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Inside Politics

Jobs Growth Blows Past Expectations, 172K Jobs Added In May; Trump Travels To Toss-Up District In WI To Visit With Farmers; Senate GOP Beats Internal Revolt To Pass $70B ICE Funding Bill; California's Slow Counting Sparks Baseless Fraud Claims; Rabbi Eli Schlanger Co- Wrote A Book On Navigating Life's Hardest Moments Before He Was Murdered At Bondi Beach. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 05, 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]

JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, that is concerning to the White House, but to Zolan's point, yes, of course it's going to -- I mean, it's going to be determined if Trump stays on message, but this is a perfect snapshot of a White House, of a day for the White House.

You have good jobs numbers, you have Kevin Hassett going out on TV to talk about it, and then you have Donald Trump reinforcing that idea, I mean, the strategists in the White House couldn't have planned it better. The question is whether or not it relates to people and whether or not they feel it.

I think in talking to Republicans over the course of the last two months, they've continued to say something in private, which is that if the economic situation gets better, they can see a better outcome for them in November in tandem with redistricting. And so you're kind of seeing at least some little seeds of that happening right now.

The question is whether or not that continues through November and whether or not those gas prices, as the President has said --

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

WRIGHT: -- continue to go down and kind of all of these things fall into place come September. A big question mark, but at least the way that it looks right now, I'm sure the people at the White House are a little bit excited.

BASH: Yes, I mean, and they should be, and Americans should be excited because when economic news is good on data, that's always, always a good thing. Again, it's the question about how long it takes for people to actually feel that because of all the reasons we know.

Let's drill down on the House district that the President is visiting today. It is Derrick Van Orden. He is obviously a Republican. In 2024, he won, but it was close. He won by 51 percentage points. His Democratic opponent, 49 percent. That's Rebecca Cooke.

It is a rematch this year in the 2026 midterms. Listen to what Rebecca Cooke told our colleague Jeff Zeleny ahead of this Trump visit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REBECCA COOKE (D), WISCONSIN HOUSE CANDIDATE: People are not looking for handouts at the other end of tariffs. Farmers just want stable marketplaces to be able to feed the world. And they're not looking for government handouts. So I feel like it's sort of a slap in the face to come here to talk about all the things that, you know, these coastal elites have passed that have actually been really a detriment to family farmers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: It's interesting that he's going to this Wisconsin district, but I kind of view it as a bigger thing than this single district in Wisconsin. This is about districts in neighboring Iowa, which are going to be very important to the battle for the House.

This is also to some extent about the Iowa Senate race, where Democrats got the candidate that they wanted in the primaries on Tuesday. And Trump's ability to speak to these concerns about farmers, which I don't think we fully understand. You know, Zolan was talking about this.

The tariffs hit farmers very hard. We haven't seen a lot of polling in some of these areas, so we don't know kind of how much that's affected things. But if that is a big factor, you know, it's not that long ago that Iowa was the swing state.

Wisconsin has been very competitive for a long time. So how the Republicans do in this area of the country is going to say a lot about how this midterm shakes out.

BASH: Let's switch gears and talk about the all-nighter that you polled, I assume, with the senators you cover, because they were voting all night long on an immigration and ICE funding bill, which eventually passed. The drama came in some of the votes that happened along the way, especially on the vote to ban ballroom funding and also on a bill -- an amendment to bar DOJ payouts to January 6 rioters who assaulted the police.

I'm going to put some interesting sort of names on the screen. Let's just start with the ballroom funding. And it shows you -- let's look at the first senator there, Susan Collins. The second one, Jon Husted. And then if you look two to the right, Dan Sullivan. What those have in common -- these are Republicans who voted to ban ballroom funding -- is that they are all in tough races in order to keep the Senate.

Now fast forward to the weaponization fund. It's the same people. You just got to add one, and that is Ashley Moody, which is kind of interesting because she's from a Southern Republican state.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly, and this was the Republican amendment. Democrats didn't vote for that one, but there was an amendment that was first out of the gate that took three and a half hours --

BASH: Yes.

FOX: -- for Republican leaders to wrestle. And part of the dynamic was that Senator Dan Sullivan ended up wanting to vote with Democrats on this issue because he's up for reelection in the state of Alaska. He's facing a tough reelection, and they basically had to talk Senator Bill Cassidy, who just lost his very bitter primary in the state of Louisiana, into getting on the team at a moment when he doesn't really feel like the team was behind him in this primary.

So you can guess how long that took, about three and a half hours yesterday. But it just goes to show you that Republicans want to be on the record as having some distance from Donald Trump --

BASH: Exactly.

FOX: -- on some of these issues because they would much rather be talking about lowering gas prices or dealing with making things more affordable for Americans.

BASH: All right, everybody stand by. California's two marquee races for governor and L.A. mayor are tightening as the votes are still being counted. It is slow, and there are lots of outstanding ballots.

[12:35:10]

The weeks-long lag time between Election Day and final results is sparking unfounded conspiracies already on the right. We're going to tell you about that after a break.

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BASH: We still don't know who the top two finishers will be in California's governor's race or in the Los Angeles mayor's race.

[12:40:03]

California officials for years decided that making it easier for voters to vote by mail up to the last minute is worth the cost of a much slower counting process. Across the right-wing mediasphere, the lag time can, of course, only mean one thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESSE WATTERS, FOX HOST: I can't prove it, but everybody watching thinks there's shenanigans when it takes this long and Pratt and Hilton keep losing.

GREG GUTFELD, FOX HOST: They said it's going to take weeks to count? You know what that means.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, shenanigans.

GUTFELD: Shenanigans. SEN. ERIC SCHMITT (R), MISSOURI: You look at what's happening in California, their election regime now is destroying trust in our election system.

REP. RANDY FINE (R), FLORIDA: They absolutely have the capability to cheat. They have designed a system that is designed to cheat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And I just want to underscore for the people maybe listening and not watching what it says on our screen that these are baseless fraud claims. And the question is, how are California officials dealing with that? Well, the current governor, Gavin Newsom, just let CNN's own Elex Michaelson explain it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: Right now, about 80 percent of voters return their ballots by mail. Each one of them has to go through a signature verification process. L.A. County alone has 5.9 million registered voters, which is more voters than 41 other states.

So there's a lot of vote by mail. There's a lot of steps to prevent fraud. And all that takes a lot of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I mean, it's expected. We knew that those baseless claims, let's just keep calling it that, would come. The question is, what is going to happen ultimately when we get the results? When will we get the results? And, I mean, we don't know if it could be ultimately in either or both of these races, a Democrat and a Republican or two Democrats.

BLAKE: I was really struck by a social media post from Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, who was not a big election denier after the 2020 election --

BASH: We can put it up and you can read it since you have it.

BLAKE: Yes, and so this was a guy who kind of kept that at arm's length. And he had a post where he said basically like, oh, does California just count until they get the result that they want?

BASH: He said, "California keeps dumping boats. Odds are shifting because the boat dumps always seem to go one way. Count until you get the result you want." Again, that is not based on anything that's actually happening. It is this the way that they are counting tends -- it tends to work out this way.

For whatever reason, the Republican votes tend to be voted -- counted earlier. I mean, maybe we have more of a reason than I'm explaining now, but that is what happens in California time and time again in election after election. And it changes as they get more of the ballots in and counted. BLAKE: And part of the reason is that Donald Trump has spent years discouraging Republicans from returning mail ballots. And so when you're counting these mail ballots late, they tend to be more Democratic leaning.

I just think it's worth underscoring how much their seeding suspicion, these conservative media personalities, Republican politicians, it's become very commonplace for them to at least play footsie with the idea that there's something untoward that's happening here, regardless of how much evidence there is. And there is a real cost for that.

You know, we saw on January 6, 2021, what can happen when a large number of people come to believe that the elections cannot be trusted. And so I think we're just kind of in a situation where this is the new normal, but it is a very dangerous new normal.

BASH: Which is why we are doing this right now --

BLAKE: Yes.

BASH: -- and calling it out, not just because of what it means for this race, but as you kind of suggested there, what it means for what we're going to potentially see this November.

WRIGHT: Yes, and obviously you heard the President yesterday in the Oval Office, again, repeating this idea that California is rife with fraud, and that's why you're seeing all these vote totals, again, not backed by reality. I did think it was interesting that we saw the SAVE America Act vote come up for a vote this week, as this is all going on, and you saw multiple Republican senators not vote for it.

Just, again, looking at this whole apparatus of the President trying to stop Americans from voting by mail, trying to put it in legislation, obviously, it doesn't have real legs on Capitol Hill. Looking at the extension of his power in that way and how, you know, people, influencers, may play footsie with it, but when it comes to real legislation, that's not moving.

BASH: Yes. All right, everybody, we're going to have to take a break. Thank you so much.

Coming up, he taught people how to find faith, but then he was murdered because of his faith. And yet he left behind lessons of hope and resilience in a book he was just finishing before he was killed. Our Have a Little Faith series is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:49:31]

BASH: Nearly six months ago, terrorists attacked a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, killing 15 people. In the wake of such staggering hate and loss, a question echoed far beyond Bondi Beach -- how do you keep believing when the unthinkable happens? In today's edition of Have a Little Faith, we get insight from the words of Rabbi Eli, excuse me, Eli Schlanger, who was murdered in that very attack.

[12:50:01]

At the time, he was putting the finishing touches on a book with his friend Nikki Goldstein. It's titled, "Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World." And Nikki joins me now.

Thank you so much for being here. I mean, it is extraordinary on so many levels, Nikki, but before we get to the rabbi's poignant words, can you describe the remarkable way that you met in an ICU and you were in a coma?

NIKKI GOLDSTEIN, CO-AUTHOR, "CONVERSATIONS WITH MY RABBI: TIMELESS TEACHINGS FOR A FRACTURED WORLD": Yes, that's right. I've been managing chronic lung disease for about 10 years, and then it started managing me, and I got a very bad pneumonia and ended up in the ICU, and things went pear-shaped pretty quickly. And the head of the ICU came to me one morning and he said, if we don't put you into an induced coma, you're going to be dead in about an hour, which kind of focuses the mind.

So I went under, and from there, we went -- everything went blank for me, but my husband and my daughter were keeping a bedside vigil. And my daughter looked up while she was kind of crying, and she saw a very fast-moving man walking through the ICU, and she nudged her father and she said, "Dad, is that a rabbi?" And my husband just legged it over to him, called out and said, "rabbi," not being very sure, because he's not Jewish, if this was indeed a rabbi. And at that moment, Rabbi Eli Schlanger turned around.

BASH: And at that point, I mean, obviously you were in a coma, and you can tell us briefly what happened afterwards, but you were a non- observant Jew. He was an Orthodox rabbi. And the idea was you ask the rabbi a question, and Rabbi Eli answers.

Here's an example of what followed and what you wrote in this book. Nikki, you wrote, "If God is everywhere in the universe, why can't we see him?" Rabbi Eli, "We're playing hide-and-seek. God hides -- not to punish us, on the contrary. He hides to give us the joy of discovery, like a parent hiding behind a tree so their child can find them and squeal with delight. That moment of reunion is powerful. That's what God wants, not robotic belief, but eager, willing connection."

Now, during those conversations, you were skeptical of what Rabbi Eli was saying.

GOLDSTEIN: No, that's right. I wasn't brought up in a religious household at all, and I had literally no understanding of Judaism. And Eli made an invitation to me. In fact, when I was out of the coma and sitting in a hospital ward, he came to my bedside and he told me that it was his dream to write a book.

And over the next year or so, he persuaded me that this was a good idea. And we started having these phenomenal conversations about God and that those conversations, a little bit of what you just read there, started to make an invitation to me to explore my Judaism in a way that I never had before.

BASH: And I want to put up a photo of you and Rabbi Eli celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. It's almost an unbearable cruelty at the heart of this tragedy because you were on the final chapter of the book that he wanted to write that lists these questions and his answers.

And when you were in that final part of writing the book, the rabbi was gunned down at Bondi Beach by anti-Semitic terrorists. And he was openly celebrating his faith on the first night of Hanukkah. Did it put all of these questions about faith and your faith back in the fore, or were you able to draw on what he had told you before he was murdered in a way that perhaps you hadn't thought of before?

GOLDSTEIN: Oh, I absolutely drew on his faith in order to complete this task. He had said to me many times that the book was very important, and he wanted an antidote to anti-Semitism, not something that cast Jews as victims, although indeed it's ironic that he was one. He wanted something positive to put into the world.

So after he was murdered, I really drew on the conversations that we had had and many hours of phone calls and thousands of words. And after he was murdered, it became even more urgent for me to share his words with the world.

BASH: And real quick, the rabbi was deeply aware, and you mentioned this, of rising anti-Semitism, which ultimately took his life, but he didn't want to live in fear. If he were here today, what would he say to people struggling to have a little faith?

[12:55:14]

GOLDSTEIN: Well, the first thing he would have said to the Jewish world is be an out and proud Jew. Don't be afraid, don't cower, don't hide, be fully who you are. But I think Eli's message really extends beyond the Jewish community.

He was a man who woke up in the morning and thought about what kind of good he could do that day and then went to bed that night wondering if he'd done enough. So I think the book is essentially about hope and about goodness, and he was a perfect example of that. And he would have been the first person to say he wasn't a saint, but I don't think you meet somebody very often who is just completely committed to doing good, and that's who he was.

BASH: Nikki Goldstein, thank you so much for coming on and sharing this book. It is such a great testament to a man, as you said, who tried to live in good ways, and it does absolutely have a message far beyond any one particular religion.

Thank you again.

GOLDSTEIN: Thank you, Dana (ph). BASH: And thank you for watching Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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