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Inside Politics

Inflation Cools Slightly, But Gas Prices Rise With 82 Days To Midterms; Mike Rogers Promises Shop Classes In High Schools In MI Senate Race; Abdul El-Sayed Drops Sanders, AOC References In Campaign Ad; Kennedy Center Board Meets To Consider Renovation Options; Trump Sued Over Paid Access To Truth Social Posts; Truth Social's Early Access Offer Prompt Federal Lawsuit. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 13, 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: The midterms just got a fresh dose of inflation, not ideal for the party trying to keep control of Congress.

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

Brand new inflation numbers out today show signs, price pressures are easing, but only at the margins. Wholesale prices, what producers charge before those costs reach consumers, rose 4.7 percent over the past year. That's still incredibly high, but it is a slowdown from the 5.5 percent we saw in June. With just 82 days until the midterms, these new numbers raise crucial political questions. Will even modest relief reach voters before they get their ballots? And will a slight improvement in inflation matter if Americans' paychecks still can't keep up?

There's also a giant number that voters see pretty much every day, and they pay at least -- at least that and that is the price of gas. This is the first time it's topped $4 this late in the year, and with so much uncertainty surrounding the war in Iran, that number could look very different by Election Day, potentially shifting the political map.

I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here. Nia, I'm going to start with you. I mean, we have known and will continue to know that the economy affordability is top of the list. There's only so much that any president can do, but the fact that the Iran war is still very much impacting the way that people have to pay for gas and many other things is something that the voters are not happy about.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST AND CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: They're not happy, and they understand, right? They directly understand that Donald Trump's decision to go to war in Iran is impacting the price that they pay at the pump, the price that they pay if they want to fly somewhere on vacation. They also understand that his tariff policy has also impacted the price they're paying to get their kids school supplies to go back to school or whatever it is, and you can't change that, right?

It has been months and months and months that this war has gone on. It's almost like Groundhog Day to listen to the president talk about it. Oh, it's about to end and a deal, and oh, maybe not a deal. So, it's a problem for Republicans, and so their challenge is how do you go to the voters and explain what's going on? How do you say, you know, in some ways your reality isn't your reality, right, and relief is on the way.

And so, this is a real issue, and I don't think it's -- you can't change it. You know, some of this stuff is just baked into the reality, and that is partly what Republicans are hoping that Americans are just so used to it that these sort of price shocks have gone on for the last many years that voters are just used to it and won't necessarily blame Republicans.

BASH: You just came back from Wisconsin. Welcome back.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Thank you. And I will have this to say on gas. In Wisconsin, it is under $4. So, in some swing states, it's not as high as the national average, which of course is inflated by New York and California. But I drove past a $4.03 one and found a $3.89 cent one, and there was a long line there. So, I mean, the reality here is gas certainly is a billboard. It is probably one of the most important billboards and campaign signs of this campaign. There's no doubt.

But I think the only thing that is really going down is the price of a lettuce, because of a variety of other issues and it is. It really is going down, but that's for because of the cyclospora incident. But look --

BASH: I will tell you that in my -- in my household that is definitely a budget item that has erased. You know, I can tell you from personal experience, you're right.

ZELENY: And the cost of cheese curds is the same, which we loved in Wisconsin. But look, the bottom line is, when I talk to voters out there, I mean, yes, there is a concern about the cost of things. The affordability message is still the driving one, but I think even more than that. On the Iran war, I mean, I still run into voters who aren't sure what it was about.

I mean -- and this, I think, is just really a hangover effect of the president never really articulating the case for why it was necessary. Yes, he talked about Iran having a nuclear weapon, but I'm not sure that really broke through. So, I think there's just sort of this malaise in that respect. But the bottom line is, the stock market has still performed very well, and people talk about that as well.

So, I'm not sure at the end of the day the affordability message is going to be the only thing that Democrats are hoping on here. I mean, they're hoping on just a -- just a general sense of we want change, and the change is the driving argument, and the Republican Party just happens to be in power now.

[12:05:00]

BASH: OK. So, we are now very much in general election phase in a lot of these key races, most of them actually. And I want to drill down on Michigan because you asked the question, what are Republicans going to say? Mike Rogers, who is the Republican nominee for Senate in Michigan has a very specific economic message. Watch this ad.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: Jobs AI can't eliminate and China can't steal.

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That is exactly what every Republican messenger needs to be communicating in this midterm cycle. It is a very simple message. It's digestible, and it's going to resonate with voters. Similarly, on El-Sayed's side, you are seeing him talk about bringing down the cost of groceries. That is what voters consistently in this polling want to be hearing their candidates talking about.

BASH: OK. So, you mentioned El-Sayed, who is Mike Rogers' Democratic opponent in what is currently a blue vacant seat. The primary ad that El-Sayed ran on the cost of groceries. Wanting to watch that and then watch the way he has updated it for the general election and see if you can figure out the difference.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

ZELENY: Bernie Sanders is not in that ad in the general election, which is sort of interesting. I mean, but the beginning of that ad actually starts out with his grandparents saying Abdul El-Sayed, kind of making it look like, you know, who is that? And she's like, we know him. We're his grandparents. So really trying to introduce him to a wider set, but certainly fascinating. Talking about groceries, but that ad packs a lot in there.

But you're right to point out that the Bernie Sanders' support is not in there. But Bernie Sanders still, I mean, he always did pretty good in Michigan. I mean, he never had the chance to run during a general election, but that was always an open question, how he would have done in 2016? Would he have beat Donald Trump or not? But I think that it is spliced out of there obviously for a reason.

BASH: Yeah. Spliced out of there for a reason. You're right. I mean, it's just kind of noteworthy. The larger message, hitting home affordability and groceries, that's really the key.

HENDERSON: But it's also, I'm one of you, right? You know, because his big challenge is going to be that his otherness for lack of a better word, so there he is saying, oh, look at my grandparents. They grew up in small town Michigan. You know, I've talked to people who are sort of advising him and talking to him about his campaign. They do still think there's a little bit too much of the sort of trolling aspect to his campaign. I think he challenged Mike Rogers to play football and challenged him to fight --

BASH: Good thing they didn't ask Betsy?

KLEIN: That's right. That's right.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: And so, yeah, but that's what -- that's what his challenge is. Like I'm not a scary Muslim. And listen, we saw Obama have to do this as well because he had -- he was the other two. I remember him a speech before AIPAC where he basically said, you know, I'm not the scary person that you've heard about, and so that is what Abdul is doing.

ZELENY: On the groceries, really quick. I mean, let's say, he's saying that Mike Rogers is basically a multi-millionaire who has moved to Florida, so it's that juxtaposition there that is also what they're trying to push.

BASH: Let's quickly talk about Maine because, you know, that was on the front pages and in our headlines for a long time, because of the Graham Platner of it all. But it is still the number one race for Democrats to try to take out Susan Collins and turn that red seat blue. Fox has a new poll showing it within the margin of error. Troy Jackson, who of course is now the Democratic candidate 48 percent, Collins' 46 percent.

And then if you look a little bit deeper, the questions are the following. Do you worry that Collins votes too much with -- too often with Trump, 55 say yes. And then kind of the flip side is do you worry that Jackson -- Troy Jackson is too tied to Democratic socialists, 43 percent.

KLEIN: Well, it just speaks to how looming over this entire race is this issue of President Trump and whether he is able to animate voters. Both it seems like Democrats are going to turn out in a opposition vote to the president, and Republicans who may or may not, particularly in Maine, be less motivated to do so by the president's MAGA base, which has really lost some of its potency as we've seen in the polling.

[12:10:00]

BASH: All right, everybody, stand by. Up next, The Kennedy Center's next play. The board decides how to carry out the president's renovation plans as the curtains there remain. For now, down. And you can pay $100,000 a month to get early access to President Trump's posts communicating about the nation's business, the quote, extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional legal fight. That's according to those suing over how President Trump is leveraging his social media platform.

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[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Today, the Kennedy Center board is meeting to consider how to move forward with renovations. The center is trying to navigate its next move after a judge ordered it to remain open during renovations that President Trump announced last year. But after President Trump took over the center and a court blocked its attempt to -- his attempt to rename it to put his name before Kennedy's, ticket sales plummeted, artists withdrew, and the staff diminished, and it made it very hard to restart a full performance schedule. That's according to sources familiar with the matter.

My panel is back now. Betsy, I'm just going to put up on the screen. This is Axios's reporting about some options that the board is considering now for these renovations. First would be a four-year partial closure with the cost of 560 million, or a two-year full closure with the cost of 287 million. I should say that Congress has allocated 257 million for Kennedy Center renovations already.

KLEIN: We're in a bit of a pickle here because you might recall that the Kennedy Center had said, announced this winter, they were going to close on July 7. And they stopped planning, they stopped booking guests -- booking artists, they stopped booking guests and essentially were creating a plan to do that full closure. Then this judge stepped in and said, no, the Kennedy Center has to remain a living memorial to President Kennedy.

But as you just laid out, they have seen these plummeting ticket sales. They're having real trouble booking artists, and they have lost a vast majority of their staff. So how they move forward in a way that is going to satisfy this judge has to be resolved today. The judge had asked, had given them a deadline of July 31 to submit a plan. They pushed that deadline a little bit. Now they have to move forward with one of these two options. It's unclear how they're going to proceed and do that.

BASH: Yeah. And his name isn't on the building anymore, but he's still the chair of the board. He put himself there, which has not been done before. I mean, the president, any president, names people to the board. It tends to be somewhat political, in some ways nonpartisan, but never before has a president put himself at the head of this board.

ZELENY: Right. And what's so interesting about this is the president took zero interest in the Kennedy Center during his first term in office. If he had, it would be done by now. I mean, but like literally, never went there for the Kennedy Center honors and other things. So that's what's so interesting about this that he's very interested in it now, but you know, so much time has moved on.

BASH: Right. Partly that happened because the people who were being honored at the Kennedy Center honors and other people who were performing there didn't want to meet with him.

ZELENY: For that one event for sure.

BASH: Yeah.

ZELENY: But in terms of overall, I don't believe he went there once during his first four years as president. I could check that, but I don't believe he did. And it's just so interesting now. That's one more example of this. But I have talked to people who've seen the bowels of the Kennedy Center and who are not Trump fans, and they say, look, he's actually right about this. It does need to be fixed.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, it's been there for a long time. It's not just the Kennedy Center, of course. The Kennedy Center, their board is meeting today. That's why we're talking about it. The president is a builder. He is obsessed with all things construction projects. We're putting several of them up on the screen. I think that's ten of them, but that is doesn't even come close to the projects and the ideas of renovations that the president is interested in, that he's starting, that he talks about.

In fact, Nia, PolitiFact did a chart of what the president talks about publicly. And number one, this is according to a word count of Trump speeches by topic in the first seven months of 2026. The Iran war was number one. Number two how was construction projects.

HENDERSON: Yeah, yeah. You know, in some ways that it's not surprising. I mean, we watch the president. He'll be at a press conference or, you know, in the Oval Office, and he'll whip out photos of what the plan is for the ballroom that they've sort of renamed. I guess it's like a military complex now or something.

Listen, I think smart Democrats will make an issue of this as example of his not focusing on average Americans' problems, instead focusing on these sort of problems that are going to cost taxpayers, right? He initially sold this as something that private investors were going to pay for, but it turns out that the majority is going to be paid for by Americans.

BASH: Yeah. And listen, as a D.C. resident, I've said this before. I'll say it again. There are a lot of structures, fountains that desperately needed to be updated and upgraded. So, that's great.

[12:20:00]

ZELENY: It's great to see the fountains flowing in Marion Hill Park, for example.

BASH: Exactly.

ZELENY: Union Station, for example.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: But that can be done without the president talking about it nonstop. It is who he is.

KLEIN: It is 100 percent who he is, and according to sources that I've talked with, the president has spent a lot more time in his second term thinking about what his legacy is going to be, and he believes that these projects and defending them in court are -- is really the foundation of that legacy. And it's really fascinating to see. He's called it in his own words his second job as president. Even sources have said they've been surprised when he's come to these meetings armed with tile samples, fabric, granular technical details that even like a high-level developer wouldn't use. BASH: Up next. President Trump is facing a fresh lawsuit over the way he's profiting from Truth Social posts about presidential pronouncements.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: A new federal lawsuit argues it is unconstitutional for President Trump's Truth Social platform to sell early access to his posts. The platform said Monday that more than 10 customers had signed up to pay between $60,000 and $100,000 a month for preferential instant access. Former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore told CNN this morning the scheme is highly problematic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL MOORE, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: He is a public employee. He works for us. He owns a plurality of this media group that has Truth Social. He's decided he's going to use that as the megaphone to the world for anything he thinks, and we've stood by and let him do it. And so, we kind of let the fox into the hen house, and now the box is trying to, you know, sell us our own chickens back, and I think that's a problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It was good, right? I mean, listen, just to put a finer point on it, we get our information now out of the White House from Truth Social. What this lawsuit is doing is saying that he cannot give access to those posts early to people who pay for it because it's not his personal information; it's public. Some of it is, but most of it, or it is used now for public information.

ZELENY: And that's why this is important. You're absolutely right. This isn't just his musings online like it used to be. Sometimes after hours it is, but it is the main function now. The White House announces a policy, announces someone's being fired in the event of a national emergency. It's likely how they would announce something like that. We used to for every president that we have all covered at least the last five for this -- for us here.

There's always been a communication system sent out by fax or by email or something else, but this is just his own vehicle how he sends out public information. So that's why this is so problematic. It takes the grifting that we've seen to an entirely different level. I mean, it just is unlike anything we have ever, ever seen.

BASH: When was the last time, Betsy, you cover the White House for us? You got a press release with new information, or you guys were called into the -- I'm just thinking of things that happened when I was covering the White House, called into the press secretary's office saying, hey, we're announcing this and we're explaining this to you now versus seeing it on Truth Social. KLEIN: I cannot think of an example of that, and it is just remarkable the way that they have normalized this shift of major announcements, market moving announcements, updates on the war with Iran, personnel announcements, as Jeff laid out. And instead of putting this out in a press release that everybody gets at the same time. This is instead going through this social media platform that is wonky, unreliable.

We don't always get them at the same time. A good example of that is just yesterday, the president announced Caroline Levitt is stepping down as press secretary. I only found out about that because I have notifications on X for the rapid response account for the White House, which sent a screenshot of that announcement.

BASH: And that's not something that generally moves markets so far. What has gone unsaid here, but it is important to say that there are many things that this president or any president announces that people can profit from, and if those people are wealthy enough and sophisticated enough to spend 60000 to $100,000 to get access to whatever he's announcing before the rest of the world does this and they have a leg up.

HENDERSON: Yeah, this is who it's for, right? It is for rich people to have a leg up to figure out what to do with their money, and you know, in the stock market and trading and buying stocks, and so the other thing is, if this is allowed, then it's such a slippery slope, right? Does Marco Rubio then also do the same thing? Does the Treasury Secretary also do the same thing? Does every cabinet official get in on this? Do senators get in on it? I mean, it is such a corrupt approach. And listen again, Democrats should make an issue of the corruption grift that is part of this --

BASH: Yeah, and they are. And that's exactly what I was going to point to. This is affordability, and then the corruption argument is what you're hearing over and over from Democrats. And I'm curious for you, Jeff, who has spent a lot of -- you just got back from Wisconsin. You've spent time in every one of these key primary states and districts.

The president, the question about whether or not he puts the country over personal gain. This is according to a CNN poll a couple of weeks ago. Yes, 34 percent, no 66 percent, meaning you know, 66 percent of the people think that he is putting himself again ahead of the country.

[12:30:00]