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Inside Politics

Trump Approval Among Independents Lower Than In Jan. 2021; Most Americans Want Trump To Focus On Economy As State Of The Union; Newsom On Trump Tariffs: "The Whole Thing Is A Farce"; Democrats Target Deep- Red Districts For Midterm Flip; Former U.K. Amb. To U.S. Peter Mandelson Arrested Amid Epstein Probe; Early Voting Underway In Heated Texas Dem State Primary. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 23, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

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AUSTON MATTHEWS, FORMER USA TEAMMATE OF JOHNNY GAUDREAU: And just a subtle reminder that, you know, him, his brother that they're kind of with us in spirit and, you know, to be able to get it done like that, to win, to have his jersey out there and the team -- in the team photo and have his kids come out and be with us. We are obviously, you know, thinking of him, and you know, he just felt like his -- the impact that he's had on so many guys in our room was special.

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ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yeah. Just what a way to end the Olympics, and what a successful games it was for team USA guys. We finished with our most golds ever, our most medals ever for a winter Olympics. You know, it's going to be in France in 2030, but I tell you what, it is going to be certainly hard to top what Team USA did at these games there in Italy. What a performance.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Great performance indeed. Andy Scholes, thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington. Tomorrow night, President Trump will deliver his second address before Congress, the second one of his second term. And the country that he will be talking to is turning more and more against him.

We have a new CNN poll out this morning with President Trump's approval rating at 36 percent. That's lower than President Biden was at this point four years ago, and it's down 12 percentage points since a year ago, just last February. Just 32 percent of Americans say the president is focused on the right priorities. 68 percent, nearly seven in 10 Americans say he is focused on the wrong things.

This morning, the president had this to say about tomorrow's address.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Greatest economy we've ever had. We have the most activity we've ever had. I'm making a speech tomorrow night, and you'll be hearing me say that. I mean, it's going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.

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BASH: I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters. Kristen, I want to start with you and the -- show the overall approval rating, but the story is deep in the poll with a couple of, actually, several of the key demographics. I'm going to start with independents. This is one of the most remarkable stories here.

If you look at where the president was in January of 2021, this is January 6, the attack on the Capitol. This is in the middle of COVID. 32 percent, now he's at 26 percent, among independents, which means only a quarter of independents in the United States of America approve of the job that he is doing.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, and he's very aware of that. Now, of course, I don't think any of us are surprised that he's going to be giving a long speech tomorrow, long in his terms, though. I mean, that seems like it might be really, really long.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: 90 minutes before?

HOLMES: Right. I mean, he's calling it long. It might be a little bit of a doozy, but you know, when it comes to independents, when it comes to the job that he's doing, there is a lot of frustration inside the White House. It's not as though he is not seeing these polls. We know that he is reliant on these polls.

We know that he is seeing polls on a regular basis from his own in house pollsters. And that's why you're hearing a lot more frustration when it comes to the president, when you're hearing him give these speeches, saying, essentially, even just now, in this event that he was doing with these Angel families, talking about how the media never gives him good coverage. He never gets credit for anything that he's doing. He believes that this is the media's fault, that this is his own PRs fault. And that's the reason that he's not getting the credit and that's why the polls are bad, not because of what he is focused on.

BASH: It's because how people feel out there, and you obviously, every day talk to people who are on the ballot in just a few months.

RAJU: Yeah. And he -- can he actually -- I know the answer to this question, but I'll just ask you anyways, can he actually show some empathy to what the American public is feeling right now, which is, not, everything is so great. The economy is amazing. This is the best ever. And trying to cheerlead his way into convincing Americans that they're not feeling how they're feeling. Can he move in a direction, saying, look, we understand there's pain right now that people are feeling. We are working on it to deal with it. And X, be very specific. We're dealing with x, we're dealing with y, we're dealing with z. That's not really in Donald Trump's DNA.

So, I think we can expect him to try to try to convince a very skeptical American public. Tomorrow is going to be probably his biggest audience he's going to have before the midterm elections, and his opportunity to try to reset some Americans perceptions of how the job that he is doing in office, but this midterm is going to be a referendum on him, which is why those numbers are freaking out. Republicans who are going to be on the ballot in November.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, independents are not only the swing voters, but they are the sort of telltale sign of where things are headed with regard to the next time there's a major election, and it's really, really bad for Republicans, Latino, the Latino vote. This is another stunning change for the president. This is one year ago. If you look up on the screen, one year ago, February 2025, 41 percent with Latinos. Now it has literally plummeted to 22 percent approval rating among Latino voters.

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ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And that was really one of the big questions from the 2024 election, was whether the support that the president had gotten from Latino voters will hold. We started to see some cracks in that coalition. Thinking back to the New Jersey governor's race, where Mikie Sherrill made up a lot of ground with the Latino voters who had shifted towards President Donald Trump, but there's frustration within the Latino community about those same issues, troubling everyone, cost of living and the economy, but also the approach to immigration.

And so, it will be interesting to see if there is any way for Trump to kind of gain that type of ground back, but also what it means for other Republicans. I'm thinking about all those districts down in Texas where you have a large Latino populations that they felt were shifting towards Republicans. That may not exactly be the case in the next midterm election.

BASH: And Emily, I know you're seeing some of this already play out in the special election in Georgia to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene.

EMILY DAVIES, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yeah, it was interesting. I was down there last week, and this is a group of people who are reliably conservative, who helped send Trump to the White House twice, but they're also independently minded, so they don't like being told what to do. They don't just listen to the president based on what he says now that he is in the government, which this group of people is very skeptical of.

And so, you see, one of the main issues that is resonating with those folks, is still immigration, and so the White House feels pressure, I think, responsive to that base, responsive to others like them, to keep hammering that issue home but then it is alienating some of these other voters who talked about, so it's like a delicate dance.

RAJU: So, walk us with -- sorry, just on the polling about how the demographic groups. He's really under water with everybody. I mean, he's struggling with Latinos, black voters, where he made gains with the black voters, at least better than previous cycle. He is really struggling with black voters, with younger voters. It's just across the board, which is what's so stunning about those numbers.

BASH: Yeah. He's plummeted among young voters, pretty much the same amount that he did with Latino voters. And then just looking at the issues, the issues that they want -- people want the president to talk about in his address tomorrow night. I mean, nothing even comes close to the economy and cost of living. It's really stark to look at that at the top of the screen and foreign policy, where he has been spending a lot of his time. It barely even registers there, Kristen?

HOLMES: Yeah. I mean, I think that's -- this is actually the first time looking at all of the columns together, and I think that's pretty stunning, the fact that the focus of the economy and the cost of living. And I think this is also where President Trump's strengths are some of his greatest weaknesses, right?

One of the things that we hear -- heard from President Trump on the campaign trail was this idea that he was able to really fixate on a topic like the economy, and drive home why it is that he cared so much about it and why he thought he could do a better job. This is also his detriment because when he goes up there now, he doesn't want to talk about the economy.

He doesn't want to talk about cost of living. He knows how people feel. He wants to talk about other things that he's doing, like the positives he feels he's doing when it comes to immigration. That's not what people want to hear. So, the more they hear about that, the angry or more frustrated they get that they're not hearing about what he's doing on the economy. He himself wants to focus on anything but where he knows people are having issues with his performance.

BASH: I just want to quickly listen to some of the comments from people who responded in this poll, Republican from Pennsylvania, Republican from Ohio, and then a Democrat from Connecticut.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cost of living, the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, it has come down a little bit, but I don't think it's come down enough. I'm retired. My wife is retired. We're on a fixed income.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I would like to see President Trump talk about the economy and cost of living because it is so difficult at this time to provide.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just a retired public school teacher, who worked my entire life. I'm struggling in ways I never expected. I'm 75 years old. Everything has become so expensive.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: And that is what the president is up against in his big speech tomorrow night. Up next. Democrats are pouring cash into red districts. Will their midterm investments pay off where the president won by double digits. Plus, my exclusive interview with California Governor Gavin Newsom.

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GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): From the prism of purely politics, there's no doubt that the Democratic Party needs to be, dare I say, more culturally normal.

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BASH: Tariffs are top of mind for President Trump, of course, and Democrats are more than happy to let him keep talking about it. Here's what Governor Gavin Newsom of California told me about this yesterday.

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NEWSOM: The whole thing is a farce. I talk about petulance. It was 10 percent two days ago, maybe 20 percent tomorrow. I mean, this is madness. He's flailing. He's a punch-drunk boxer. He's just, you know, he's just trying to hit anything, a shadow, and he's a shadow of himself. He's lost a step or two. He needs to return that money. He needs to refund that money with interest. He can do that in a nanosecond.

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BASH: And my panel is back now. Manu, this has been such a roller coaster when it -- I mean, obviously tariffs in general have been a roller coaster, but specifically the way that Republicans have taken in the news of the Supreme Court decision on Friday. At first, I got the sense that there was a little bit of relief, like oh, we don't have to deal with tariffs anymore, but now it's going to be squarely in their corner and on their plate.

RAJU: Especially since Trump, when he came out and announced these new tariffs on Saturday, 15 percent that under this new authority that lasts just 150 days, putting the ball back in Congress's lap right before the midterms, when issues of the economy, affordability are going to be right front and center.

And Mike Johnson, the speaker has done everything he possibly could to prevent Republicans from taking votes on Trump terrace. Now that he has been essentially maneuvered in a way that he has not been unable to block such votes, going forward, expect more efforts to challenge his tariffs.

It is the question about the refunds too, I mean, will be in an interesting one, because I was talking to Democrat Senator Andy Kim yesterday, and he told me that Democrats are trying to push legislation to actually force rebates checks to provide this money back to the American public, the roughly $130 billion or so that was collected by the tariffs. How will Republicans deal with that question? Because you were asking Scott Bessent about that yesterday, and the administration that is non-committal about what to do with that money.

BASH: Yeah. He's the treasury secretary, and he claimed that he has no opinion. He's going to let the courts decide. So, we'll see what happens there. On the Democrats and how they're trying to capitalize on all of this. Tariff supports is one thing, but just the fact that the economy is such a sore spot for Republicans.

I mean, just on the tariffs alone, how do they affect the U.S. economy? This is from an NPR/Marist/PBS poll. Again, even independents, 63 percent of them say that these tariffs are hurting the economy. 20 percent of Republicans, the majority of those who say they're bad are Democrats. And then, just in terms of how the Democrats are tactically trying to take all of this and look ahead to November, where they're spending their money.

The DCCC, the campaign arm that is tasked with electing Democrats put out some targets for what they call their red to blue program. And we have on there a map of a lot of these districts, most of them are what we call R+ 9/2.5, 11/13, 17/12, which means that right now, they are -- most of them are comfortably Republican seats, and yet Democrats still think that it's worth putting resources there.

SAENZ: Yeah. Democrats are really betting that the souring voter sentiment towards the president is going to work in their favor, especially when it comes to issues of the economy and the cost of living, the tariffs plays into all of that. So that is why you are seeing Democrats say that they want to go into areas that are considered to be red. They believe that that could be fertile ground as they making their case to voters.

They're also putting up candidates who they feel have these working- class backgrounds that are going to attract voters, people like farmers, union workers, you have a smoke jumper out west. So, these are all kind of the characters that they're putting forth, but they do believe that those issues of the economy will be front and center.

I also think with the tariffs, if you think about a state like Iowa, that's somewhere where Democrats really feel they could maybe see an opening. Even though Iowa has voted Republican in most recent years. They feel that the pain that farmers have felt because of these tariffs is something that they can use to make their case as they're pushing for Democratic candidates there.

DAVIES: Yeah. I mean, I was talking to a White House advisor a few hours ago who was saying that the Trump machine is really used to campaigns of contrast. So, you know, when Biden is in office and Democrats have power, they can run on, we're going to do it better than they will. And now it's been a year and they're struggling to find that same like oomph in their messaging.

And you saw it in this, like, red part of Georgia, not to keep, bringing it back to that race. It was just so interesting. It's like the most conservative slice of the state and the Democratic candidate actually has some momentum there. Now, like, I'm not saying that the Democratic candidate is going to win, but he -- Shawn Harris is freaking out the GOP establishment, in part because the MAGA base is cracking. And so, with that dynamic, with Trump in power, it's just bringing really interesting dynamics.

HOLMES: Yeah. And I think Trump is not on the ballot. Obviously, these polls show this, but it is something that Democrats have had to contend with in several cycles, not knowing how to beat Donald Trump. Donald Trump is not on the ballot and --

BASH: He is not on the ballot, but he's on the ballot.

HOLMES: He is. But I actually think in this case, he's -- he doesn't have the passion, the messaging of this election. He also has all the negatives that come with him are on the ballot, but none of the positives that come with him are on the ballot. So, he's really just dumped his baggage of all this polling on to all of these Republicans who don't have the kind of Teflon that Donald Trump has proven to have.

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And I think that is really where you're seeing Democrats see an opportunity here of tying all the other Republicans to his baggage and not really having, you know, a Donald Trump there to kind of anchor those Republicans, so they see the room.

RAJU: The one question is, when there's talking about these targets, Dana, are these head fakes? Are they actually going to spend money here? If they actually spend money, and they're competing in states that Donald Trump -- districts that Donald Trump cared by 10 points or more, then it's a wave election. But right now, they think they may spend money in some of these races. We'll see if they actually do.

BASH: Right. Or they're trying to get Republicans to spend their resources there in anticipation. Everybody stand by. We have some breaking news out of London. Police arrested the U.K.'s former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson. I want to get straight to Max Foster who is standing by to give us the information. Max this, once again, is all about Jeffrey Epstein.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: It is, in a sense, similar allegation that the one was made to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. So, we've just seen Peter Mandelson being taken from his home in North London. The police -- Metropolitan Police have confirmed that he's been arrested and taken away for questioning. This follows searches of his house in North London, but also his country house in Wiltshire.

So, the assumption would be that they have found something, which raised the level of the investigation to the point where they could actually make this arrest, so he will now face questions. He hasn't been charged, but this is about misuse of his position in public office, a similar allegation to Andrew which was forwarding market sensitive information to Jeffrey Epstein.

Mandelson has denied any wrongdoing in this area. This has been a longer investigation than Andrew's, because it actually became formalized quite quickly and its completely engulfed parliament. I have to say, Dana, because there's a huge investigation into what Peter Mandelson knew when these allegations go back to his time when he was business secretary, a senior figure in Gordon Brown's government.

BASH: Yeah. And then the question of how it relates to Keir Starmer. And it's just another sort of reminder of where you are across the pond, the ramifications for political figures and even a former member of the royal family are much bigger when it comes to the law and justice than they have been here in the U.S. so far.

FOSTER: Absolutely. It's absolutely, you know, causing repercussions across the British establishment. So, when Peter Mandelson was appointed to the U.S. ambassador role by Keir Starmer, and he's under huge pressure about why he did that, knowing that Mandelson had a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and that is the subject of a parliamentary investigation.

At the moment, a committee is looking into that and they're going to issue their first findings, actually, next month. So, this has now raised the game because there's enough for him to be arrested and lots of questions for Keir Starmer. I have to say, he came very close to losing his job, but he managed to pull his back benches on side after an emergency meeting.

But there could be something -- he's basically shared all of the communications with Mandelson. All of Mandelson's communications are being gone through. If there's something there that implicates the prime minister, he'll be in trouble again.

BASH: Yeah. You know this better than ,I but the sense was that Mandelson was appointed because they wanted somebody who could connect with Donald Trump. The irony here is pretty rich. Max, thank you so much. Appreciate your reporting.

When we come back, Arlette here was just in Texas where she asked Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett about her non-traditional Senate campaign. Again, that's next. Plus, my exclusive sit down with California Governor Gavin Newsom. Our conversation is coming up.

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BASH: Election Day in Texas is March 3. Voting already began last week in two fascinating Senate primary races. Among Democrats, it's become an increasingly personal race between state Rep. James Talarico and Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Both are trying to convince Democratic voters that they are the one who can finally turn Texas blue.

Arlette Saenz just went to Texas, talked to voters there and filed this great story. How Jasmine Crockett's unconventional Senate campaign is testing Texas politics. Here's some of what Democrats in Houston told her.

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SAENZ: What is it about Jasmine Crockett that you like?

PAQUETTE PERKINS, TEXAS VOTER: Just her spirit, she's just, you know, incredible woman.

SONYA BERNHARDT, TEXAS VOTER: So yes, we need a fighter. And I was so ready to vote for Jasmine Crockett because I love her, but I voted for Talarico because we need somebody who can win.

GRANT, TEXAS VOTER: As hard as it is to say, I think she's going to be harder, like statewide.

ANDRE GRAVES, TEXAS VOTER: So, I give the girl a chance.

SAENZ: You know, she's running a bit of an untraditional campaign.

GRAVES: Sometimes you got to be untraditional because traditional hadn't been working hedge.

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BASH: Arlette is still here, along with Manu Raju, who also just visited the state. Wow, that voter, I mean, you could literally see the struggle between heart and head.

SAENZ: Yeah. And she wasn't the only voter that I spoke to who was in that same position. There was another undecided voter who said Jasmine Crockett was far and away his favorites, but he was concerned about her ability to win. And that is an issue that's really come up throughout her campaign, whether it's fair or not to bring up this question.

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