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Inside Politics
Fed Expected to Raise Interest Rates for First Time in Three Years; A.I. Brings Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon Together; Trump Calls Artificial Intelligence Concerns a Hoax. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired September 16, 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]
DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: -- lifted the bond market. And when the bond market keeps going up, then things that are pegged to it keep going up, including the mortgage rate, and that has locked in so many people into their homes and it has prevented people from buying homes.
We've seen a 24 percent decrease in mortgage applications as this has gone higher and higher and higher, about four-tenths of a percent this year alone. Remember, this was under six percent around February, the effect of the war again having a big, big impact.
Now, what happens if the Fed raises rates? And this is why politicians want those rates lower, Donald Trump namely, because credit card rates are pegged to the Fed funds rate. Mortgages and car loans pegged to bond rates that follow the Fed.
So, Dana, it is not a pleasant business to raise rates, but when inflation is rearing its ugly head, that's what you have to do.
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': OK, so what happens if the Fed doesn't do anything?
GOLDMAN: Yeah, well, the bond market is basically daring the Fed to raise rates. I mean, we have seen bond yields around five percent as my magic wall breaks --
(LAUGH)
GOLDMAN: -- five percent since 2023, and we hit 5.04 percent yesterday. That was the highest in 19 years. What happened 19 years ago? The financial crisis. We don't want to see that. That will keep going higher and higher if the Fed doesn't raise rates today.
BASH: Your magic wall is clearly in cahoots with the bond market.
GOLDMAN: I think that's right.
BASH: That's my diagnosis there.
(LAUGH)
GOLDMAN: That's right. BASH: Always good to see you. Thank you so much.
GOLDMAN: Thanks, Dana.
BASH: Claims coming out of Silicon Valley that artificial intelligence could destroy humanity are bringing people together in Washington. You heard me right, bringing people together on very opposite sides of the political spectrum, including two men who disagree on pretty much everything else.
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[12:36:20]
BASH: What brings Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon together? Well, the two joined forces to push Congress to regulate A.I. after a week of warnings about possible catastrophic outcomes of the technology. Senator Sanders explained the strange synergy on CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I-VT): I think all over this country, whether people are conservatives, progressives, moderates, are saying, where the hell is the United States government? Where are our elected officials? We are worried. What are you doing? And the answer, Jake, is nowhere, nowhere near enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: And my panel is back. Now, Toluse, you wrote about this interesting -- I don't even want to call it a bromance. Well, let's just read what you called it. The only thing capable of uniting Bernie and Bannon, with warnings that the technology could cause mass economic displacement and even human extinction, political figures who wanted nothing to do with one another are suddenly joining forces, scrambling the political landscape just weeks before the midterm elections.
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Yeah, flashback a decade ago, Bernie Sanders was calling Steve Bannon a racist and calling on Trump to ex-communicate him from his government because of his association with the far right. Last year, Steve Bannon was using words that I can't use on this program to describe Bernie Sanders.
What's brought them together is sort of this joint fear of A.I. not only harming the economy and displacing millions of jobs, but potentially also creating a national security crisis that could potentially lead to the extinction of the human race. And so they are joining forces in a way. They did not actually share the stage.
Bernie Sanders' people made it clear that they were not on stage together, but they were making the same argument from the same stage about the dangers of A.I. and saying that we've got to get the oligarchs -- they both used that word -- out of power and put the people back in charge. BASH: OK, and another evidence that we are in the upside down, Steve Bannon went on National Public Radio, public radio which the Trump administration cut funding for because they said it was too lefty without, you know, hard evidence of that. But let's listen to what Steve Bannon said on National Public Radio.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: If you shut down the Chinese Communist Party and A.I., which we can do because we give them everything, we can then take our time and set up a regulatory apparatus, I think, like the Atomic Energy Commission or something like that to have some legislation. You need time to do this right. It can't be done in a hurry.
And to do that right, you need to shut down. Everybody says, oh, it's China, China, China. Well, shut China down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Kristen?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: So I think back to 2016 when there was this kind of overlap at one point where the Bernie bros met the MAGA party. And then --
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: It is populism.
HOLMES: It was populism. And the thing about Trump that was always so interesting is those kind of crossover issues are ones that he has had the finger on the pulse of. He has not had the finger on the pulse of this. He is trying to barrel through. He is trying to fight both the left and the right.
He is saying that data centers are great. Then he gets pushed back. He says, well, they are great for most people. He is saying we should go full steam ahead on A.I. It shouldn't slow us down at all. That is not where the American people are.
BASH: And what does it tell you that Bannon is trying to push him from the outside?
HOLMES: He is not the only one. I mean, they understand this is an issue. And I will say, they saw this coming months ago, but they still hadn't quite streamlined any kind of messaging. And his messaging now is just do this, which is not what people want to hear.
BASH: It seems like this is kind of classic Donald Trump. He feels backed into a corner on a number of issues, many of which we have talked about today. And so when he feels backed into a corner, he pushes back on this issue and others.
[12:40:00] Where do you spend your time, Andrew, on Capitol Hill, there are members of Congress who are using A.I. in their daily work, in the work that they do for the American people.
ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL: Yeah.
BASH: There's a story from The Washington Post. From the summer, chatbots are doing the work of Congress with little oversight. One of Anna Paulina Luna's staffers had copied a chatbot's answer, timestamp and all, and pasted it into the public record of the National Defense Authorization Act, a screenshot of the garbled text circulated on social media, and the Florida Republican was nonchalant. She said, not a shocker. Most staff use it.
DESIDERIO: That is true, but a lot of them still don't know how to use it and the best ways to use it. At the same time, they're going down into the SCIF, which is a secure briefing area where you get classified briefings in the Capitol from senior administration officials, and they're hearing about the perils of it, the dangers of it, the national security risks and threats from entities like the Chinese Communist Party, as we heard Steve Bannon just mention.
But the reality is that Congress has been working on A.I. policy for a long time. I say working on. That doesn't mean they've legislated on it.
(LAUGH)
DESIDERIO: They've been -- they've created working groups. Different members have introduced legislation. But the speed of the innovation of A.I. is way too rapid for the speed of legislating, right?
We know the speed of legislating is like at a snail's pace, right? So the concern here is that by the time Congress actually comes up with something that might or might not be comprehensive enough, there's more advancements that make what they just did moot. It's exactly why Congress has done pretty much nothing on social media, for example, over the past decade.
BASH: Right. There's that, and then there's the fact that, I mean, I've heard from some members of Congress who are working on this that as soon as they saw the president's post earlier this week saying, you know, if you're not for this, then you're for China. And if you're not for this, you know, that, what do you say, I'm the president and I'm the one who's going to regulate it, something to that effect, that that sort of threw cold water on any attempt, even as late as it is, to push legislation.
OLORUNNIPA: Yeah. The president has made it clear that he's not going to support anything that would hinder or restrict A.I. from advancing. He thinks he's in a race against China towards superintelligence, and he does not want anything to stop that. And so Republicans are not going to stick their necks out if the president is not going to support it anyways, and so that makes it hard for legislation to take place. It makes it hard for the bipartisanship that you need for something like this when you're talking about the potential extinction of the human race. You need both parties to kind of put aside their partisanship, but the president does not subscribe to that.
BASH: Talk about a bumper sticker.
(LAUGH)
BASH: When you're talking about the extension, extinction of the human race, you kind of need both parties to get together, I'll say.
Thank you all. Appreciate your great reporting. And Alaska is home to Fat Bear Week, eight national parks, could be home to the Democrats' path to regaining control of the Senate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDY MEZIROW, ALASKA VOTER: I don't think this is like a communist versus a Nazi, or a devil versus an angel. This is two good people that are trying to do their best.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: John King talks to voters in the last frontier for the latest installment of "All Over the Map."
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[12:47:40]
BASH: Could be the last frontier for control of the Senate. Democrats are hoping Mary Peltola can beat incumbent Republican Senator, Dan Sullivan, come November, giving them an opening in the race for the majority. CNN's John King leaves the lower 48 and heads all over Alaska's map.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT & ANCHOR OF "ALL OVER THE MAP" (voice-over): Raw, rainy morning makes no difference, it's September now, snow not that far off. Training is on a schedule, weather is weather.
ALYSSA BUSER, ALASKA VOTER: It is a part of Alaskan culture. There's evidence of sled dogs that dates back 8,000 years.
KING (voice-over): Alyssa Buser and her husband Roan pick the team, then harnesses for 10. Just four miles or so, this run.
A. BUSER: And then we'll slowly continue to build and by December, they'll be worked up to 50-mile runs.
Haw.
KING (voice-over): Gee is right. Haw is left. There is no sled dog command for Flip (ph) Washington on its head.
A. BUSER: It's crazy the amount of money that you spend on groceries, especially like within the last year and a half, food has just gone up so much. So I think it's really important to vote and make sure that we have affordable food, affordable housing, that we have jobs, that we have health care.
Thank you, Ash.
KING (voice-over): Buser is a registered Independent, but she wants change in Washington. Democrat Mary Peltola is her choice in a Senate race that could determine which party controls Congress.
A. BUSER: Mary is from Alaska that you know, maybe -- maybe she'll actually look out for what's the best for Alaskans.
KING (voice-over): The State Fair has a spectacular snowy backdrop, rides, games and yes, little politics if you wish. Daily celebrations of Native Alaskans and traditions many in the Lower 48 might not understand.
They're about 15 percent of the population now, many living in the most remote corners of this giant state.
Lisa Lynch lives in the Anchorage suburbs now, but her mother is from Nome, and much of their family still there.
LISA LYNCH, ALASKA VOTER: It is crazy to think that you could go to a grocery store here in America and there's no fresh meat, there is no fresh fruit.
[12:50:00]
There's no fresh vegetables and it gets a whole bad in some of the villages.
KING (voice-over): A visitor gets VIP Inupiat treatment. The curved ulu used to chop slices of dried salmon and muktuk, whale blubber.
Yes, some policy disagreements with Senator Sullivan. But Lynch says her vote for Peltola is mostly because of her rural Alaska roots.
LYNCH: He has lived here for a long time, but it's not quite the same because he never had to rely on the fish runs to feed his family. He never had to worry about if they could have a moose in their freezer or go caribou hunting.
KING (voice-over): If elected, Peltola would be the first native Alaskan to serve in the Senate. Senator Sullivan was born in Ohio, but has lived in Alaska for more than 20 years, served as the state attorney general, and has held the Senate seat since 2015.
Palmer is home to the state fairgrounds, and Mary Grubbs stopped at a local restaurant for lunch during a visit from Fairbanks.
MARY GRUBBS, ALASKA VOTER: I don't ever miss a vote. And I will definitely be out there and I will vote for Sullivan.
KING (voice-over): Nothing bad to say about Peltola, though Grubbs is worried about Democrats gaining power in Washington.
GRUBBS: You've got all these communities that are electing socialists or really far-left-leaning ideologies. So to me, I just -- I don't really want far like those, but I also don't really want really far to the right either.
KING (voice-over): Everywhere you go, reminders of the big choice. And don't make the mistake of thinking these warnings are just for show.
KING: Affordability, of course, is the biggest midterm issue everywhere. But Alaskans pay even more for most things, because being so remote comes at a price. Groceries in Juneau, for example, 29 percent more than the national average. In Anchorage, it's 26 percent higher. In Fairbanks, 25 percent.
Healthcare is another giant affordability challenge. Americans on average pay $9,700 a year for healthcare. In Alaska, it's $14,000. That's 44 percent above the national average. And those living in rural communities that are hard to reach face even higher, sometimes eye-popping costs.
A gallon of milk as high as $16 in Bethel. A dozen of eggs, $8.69 in Skagway. Gas hit $11.50 a gallon recently in Alatna, and nearly $27 in Shungnak.
KING (voice-over): Rick Brown moved to Alaska three decades ago, the day he retired from the fire department back home in Kentucky.
Started his own adventure company 20 years ago, fishing, hiking, kayaking, panning for gold.
He just turned 75.
KING: Happy birthday.
(LAUGH)
RICK BROWN, ALASKA VOTER: So anyway, you know, if I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it.
KING (voice-over): Business this summer was OK. He expected better.
BROWN: I think the war had a little bit to do with it, and people were unsure of what was going to happen.
We get a lot of campers that come up. They drive up, and I see that changing as the years go on, as the price of fuel gets up.
KING (voice-over): Brown likes Senator Sullivan and says he helped the company get access to federal land for some of its tours. For Sullivan twice before, leaning Sullivan this time, but some hesitation because of campaign support the Senator receives from larger fishing operations.
BROWN: Our Seward used to be a little village with a fishing problem. Now it's a tourism town, but I still have a lot of friends that are commercial fishermen, and I want to see what's going to happen to support some of the issues they got with the draggers, the --
KING: Big trawlers.
BROWN: The trawlers.
KING (voice-over): Again, nothing negative to say about Peltola. But again, worries about the Democrats' direction.
BROWN: You know, the socialism, socialist side of it, I don't -- I can't wrap my arms around that.
KING (voice-over): You see the change at the Seward Waterfront, still a fair share of small commercial fishing boats, but also a cruise ship stop now, and a harbor more and more tailored to tourists.
31 years in the charter business for Andy Mezirow. 31 years of finding the right spot.
MEZIROW: How are you doing, buddy? Beautiful silver salmon. We're going to let him go, John, so he can live to spawn another day.
KING: Yeah.
KING (voice-over): This year, a faraway war hurt.
MEZIROW: We came into the season and fuel was $3.25, and then overnight it turned into $5.25, and there's no way we can really backcharge people that have already paid for their trips for the cost of fuel, so we kind of had to eat it this year.
KING (voice-over): Mezirow is on the water just about every day, and he served in fisheries management roles here for years.
MEZIROW: And they have a unique smell to them.
KING (voice-over): He thinks Peltola's talk of banning the big trawlers is over the top.
MEZIROW: I don't think we should ban trawling.
[12:55:00]
I think we should hold their feet to the fire and make them do a better job.
KING (voice-over): Mezirow knows and likes both Senate candidates, and he says Alaska is lucky.
MEZIROW: I don't think this is like a communist versus a Nazi or a devil versus an angel. This is two good people that are trying to do their best. KING (voice-over): But choice time soon. Likely Peltola, again because of her roots.
MEZIROW: She's like a real Alaskan that lives out in rural areas and has been a fisherman. She knows what it's like to have a sore back at this time of year and sore hands.
I think the decision point is, do you want to change in the way things are going in D.C. or do you like it the way it is? And if you frame it that way, it's hard to like it the way it is.
KING (voice-over): A change in course by reliably red Alaska would be beyond a big deal. But the last frontier just may get the last word on whether the Senate and Washington change tracks from red to blue.
John King, CNN, Moose Pass, Alaska.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: Certainly God's country. Thank you so much for joining "Insight Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after a quick break.
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