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Inside Politics

Trump Abruptly Cancels Bill Signing For Bipartisan Housing Bill; Trump Shocks GOP, Says He Won't Sign Bipartisan Housing Bill; Democratic Socialists Flex Power With Big Wins In NY Primaries; All Three Mamdani-Backed Candidates Win House Primaries; New York Results Highlight Democratic Split Over Israel; Suozzi Tells Moderate Dems To "Wake Up" After Mamdani Wins. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 24, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Republicans were cruising toward a big election year legislative victory, but President Trump just hit the brakes.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

"This is why we can't have nice things." It's a message I got from an exasperated senior Republican congressional aide after President Trump abruptly announced he will not sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill that Congress passed overwhelmingly yesterday. Here's what the president said, quote, today's housing news conference and signing is hereby canceled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE America Act, which I consider to be a national emergency.

Now, the president really pulled the rug out from under Republicans at the very moment GOP leaders were celebrating what they thought was about to be a big GOP victory, a presidential signing ceremony.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. FRENCH HILL (R-AR): Let's show the American people what legislating looks like. Let's show the American people how you bring together and do something on a bicameral basis. And we did that, and we did that in conjunction with President Trump and his priorities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Again, that was at the almost exact same moment President Trump posted that he's not signing that very bill that the chairman said shows what legislating looks like. Here's House Speaker Mike Johnson at that same press conference a few minutes later.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the process of this press conference, President Trump announced that he is canceling the bill signing for the housing bill that you all were just talking about. What's your reaction? REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Yeah. My reaction is the truth of the matter. I spoke to the president for 20 minutes before I went in and gave that rousing speech to the House Republicans this morning. He and I have talked about this a lot. He has expressed his priority and the preference of the SAVE America Act.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Johnson claims President Trump told him in that call this morning that he was going to cancel the signing. Let's get straight to Manu Raju on Capitol Hill. Wow, Manu.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, completely blindsiding Republican leaders, particularly here in the Senate. The Senate Major Leader John Thune had no idea that the president would essentially cancel what was expected to be a victory lap. The Republicans have been pleading with the president to focus on an affordability agenda, and they just passed this bill with massive bipartisan majorities in the House and the Senate.

They wanted to go and tout their efforts to reduce housing costs, and just moments ago, that announcement by the president, catching the Republican leaders off guard. I just talked to John Thune himself.

A moments ago, I asked him, did the president make a mistake by canceling the signing ceremony and making these demands on the SAVE America Act? He said, I mean, that was his call to make, and he went on to tout that housing bill that has been worked on for a long time. He called it a great piece of legislation. He said it addresses it's a quote in affordability issue. And he said, quote, I eventually hope he'll find his way to sign it.

So, expect that to be a big part of the discussion that is still expected to happen behind closed doors. Trump has been making this case for months for the Senate to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, but they have tried repeatedly in the Senate to do that, and they simply just do not have the votes to pass it.

John Thune has made that case to the president directly. He has said that publicly. Other Republican senators have said that. Trump has come back and said, well, just do away with the filibuster and try to pass along straight party lines, but Thune does not have the votes to get rid of the filibuster. That is a second problem that the Senate Republican leader has.

Meantime, the speaker of the House says that they may try to roll this into the budget process to pass the SAVE America Act along straight party lines. But here's another problem, doing that would run afoul, very likely, in the Senate's very strict budget rules. So, there is really no way to get this bill to the president's desk. And meantime the legislative agenda has been completely stymied, a key surveillance law, the spying powers have been turned off, the position for the Director of National Intelligence is not filled on a permanent basis because of the president's demands.

So, the question here, Dana, is amid this turmoil between the Senate GOP and President Trump, will anything change when he be meets behind closed doors? Will he berate those GOP senators? Will they convince him that his push is not actually going to succeed? All big questions in a matter of moments. We'll see what happens behind closed doors, Dana.

[12:05:00]

BASH: Yeah. And you can see all the activity behind, Manu, that is because the president is still expected to be up there despite saying, he's not going to sign this bill. Manu, thank you so much. Let us know if you hear anything else. I'm here with a terrific group of reporters. Let me just bottom line this, because there's so much drama in what happened. But taking a step back, what the president is doing is saying, I care so much about this legislation that he wants to be put in place about voting to make it harder to vote and having to do with a whole bunch of other restrictions.

I should say, he thinks it's about cleaning it up, but there are lots of debates on that. He cares so much about that, that the number one issue for voters, which is affordability, and housing is a huge part of that. He's willing to sacrifice that, despite a big bipartisan vote.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR AND WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Dana, I mean, I would just ask you to do this. Look at the bipartisan numbers in the House and the Senate that this legislation passed with overwhelmingly, right? How often does that happen? When do we see both parties coming together to address a major concern of voters and actually pass something that you just --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Yesterday on the show, we talked about this breaking news.

CHALIAN: Yeah, exactly.

BASH: Exactly. You're putting up some of these specifics.

CHALIAN: So, look, this doesn't happen anymore in our politics. There is nobody you talk to that I've talked to on the Republican side or Democratic side that just didn't see this as a huge win for all these members to go out and sell on the campaign trail. And you are right, Donald Trump is saying, you don't get that win to go sell this on the campaign trail, at least not yet until I get to hammer away at this bill that I keep being told, I don't have the votes to actually pass.

BASH: Yeah. And on that bill, the SAVE America Act. This is one example of a Republican who is in a tough race, Senator Jon Husted. He is from Ohio. And he said to CNN today, the SAVE America Act is very important. I voted for it six times. The Housing Act is also very important. I did my job, and I got this housing bill passed, and I'm confident that the president will sign the bill eventually. We'll just continue to work with him to get that done.

ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER AT PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Well, the blind siding just doesn't stop of Senate Republican leaders, because when the president put this announcement out on Truth Social, Senate Majority Leader John Thune was speaking on the Senate floor about this very issue, getting ready to walk across the Capitol to Statuary Hall for that signing ceremony, where everything was still set up, the presidential podium, the desk where he signs legislation, and then the rug was pulled out from under them.

Once again, this happened, of course, with the Jay Clayton nomination for Director of National Intelligence, and Senate Republican leaders were already going into this meeting today with Donald Trump. I'm pretty nervous about it, to be honest with you, because they expected a berating from President Trump. They didn't know which of their members would be -- would have enough courage to speak up and essentially say, Mr. President, not only does your push not have the votes, but it's undermining us politically.

And I want to underscore a message that I got from a senior Senate Republican aide here, who said, quote, never in my lifetime have I seen a president so deliberately attempt to lose majorities for his own party. That's how they feel about this right now.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yeah. I mean, President Trump is clearly very frustrated with the Senate. We reported that last week. One person close with both President Trump and John Thune described it as, we take two steps forward but then keep having to check to see if there are any landmines around. This is very clearly a landmine.

When you talk to White House officials, they say that President Trump's main priorities are the SAVE America Act, getting rid of the Senate parliamentarian who he feels is in the way of getting past some of these big bills that he wants to do, and that blue slit process when it comes to judges. Nowhere in those three things I listed is this housing bill, and so I think you're seeing the president say --

BASH: For any kind of affordability economically.

WRIGHT: For any kind of affordability, obviously the one thing that voters are worried about. And so, I think you're seeing the president say, I'm going to twist the knife to try to get something that I want, and you're seeing Republicans say, we don't have it, and I don't know how that exactly ends with unless one of them basically backs down, and I don't think you're going to see President Trump do that immediately.

BASH: And if you just sort of put a finer point on the bipartisanship, we had the big vote, but the lead sponsors of this were Tim Scott, who actually bumped into on Capitol Hill yesterday, and he was over the moon, understandably so, because they got such a big vote. And they said -- he said that they had other bits of bipartisan legislation on the economy coming, and Elizabeth Warren. So, Tim Scott, Elizabeth Warren. Listen to what Elizabeth Warren said about this presidential move.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): It's a complete indifference to the cost squeeze on American families, and to genuine efforts to do something about it. You know, he could be over here, trying to claim a victory lap, and instead he's saying no, no, he doesn't want anything to do with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:00]

CHALIAN: And I'm not sure who President Trump thinks he's screwing in this, or you know, like, who does he think like he is needling in a way that is going to produce a result that he wants. He tried this on the SAVE Act with the Texas Senate endorsement. Remember the whole scheme that Ken Paxton was like, hey, I'll bow out of this, I'll make the Republican establishment nightmares go away. Cornyn will be, as long as you pass the SAVE Act, get rid of the filibuster.

And again, the math isn't there. And I just don't -- what I don't understand is from Donald Trump's point of view, I get the priority nature of the SAVE America Act. I know he believes that is going to help maintain majorities for him in the Congress --

BASH: Because it changed the way people vote.

CHALIAN: -- because it will change the way people vote, but --

WRIGHT: Where it changes who can vote.

CHALIAN: -- and by the way, I'm not sure he's right about that. I'm not sure that he's right about that, but I'm just saying that that's his thinking. But I don't understand how he doesn't see this getting in his ultimate own way.

BASH: I mean, you know this, because you cover him every day. Also, the answer is because he is so sure of the power that he has of persuasion that he feels that he can make this work, and clearly nobody can convince him otherwise, despite the facts and the numbers that you just described.

OK, up next. Can Mayor Mamdani's Democratic socialist hat trick travel beyond the five boroughs? Plus, we'll talk to the man behind three of the last -- of last night's primary wins and Mamdani's rise to Gracie Mansion. Strategist Morris Katz will join me live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is flexing his political muscle in a way Democrats nationwide can't ignore. Three endorsements, three like-minded candidates, three wins. Darializa Avila Chevalier toppled five-term incumbent congressman and chair of the Hispanic caucus in Congress, Adriano Espaillat. Claire Valdez beat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, and Brad Lander defeated another incumbent congressman, Democrat Dan Goldman. It is a sign that Mamdani's brand of democratic socialism is on the rise, or is it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARIALIZA AVILA CHEVALIER, (D) NEW YORK CONG. CANDIDATE: The establishment regime has done everything in his power to keep our community from having a seat at the table, we'll have some bad news for them. We brought folding chairs.

CLAIRE VALDEZ, (D) NEW YORK CONG. CANDIDATE: Solidarity forever, abolish ICE, free Palestine, organize your union, and join DSA.

BRAD LANDER, (D) NEW YORK CONG. CANDIDATE: When I launched this race, I said it wasn't progressives versus moderates, I said it's fighters versus folders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And our panel is back now. It's a little hard to hear, Chevalier. So, I'll tell you what she said. The establishment machine has done everything in its power to keep our community from having a seat at the table. While I have some bad news for them, we brought a folding chair. David Chalian, I'm eager for this. Your big picture takeaway from last night.

CHALIAN: I mean, I think there's no doubt that the Democratic socialists' wing of the Democratic Party is on the rise in New York City. I mean, I think we saw it with Mamdani's election last November. And he did do something risky here politically and put a lot of his effort into getting these three members elected.

Now, we'll see if there's a blowback for him politically because when you play politics like that, and it's a huge successful night for him. I'm not taking that away, but you know, there are repercussions now, right? I mean, he has to work. Nydia Velazquez is still staying in Congress through the rest of this year. He has to work with some people who now may not feel very inclined to help out Mayor Mamdani and his needs with the federal government, his relationship with Hakeem Jeffries. He'll have to work on all of that, given that he ousted two incumbents, you noted one, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

But I do think the big question out of this is, where is this translatable nationally? Where is this? Can we look at this and say the Democratic Party is moving left in America, and that is going to cause them problems in the general election. The answer is, I don't know that we know that. I think we'll find that out in Michigan in a Senate race there this summer, that will have more general election consequences.

And I'll just say this, Dana, think back to 2018, eight years ago, AOC. She comes on the scene, she defeats Joe Crowley, right, and it's a -- and I remember a lot of commentary around. The Bernie Sanders wing is on the rise in this party. And then Joe Biden won the presidential nomination the next day. So, I don't know that we know yet how this will play out in Purple America.

BASH: What we do know unmistakably is that the passion in the Democratic Party is there, and the passion that drives people to actually do what they need, which is go out and vote in there is there. It was a small percentage. I mean, they didn't have -- just like AOC back then. They don't have to win with a big percentage of the vote when you're talking about a Democratic primary electorate even in New York City, Democratic socialist lawmakers.

Yes, we talked about the three -- well, two and a half, I guess, that won last night in New York because they're Democratic districts. They're almost certainly going to be the lawmakers.

[12:20:00]

But if you look across beyond New York, you have Zohran Mamdani, of course, by me, the most famous. You do have Katie Wilson across the country in Seattle, also here in D.C. I would -- will say that there -- well, let me get to that in a second. House members, AOC, Rashida Tlaib, gubernatorial candidates, you have Francesca Hong in Wisconsin.

And this is what I was going to get to here in D.C., Janeese Lewis George is a Democratic socialist. She won the primary, which means she's almost certainly going to be the mayor of D.C. Nithya Raman is running against the incumbent Karen Bass in L.A. She is a Democratic socialist. And then the candidates who won last night, and then you also have Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania.

So, if you look at the totality of lawmakers on every level across the country in the Democratic Party, that is definitely a small percentage, but they're loud and they are aggressive and they get their popular across the country and they get a lot of attention.

WRIGHT: I mean, I think this is the manifestation of what you're seeing of when people feel that their political party does not represent them and does not fight for them, and that has been a through line of the Democratic feeling, not since 2024 but even before then. I mean, you have people consistently complaining to leadership about the fact that they don't feel that they are really engaging in these fights, not just with Donald Trump, but across the country.

And so, you're seeing that insurgency that perhaps put Donald Trump back into the White House, fueling some of this rise on the left of the Democratic Party. And you can even look, you know, down the level. I think Dayton, Ohio's mayor is technically DSA. Summer Lee, she's not technically DSA, but she aligns with them in Pittsburgh.

And so, you are seeing it fan out across the country. Yes, I think the question of whether or not it goes beyond that is a huge one. We talked to a bunch of Democratic strategists last night, they also don't know the answer to that. But you're seeing that insurgency across the country on both sides of the country fuel this. And I think that that is something that Democrats in the establishment have to be really concerned about, just writ large.

BASH: Yeah. And so, in New York, in these races, the through line and the dividing line unmistakably was support for Israel, and that was something that was talked about much more openly than Zohran Mamdani did when he was running on affordability, and this was also a topic that divided the people who were considering voting for him.

But this morning, in the aftermath of his wins, he kept his comments specifically and directly on the issue of affordability. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I, you know, I'm very proud to represent the most Jewish congressional district in America, or to hopefully --

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI, (D-NY): Hungry for a new kind of politics. They are hungry for a politics that understands working people should be at the heart of it. And they're hungry for a politics that looks at the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and understands that it's unacceptable that one in four are living in poverty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DESIDERIO: Well, look, you talk about affordability, you talk about Israel, you talk about all these other issues that Democrats are litigating right now in these primaries. I think it's more a question of 2028 for the party, because they're going to have to figure out what the direction is in terms of their presidential nominee. In the immediate term, what they tell me for 2026 is that they're just capitalizing on the backlash to Republicans, the backlash to Donald Trump, his really low -- historically low approval numbers.

So, most Democrats, they don't want to have this conversation yet, this discussion yet, but it's coming and it's coming very soon. And one thing I'll note about New York too is that the top House Democrat and the top Senate Democrat are both from New York. Chuck Schumer has a decision to make. Is he going to run for re-election in 2028? If he does, he will very likely have primary challengers from the left, possibly even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

BASH: And you're right, the big, most important question is, what it means for 2028. I think Hakeem Jeffries is looking at what it means for 20 -- January of 2027 if he does become speaker, because it's going to make his job interesting, paging Kevin McCarthy, much more on the Democratic Party results. And what it means when we come back, including a new call to action from a moderate New York Democratic congressman. We'll tell you who it is and what he said after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: While many on the left celebrate Mayor Mamdani's primary sweep last night, some moderate Democrats see it as a wake-up call. New York Congressman Tom Suozzi told me the following this morning. People who do not support the Democratic Socialists of America wring their hands at cocktail parties, while the DSA is organizing. It's time to wake up. Economic insecurity, climate change and immigrant injustice are all real problems, and alternative solutions must be offered. It's time for a great deal of hard work to out organize the extremists on the right and the left.

My panel is back now. He knows the passion is on the left, the organizing is on the left and has been for years. The question is whether or not there is a future sort of Biden type of win in a primary largely, or whether or not the moderates can overcome where the passion is right now in the party?

[12:30:00]