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Sen. Coons: "Democrats Need To Stop Telling Americans How To Be"; Turning Point Event Displays Deep Tensions In MAGA Movement; Honoring The Hero Of The Bondi Beach Antisemitic Terror Attack. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 19, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, all right. Speaking about the way people feel, Democrats may be feeling a little bit better about their political situation as 2025 comes to a close, but they're not out of the woods politically.

Up next, I'm going to speak with a Democratic senator who wrote a prescription for the year ahead, and it's peppered with mea culpas.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Did they make it through the wilderness? That's what the Democratic Party is asking itself as it hopes to turn the page after a full year out of power.

[12:35:04]

As Democrats prepare for next year's midterms, Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons is hoping to give his party a little direction. In a new essay, Senator Coons writes, quote, "Democrats need to stop telling Americans how to be and what to feel and believe. Instead, we need to listen. People didn't recognize the impacts of the bills we wrote and the votes we took. That's why Americans don't believe us when we preach at them from auditorium stages, cable news desks, and social media posts."

Joining me now is the senior senator from Delaware, Chris Coons. Thank you so much for being here, sir. This is a really lengthy, really detailed column in which you have a lot of prescriptions. You have some mea culpas in here.

But one of the things that's really kind of remarkable to me is, frankly, how you start. You start by writing a sentence that you hear over and over and over again when you go out and talk to people. When did the Democratic Party stop caring about working people? That's a question that you get on a loop. What's the answer that you give?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D), DELAWARE: The answer has to be that we are fighting hard for the working families of the United States, and that what we do is informed by what we hear, what folks who are struggling to make ends meet want us to focus on. So right now, we're in the middle of a big fight with Republicans in Congress and President Trump over health care costs.

I literally just came from a meeting with a group of doctors in Delaware who are despondent about how they're going to continue to deliver great care when more and more of their patients are losing health insurance, can't afford medical care. Our emergency rooms are backed up and have unacceptably long wait times here in Delaware.

And frankly, we're going to have a population that is sicker and poorer as a result. Dana, as you and I both know, Donald Trump ran for president on lowering costs, making America healthy again, and releasing the Epstein files. And he's not doing any of those things, not willingly, not well.

But Democrats can't just run against Donald Trump. We have to put out a clear vision for what our priorities will be. And in the piece you referenced just published in Democracy magazine, I suggest opportunity, security, and justice.

And opportunity is the first focus, because if folks don't believe we're fighting for them, for their chance to move up in the world, to have a high ceiling to their dreams, a real potential that their kids will do better than they've done, they're not going to listen to us.

And if we don't deliver security, security both at home and security for retirement, for health care, economic security, they're not going to listen to us. So if we lecture them about justice, about addressing historic inequalities in America, and we don't begin by delivering on opportunity and security, we're not going to have a better future than we have right now.

So my diagnosis is, if we focus on the things that have made Democrats strong, which is fighting for working people in this country over decades, we will get the future that we all deserve together, and we'll take advantage of this moment where President Trump is failing to deliver on the things he promised and he ran on.

BASH: I do want to ask, you're talking about policy issues, which are the most important to focus on, that Democrats, you say, are not -- did not listen to voters on enough and need to do better in the future. But we saw last year that party leaders didn't listen to voters on one issue, and that is when they said that they didn't want President Biden to run for re-election. As a Democratic Senator from Joe Biden's state of Delaware, and obviously a vocal defender and an ally of her -- of his, is that a lesson learned?

COONS: Look, Dana, you know that I love Joe Biden. I fought really hard for his re-election. But, obviously, if you look back at last year, it wasn't a successful campaign. At the beginning of the year, the very beginning of the year, when President Biden gave a commanding performance at the State of the Union address, and he had just finished signing into law a whole series of record bipartisan bills, it looked like we had a positive path forward.

In the end, we didn't. And in the end, we need to look hard at the generational change that Americans are insisting happen in politics, in the Senate, in both parties. We have too many leaders in their 70s --

BASH: Yes.

COONS: -- and 80s, and not enough voices that are young, that are agile, that respond to the demands and the opportunities of this moment.

[12:40:10]

BASH: And we're almost out of time, but I do want to sort of dig into the party and who within the party should be -- people should be listening to, or vice versa. Should the progressive wing of the party and the voters, young voters who maybe moved towards Trump, should they have the loudest voice with leaders like you?

Should it be older white voters who also left the party in droves and voted for President Trump? How do you define who gets listened to most? Because they're not all singing from the same song sheet.

COONS: They're not. What has united the Democratic Party is opposition to how President Trump is skyrocketing healthcare costs, failing to bring prices down, sleepwalking into a new war with Venezuela, and as of today, failing to release the Epstein files fully and on time.

I think in the most recent election successes we had, I principally look at our new governors in Virginia and New Jersey, who will be leading with common sense solutions to the concerns that folks in these two important states have brought to the ballot box. But we had electoral successes from New York City to Georgia to Mississippi.

We have a moment of opportunity that I think we will most succeed if we actually meet --

BASH: All right.

COONS: -- the concerns of folks in their cities, counties, and states, from housing costs to grocery costs to healthcare costs.

BASH: All right, Senator Chris Coons, thank you so much for being here. I encourage people to read this. It is lengthy --

COONS: Thank you.

BASH: -- and very detailed. And I appreciate it. As I said, have a Merry Christmas to you and your family.

COONS: Happy holidays. Thank you, Dana.

BASH: Thank you.

Up next, frauds, grifters, charlatans, these are Ben Shapiro's words describing some in his own party, some of the biggest stars. I'm going to speak with conservative columnist David French about why and what it means for MAGA.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:46:36]

BASH: MAGA is having an identity crisis and it's splintering some of its biggest media stars. Here's Ben Shapiro calling out his fellow right-wing podcasters at yesterday's Turning Point USA event.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN SHAPIRO, HOST, "THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW": The conservative movement is also in danger from charlatans who claim to speak in the name of principle, but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty. The people who refuse to condemn Candace's truly vicious attacks, and some of them are speaking here, are guilty of cowardice.

There is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised at Nick Fuentes, and indeed even chided Dinesh D'Souza for debating him. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility. And that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: This is the largest Turning Point gathering since its founder, Charlie Kirk's assassination in September. And the audience isn't just hearing from Ben Shapiro, they're also hearing from Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, the very people Shapiro is saying are endangering the conservative movement.

Joining me now to talk about this is David French, a columnist at the New York Times, lifelong conservative who left the GOP because of its embrace of Donald Trump. Thank you so much for being here. First, your reaction to Ben Shapiro's speech.

DAVID FRENCH, OPINION WRITER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I thought it was brave. I mean, he walked into a place where there were a ton of fans of Tucker Carlson, of Candace Owens, of Megyn Kelly, of Steve Bannon, and told the truth. I mean, that there is a rising (technical difficulty) kind of worldview is going to eat the right from the inside out. And I thought it was brave of him to do it.

BASH: David, Tucker Carlson did speak not long after Ben Shapiro took the stage. He spent a lot of his speech responding to Shapiro's criticism. He actually said the words, I am not an anti-Semite. Listen to more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW: So anti-Semitism is not just naughty, it's immoral. And it is precisely as immoral as hating any other group. And that would include other groups in the United States that are hated and have been under attack for decades. And that would include white men.

Who did nothing to become white men, they were born that way. And just because you have a beef with a white man, let's just say Donald Trump, doesn't mean you get to punish all the rest of the white men in the country. That is racism that is precisely as bad as anti-Semitism, but it is much more widespread and has been so far much more damaging.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It says a lot, David, about where the debate is inside MAGA world right now.

FRENCH: Yes, it really does. I mean, I don't think people understand the extent to which anti-Semitism is rising on the right. And it's rising through people like Tucker Carlson, who just hosted an avowed fan of Adolf Hitler, Nick Fuentes, who has his own large following on the right, for a series of -- for a softball interview, offering a series of softball questions.

There is a very diverse coalition in the right right now. It includes people who are anti-vax and pro-vaccine, people who are very dedicated to defending Israel from its enemies. And those people are outright anti-Semites. You've got normie Republicans and conspiracy theorists all under the same tent.

[12:50:06]

And what's been holding them together until now is the red hat, is Donald Trump. They are -- they have been united behind Donald Trump. But as Trump moves towards lame duck status, these other divisions are really spilling out into the open now.

BASH: What do you make of, you know, this sort of aggrieved white man? It's not new, but how big --

FRENCH: Right.

BASH: -- of a movement is that? And how much is that infused in, despite Tucker saying it's not, the growing anti-Semitism?

FRENCH: I honestly think that some of these things are not as connected as Tucker is saying. I think the aggrieved white man element, there is absolutely a part of the right that is sort of stoking every single incident you see of sort of anti-white discrimination from the far left. They're stoking that and stoking that to try to make it seem like there's a vast anti-white conspiracy.

Then the anti-Semitism is really -- and there's elements that overlap there (technical difficulty) whenever you start to see a paranoid worldview arise, whenever you start to see conspiracy arise, just wait. Anti-Semitism is not far behind. This has been something that's been going on for thousands of years --

BASH: Yes.

FRENCH: -- when (technical difficulty).

BASH: David, just so you know, we're having a little bit of trouble with your shot, but we definitely got the point of what you were making. Your column earlier this month wrote about an erosion as you see it in MAGA. You say, "The depth of the Republican divisions has been obscured by two things" -- you just mentioned this again -- "shared affection for Trump and shared revulsion at the left. But Trump is no longer on the ballot and there's an increased alarm over the right. These two factors are working together to shrink the GOP tent."

Since you've already talked about the Trump part of it, what about the sort of revulsion at the left? Is that still propelling the unity as much as it was inside the Republican Party?

FRENCH: I mean, not as much. I mean, we are very far from sort of what people have called peak woke around 2019, 2020, 2021. The Democrats, even in 2024, made some moves towards the center. A lot of Democrats are moving towards the center. Not all of them, of course.

Mamdani, the mayor of New York, is not moving towards the center, but a lot of Democrats are moving towards the center. And if Trump, parting from the scene, and he is, and Democrats are moving towards the center, as many are, a lot of the forces that have united this very fractious MAGA coalition, a lot of those forces are going to become weaker. And a lot of the things that are pulling MAGA apart will become more stronger and more salient. I think we're looking at the beginning of a crack up.

BASH: Real quick, last night, Erika Kirk said at TPUSA that they would work to elect Vice President JD Vance as president in 2028. Now, he has not weighed in on these divides. In fact, even when asked about it, particularly about, you know, the hate and anti-Semitism, he has sidestepped. What's your take?

FRENCH: You know, I think it's so premature to talk about JD Vance in 2028. If Trump begins -- if Trump's approval rating drops even more, if Democrats wipe out Republicans in the midterms, there's not going to be a big appetite for the Trump-Vance ticket going forward, or any element of sort of that Trump ticket going forward.

And so people are staking out ground now. Watch them change if a year from now, Republicans get wiped out. A year from now, and Republicans get wiped out, a lot of people are going to want to turn the page from Trump-Vance, not double down on it.

BASH: Yes. And as I just want to -- as we go to break, I just want to say, when I mentioned JD Vance and not taking a stand on anti- Semitism, I'm talking about he hasn't taken a stand on the rift within the GOP on this issue, obviously.

FRENCH: Right.

BASH: He has taken a stand generally on anti-Semitism.

David French, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Have a happy holiday.

FRENCH: Thank you.

BASH: Up next, in the midst of a tragic week of breaking news, we have some light to hold on to. A must-watch moment that will give you all the feels. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:58:52]

BASH: Now to this week's edition of Have a Little Faith, to put it bluntly, that's not always so easy to do these days. But I want to focus on someone who may restore your faith in humanity, a hero named Ahmed Al Ahmed. When a terror attack shattered a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, Ahmed literally jumped in to save lives. He's seen here tackling one of the shooters at Bondi Beach and wrestling away his rifle.

Fifteen people died in that shooting, and dozens more were injured. If not for Ahmed, this antisemitic, murderous attack could have claimed countless more innocent lives. Ahmed is Muslim. And amid so much hate and heightened tensions between Muslims and Jews, he risked his life to protect Jewish people who were being attacked because they're Jewish.

Now, while Ahmed recovered in his hospital room from gunshot wounds, a social media influencer named Zachery Dereniowski organized a GoFundMe page in his honor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZACHERY DERENIOWSKI: I came here with news of people around the world, 43,000 people.

AHMED AL AHMED: Thank you very much.

DERENIOWSKI: They raised you $2.5 million.

AL AHMED: I deserve it?

DERENIOWSKI: Every penny.

AL AHMED: Thank you very much.

DERENIOWSKI: If you could say one thing to the people that donated, what would you tell them?

AL AHMED: Stand with each other, all human beings. And forget everything back, behind the back, and keep going to save life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Thank you, Ahmed, for helping so many of us have a little faith.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.