast two years ago. He joked, "We should abolish old people."
I have to say, I know you're not a voter in that district. You didn't nominate this guy, but I was surprised to see you endorse him and fund-raise him -- fund-raise for him. What does candidacy say about the Republican Party's more extreme candidates?
JOHNSON: That's, look, detestable language. You know how I feel about all of that, Jake.
But I also know Brandon Herrera has been out running a very effective campaign and explained to people that he has apologized for all that. He was a podcaster and a provocateur and tried to get attention. That's not the way I speak or think, and that's not the way most do.
But that was a -- that was his persona online, right? Right now, he's running as a very serious candidate for Congress and a very thoughtful guy. I was with him at the convention. We talked about all this. I said, Brandon, when you get to Congress, and he will be there, you're going to join this team and help us to save America to preserve freedom and bring down costs for the American people.
That guy's laser-focused on doing that, and he is far superior to the candidate he is running against down in that district in South Texas. I'm telling you, this is a contrast election between common sense and crazy. Brandon Herrera will join the commonsense team of Republicans, making life better for Americans, while the DSA candidates that you referenced, the Democrats Socialists of America, have said what they want to do.
They put it on paper, Jake. Their platform is abolish the border, abolish prisons, defund the police, defund the Pentagon and the Department of War at one of the most dangerous times in American history. They want to abolish the U.S. Senate. They want to pack the Supreme Court and give one unicameral body, the House, all the power.
Why? Because they want -- they think, over two or three cycles, they will elect enough Marxist socialist communists to take over the means of production. That means no more private property ownership. Compare that agenda with some crazy things that people have said in their past.
I think -- I think that the choice here is very simple. I think Republicans are going to win up and down the ballot around this country, and we're going to defy history, grow the majority, and move the country forward, just as we have been doing for this Congress in the last year-and-a-half or more.
TAPPER: Speaker Johnson, thanks for joining us today. We appreciate it. Hope you have a nice Sunday.
JOHNSON: Thanks, Jake. You too.
TAPPER: Democrats are seizing on the A.I. issue. What former President Obama is now advising Democrats to do next. And President Trump brushed off safety concerns, but can A.I. leaders change his mind? We will ask a top White House economic adviser coming up.
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TAPPER: On Thursday, President Obama urged Democrats in a private meeting, including Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to lean into the issue of A.I. safety, to make it a center of the Democratic agenda.
Quote: "Certainly, if I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this. This is something that is moving very fast in private hands. And if we don't get on top of it, I think it can be dangerous" -- unquote -- information provided from President Obama's office.
My next guest is calling for Congress to act now.
Joining me in studio Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona.
So, you're calling on Senate leadership to establish a select committee on A.I. as soon as possible -- as soon as possible. We're at a point now where A.I. leaders are sounding the alarm, saying that this needs to happen now, that A.I. could take over the Internet in six to 12 months, potentially eliminate the human race within a decade.
Congress has really done nothing about this.
SEN. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-AZ): That's right.
And, look, I heard the speaker talk about previous tech. This isn't previous tech. Previous tech could not make a decision to kill us, right? If you -- when we turned on the Internet, it did not have autonomy, right?
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When we created a nuclear weapon, the nuclear weapon did not have the decision-making power to drop a nuclear weapon. A.I. has the capability and will have the capability to make decisions like that. This is more akin to Dr. Frankenstein telling us the monster is loose, help me stop the monster.
And what we have right now is -- the method that we're answering is not meeting the moment. Speaker Johnson's not meeting the moment. Trump's not meeting the moment. Senate and Congress are not meeting the moment. We need to get together as fast as possible with the smartest people, with the skeptics, with the people that want to regulate, the people that want to actually deal with this, the people that are going to figure out how to actually have that perfect balance. And we can't just use this idea that if, we do this, we're somehow
going to lose to China, because A.I. does not care, once it becomes fully dangerous, whether we're Chinese or American. That's the danger of this. This is -- everyone's thinking about this in a way that is based on old tech and not what's going towards the future.
And this is why we need to get the people in the room.
TAPPER: So, Bernie Sanders, your colleague in the Senate, he's been calling for a temporary ban on the development of A.I. Would you support that?
GALLEGO: Look, I think we have to take everything under consideration. And the way you figure this out is, again, you use this -- the sense of urgency to get the smartest people in the room to figure -- if that is the way to do it, then we go down that road.
Right now, the problem is, we don't know everything we don't know. And we need to get the people in the room to actually do that. And they do know what they know. And that includes the skeptics. That includes the futurists. That includes the people that have to put the ethics around A.I.
But the way that we're going about this is that we're hoping that some committee in the House or in the Senate is just going to come together with some staffers and put together the framework that's going to go into place maybe three years from now.
We don't have that time. We don't have the time. Dr. Frankenstein is telling us the monster has escaped, help us stop this.
TAPPER: You heard the speaker also attack Democrats, saying the party's under the influence of Marxists, radical socialists. I'm sure you think he's overstating the case.
But President Trump this week at the convention went after Michigan Democratic candidate Will Lawrence for some of the things Lawrence had said about the nuclear family. Is it true that some of these Democrats, some of these DSA candidates are making it easier for Republicans to caricature all of you as socialists?
GALLEGO: Look, this is the scare tactic of 2026.
When Republicans are losing, and they're losing on every front, they just try to find the nearest boogeyman. Right now, the American public is hurting. Food's expensive, gas is expensive, buying a piece of property is expensive, cars are expensive, all because of everything that this decision -- that -- these decisions this president has made and the Republicans have backed, in addition to entering into a stupid war that we have not been able to get out of and that actually has diminished our world standing around the world.
And so they're going to find some of the most egregious statements that are made by young men, young women from maybe 10, 20 years ago. I couldn't tell you. But, at the end of the day, the reason they're doing that is because they're weak. They're in a weak position right now.
The American public absolutely dislikes the president and what he's doing, and they're going to go and punish him. So, they're going to have to throw some red herrings out there. At the end of the day, there is no solution. They have no solutions to actually bring down the cost of living for Americans right now.
So all they can do is scare, and when they should be talking about is trying to figure out how do we solve this A.I. conundrum right now.
TAPPER: Senator John Fetterman, your colleague, appeared in a video at the Republican Midterm Convention saying nice things about Dave McCormick and also about President Trump. This followed a report from "The Wall Street Journal" that Fetterman has been shirking a lot of many of his Senate duties.
Do you have any concerns about Senator Fetterman's commitment to his job or to the Democratic Party?
GALLEGO: Look, I can't talk about his job. That's a -- the position of the Pennsylvania voter.
In terms of his commitment to the Democratic Party, what we have seen so far, everything that he's communicated to us when we talk to him, whether in the hallways or in caucus or anything of that nature, that he's a committed Democrat.
Obviously, we have different points of view on different issues and how to handle things, but he has always said that he's going to stay as a Democrat and will continue to be in the Democratic Caucus with us.
TAPPER: President Trump is putting his mark on Washington, D.C., quite a bit, building a White House ballroom. He plans to build an arch, attempts to rename the Kennedy Center, the Reflecting Pool, and on and on and on.
It seems clear to me that this is going to be a big issue for Democrats running for president in 2028. I know you haven't made a decision yet about whether or not you're going to run for president, but, if you do, would you advocate for tearing down the ballroom or tearing down the arch?
GALLEGO: I think I'd be advocating for almost all of that.
The real stain that this president has put on this country has been the fact that he eroded democracy, right? Let's start with January 6, the fact that, for the first time ever, a U.S. president attempted an actual coup. That right there is a reason why we should not have anything's name towards him.
The fact that he has destroyed the institutions that have kept this government together through some of the hardest times and eroded, for example, our Department of Justice is another reason why we need to be taking down all these honorific situations or emblems of him. The fact that he wants to destroy the Kennedy Center, a man that
contributed so much to this country, for -- to replace it with his name, who's done everything to destroy this country, is another reason why we have to make sure that we wipe him out.
[09:30:09]
So this is not me trying to get to Donald Trump because I don't like Donald Trump. It's because of what Donald Trump has done to this country. And as somebody that visits a lot of my friends at Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, the fact that we're going to have this ugly monstrosity in the view of this very sacred site...
TAPPER: The arch, you mean.
GALLEGO: Yes, the arch -- is another reason why that needs to be taken care of, because, again, this man has done nothing but actually destroy the very fundamental things that these men and women have fought for, which is to save this country and continue this democracy.
TAPPER: Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, thanks for joining us this morning.
GALLEGO: Thanks, Jake.
TAPPER: We appreciate it.
A big decision for the Fed this week just weeks before the election. How will the president respond if his handpicked Fed chair does not do what he wants and lower interest rates?
Trump's top economic adviser joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:35:02] _ TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.
Huge A.I. news this weekend. How is that going to affect the markets when they open tomorrow?
Joining us now, top White House economic adviser, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett.
Kevin, thank you so much for joining us.
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Great to be here, Jake.
TAPPER: So, the markets and the American people are very worried about all these warnings from A.I. moguls. Are you worried that this lack of leadership is not only problematic policy-wise, but that, tomorrow morning and this week, it could wreak havoc on the markets?
HASSETT: I don't expect that that's what's going to happen. In fact, I would argue with your characterization, that what happened
was that the Anthropic CEO, Dario, put out a very thoughtful letter about what we need to do first to go a little bit slower, and then to make sure that the private companies assure everybody -- of course, that's in the private companies' interest -- that the things that they're doing, that the things that they are creating are safe.
And he had a specific proposal where we need to get, like, independent observers who are wired in, just like we have supervisors at banks, and he wants those independent observers to be watching what happens and making sure that we're safe.
So far, these things have advanced rapidly and safely under the guidance of the independent companies, but also the White House under Sean Cairncross, that the safety has been assured. We need to keep it that way.
But there's one last thing, Jake, that I want everybody to think about, that there's the risk that these agencies, A.I. agents, go around and violate people's cybersecurity and so on. But the far bigger risk is that a malevolent actor has access to an A.I. that's better than the one we have that can protect us.
And so, while we're keeping us safe, we have to make sure that a beloved actor doesn't necessarily create an A.I. that's better than ours and use it to create bioweapons and so on.
TAPPER: The president just said moments ago that he is willing to put some guardrails in to address safety concerns. What kind of guardrails might the White House be willing to put forward?
HASSETT: Well, Dario's letter, which was very carefully thought through by him, just came out. The president's in Ireland. I would expect that there will be meetings this week with, again, the cyber leaders like Sean Cairncross and Michael Kratsios to think about what the next step is.
I know members of Congress have strong views about this. And I think the president wants to hear from them as well.
TAPPER: On Friday, the Consumer Price Index report showed that August's inflation numbers were up 3.4 percent over last year. Those numbers, along with the war with Iran, the president's tariffs, it all has added pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this week.
If the Fed decides to raise interest rates, will President Trump accept it?
HASSETT: Yes, President Trump 100 percent respects the independence of Kevin Warsh. He understands that he's a man of honor who will look at the data and then drive the committee to the right decision.
Now, President Trump and I actually think that there isn't a reason right now to raise rates. And we're willing to make the policy discussion public about, hey, here's what I'm seeing. So, for example, Jake, what I'm seeing is that, if you look at the
previous three months, then the average top-line inflation number was above 8. And that was in part because of the surge in oil prices during the issue of the Gulf.
Over the last three months, inflation annualized is really just about 1 percent. And so what's happening is that the inflation progress that we have made because of all of our policies is really visible in the data. And so, if you take that and then add to the fact that, when I worked for Alan Greenspan, one of the things that Greenspan emphasized is that it's pretty important for the Fed to just leave things alone ahead of an election to preserve its independence.
And so it's only been a couple times since 2013 where the Fed actually made a move right before an election because they wanted to preserve their independence. But if Kevin and the committee decide whatever they're going to decide, we will 100 percent support them.
And we are grateful for limited democracy, where we get to say what our view of the data is too. And I hope they're grateful for it as well.
TAPPER: President Trump says that, if the Fed does not lower interest rates, lower interest rates, he's going to stop trading with every country with whom we are -- with which we have a trade deficit.
Now, the latest data shows the U.S. has a trade deficit with 99 countries. That includes China, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan. Is this a real threat to stop trading with any country with which the U.S. has a trade deficit? And if he did actually do that, wouldn't that just be a disaster for the American people and the economy?
HASSETT: I don't expect that trade is going to go to zero, but I do think that the president has a very strong opinion that interest rates could be a lot lower. And we will just have to wait and see what the Fed decides.
TAPPER: All right, Kevin Hassett, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today.
HASSETT: Thank you, Jake. Great to be here.
TAPPER: President Trump is responding this morning to a push by A.I. leaders to slow things down. What Trump wants to do about it -- next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:44:08]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're the most sophisticated country in the world. And, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins A.I. wins. And we could put guardrails. We can do this and that.
But I think you have a lot of negative voices that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up. And they're bringing up things that won't happen. But whoever wins with A.I. wins.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: All right, that was President Trump just moments ago speaking to reporters in Ireland and responding to the growing pleas from A.I. leaders for the government to step in and help address some of these safety concerns.
Our panel is with me now.
And, Scott, before we begin, as always, we have to offer the disclaimer that you are under consideration to be White House communications director or press secretary. Why you would want that job, I don't know. But we have to disclaim it.
Congresswoman, President Trump says you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing up. The forces that are bringing it up are the CEOs of Anthropic, xAI, Elon Musk, and OpenAI, Sam Altman.
[09:45:08]
I mean, it's not naysayers. It's the very people in charge of it. Is Congress going to do anything?
REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): I hope so.
And you have seen different legislation that is out there. Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran have a piece of legislation that I'm looking at. But, to your point, and to the president's point, we get this chance to get it right or not.
We met years ago in a very bipartisan way around A.I., and that talk has continued. But I think the urgency now that we see that the different people are bringing to it, I pray to God we do something. Unfortunately, the speaker has us coming in this week, canceled other session weeks, which I think was a mistake.
TAPPER: The speaker had said earlier in the show that he does want to act urgently and have all these leaders come in and meet with experts to talk about what to do.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that's fine. I don't know why these companies can't slow themselves down.
Why do they need the government?
TAPPER: Because they can't agree on how to do it.
JENNINGS: Well, you have two guys writing a letter right now, the two -- by the way, the two biggest companies, that want everyone to slow down. It would be in their best interest for that to happen, of course.
If they want to slow down, they could slow down today. I mean, the flip side is, though, China's not going to slow down. I think the president's instinct is correct. We have to win this. Now, winning it the right way and how we agree on that is important.
But these two companies asking to be regulated, I mean, let's not -- look, this is not altruistic fully. I mean, maybe they have legitimate concerns, but come on.
TAPPER: What do you hear from the voters in Michigan and in terms of like how concerned people are about this?
STATE SEN. MALLORY MCMORROW (D-MI): Look, people are terrified, but they're using it. I was the first candidate for U.S. Senate in the entire country to put out a comprehensive A.I. safety plan, because people recognize this can be a tool, it can, but you see people using it for nefarious purposes.
When we see the warnings that broke out this week, I mean, 130 million retweets of this Anthropic researcher really sounding the alarm from the inside that there's a 10 percent chance that this could kill us all, and it is not beyond the realm of imagination now to see after the Hugging Face attacks.
What if it attacks critical infrastructure? What if it creates a bioweapon? Anthropic warned that they shut down accounts that were trying to do exactly that. So there's a reason that we see such strong opposition to data centers, not just because of rising energy costs, the threats to air, the threats to water, but because people are asking, what is this thing for?
Why is there so much money being poured in? Why are people asking us to turn the other way and just trust us? Something's off, and people want to see the government act.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And some of this is in part because of a significant amount of money by Chinese bad actors and disinformation campaigns to get us to slow down.
And so, to the president's instincts, I think he's right in that regard. Now, I agree here with my two Democratic friends that, sure, you can have some slight oversight to protect people in terms of energy costs and protecting the environment. I think most Americans objectively would agree.
But, to your point, everyone's using this. We have been here before. You have had revolutionized a technology that took us to the next frontier. Do we want to be second-class to the Chinese in that regard, who, by the way, will not slow down, will not have very extreme oversight?
I am more comfortable in trusting of American-based companies than I am of the Chinese government. And I think most people would agree.
DEAN: How about coordination with governments, with the U.S. government? We can do anything if we do it together.
SINGLETON: Well, and I'm not opposed to the government. But the companies, if they can agree to sign this mutual document, to Scott's point, why can't they agree to put in more guardrails to slow this thing down?
You don't need the government to step in to provide oversight.
MCMORROW: But that's where -- that's where government has to come in and require the regulation. Car companies could have put seat belts in. Car companies could have put airbags in on their own, and they didn't until government stepped in.
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: But the CEOs are asking for a regulatory regime. You would think they would...
MCMORROW: Then what's the excuse in waiting?
JENNINGS: Then what's the excuse in not doing it yourself? If you're saying, please come regulate me, just do it.
DEAN: Well, hopefully, the conversations are going on within the companies.
The conversations, I believe, are going on within the companies. What is our responsibility? But this is a call to all of us. It's a call to American citizens, as well as to government. We have a responsibility to do this together if we're going to get it right.
TAPPER: So there was a midterm convention this week, a Republican Midterm Convention. And President Trump towards the end asked the crowd to go along with a pledge.
It was not the Pledge of Allegiance. It was a different kind of pledge. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I pledge...
AUDIENCE: I pledge...
TRUMP: ... to the greatest president in the history of the United States...
AUDIENCE: ... to the greatest president in the history of the United States...
TRUMP: ... that I will go out with my family, my friends. I will do it any way. I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Congresswoman?
DEAN: That's something to get behind. TAPPER: What?
DEAN: That's something to get behind.
[09:50:00]
I brought the newspaper today because perhaps you saw this lead article about sweeping effort to stifle speech by the administration, whether it's critics or it's journalists or it's comedians.
I add that with the $5,000 bribe, the cheating, pledge to cheat, go right ahead, we don't care, and a pledge to the president. I take two pledges in my life, and I have been asked to take others. Pledge allegiance, I'm happy to do that. Pledge to my husband, who happens to be here, to him.
That's it. This is buffoonery. It's farcical, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous. I was down in Dallas. Hakeem Jeffries asked four of us to go on down to do some counterprogramming, to offer facts versus farce. And this is extremely dangerous, a president offering $5,000 for a win.
Imagine me running for office and saying, you know what? If I win, you're all getting $500. I'm going to promise you that. I'd be run out. I'd be run out.
TAPPER: Scott.
JENNINGS: So the convention was a success. Democrats are complaining that Republicans are asking Republicans to turn out and vote. They needed a pep rally. What I picked up in Dallas was folks were tired of operating off the back foot. They wanted a little front foot operation. They wanted an affirmative defense of the president's policies.
That's what they got. It was a pep rally. It was designed to generate turnout among Republicans. And if they don't get that, they won't win. Smart idea.
TAPPER: Democrats need turnout in Michigan to hold on to that Senate seat.
MCMORROW: Yes. And we're still waiting in Michigan for the $5,000 check that was promised us before. There was an ACA subsidy cancellation. I think it was $1,000 we were supposed to get.
So if you believe that you're going to get $5,000, I got a bridge to sell you. Michigan...
TAPPER: Check is in the mail is what...
MCMORROW: Check is in the mail.
Michigan has been hit harder by Donald Trump's tariffs than any other state in the country. Michigan families have already paid $5,600. That cost is just increasing. They want to see an end to the war in Iran. They want to see gas prices come down. They want to be able to afford to buy a house, not waving a fake $5,000 check in the air and saying, just vote. I promise this time.
JENNINGS: Do people in Michigan think America deserved 9/11?
MCMORROW: Absolutely not. Nobody does.
JENNINGS: Then why does your Senate campaign's top surrogate go around saying that?
(CROSSTALK)
MCMORROW: Hold on. May I...
JENNINGS: That's on the ballot in Michigan too.
(CROSSTALK)
MCMORROW: No, it's not, because I -- hold on. Shermichael, Shermichael...
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Why does your guy campaign with that guy?
MCMORROW: I famously was the candidate in the Senate race who disavowed Hasan Piker.
JENNINGS: And then you were famously out of the race.
(CROSSTALK)
MCMORROW: And it didn't matter.
JENNINGS: And you got Piker, and you got El-Sayed, and that's on the ballot.
(CROSSTALK)
MCMORROW: And it didn't matter.
SINGLETON: Real quick. Real quickly.
TAPPER: Yes.
SINGLETON: There's a 12-to-13-point advantage Democrats have in terms of enthusiasm. The sole focus of this convention in Dallas was to get the president's low-propensity nontraditional voters out to vote.
It is why places like Michigan are a toss-up, that, despite some of the critiques about Republicans, it could still go our way. And so the objective was to get those folks out, despite the fact that the president isn't on the ballot, and I'm convinced that it might indeed be effective.
TAPPER: Go ahead. What's the other point you were making? JENNINGS: No, look, I think the Republicans need to turn out people who are of low propensity. There's a lot of folks that want to vote, but not necessarily in midterms. We got to get them out.
DEAN: But...
TAPPER: All right, that's all the time we have, Congresswoman.
Thank you so much. Go, Birds. I know you believe go, Birds.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: Go, Birds, today.
TAPPER: Go, Birds.
DEAN: We're going to do well.
TAPPER: Could the Supreme Court toss a hand grenade into the middle of the midterms less than two months out?
That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:58:02]
TAPPER: President Trump is heading to North Carolina this week. He's going to be campaigning with Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley, the former RNC chair, who, right now, according to polls, trails former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in that race.
North Carolina, where mail-in ballots have already started going out, though President Trump is pushing the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the Trump administration to upend all the rules when it comes to mail-in ballots and who can vote by mail.
A win for the president could allow the U.S. Postal Service to withhold ballots from states that don't hand over their voter data to the Trump administration, potentially throwing the elections into chaos with just weeks to go. We expect to hear from the court soon.
Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us. Shana tova, and happy new year to all who celebrate the Jewish new year.
Be sure to tune in to "AC360" tomorrow 8:00 p.m. Eastern for the rest of Anderson's exclusive interview with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Fareed Zakaria is up next. He has an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Please stay tuned.
