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Inside Politics

Can Dems Win Florida Governor's Race For First Time In 32 Years?; Trump Vows "Cuba Is Next" After Military Action In Iran, Venezuela; How Pete Hegseth Became Trump's Top Cheerleader For War In Iran; SNL's Colin Jost Parodies Pete Hegseth's Pentagon Briefings; Trump Presidential Library Renderings Show Massive Skyscraper. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 31, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

MAYOR JERRY DEMINGS (D), FLORIDA GOV. CANDIDATE: -- across the country, those within Florida, this is an opportunity for Democrats to bring about the change that many people in Florida want to see.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: But Mr. Demings, the number of Republicans, registered Republicans, in the state is only growing. Today there are 1.5 million more Republican voters in Florida than Democrats when in 2018 your party had the registration advantage there. So how realistic is it now for a Florida Democrat to win over Republican voters, particularly ones who may be happy with Governor DeSantis' job performance?

DEMINGS: Well, there's no doubt that Democrats have -- certainly have a deficit of registrations within the state of Florida. But I believe that through organizing and mobilizing, you're going to see Democrats continue to register persons to vote. But also, when we see some of the issues that are surrounding immigration-related policies, issues centered around affordability here within Florida, those issues are moving people.

There still remains more no-party affiliates in Florida than there are registered Democrats or Republicans. And the only path to victory for a Democratic candidate running statewide is to appeal to a broader audience. I would tell you that the no-party affiliates are important to me.

I believe that even frustrated Republicans are sitting on the sidelines in many cases waiting to see something fresh. I currently serve in a nonpartisan role as the countywide elected mayor in Orange County, Florida, the metro Orlando area, one of only three countywide elected mayors within the state of Florida. And as such, I didn't get elected as a Democrat. While I'm a Democrat, I got bipartisan support and I look forward to having that in this election cycle as well.

RAJU: But you'd consider yourself a progressive, right?

DEMINGS: I consider myself a moderate Democrat because that's where the majority of people are, quite frankly. But I'm a lifetime, lifelong Democrat. I've been in public service now for the last 45 years, having held a number of different titles. I've been the Orange County mayor now, countywide mayor in my eighth year.

I've been the elected sheriff. I've been the Orlando chief of police. And all of that has allowed me to lead during not just the good times, but sometimes during the worst of times as well.

RAJU: Mayor Demings, President Trump, of course, would be your constituent if you won this race. There are Democratic governors who have sought to work with the President, like Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, and ones who have fought him tooth and nail like Gavin Newsom. What about you? How hard would you fight the President if you became governor?

DEMINGS: Listen, we'll have to wait and see. I believe that government works the best when the federal government and the state and the local governments work together. What we have now are cultural wars going on where we see the state of Florida, the governor, preempting local government authority. And that affects not just the Democratic counties, but the Republican counties as well.

And so I want to bring back the unity, the collaborative working together of governments. But I'll have to wait and see. Quite frankly, I'm not opposed to fighting for what I believe is right. I've been in numerous fights with the current gubernatorial administration.

I've had to fight the federal government over issues regarding immigration enforcement and what they owe us for booking people in our local jail. I'm going to continue to fight for what is right.

RAJU: Mayor, in the aftermath of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and Iran, the President has repeatedly said that Cuba is next. Secretary Rubio has said Cuba needs a new government to change the economic realities there. So as you know, the Cuban community is a vital voting bloc in Florida. Would you support U.S. military operations to initiate regime change in Cuba?

DEMINGS: I'm not going to say that I would support that at this point. What I would tell you is that you should only go to war when necessary. And it depends on the circumstances at the time. I have many friends now for years who are Cubans, and they're split on the issue themselves.

And so I believe that when America asserts itself in wars and when America does that, sometimes they expose our service men and women to danger, to the possibility of death.

RAJU: Yes.

DEMINGS: And I can tell you -- my heart goes out to those families who have lost loved ones. So it really depends on the circumstances whether or not I would support it or not.

RAJU: OK. Mayor, in his reelection victory speech in 2022, Governor DeSantis said, quote, "Florida is where woke goes to die." And as part of this so-called anti-woke crusade, DeSantis and Republicans have banned certain instruction on sexual and gender identities in schools, regulated curricula on race, and gone after DEI initiatives. So if you are governor, would you try to repeal those laws?

[12:35:04]

DEMINGS: Absolutely. I believe where appropriate. We want to embrace diversity in the state of Florida. We are melting pot with people from all over the world. I can tell you that I've been accused of being woke. I don't even know what that is.

You know, the state of Florida hasn't defined that. But I was threatened with removal from office by the governor when we pushed back over signing the 287(g) agreement regarding immigration and enforcement related issues. I believe that we ought to enforce the nation's laws, but we should do so in a humane way.

My fight with them was over whether or not we would be reimbursed adequately, whether or not we will continue to maintain control and supervision over the men and women who work within our county, through our Orange County Corrections Department. That's what the conversation really was about. It wasn't about the merits of whether or not we should enforce the laws or not --

RAJU: So you --

DEMINGS: -- but how should we do that?

RAJU: So you would try to repeal those laws. What about the law that was just signed by Governor DeSantis yesterday to rename Palm Beach Airport the Donald J. Trump Airport? Would you try to repeal that?

DEMINGS: It's stunning to me that we have a sitting President building and naming monuments after himself. Certainly, I would work with the Palm Beach County Airport Authority and that particular community to see if that's something that's important to them. At this point, it does seem a little self-serving by the President to do what he's doing.

And so, these are the things that the American people have to weigh in on. And so, I'm a person that believes in the power of the people, not necessarily the people in power. And so I'd have to do a check of what those who live in the Palm Beach County area really think about it.

RAJU: All right, Mayor Jerry Demings, thank you so much for coming out and sharing your perspective. Really appreciate your time.

DEMINGS: Thank you very much.

RAJU: Coming up for us, is blowing stuff up the key to Pete Hegseth's job security? We have brand new reporting on the Defense Secretary. That's next.

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[12:41:37] RAJU: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he visited U.S. Central Command over the weekend to meet with troops, but breaking with the usual practice, he does not appear to have taken any reporters with him, and he wouldn't reveal exactly where he went.

Today, CNN has brand-new reporting on Hegseth's role in prosecuting this war. Multiple sources tell CNN Hegseth's job right now is to serve as a cheerleader in chief of sorts for military action in Iran. My colleagues Kristen Holmes and Zach Cohen write, in part, quote, "He's very trigger-happy, one source familiar with Hegseth's current mindset told CNN, and he believes blowing shit up is the best way for him to keep his job."

Over the past month, Hegseth has made it unmistakably clear to an audience of one that he's doing exactly that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: If you threaten Americans anywhere on earth, we will hunt you down without apology and without hesitation, and we will kill you.

We have only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy, death and destruction from the sky all day long.

It takes money to kill bad guys.

We negotiate with bombs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: We're lucky enough to have Kristen Holmes, the co-author of this piece, with us. Excellent story, Kristen. What have you learned from your sources?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That President Trump believes that Hegseth is doing a great job at exactly what he wants him to be doing. I mean, remember we had this whole conversation when Donald Trump chose Pete Hegseth and a number of other cabinet members. He wanted cabinet members out of central casting.

He wanted cabinet members who would go on TV and sell his mission and his agenda. And that is exactly what he has in Pete Hegseth --

RAJU: To be more of a spokesperson than yet a military planner.

HOLMES: The thing is that he wants to be the face of the Pentagon, yes. And behind the scenes, we are told he's not doing all the military planning. A lot of that is falling on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan Caine, who is obviously out there doing some of these press conferences with Hegseth, but is kind of the silent, more reserved partner.

I will say, you know, we had people telling us that Hegseth wanted to keep his job by blowing stuff up. I will also tell you that the White House laughed off that idea at one point, saying if he has any concern about his job, it's not coming from us. President Trump has shown him just how happy he is with the job that he's doing.

RAJU: And there's -- you guys reported about the role that Hegseth played in the run-up to this war with Iran. This is a piece from your -- a part from the story, "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not only validated the President's idea to move forward, he also downplayed the inherent risk of the conflict spiraling out of control, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Nobody in the room during that critical meeting emphasized the potential risks of starting war."

Typically, you'd have a Defense Secretary say, OK, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen. Hegseth clearly had a different mindset here.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: The most telling, I think, anecdotes of the last several weeks, like, again, the secret kind of best thing about President Trump as a reporter is when he is in one of his modes. That he's talking to people like Kristen for an hour inside the Oval Office or at a spray or something like that, he will tell you things that happened behind the scenes that you otherwise would have a really difficult time reporting, unless you're Kristen and Zach with this story here.

And one of them was when he was weighing whether or not to do this, Hegseth was one of the first people to step or to speak up. And that entire group of people of very experienced, very long-term political operators, policy people, it was Hegseth who was one of the first people to say like, yes, we should go, we should absolutely go.

[12:45:01]

And the second was when he said he was pulling back from the initial threat to hit power and energy infrastructure in Iran and potentially starting negotiations, it was Hegseth who was like disappointed and bummed out that they weren't going to continue. Like that's the -- I think the President's telling you what's happening as is reflected in their story. It is a reality here that he is all gas, no brakes. And I think that's a very, very different and potentially very risky proposition for a defense secretary.

RAJU: And just listen to his messaging, Hegseth's messaging about how he's talked about this war over the last several weeks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEGSETH: Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle. Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.

May his almighty and eternal arms of providence stretch over them and protect them and bring them peace in the name of Jesus Christ. And amen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Yes, that was the comments about how he's invoked Jesus and Christianity, which has gotten some pushback from the Pope.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Yes. And I don't know how many people are looking to Hegseth for, you know, spiritual leadership, but that's neither here nor there. I think it's interesting that he is a cheerleader and he's doing what Trump wants him to do, but he is not selling this to the American people very well. And the polls show that.

And so I wonder what this means for Hegseth's future after Trump, there will be an after Trump. And, like, if the people, if the public is not supportive of this, what does this mean for you when you have to answer for this in the future?

RAJU: Yes, no question about it. And while this has all happened, he's become caricatured on Saturday Night Live by Colin Jost multiple times, including this from just a couple of weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN JOST, COMEDIAN: To quote my personal hero, Papa Roach, cut Iran into pieces, make it a Trump resort. We're giving Iran a third degree purple nurple. All right? And we've torpedoed their ship so bad, their Navy is going to be singing on the sea.

You all playing chess. I'm playing Grand Theft Auto, OK?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: It's not a terrible impression, actually.

HOLMES: Look, one of the people in the story told us that President Trump likes how enthusiastic he is, how unapologetic he is and patriotic. And I think Colin Jost does the job of capturing some of that part of Hegseth in that.

RAJU: Yes. I would say enthusiasm.

MATTINGLY: As a Midwestern here, Manu, you identify with the Papa Roach stuff.

RAJU: Yes, of course.

MATTINGLY: You were like of our era, like, you were into that generationally. I think, one, there's always like these breakthrough Saturday Night Live impressions that you will remember forever. That is certainly one of them. And two, it is so exactly how he is, except sometimes, especially in recent ones, I've been convinced he's actually trying to amp up or one up Colin Jost --

RAJU: Yes, exactly. That's actually reserved --

MATTINGLY: Yes.

RAJU: -- for the next step in some ways.

All right, coming up for us, a gold escalator and a gold statue. We're getting a look at the proposal for Trump's presidential library.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:52:39]

RAJU: We're getting our first look at what President Trump's presidential library could look like. The President posted the video on social media showing renderings of a skyscraper in Miami with no surprise Trump's name on it. Inside the building, there's a golden escalator like the one Trump descended to announce his presidential run in 2015.

An Air Force One plane, perhaps the one he got as a gift from the country of Qatar. There are replicas of the presidential walk of fame. Trump's planned White House ballroom and the Oval Office. There's also an auditorium that features a very large gold statue of Trump raising his fist, capturing the President moments after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. It's not clear if the renderings represent final plans for the library.

My panel is back. So this is what the statue looks like of the gold statue of Trump in the auditorium raising his fist. You can see there on your screen.

Kristen Holmes, perhaps no surprise?

HOLMES: Well, no, none of it's a surprise, but I don't know if he's ever been to Miami during like the windy season. And like that building is two buildings taller than everything else in Miami, according to the rendering. Like there -- like I would be scared just in a normal size building in Miami for the windows rattling. Like, I think they need to rethink the size of that just based on where it is --

RAJU: I mean, it's massive.

RASCOE: And we're all, you know, we were just talking about, you know, Pete Hegseth and Jesus in the Bible. But I mean, they always forget about those golden statues, which you're not supposed to, you know, do. They have like some negative connotations in the Bible, the whole like golden statue thing.

RAJU: Just to compare what that looks like, that building looks like compared to other presidential libraries, this is the new Obama Presidential Center opening up in Chicago, the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, Bill Clinton's Arkansas Library, JFK's in Boston, and Abe Lincoln's Presidential Library, which is an excellent, excellent museum, by the way, in Springfield, Illinois.

Phil, how do you assess the Trump Library compared to these?

MATTINGLY: Bigger, gaudier --

RAJU: Golder.

MATTINGLY: Golder, gaudier, more hypothetical-er at this point. Look, I think my expectation to the extent I've ever thought about it before this exact moment, which was actually never happened, was that it would probably look exactly like that on some level.

[12:55:02]

I think the most fascinating thing for me is like none of us are surprised by the fact that like this is stuff that he has time to pay attention to. And I don't know that this was something he was focusing on intently, but like the ballroom stuff on Air Force One, pulling out the new rendering as everybody's like so, you know, like the Strait of Hormuz is closed --

RAJU: Yes.

MATTINGLY: -- what's the deal with, are we going to deploy ground troops? He's like, hang on, let me show you the rendering of the ballroom, and by the way, there's a secret underground lair of sorts.

RAJU: Yes.

MATTINGLY: That to me is remarkable, and I understand he moves a million miles an hour and can do a million things at once, but I -- like, that at some point, like in any other world --

RAJU: Yes.

MATTINGLY: -- every Republican who's running in the midterms would look at that and go, you've got to be kidding me right now.

RAJU: Yes, exactly. Could you imagine -- again, could you imagine if Joe Biden announced his presidential library in the middle of a war with a gold statue of himself? I think Republicans may have something to say about that perhaps.

MATTINGLY: No, they won't. You're going to chase them around the hallways, and they will have nothing to say to you about it.

RAJU: Well, not about Trump, but I'm thinking about Biden.

MATTINGLY: Oh, yes.

RAJU: Yes, yes, yes, of course.

All right. Well, thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a very quick break.

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