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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip

James Talarico Speaks to Voters at the CNN-Jubilee Media Town Hall; Trump Veers off Midterm Pitch, Says Leakers Should be Shot. Aired 10:30-11p ET

Aired October 14, 2026 - 22:30   ET

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

[22:30:35]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Tonight, live at the table, Scott Jennings, Ashley Allison, Lauren Wright, Isaiah Martin, and Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Welcome to a special 90-minute edition of "NewsNight."

PHILLIP: Good evening, I'm Abby Philip in New York.

Tonight, it's one of the most closely watched races on the midterm map. Ad spending just surpassed half a billion dollars. And just before early voting begins, we are hearing from one of the candidates in prime time.

The CNN-Jubilee Media town hall in Fort Worth, Texas tonight had James Talarico, the state's Democratic nominee for Senate, taking questions from voters. Two new polls find that the race is too close to call, but Democrats still hope that it will propel them to the Senate majority. CNN invited Talarico's opponent, Ken Paxton, to participate in this town hall as well as a separate debate with Talarico, and we haven't heard back from him on either of those fronts.

And while Talarico spent much of the evening focused on the issues, he offered a pretty scathing closing message about his opponent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES TALARICO (D), TEXAS SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: I don't want people to vote just against Ken Paxton, I want them to vote for me. I want them to know my values and my vision.

But the last thing I will say is that we are running against the most corrupt politician in Texas. And this is not an exaggeration. Since taking office, Ken Paxton has increased his net worth by $27 million.

He now owns 15 homes, while most Texans can't afford one. He has taken bribes from wealthy special interests, including half a million dollars from data center companies, all while he sells us out when he makes public policy. This election is not about left versus right.

It's about whether we will have a senator who puts money in your pocket, or a senator who puts money in their own. That is the choice before us in November.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIP: Before we open it up to the table here, we invite you at home to join our debate. Head to cnn.com/abby. You can weigh in there and we'll get to some of your comments as we go throughout the show.

We were talking, Scott, in the break about the format, which was interesting because it allowed Talarico to take a very wide range of questions, and some of them directly and back and forth with voters. You noted that maybe there wasn't as much pushback, but that's one of the problems with not debating your opponent, is that you don't get to push back.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, HOST OF "THE SCOTT JENNINGS SHOW" ON SALEM RADIO, AUTHOR, "REVOLUTION OF COMMON SENSE", AND FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: That's right, and I give Talarico credit for doing this. It was an innovative kind of format, I think it was smart for CNN to do it. It's a good show, it's good for people to be engaged.

One of the exchanges that stood out to me was when that Navy veteran, the guy that had served for 22 years, jumped in and said, I support the Save America Act. I want to know if you'll vote for it. Talarico looked him in the eye and said, effectively, I don't know that much about it, I don't want to comment on things I don't know anything about.

Two months ago, he gave a long answer in an interview somewhere, trashing the Save America Act, claiming it was only designed to disenfranchise black voters. What I learned about Talarico in that moment is that he has trouble looking someone in the eye who he knows disagrees with him and just saying, you know what, you and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this.

PHILLIP: He did that all day.

Even the Catholic lady, who is clearly pro-life and clearly has a different view of things, he tried to get her to believe that they were on the same page.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, PUBLISHER, "THE ROOT", FOUNDER, WATERING HOLE MEDIA, AND FORMER NATIONAL COALITIONS DIRECTOR, BIDEN-HARRIS 2020: That's what you're supposed to do as a politician.

JENNINGS: He lied to that veteran. He is more slippery than a wet panther. That's what I learned tonight.

ALLISON: That's what you learned tonight. You all might lose Texas. That's what you learned tonight.

JENNINGS: You think I just learned that tonight?

ALLISON: No, you probably knew it before. You just were afraid to say it. Tonight solidified that.

I think James Talarico got up there and he said multiple times, we might just have to agree to disagree, but let's find the common ground. And quite honestly, that's what most Americans want right now. They are sick of the extremes, they are sick of the fighting, of the dishonesty. He said, to quote him exactly, he said, "I am a policy wonk and I want to know every explicit thing."

JENNINGS: He trashed it two months ago. If he's such a policy wonk and wants to know all the details, why was he out trashing it two months ago, but he couldn't look that guy in the eye and just admit it?

[22:35:03]

ISAIAH MARTIN (D). FORMER TEXAS CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Scott, he literally came forward and said that he supports voter I.D.

JENNINGS: He asked him about the Save America Act.

MARTIN: What specifically is the Save America Act? It's a bill that is a passport to vote bill. That is what the bill is. If you read the bill text, you know that and everybody else knows that.

He said that he supported voter I.D. and that is what the law is in the state of Texas and what he will support at the federal level as well.

JENNINGS: Do you have any answer? Of course not. Why didn't he admit so much?

MARTIN: Because that is not what the bill is.

JENNINGS: But that's what the guy wanted him to answer.

MARTIN: The question was about voter I.D., Scott.

JENNINGS: Why didn't he shoot straight with the guy?

MARTIN: Scott, because you guys lied on the very premise on what the bill is. The bill is not a voter I.D. bill. It is a bill to require effectively a passport to register to vote.

Are you going to disagree that only five states actually would be able, with their I.D.s as it is today, to be able to qualify under the Save America Act?

ALLISON: I think the most important --

MARTIN: Are you going to say that's not true?

ALLISON: I think you're trying to use the Save America Act, but I'm going to say I think the best part of that answer was he actually said that he wasn't here to represent Republicans or Democrats. He was actually here to represent Texans.

And he wasn't going to be the senator for California or the senator for New York because that veteran wanted to know is he going to have his decision in part.

And when he answered that, he said -- MARTIN: He wanted to know what the Save America Act is?

JENNINGS: He wanted to know -- he just wanted to know if he would support that bill. And Talarico, as you point out, and I agree with you, is not going to support it. But he couldn't look the man in the eye and just be honest with him.

And that's a slippery politician thing to do. Why not just say what you just said? I have problems with the bill, I don't like it, I shouldn't vote for it.

He said he didn't want to do it. He didn't want to do it. And I thought that was telling to me.

MARTIN: Because he agreed on the very premise was do you support voter I.D.? Talarico does support voter I.D.

But what he also said was that the Save Act is not what Republicans like you, Scott, have been saying that it is.

JENNINGS: No, he claimed he had never heard of it.

(CROSSTALK)

ALLISON: As a voting rights advocate, I want to move on to the Save Act because there was a lot of other stuff he covered that also should be considered.

PHILLIP: That's exactly what I was going to say is that there is a lot else that was discussed. And I think that the idea that he didn't acknowledge differences of people who challenged him, that is not true.

ALLISON: It's not true.

PHILLIP: Because he was confronted by a Catholic woman who said abortion is basically against your faith.

ALLISON: Did you hear her after?

PHILLIP: She was confronted by another woman about the comments that Republicans like to tout so much where he said that God is non-binary. And let me just play his response to that, listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TALARICO: The first comment about God not being defined by gender, when I said that I was being provocative, and I want to admit that, and come clean about that, I think what I was saying is actually not controversial theologically. The idea that we can't define God using human categories.

Yes, I was doing it maybe in an annoying way. I can admit that.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: I think we have to be careful using modern cultural terms when talking about God. TALARICO: Sure. I think that is very fair criticism. And I've kind of admitted how I've said things in the past that have maybe not come across in the right way or have upset people, and that's not my intention.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, that was such a striking exchange. And honestly, I think people should actually go and watch the whole, if you missed it, watch that entire exchange because it was incredibly detailed.

LAUREN A. WRIGHT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY POLITICAL SCIENTIST: Those of the religious -- some very interesting.

PHILLIP: Yes, she was a person of faith. She challenged him on biblical grounds on that issue. How did you think that he did overall?

Because I think there are two parts about it. One is, A, his provocative comments. But then the other one is, how does he talk about faith? And can he do it? Because that's the reason that he kind of came on the map in the first place.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, "NEW YORK TIMES" JOURNALIST, AND HOST OF "THE INTERVIEW": I mean, I actually credit Joe Rogan with Talarico's career because if you remember how he surged into national attention, it was because he was doing TikToks and Instagrams talking about his faith from a progressive lens. And then Joe Rogan had him on his show, said, you know what, you should run for president, buddy. I like what you're saying.

And then all of a sudden, James Talarico, here we are. So, Joe Rogan is someone else that we have to thank for our political reality at the moment.

What I would say about how he did, I think you're actually both right in this. He used a lot of rhetorical devices that were slippery in the sense that it is part of a politician's manner to agree a lot, right? And he did a lot of declarative sentences.

Yes, I agree. And he was trying to find common ground and it was very disarming. And what he was doing in that was trying to disarm people. And he did that very effectively.

But by the same token, empathy only goes so far. So, when you had the woman who was another religious discussion, who was Jewish talking about Israel, he wasn't actually saying, hey, I'm going to vote not to send bombs to Israel, or this is my position on Gaza, or this is how I feel about X, Y, or Z.

[22:40:10]

How am I going to vote as a senator? He was doing a lot of empathetic sort of engagement, which is fine.

PHILLIP: Let's not focus on the things that we don't have in common.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let's focus on the things that we do.

JENNINGS: It's a way to avoid the policy issue.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: But it's refreshing. But what I'll say is, no, listen, in a moment where everyone's fighting, but listen --

ALLISON: It's not to show up, actually, Scott. Your candidate won't even show up. That's the truth.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: He wasn't answering something that I want to talk about, which --

WRIGHT: I think is very odd. When you have an opponent, Isaiah and I were just talking about this, who's so weak and, by all accounts, very corrupt, but you're playing the high ground, and you're saying, well, first of all, he's not even showing up on the trail because of the flu, but then he's saying, I'm not going to make this about my opponent.

Make it about your opponent.

PHILLIP: That's a strategy, right?

WRIGHT: Your opponent is extremely weak. Draw the contrast. I think the dominant theory among Democrats about him is that because of his faith and his background as a pastor, he's going to siphon votes from Republicans. I don't think that's going to happen.

I thought he looked at two religious women in the face and said the Bible's silent on abortion, and then he bragged about his legislative record blocking gender reassignment surgeries for kids, but then allowing puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones, which do do damage to kids.

So I don't think he's going to get there, and there's two and a half times more likely Republican voters than Democrats.

PHILLIP: I'll just say this.

WRIGHT: It's not enough.

PHILLIP: When you look at the strategy, what he might have been doing tonight is that, yes, he could have attacked Ken Paxton and raised his unfavorables, which are already pretty high, but he has some work to do in convincing Texas voters that they should give him even a look, and I think that's what he thought tonight was about, which is not how do I bring down the other guy, because Ken Paxton, I'm not sure you can bring him down any more than he is, but he has to raise his favorables.

WRIGHT: I don't think he did that on the cultural issues. I thought he lost it.

MARTIN: I actually disagree with you, and the reason why, I was actually having a conversation with your governor, Scott, Andy Beshear, and he was saying one of the ways that he goes and talks to people is not to focus on the things that you disagree with.

Figure out, okay, we're both on two different sides of the issue. Let's figure out where we can agree, and I think what Talarico was doing consistently tonight was finding common ground with people, and that is precisely what he said that he would do throughout his campaign.

WRIGHT: That's a very optimistic view.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I agree with this, and I'll tell you why. If you look at Republicans, or you look at Democrats who run in states where there's populations that are not of their particular party, I'm thinking of Governor Cox, I'm thinking of Governor Shapiro, I'm thinking of Andy Beshear.

You see this tactic a lot, which is that they will always try and bring the other side in. They try not to be divisive, and even though their policy positions might not align with you, their verbal -- the way that they engage with the public is very different.

MARTIN: I don't think that Talarico would have gained --

PHILLIP: You guys, one at a time.

MARTIN: I don't think that Talarico --

PHILLIP: Hold on one second. Isaiah, and then Ashley.

MARTIN: Yes, I don't think that Talarico would have gained very many undecided voters if he would have just walked in there and said, you guys are all wrong. You guys are all dumb. I think that what he did was say, look, if we have disagreements, that's fine. We're going to find ways to --

WRIGHT: But that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying not everyone's running against a candidate who was impeached by a Republican in the White House.

ALLISON: Yes, but that's happening -- that's happening --

WRIGHT: Back me up, Ashley. The Democratic strategist.

ALLISON: Okay, here's what I'll just say, is I think tonight his strategy was not actually to get people who were double Trump voters. I actually don't think that.

I think his strategy were to get people who voted for Jasmine Crockett in the primary, those two black women that were undecided at the end of it, to speak to them. One was still undecided, one was not.

As someone who supported James Talarico, I needed him to convince me, not tonight, but before, and he needs to do that work. He also was thinking about Latino voters, right, who supported Trump, also probably supported Obama, maybe at some point. He's looking at a different coalition.

WRIGHT: The gender and abortion stuff, strange to me.

ALLISON: No, but here's the thing. Those are the things that I'm just, I know you're not technically a Republican, but -- Last time --

WRIGHT: I am, actually a card-carrying Republican.

ALLISON: Okay, great. Last time I thought you said you weren't. But nevertheless, I think there were a lot of other issues, like education. Right now, education -- I was just in Houston, okay, interviewing the governor candidate, Gina Hinojosa.

What Abbott is doing right now with vouchers around public education and potentially gutting the public education system in Texas, which is the biggest employer in the state, has Texans outraged.

He got to talk about that tonight, as a teacher. He got to talk about immigration, in a way. The woman who says she's a Republican at the very end, what I heard her say, she didn't want to say she was going to vote for Talarico, but I heard she say she might not vote for Paxton.

[22:45:05]

And that is a winning strategy for Talarico, not trying to get a MAGA voter to do it. It's trying to get some people to stay home, some people who didn't support him in the primary to switch, and some people who are actual independents to vote.

PHILLIP: Do you want to respond? Last word?

WRIGHT: Well, I just don't think he's met the bar for strength that you need to win in such a lopsided state. I also don't really believe the polling is as close as it is.

Maybe he's a strong candidate. Yes, he tried to reach across the aisle, but the polling is heavily favoring progressive voters. They are having trouble identifying who's a likely voter, period, in the midterms right now, and it is extremely weighted toward progressives, and they can't find Republicans in the middle.

It's the same issues that there were in the polling in the primary in California and Wisconsin. Same issues.

PHILLIP: I don't disagree with you in terms of, in general, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made by pollsters right now about how you weight this electorate, but the latest Marist poll was an R- plus-14 sample, which is very heavily Republican. It looks like a presidential year, and this is not presidential year-level enthusiasm for this candidate or for Republicans in general, so I think there's a lot that we don't know in the polling, but what it really says is this is a toss-up race.

It's a toss-up race in a heavily Republican state, and for Democrats, that is a window of opportunity.

MARTIN: And the other important thing is that Talladega really spoke about policy, and I thought that was really important. He's talked about fiscal responsibility, getting back to economics and a budget like under Bill Clinton where we had a surplus. I think that that played well because the last time that Texas had voted for a Democrat, it was in the Bill Clinton years with Governor Ann Richards, so he was trying to go and also go and bring back a time --

PHILLIP: He even referenced LBJ, another famous Texan.

All right, next for us, as the President considers live-streaming a Pentagon execution, he now says that leakers should also be executed. They should be shot to death, he says. We'll discuss that.

Plus, Marsha Blackburn's Kendrick Lamar video is sparking quite the debate for several different reasons. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIP: Tonight, President Trump believes in a grim solution to his White House leaking problem, particularly for those divulging war plans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Leakers should be, in my opinion, leakers should be shot. They should be shot.

In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak, what time you're going to attack a country and the reason you're attacking is really for defense because you don't want them to have a weapon that can blow up millions of people at one shot.

No, leakers should be dealt with very strongly. They're real, to me, they're the scum of the earth. The leakers are the scum of the earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: He then immediately went after reporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They're very, they're almost as bad as a leaker because they leak, they leak false information that makes them a leaker. Oftentimes, without a source. I think they make up a lot of the sources.

A source said that Donald Trump was extremely unhappy today but then you find out there was no source. They make it up. They're like storytellers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, Lulu, not the first time Trump has suggested the death penalty for various things and various types of people but in this case, what do you make of it when it comes to both leaking and reporters who report on whistleblowers or leakers in the administration?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, the blood lust is getting a little bit extreme with the let's live stream an execution and now let's shoot leakers and by the way, reporters are leakers so by extension, I'm assuming he's also calling for violence towards reporters. I mean, I think the more damaging thing that has happened in this era is the constant drumbeat of like you can't believe your own eyes.

You can't believe what is reported, you can't believe what you read, you can't trust all these things and it's completely fabricated and made up.

What, again, I'm just going to say it one more time, what are reporters doing? They are reporting for the public's right to know, right?

So, if you are getting information about something that's happening in the government, all governments want to hide it. Republican, Democrat, they all want to hide things from the public. What reporters are trying to do is actually find that information and then weigh it and is it important for the public to understand it because they are the voters and the government is acting in their name and so, but he's trying to obfuscate all this.

PHILLIP: Yes, and he doesn't -- look, he doesn't care about.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: No, he doesn't, but I think it's important to say this over and over again.

PHILLIP: He believes that the press should be writing good stories about him, that everything that he wants to be kept secret should be kept secret. We know that that's not how both journalism works or how the relationship between the public and the government should work. There's something that the government doesn't want you to know that the people have a right to know.

WRIGHT: Well, of course, I mean, journalism and the presidency, it's supposed to be a very adversarial relationship, but he's been saying outrageous, disturbing things like this for 10 years and he keeps getting elected and so I think the tactic is he just continues to say these shocking things.

They're not anywhere on America's list of priorities. They don't care about the news media, they don't care about the well-being of the news media, they think everyone is biased and they like to watch what they like to watch for the most part.

And so I do think that if everyone continues to pile on these comments, it's like his sexism comments. It's all the shrugging off violence.

[22:55:09]

PHILLIP: Are you suggesting that it just doesn't matter?

WRIGHT: Oh, no, I think it matters and every time he says something like this, I'm very critical of him.

PHILLIP: The death penalty for people who are leaking.

WRIGHT: No, I've been continuously critical of him.

PHILLIP: I mean, it either matters or it doesn't.

WRIGHT: And it's also directed toward him by the way. He's had, what is it, four or five assassination attempts at this point? It's directed toward him.

MARTIN: And the same thing though comes to the Democrats that have also been attacked, Melissa Hortman and everything else. I think at the end of the day, this from Donald Trump, is a tactic. He does it so at the very top of this show and other things, we are talking about the outlandish things that he says so we don't talk about the fact that inflation went and spiked up.

WRIGHT: That's right, I think that's absolutely correct.

MARTIN: And that's why he does it. Because he wants us to be outraged about the things he says. And the reality is, it is 100 percent wrong, everything that he is saying.

And I think that common sense America agrees with that. But I think what we also have to do is say, this President says crazy things and is absurd, but it's a distraction from the economy that he destroyed.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I disagree with that.

PHILLIP: We're going to continue the conversation with another hour of special coverage where we'll react to the fact that inflation is accelerating faster than expected and tell you just how the president is spinning it.

Plus, Marsha Blackburn channels Kendrick Lamar to promote early voting, despite calling rap filth in the past. We'll discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)