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State of the Union
Interview With Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY); Interview With National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett; Cornell University Rape Investigation Ramps Up; Attorney For Christa Pike Speaks Out. Aired 9-10a ET
Aired October 04, 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): In the red. With 30 days to go, President Trump tries to shore up Republicans' sagging poll numbers and convince voters they're wrong about the economy.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have the greatest numbers. Maybe we're doing a bad job in selling it.
TAPPER: Why aren't Americans buying it? Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett joins me next.
Plus: reckoning. Cornell's president vows to act after an alleged gang rape on campus.
MICHAEL KOTLIKOFF, PRESIDENT, CORNELL UNIVERSITY: This is a defining moment.
TAPPER: But as that moment reverberates...
GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): She was failed by people and institutions.
TRUMP: They won't get a fair shake.
TAPPER: ... what does justice look like? I'll ask Jane Doe's lawyer, Thomas Giuffra.
And life and death. Tennessee's prison chief resigns after a botched execution leaves a convicted murderer on life support.
STEPHEN FERRELL, ATTORNEY FOR CHRISTA PIKE: That was cruel and unusual punishment.
Could the state try again? Christa Pike's attorney, Steven Ferrell, is ahead. (END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is ornery.
In just 30 days, voters will have their say about the state of the country. And a handful of new polling shows they're in a fighting mood, and that's putting even some deep red states in play.
Last night, President Trump pleaded his case to voters in Ohio, where he won by 11 points just two years ago, but where the Senate and governor races now look rather tight.
This morning, let's focus on the main reason why the president finds himself in this position, voter sentiment about the economy. A new AP poll found 73 percent of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the economy, with 82 percent disapproving of how he's handled the cost of living.
And a CBS poll out just this morning shows 70 percent of voters say President Trump's policies are making the price of food and groceries go up. This week, Mr. Trump has been suggesting this is merely a P.R. problem.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: There's no economy like this economy. We don't seem to be able to get the word across. I'm going out because nobody's selling it. I'm doing -- we're doing an extremely poor job of promotion. We're doing a great job in running the country, but we're not doing a good job of public relations.
It was just announced we have the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Joining me now is one of the people who's out there -- quote -- "selling the economy," White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett.
KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Good morning, Jake.
TAPPER: Good morning, sir.
So, you just heard the president say -- quote -- "It was just announced that we have the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country."
So, let's break down the economic numbers. Growth is a modest 2.2 percent. Unemployment is relatively low, but ticking up a bit at 4.2 percent. Hiring is weak, only 29,000 jobs added at September. July and August were revised down. Inflation is at 3.4 percent. Prices rose 0.4 percent in August. Wage growth is at a five-year low, hourly wages down 0.3 percent over the past year. So, assessing it here, it's a growing economy, but hiring is slow,
wages are not keeping up with rising prices. So what is the president talking about when he says it's the best economic numbers ever? Is he misinformed or is he not telling the truth?
HASSETT: No, no, first of all, I just want to say that this is a characterization that very often the president's opponents make when I'm doing interviews, because it's a double-bind question.
If I say, oh, people are wrong, the economy's great, then it looks like I'm insensitive. And if I then go into why the economy is great, then it looks like I'm insensitive. And so let's just unpack it and start with, well, people are saying that the economy's not great.
Well, it's true that the polls, which have gotten the president's success wrong every time, have been saying that people are looking a little bit depressed about the economy. But if you look at their actions, the actions speak way louder than words.
And so what we know from the economic literature is that, if people are worried about whether they're going to lose their job, if they're worried about whether they're going to get a pay cut, then they start reducing their consumption and increasing their savings. It's called the buffer-stock theory of savings.
And so what we see right now is that people are really, really optimistic about the future, about their future incomes, because they're spending really, really at record levels. They're defaulting at their credit card debt at really, really low levels.
We just had this week the consumer -- the consumer information data came out or price data came out that showed that consumption was up year over year at the highest rate in years. We have got GDP now for the third quarter running 4 to 5 percent.
[09:05:15]
And so -- and think about all the things that are positive, like initial claims for unemployment insurance the lowest almost all the way back to World War II, when we had a much smaller labor force. And so people are acting like what the initial claims say.
They're saying, oh, I'm confident I'm not going to lose my job. I'm constant confident in my income growth, because GDP growth is coming too. And the polls are different from that. And so then the question is, are the people wrong or the pollsters wrong? And I would say the pollsters are wrong.
TAPPER: I want to play something that Vice President Vance said just recently about high prices. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you're frustrated about high prices, you have every reason to be frustrated by high prices. (END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Now, he blames Democrats for the high prices. But is he wrong that prices are high?
HASSETT: Oh, prices are high, in the sense that inflation went up about 20 percent under Joe Biden, and the inflation rate has gone way, way down.
If we look at the three-month moving average of the PCE data that came this week, then core inflation is running now at 2 percent, which is the Fed's target, and top-line inflation is at 1 percent, because food prices and gasoline prices are dropping faster than everything else.
And so we're making progress, but, in the end, the way that we make up the Biden inflation for folks is we give them income growth, and the income growth is coming. You mentioned the hourly wage. We just got great census data on big reductions in poverty, but also, if you look at the weekly wage, those numbers are really promising, because we gave no tax on overtime, no tax on tips.
And so a lot of middle-class workers are working longer weeks and making more money and not being taxed while they do that.
TAPPER: It is true that inflation was very high under President Biden, but when President Biden handed over the presidency to President Trump in January 2025, it was 3 percent. And it's currently 3.4 percent.
I'm no economist, but it does seem like that's going up.
HASSETT: Well, you know your economics pretty good, but that means you also know that, when we handed the economy off to President Biden that inflation was 1.5 percent.
TAPPER: It was the middle of COVID. It was the middle of COVID.
HASSETT: And, right now, we have got top-line inflation at 1 percent. And inflation has come back down.
TAPPER: Yes.
HASSETT: It -- well, it was actually the end of COVID. That was the problem, because COVID was right at the end, and then they did this massive stimulus, and that's where the inflation came from.
TAPPER: If this is truly a P.R. problem, then when is gas going to be $3 again? When will inflation settle down to 2 percent?
HASSETT: Well, I think that what's going on is, the American people look at what's in their wallets and then they react accordingly.
And so Americans right now are acting the way they have done in past booms. And ahead of an election cycle, the fact that there's possibly partisan pollsters telling us that the people are really, really depressed, it's a classic Democrat move. And I just don't buy it, because, if it were true, if the polls were any value for thinking about what's going on with consumers, then we should look at the consumption data and say, geez, yes, that's right, people -- people aren't spending.
But, in fact, the retailers are doing well. I talk to the banks all the time. They say that their consumers are happy and they're paying back their loans. And so -- and so the data, the hard data are radically inconsistent with the polls.
And so which do you believe, the government hard data or the polls that have been wrong about every single election since I can remember?
TAPPER: But the government hard data is at only 29,000 jobs were created in...
(CROSSTALK)
HASSETT: Oh, come on. And that's just last month.
TAPPER: And it was revised downwards by 60,000...
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: .. in July and August.
HASSETT: It was revised downward the month before to 133,000, which was still above the forecast, double the forecast of the Fed, and above the forecast of everybody forecasted by -- who forecasted for Bloomberg.
And so we had a blockbuster number the month before, and then we had a number this month that was actually much better once you took out the decline in government jobs. So, the decline in government jobs is part of our structure to be more fiscally responsible, where we have reduced federal employment by about 300,000 workers.
TAPPER: So, two years ago, President Trump said he thought he could get mortgage rates down to 3 percent or even lower. Last week, mortgage rates had the biggest weekly jump in four years. It's more than 7 percent.
Why has President Trump failed to deliver on that promise?
HASSETT: President Trump hasn't failed to deliver at all.
The economy is booming. And what you have to do is, you have to look at the whole picture. And so what happens when the economy is booming is that people feel better about their economic circumstances, and then they go out and they spend and they buy houses and they buy cars.
And if you look at the housing data over the summer, then income growth is outpacing the mortgage rates, and housing starts and purchases and permits are way up. And so, once again, absolutely true, mortgage rates have to come down. And as we get inflation down to 1, 2 percent, then that's where
mortgage rates are going to head towards that, plus two or three. And that's going to happen, I think, very quickly over the next few months. But the bottom line is the that, in the end, look at the hard data. People are buying houses.
[09:10:06]
TAPPER: Well, I mean, you said it was basically the fault of partisan polling, but it was President Trump himself who said that people didn't think the economy was good. They were just wrong. They needed to have a -- there needed to be a better P.R. campaign.
HASSETT: I can talk to you about the partisan polling, because I have done a lot of work on it. Do you want to hear something about it?
I mean, like so, in the Michigan survey, the Republicans were surveyed say the economy's great. Democrats who are surveyed say the economy is like the worst since the Great Depression. And the independents agree with the Democrats.
But if you look at the ups and downs of the independents and Democrats, it looks like what the Michigan survey guys call independents are actually Democrats. And so I think that it's a two- thirds poll of Democrats, and so it's saying that people are really unhappy, but I just think it's a bad poll.
But, again, if people were unhappy, it'd show up in the data.
TAPPER: It seems to be showing up in the data, just not the data you're looking at.
HASSETT: No, it's not.
(CROSSTALK)
HASSETT: ... the polls.
TAPPER: Kevin, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Two national conversations we're all having this week.
First, darkening mood at Cornell University as the college president promises to act. I will ask Jane Doe's attorney whether the new investigation has started next.
Plus: the convicted murderer now caught between life and death. I'm going to ask the lawyer for Christa Pike about her condition after botched execution attempts and what happens now.
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[09:15:12]
TAPPER: Last night in Ithaca, New York, amid mounting anger on Cornell's campus, the college president told students that he's going to take action. This is after outrage over a young woman's allegation that she was gang-raped at a university frat house in 2024.
That, plus the deeply flawed response, made this what the college president called -- quote -- "a defining moment."
On Wednesday, President Trump weighed in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Cornell's a fine school, and I'm sure they'll do what's right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: "I'm sure they'll do what's right," he said.
Then, after New York Attorney General Letitia James was appointed to oversee a new investigation because the governor had no faith in the local DA, President Trump weighed in again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: And I feel badly for whoever she's looking at, because they won't get a fair shake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Joining us now is the attorney representing the woman we only know as Jane Doe, Thomas Giuffra.
Mr. Giuffra, thanks for joining us.
You just heard President Trump weighing in, suggesting that the men your client is accusing will not get a fair shake. What's your response?
THOMAS GIUFFRA, ATTORNEY FOR JANE DOE: Well, I don't think this is a political issue.
I think there are women from red states and blue states who are getting assaulted on college campuses. I think to politicize something like this is just wrong. There are Republicans whose daughters are getting assaulted. There are Democrats whose daughters are getting assaulted. It has nothing to do with politics.
TAPPER: New York Attorney General Tish James is now taking over this investigation as a special prosecutor. Have you or your client heard from her team?
GIUFFRA: I had an initial call from her office last week.
TAPPER: Attorney General James had posted on social media before she was appointed to this position -- quote -- "What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I'm holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her and to all survivors, you're not alone. We stand with you" -- unquote.
And then when Tish James was named to this special prosecutor role, she was asked about that Facebook post. She said she's not going to comment on a Facebook post, even though it was her Facebook post.
I'm wondering if you worry at all about her credibility in investigating this case in an impartial way, which is important, obviously, for your client, when people are already calling into question her impartiality and her fairness, given her what she posted on Facebook.
GIUFFRA: Well, I think Tish James, at least what her office has told to me, is they're reaching out to outside people to get involved, because the attorney general's office doesn't typically investigate crimes of this sort.
So it sounds to me that people are being brought in who are experienced in crime and investigating crime. So, I think there will be impartiality. I think there will be fairness.
Again, I'm troubled by this attempt at politicize something that is not political.
TAPPER: Your client recorded calls with several of the men involved in the rape allegation. This is in the weeks after the alleged assault in 2024.
Those recordings never made it to the district attorney's office. A lot of stuff didn't make it to the district attorney's office. What do the men say on the recordings? And do you or your clients still have them?
GIUFFRA: We have some of them.
And I think we had apologies in various e-mails, the typical -- after somebody has harmed somebody else, they're saying, oh, I'm sorry it got out of control, things of that nature.
Yes, a lot wasn't looked into by the district attorney's office. And now a new set of eyes is looking at it with the whole team. I mean, candidly, I don't think Tish James is doing the legwork of doing the investigation. She's bringing in a lot of people who are experienced prosecutors and investigators to look into these things.
And they will get everything. And, finally, we will know what was done, what was said. I mean, look, I have said as much as I can say about what I think about DA Van Houten's investigation. It was not an appropriate investigation. It was not complete. It was stick your head in the sand and don't look to find a crime.
If it wasn't for somebody in the Cornell Police Department leaking the statements and leaking all the evidence to "The New York Times," I wouldn't know about it, because I can't get investigative materials.
TAPPER: So it's interesting you bring that up, because Cornell University, in one of those materials that was leaked, your client told the Cornell University police -- and she used the word rape, that she was raped.
GIUFFRA: Yes. TAPPER: But that did not appear in the six-page single-spaced summary that the police wrote up for her that she signed. I'm not faulting her for -- for her not asking why that wasn't in there, but how could that not be in there?
And did Cornell police ever explain that?
GIUFFRA: They have not explained it, and I don't fully understand it. I have my thoughts about it.
It seems that, if you have a complaining witness saying, I'm 100 percent certain I was raped, that should make it into a report. You had the group chat inviting people to participate in a rape. You had a complaining witness. You had evidence of a crime. And they didn't follow up on it. They didn't include it.
[09:20:17]
And that's very concerning to me. And I'm not a person who believes in cover-ups, but, in this case, I feel like there really was a cover-up. And I was surprised. I mean, thank goodness for whoever leaked this to "The Times." We wouldn't have known what had happened.
TAPPER: District attorney Van Houten said last week that, according to your client's statement -- quote -- "Each time Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual conduct, the sexual conduct stopped" -- unquote.
Is that accurate?
GIUFFRA: I don't really credit much of what DA Van Houten said. I don't credit much about what DA Van Houten did during the course of this investigation.
I think DA Van Houten had an agenda. I think that agenda was to protect Cornell University. And I'm glad to see the back of DA Van Houten.
TAPPER: The DA relied only on the Cornell police report about your client, which means he did not subpoena the Snapchat text group or the phones of any of the alleged wrongdoers.
Now, CNN reported that that text group on Snapchat included a photograph of your client taken apparently that night. Do you know if there are other photos or even videos from that night that exist?
GIUFFRA: Well, that's the great concern, right? I mean, if this was a normal investigation that was done in New York City, for example, they would have gotten search warrants. They would have grabbed every single one of these phones of these guys. They would have downloaded all this material.
I'm confident, knowing this day and age and the group that we're dealing with, that there were other photos, that there were videos. And where I think those photos and videos are now? I think they're in the bottom of Lake Cuyahoga, because once they knew there was a problem, they cleared everything out and they got rid of it. And the fact is that the investigators let that happen. They let that
happen. We'd have a lot more evidence. And, frankly, I don't -- I'm not even sure we have everybody who participated in this assault, because my client was blacked out during periods of time.
And that's reported in these statements. We don't even know the people we have or the people we definitively know. If you ask me, I believe there were more.
TAPPER: So you think it's more than seven?
GIUFFRA: I think so, but we will never know. We will never know because of such the inadequate investigation that was done. It was not an investigation. I'm not a criminal lawyer. I'm a civil lawyer, and I could have done a better investigation than this.
TAPPER: Cornell's Student Assembly held an open forum this week in which another woman, another student said that she had reported a sexual assault to Cornell and was let down by the university.
Do you know if we're going to see more lawsuits from other Cornell students?
GIUFFRA: That I don't know.
But I have received many e-mails from students, not just at Cornell, at other schools, saying that they were sexually assaulted on campus, they made complaints, and it wasn't followed up on. And that's the real scary part. This isn't just a Cornell problem. This is a college- wide problem.
I have heard from women as far back as 40 years ago saying they were raped in a fraternity house, and not at Cornell, at different places. And I think that's the important part of this case is, we're learning as a society that college sexual assault is a huge problem, a huge problem in this country.
And we're finally pulling the -- putting a spotlight on it and learning what actually has gone on for all these years.
TAPPER: There is certainly a rise in outspoken commentators, podcasters, et cetera, who are blaming your client, who say that she brought this on herself by getting drunk, by going to the fraternity house, it's all her fault.
What's your response to that? How is Jane Doe doing?
GIUFFRA: Well, my response to that is this. They're saying to Jane Doe -- there are people out there trying to track her down. They have tracked down the wrong women, at least three of the wrong women that I have heard about.
They said, we're going to shut you up. You're going to be -- still get hurt by us. You're going to pull this lawsuit out, or we're going to do something to hurt you even more. She's received multiple threats, and women who aren't even Jane Doe have received threats about what they're going to do to her.
And, in fact, this morning, I received a threat. But I don't care. My grandfather fought the Germans for three years. I'm not afraid of these people. But the threats, the abuse to protect what's going on, the status quo, these guys are disgusting. They should stay in their mother's basement and stay out of the world.
TAPPER: Mr. Giuffra, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it.
GIUFFRA: Thank you, Jake.
TAPPER: Coming up: She survived two doses of a lethal injection. Could the state of Tennessee try to execute Christa Pike again? Her attorney joins me next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:29:20]
TAPPER: The head of Tennessee's prison system is resigning after the failed execution of Christa Pike, the governor said this weekend, as state leaders ask themselves, what happens when someone survives their own execution?
Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1995 by the state of Tennessee for the brutal torture and murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer. And now she is in the hospital after surviving two supposedly fatal doses of pentobarbital.
Joining us now is the attorney for Christa Pike, Stephen Ferrell.
Mr. Ferrell, your team said in a court filing that Ms. Pike is in the hospital on a ventilator. What's her condition this morning?
STEPHEN FERRELL, ATTORNEY FOR CHRISTA PIKE: It remains the same. She's still in the hospital on a ventilator, critically ill. We don't really know the prognosis yet and may not know for several days.
[09:30:08]
TAPPER: Was she ever conscious after this? Has she been able to say anything?
FERRELL: Not that I am aware of, no.
TAPPER: On Thursday night, the hospital staff was trying to clear the two doses of pentobarbital from her body. Were they able to?
FERRELL: No, that's still the ongoing process right now.
TAPPER: Have the doctors been able to explain at all how she survived these two attempts at execution?
FERRELL: They haven't. And I need to emphasize that we are not getting -- we're not
consulting directly with the doctors. She has a medical power of attorney that gives us information. I'm not sure what all they may have told that person, but this is the extent of what we know.
TAPPER: They haven't let you in to see her?
FERRELL: No. And she is guarded. I'm not sure who may have seen her. I know I have not seen her.
TAPPER: The state of Tennessee has not yet said whether it will ultimately try to execute her again. Have you received any indication from the governor's office or the Tennessee attorney general that the state intends to seek another execution date?
FERRELL: No, other than the governor did suspend all executions in Tennessee for the end of this year, which is pretty much the end of his term.
Now, gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn has announced that she would try to use the electric chair, which would require the Tennessee legislature to change the law. But it remains to be seen what the future is.
And I think one of the main things that will leave this up in the air for a while is the fact that we don't know what the prognosis is, as in the long-term prognosis. If she recovers, she may not fully recover. And there may be issues about her competence. I mean, we just don't know any of this.
So, we have had no discussions about this. The Tennessee attorney general's office so far has not given us any indications of what their intentions will be.
TAPPER: What do you want to happen? What do you think the state should do now?
FERRELL: I think, at the very least, the governor should commute Ms. Pike's death sentence to a life sentence, at the very least.
We -- like I said, we don't know what her physical state will be, but it is clear that she has endured a torturous attempt at executing her. And we had already asked that the governor commute her for many good reasons. I think she's spent over 30 years in prison, most of that in solitary confinement, only to be taken out and not executed, but tried to execute her.
And that -- we don't know right now, and we may never know, what sort of torture she endured during that process, what -- where her consciousness was, what physical pain there was, what mental torture she went through. I can tell you that we had 2.5-day hearing about lethal injection.
The special master that was appointed to hear the case insisted that Ms. Pike be present and listen for 2.5 days as to how the state of Tennessee was going to kill her. I think she has been put through some really, really bad mental torture and physical torture, and that, at the very least, that deserves a commutation of her death sentence.
TAPPER: There is obviously another side here in terms of the case itself, the family of Colleen Slemmer, the 19-year-old that Christa murdered.
Colleen's mother was on the grounds of the prison that night. She was waiting for your client to be executed. I'm wondering what you think justice looks like in terms of the victim.
FERRELL: I think that's very hard to say.
I can tell you what justice shouldn't be for the victim's family, and that's this long, many years of back-and-forth for her, and to be brought here to witness an execution that doesn't happen. Nothing that anyone can do will bring back Colleen Slemmer. Nothing that anyone can do will make this right for May Martinez, her mother.
I can't give any better solution than the fact that Christa has been and may very well continue to be severely punished, harshly punished, and maybe not overly so. But, certainly, this has been a serious punishment for a very serious and awful crime.
I don't think that attempting another execution is going to bring justice.
TAPPER: It is certainly an odd and unusual situation where the world is waiting, at least as far as I can tell, for your client to recover from these botched execution attempts so the state can kill her for good. That just seems bizarre.
[09:35:12]
FERRELL: It -- as far as I know, it's unique in this country.
There have been other attempted executions that were botched, as in they couldn't get the vein, they -- other things went wrong. I don't know of any situation where the state says that the execution was carried out exactly as it planned to do and the person survived. And that is a unique situation, and I think that your word bizarre is exactly right.
And one thing that should definitely come from this is that this needs to be a much more open process. Over a year ago, it in the face of another execution, we asked for information about what the state was going to do. A judge ordered one thing to be disclosed, and that was the expiration date of the chemicals they were going to use to execute him.
The state immediately filed an emergency motion with the Tennessee Court of Appeals that blocked that order. With Christa Pike's execution, there was a delay. It was supposed to happen at 10:00 a.m. in the -- that day, and it didn't end up happening until about 8:00 that evening.
We don't know what drugs there were, whether manufactured, compounded, how well they were preserved, what was done with them. That could have played a role.
In order to find out what happened, the state of Tennessee has got to start telling its people exactly what it is doing, so that, in the democratic process, the people of Tennessee can decide if that's what they want to be done in their name, because this torturous execution leaves so many questions that the state of Tennessee will refuse to answer.
We don't know who's performing this, the people who placed the I.V. lines, who obviously were not able to do it successfully, or to me.
TAPPER: Yes.
FERRELL: Obviously, I don't have definitive answers on what happened. But that caused the drugs to not effectively circulate, and that's probably why Christa Pike survived.
But the state of Tennessee had assured us that these were people with decades of experience at setting I.V. lines.
TAPPER: Yes, there certainly needs to be transparency in the face of this.
Mr. Ferrell, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it.
FERRELL: Thank you.
TAPPER: For Republicans in key races, the new polling is going in the wrong direction. Are Democrats really about to reverse decades of losses in America's heartland?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:42:05]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We need the votes, and I'm here for that. And I think we're going to win.
We're worried about Michigan. We're worried about Texas. We're worried about a few states. You're going to think of me as on the ballot, right? Everybody, promise?
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: Just get out and vote. If you do that, we're going to win and we're going to win big. And we're going to shove it up their ass.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Just -- I think he's gesturing to reporters there, just so you know, like, in terms of whose rear end is going to be shoved up.
(LAUGHTER)
TAPPER: Before we begin, our panel is here. I just want to disclose two things.
Xochitl, your sister Gina is running for governor in Texas as a Democrat.
Scott, you're still being considered for the role of White House press secretary.
This is what you get when you have super plugged-in panelists.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: We're just...
TAPPER: Yes.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Jamal stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
(LAUGHTER)
JENNINGS: Nicole...
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: And you're an incumbent congresswoman.
REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): Running for reelection.
TAPPER: So, let me ask you.
As Trump blitzes red states, there are new polls showing Democrats leading in Alaska and Texas and in a dead heat in Ohio, Iowa, Kansas. Are you -- how worried are you about the midterms, and especially the Senate?
MALLIOTAKIS: Well, I think we need to be realistic that the party that is in control always has an uphill battle.
However, I do think we could still hold on. I think it really depends on the district and the actual candidate you have in that district. The last time we lost the House was in the Trump midterm in 2018. But then, in the Biden midterm, we were able to flip it and keep it in Republican control.
And so I think that, look, we have the message. We just need to get it out there. We did deliver the middle-class tax cuts. We did refund 88 percent of senior citizens' taxes that they paid on Social Security. We did deliver on no tax on tips and overtime, and we did secure the border.
Cities like mine, we saw illegal immigrants committing crimes. They were wreaking havoc all over New York City. You don't see that anymore because now the border is secure, and we have deported those criminals.
TAPPER: Do you think Democrats can take the Senate?
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think Democrats can get the Senate, yes. They also may just get very close. What happens if Democrats -- if it's a 50/50 Senate?
We don't know what this wave is going to be. We don't know what the Republican undertow, which is what Charlie Cook calls it, that is an undertow that's going to just take Republicans down.
What I have been looking at is the trend lines around these polls, right? Any individual poll is just a snapshot. But if we look at the trends around these polls, we just see a Republicans who are capping out. They have these ceilings that can't get past.
And even incumbent Republicans can't get over 50 percent. Those voters are really familiar with these candidates. And if they're not over 50 percent now, it means they're looking around and they're still shopping. And you might see Democrats actually take out a seat that you -- that we don't expect.
TAPPER: Scott, in Texas, Ken Paxton's super PAC is running an ad from his estranged wife, I guess soon-to-be-ex-wife, Angela. She filed for divorce last year on biblical grounds.
And she says she urges voters to vote for the Republican ticket. Will hold your nose and vote for Ken Paxton be a winning message or sufficient?
JENNINGS: Well, I hope so.
[09:45:00]
I mean, look, it it's something that people are talking about down there. The fact that she decided to go out and become part of this campaign is noteworthy. And, I mean, two things can be true. You could think Ken Paxton has made bad personal decisions, but at the same time I don't want to put my face in a wood chipper and elect Democrats to run the country.
I mean, they have gone plumb crazy right now, with all the socialism and the abolish ICE and the abolish prisons and the abolish borders, et cetera. et cetera. Just -- so just because I have some quibble with Ken Paxton's personal life doesn't mean I have to turn the country over to people who hate it. And so I think that's a pretty decent message, actually.
TAPPER: Xochitl, how worried are you about the Senate races in Texas, Michigan, and Maine?
HINOJOSA: Well, if you're looking at "The New York Times" poll that came out yesterday, in Ohio, they're up three. In Alaska, Democrats are up seven. And, in Texas, we're up six.
And, as Jamal points out, Republicans have not been able to break 50 percent in a lot of this polling, and that just shows that Republicans are in deep trouble.
I will say that, in Texas, what is hilarious is that every poll has consistently showed James Talarico up. And then Ken Paxton had to put something out that shows proof of life in his candidacy, because he is doing so poorly.
If you look at the "New York Times" polling, one thing that really stood out is not only are Americans fed up with the economy, they're fed up with gas prices, but in a place like Texas, James Talarico and Ken Paxton are about even on immigration.
Donald Trump was running plus-10 points on the issue of immigration in a place like Texas, deep red Texas, and especially because the border was such a problem during the Biden administration. But the fact that Democrats are now gaining ground on immigration because of ICE raids and other things just shows that one of the key issues for Republicans is no longer a strength for them.
(CROSSTALK)
SIMMONS: I saw your interview with Kevin Hassett earlier.
And he just was really misleading the American people about the economy and what's going on in the economy right now. It's not that complicated. If you want to buy a house, it's more expensive.
HINOJOSA: Yes.
SIMMONS: If you got to use gas to go to work, it's more expensive. If you're going to get health care, it's going to be more expensive because of the bills that they passed.
African-American women now have 7.3 percent unemployment. It's the largest jump. So he says, let's take out the 300,000 jobs that we took out of the federal government. You know who got laid off? A lot of African-American workers got laid off in that 300,000.
And then they're going after people on DEI. So, even the corporate jobs that maybe wanted to hire them are feeling skeptical about hiring African-Americans. So I'm surprised that it took this long for the numbers to jump up the way they did.
TAPPER: Congresswoman, are -- do you -- did you hear -- I don't know if you heard Kevin Hassett's interview, but you have heard the administration's message on the economy. Does that resonate with voters in Staten Island? Or do they need to hear an acknowledgement that prices are high?
MALLIOTAKIS: Look, I think people go to the supermarket. They do see the gas prices.
But when you looked where we were under Joe Biden in the midterm, you had 7.7 percent inflation. You also had a point where there were $5 gas prices under Joe Biden. The issue is, are things getting better?
They are getting better, because we did deliver on our message of tax cuts, where the Democrats, if they had control, we would have had a $5 trillion increase, the child tax credit would have been cut in half, the standard deduction would have been cut in half, and all income tax rates across the board would have increased. But, in addition, they see that we did secure the border, making
America's cities safer. Crime is at a record low across this country. Those are all really important. The GDP is growing. We're seeing trillions of dollars in private and foreign investment coming to the United States.
We are repatriating manufacturing. It is going to take some time because we had so much inflation under Joe Biden. All those trillion- dollar spending packages, guess what, they raised prices.
JENNINGS: I think it's pretty simple. If I were running a campaign right now, I'd say the people who dug a very deep hole are making you one promise, go back to the shovels. And I wouldn't let them do it.
I think the Republicans have great points to make. I think they have passed legislation. I have not heard a single Democrat campaign argue what bill or policy they would change. They want to go back to the way they were doing it, and most of the cost of living in this country that people are mad about came under Democrats.
TAPPER: Xochitl, go ahead.
(CROSSTALK)
HINOJOSA: I was going to say, voters -- the problem is, is that voters are not feeling any sort of economic gain. They're hurting, as Jamal just points out.
And they don't trust Republicans on the economy. And so, at the end of the day, this is -- we're one month out. Voters do not trust Republicans to lead.
TAPPER: All right.
HINOJOSA: And that's what's going to decide.
TAPPER: Thanks, one and all for being here.
Folks out there are deliberately trying to keep Americans at each other's throats. Are we going to continue to let them?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:54:08]
TAPPER: On Thursday in Lakeland, Florida, Vice President Vance attacked the Democratic Senate nominee in Florida, Angie Nixon, who is a Democratic Socialist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, then get the hell out of here. You don't belong in America, if those are your views.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: A decade ago, the notion that a sitting vice president would tell an American citizen to leave the United States because he disagrees with her views would have been shocking.
But there's currently so much tribalism in America, it barely registers. We see the same mentality everywhere. It's not a debate over ideas. It's a notion that some ideas cannot even be held.
In the case of Secretary Pete Hegseth this week, the notion that journalists report on facts he finds inconvenient is an offense.
[09:55:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: A free press is, of course, important, but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they're undertaking is fundamentally anti-American.
It's sick. It's a national betrayal. It's treason, actually.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Well, treason, actually, is punishable by death. And journalism is not treason.
One might note this is his curious definition of what should befall the news media for reporting on a war, one that a majority of the American people don't support. Secretary Hegseth would prefer a state media that just transcribes his views of matters, like they have in the country that we are currently at war with.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEGSETH: Our so-called press makes Iranian state media look reasonable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: The cocoon of tribalism is no doubt cozy for those of brittle spirit. It's also dangerous.
Last year, Pew polled 25 countries as to what folks thought about the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens in those countries; 92 percent of Canadians, for example, approved of their fellow citizens in that respect.
Americans were not only the most likely country to question the morality and ethics of our fellow country men and women. America was the only country surveyed where more adults describe their fellow countrymen as bad than good. Are we as Americans truly worse people than the average Indonesian or
Swede or Brit? I don't think so. I think it's pretty clear that certain leaders and certain folks in ideological media and the algorithms on our phone are giving out cheap endorphin hits by introducing you to people to hate.
Whether politicians or podcasts, these people are doing so they can make money and accrue power. Hate is easy. Hate is lazy. It's comfort food for the weak. But they're selling to us -- they're selling it to us because it works.
Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us.
"FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts next.
