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Trump And China's Xi Visit National Archives; Trump: Meetings With Xi Have Been "Very, Very Productivity"; Supreme Court Says States Can Use A Controversial Citizenship Data Tool In A Major Win For Trump; Big Win For Trump As Supreme Court Allows Use Of Citizenship Data Collection Tool For Midterms; Punchbowl News: Main Senate GOP Super PAC Could Spend $200M To Defend Paxton In Texas; Republicans Privately Sound Alarm Over Inaction On Affordability. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 25, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics.

The breaking news. You are looking right now live at Chinese leader Xi Jinping with President Trump, the First Lady Melania Trump. They are currently at the National Archives, where they are getting a tour from the archivist, and currently looking, it looks like, at the Constitution of the United States. They are stationed in the rotunda, where the foundational documents of American democracy reside permanently the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, obviously foundational to this country, also a contrast with the Chinese leader and the Chinese Communist Party.

We'll see kind of where this goes throughout the course of the afternoon. Obviously, this has been a multi-stop visit. We're going to listen to the president right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: This goes 6000 years, so there's a little difference between 6,000 and 250, but we're very proud of our 250.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump --

TRUMP: Oh, everything. We had a great meeting. We had a really great meeting. Great for everybody, great for the farmers, great for everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: We just heard the president answer a couple of questions. One comparing the length, the duration of our two nations, but also answering a quick question about what has been discussed. Talked about everything. We've been waiting to hear specifics about what was discussed in the bilateral meetings, in the course of the one-on-one meetings between the president and Xi Jinping.

I want to bring in my panel now because I think Megan, that's kind of the question that I've had throughout the course of the last couple of days, which is, we always talk in very Washington speak in moments like this and what are the deliverables, right? This is the two most important leaders of the two most powerful militaries and economies in the entire world. The future of this relationship will dictate and define the entire world. That's not being hyperbolic. What are you hearing about what has been discussed, what has been worked through, and what outcomes may exist?

MEGAN MESSERLY, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, POLITICO: You're totally right about deliverables. Everyone's clamoring to know. OK, are there, you know, more Boeings, more soybeans, investments, right? These are the kinds of things we usually see out of these big bilateral meetings. But in my conversations with folks, both leading up to the trip and during it, you know, so much of this is really about the U.S.-China relationship and keeping that relationship stable.

I was talking with a White House official before the visit, and you know, I asked, you know, what would success look like, and the answer really was, you know, we want to show that these two world leaders can work together, that they're not launching into, you know, another trade war, that there's economic stability and that some of the other conversations will happen down the line.

We heard the leaders say that they're going to meet again twice more this year, so they're going to meet at APEC in China, and then again at the G20 in Miami. So that provides them time to have more of these conversations. But this trip really is more about the optics, and we haven't got a ton of those deliverables.

MATTINGLY: You know, Adam, to that point, it was interesting listening to Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative, obviously is an essential component of the lead negotiating team. Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary, running point on things, saying that they are in a managed relationship right now, getting at the point of stability. Which, by the way, is not nothing if you think back to the first six months of the second term of the administration. But it is also leaving a lot of things unsaid, undone, unresolved at a pretty critical moment economically for both countries, and I think from a national security perspective as well.

ADAM HARRIS, CO-HOST, RADIO ATLANTIC: Yeah, you know, this is an -- we're in a really interesting situation in part because the president has a tendency to like to move fast to say he's going to -- we're working towards a deal, we're going to get something done really quickly and to sort of trying to change narratives quickly and this isn't a relationship that's going to thaw as quickly, right? This is something that's moved from sort of cold to lukewarm over time.

The first Trump administration was really adversarial with China and then you move into the second administration, and you immediately had the tariffs and then the sort of retaliatory tariffs, and that sort of thawed out over time. And I think that what they're trying to get back to at this point is, like you said, right, that sort of managed relationship to where they can begin to have a little bit more agreement on the particulars, right?

I know they came into this. There was all of the talk about AI and artificial intelligence and how they might come to an agreement on that. But you have the United States, which brought CEOs to the meeting, invite CEOs to state dinner, and you don't have that same thing on the Chinese side.

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MATTINGLY: Right?

HARRIS: Yeah, exactly. It's showing a sort of that they may be in two different positions in terms of where they are and supposed negotiations.

MATTINGLY: I want to circle back on the AI piece in a second, but Sarah Ferris, it's striking when, you know, your day-to-day walking the halls of Congress. There is genuine unease with lawmakers about kind of the broader macro relationship, but also some very specific issues that they have in districts or in their states as it relates to China. And it's also coming when, you know, we had reporting from our colleagues Katie Bo Lillis, Zach Cohen, Kylie Atwood, and Haley Britzky. The headline is intelligence from Chinese groups aiding in Iran's increasingly effective targeting of U.S. sites.

Satellite imagery and intelligence support provided by Chinese groups has helped Iran threaten ships in the Strait of Hormuz and launch precision strikes on U.S. military bases in the Middle East, part of a dramatic improvement of Iranian targeting capabilities over the past several months. What are you hearing from lawmakers as they watch this play out?

SARAH FERRIS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Yeah. I think it's easy for Republicans to watch Trump in his typical stance towards China, which is he wants to be tough. He wants to say, we're going to beat you at this and that. We're going to slap these sanctions on you. That's what we've heard from him from a lot of this year and seeing him shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese leadership here. I mean, that's a very stark contrast. It's -- to be honest, it's not exactly what Republicans are eager to see right now.

And of course, you have to play that role. You have to play the diplomatic state dinner role when you have those kinds of relationships that you're trying to foster. But it's just very hard to straddle both worlds when -- right now the president and his party are really, really struggling politically. Their voters are very angry about what they're seeing there.

They've been watching the president engage in overseas efforts for a lot of this year, and the Republicans have continued to say, we want you home, we want you focused, we want you doing what you need to do at home, and yet you continue to see these big forward engagements that, you know, right now, 39 days out or so, not exactly what the Republican Party is eager to see.

MATTINGLY: You know, Carrie, one of the -- there was an interesting -- we heard from the president earlier today, alluding to the fact that farmers will be happy with some kind of outcome, which again, to make his point, like we're trying to read tea leaves here to get some sense of deliverables, and soybean purchases in particular are often one of the deliverables any time Trump and Xi meet. China never actually fulfills the commitments of the agreements, both first term and second term, but that's a huge issue, particularly if you go to a state like Iowa. We're going to talk about it in more detail a little bit later. But for midterms, farmers in particular, you mentioned diesel prices, you mentioned Strait of Hormuz writ large, but also China in purchasing is a big deal.

CARRIE DANN, MANAGING EDITOR, THE COOK POLITICAL REPORT: That's right. And I think there's even to your point, Sarah, like a, even a bigger issue here because the Republican Party is spending millions of dollars of ads, which I know we'll talk about on trying to paint Democrats as socialists or as communists. I just looked at some of the ad data out of Texas. The most probably the most important Senate race that Republicans have on the board.

Ken Paxton is spending almost $10 million on specific ads tying James Talarico to communist China, talking about exactly the issues that you're talking about, the Chinese buying land, Chinese beef imports, the issues of agriculture that you're talking about. So, Republicans are in this bizarre situation where they're trying to tie every republic -- or every Democrat out there to sort of the idea of communism, and this is they're socialists. They're bad for America. They don't believe in America. And yet, the president is having a very warm welcome for the leader of the largest communist country in the world.

And so, I think it's a little head scratching for Republicans. To your point, why are we having this sort of split screen between what we're trying to do from a political standpoint six weeks out from a midterm and what the president is spending his time on right now?

MATTINGLY: Well, because the focus should be on rebranding artificial intelligence, which we were going to get to, but we actually have breaking news right now. By the way, you are watching video from moments ago. The two leaders and their wives have left the National Archives. We'll keep you updated as we know more about that.

The breaking news from the Supreme Court. The Trump administration will now be allowed to use a DHS citizenship database to review voter rolls in their search for non-citizen voters. The ruling reverses a lower court decision, which had said the administration's effort likely broke the law. This is an unsigned opinion, meaning we don't know who exactly was in the majority here. We do know the three liberal justices dissented.

Gabe Cohen has been covering every single step of this story and joins me now. Gabe, talk about what the administration is actually planning to do now that they have the green light.

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So, Phil, the short answer is we don't know exactly what they're planning to do ahead of the midterms, and we are still going through this ruling. But I'll tell you off the bat, the question at play here that the Supreme Court needed to answer was whether or not the administration broke the law when it beefed up this Save Citizenship Verification System.

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Over the past 18 months, bringing in various records, federal records from other agencies, social security data, including data on U.S. born citizens, whether or not they had broken the law to create this system that states could then run their voter registration list through in this hunt for non-citizens who might be registered. Remember, this has been a massive initiative of this administration as the president has continued to claim, without significant evidence, that there is this widespread crisis of not just election fraud but of non-citizens voting.

And we know that about two dozen Republican-led states have actually run their voter list through this system until the courts paused it to figure out whether or not this was even legal. And we also know that the Department of Justice has sued to require to order 30 other states to hand over those lists so that the federal government could audit them.

I do want to read you a bit of that unsigned majority opinion, which said that under the federal law -- under federal law, I should say, the federal government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters. The lower court order, the Supreme Court said, had prevented the federal government from using the program that it believes it is -- that it is best suited for the task of being able to identify these non-citizens who may be registered to vote.

The dissent that came from those three liberal justices, it said, the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.

And that, Phil, I mean, that hits on a question that we have been talking about and facing again and again as the administration over the past 18 months has, and the president in particular has tried to take more federal control over election administration, but he's gotten blocked again and again by courts because the Constitution gives the vast majority of that authority to the states, with some limited authority given to Congress, but none given to the president. But this is a big win, and the big question is, how could it be used for the midterms? And we don't exactly have an answer to that because there are laws in place that say you can't have systematic purges of voters within 90 days of an election.

But we have also heard officials in this administration essentially say that what we're talking about here is not exactly systematic because while those results are produced by this system, it's identifying these individuals who, if they're non-citizens, maybe they're not even protected by those laws. But also, that the states would then have to verify, are they a non-citizen? Then they are the ones removing them. So, there are all kinds of questions about could people be removed, and those are answers we don't necessarily know at this point.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. And we should know contextually for this, as you laid out and have done amazing reporting on in terms of the scale, the architect that's been built by this administration to attempt to go after this issue is the number of times, including from the president, where specific numbers related to non-citizen voters or non-citizens on voter rolls have been utilized to justify these actions, and then subsequently have no basis or proof up to this point.

As you've reported, on, can I ask you, Gabe? Because a lot of folks that are leading or key players in the administration in their pursuit of kind of that architecture? I mentioned that you've reported so long before this administration were talking about doing just this or talking about using this tool. Is this tool actually effective at identifying non-citizens on voter rolls or non-citizen voters?

DANN: Well, the administration would argue that it has been very helpful, especially as they have combined all of these records. When we have spoken with the Department of Homeland Security, they have said, you know, these tools are of tremendous use, and that they are able to far more easily identify non-citizens, and that they're making a lot of progress. Remember, they're also ramping up their own criminal investigations using agents from DHS who used to work on other types of cases, who are now really focused on voter fraud cases.

But in terms of what the data has shown at this point, there are a couple subsets I would point to. One is the Republican-led states that have actually run their voter list through the Save System. I believe it was just under two dozen, and DHS a couple months ago put out some findings saying they had found about 20 plus thousand. I think it was 24,000 across the states of non-citizens who were registered to vote.

But I've spoken with Republican officials in those states who have said, you know, that's sort of a starting point, and they need to investigate these numbers. And what we have seen in states like Louisiana and in Texas is, as the state has gone through and actually invested those cases, it is dramatically fewer. We're talking about maybe a few dozen cases in some cases where they were actually non- citizens who were registered to vote, and by the way, there could be a variety of circumstances that lead to a non-citizen being registered.

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For example, what we saw in New Jersey, where the state and an issue at the state, DMV had caused more than 6000 non-citizens to end up on voter lists, and about 400 of them ended up voting. So, it's a big question and it's an issue that the administration wants to address, but the data that DHS has put forward on that side has not exactly proven to be accurate at this point, or it hasn't been substantiated at this point.

And I'll also tell you there was another batch of data where they said they took public voter lists from a handful of other states, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Jersey. They ran them through another system at DHS that also does these types of checks, and they said they had found more than 200,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote. But officials in those states said we have no idea where you're getting this. Your math does not seem accurate.

And since then, just a couple of days ago, we saw the state of Nevada after meeting with DHS about it. After they presented these findings, which, by the way, it turned out what was 16,000 non-citizens registered in Nevada as they met. They said, well, we've only confirmed 185 of them. And just a couple of days ago, the state of Nevada said, well, we check those 185 people, and they're actually citizens.

So big questions. And I know I've laid a lot out there, but the point is there are a lot of questions about how accurate this data is. And now the big question is how is this tool potentially going to be used with just 40 days to go before the midterms?

MATTINGLY: Yeah. You've laid a lot out there, but what you laid out is almost entirely stuff that you've broken and helped explain to people, and I think understanding the full scale of what's happening here is essential in the midst of it. For an administration that has lost a lot on these issues with the Supreme Court, this is a win without any question about it.

Gabe, appreciate your reporting as always. Adam, I think kind of to that point, like trying to step back a little bit and looking at the scale across the administration, using agencies that oftentimes have not been involved in this type of stuff beforehand. What's the end game here?

HARRIS: You know, I think what we're seeing is this. This push from the administration that has historically been trying to sort of rein in voting, right? There's this idea that has coursed through the last several -- last several Trump administrations, right? So, 2016 and also 2024, right, that there is a widespread voter fraud that is happening.

And as you just laid out, right, there? When they found evidence, it's like, oh, there are hundred and some odd cases. The state goes back and looks at it again and says, well, there is no -- there's no evidence that that these people are non-citizens. These are actually citizen voters. And so, the idea that there is a widespread voter fraud. We have sort of seen, and that there's no evidence for such a claim. But the administration is marshaling as many resources as it can in order to sort of paint this picture of a reality that does not necessarily exist.

I think that the second order part of that is when you look at the dissents from the liberal justices, they sort of echo what we have heard from civil rights groups about this case in particular and the other efforts to sort of stem voter fraud, as the administration calls it. And that's to say that what this is actually going to do is burden people who are citizens, who may have already had a difficult time getting out to vote is going to just keep them away from the poll.

And in a democracy where we are built around people showing up and having their voices heard by removing that from people who are citizens who are trying to exercise their right. It is a violation of their civil rights protection. MATTINGLY: Yeah. It's the complicated balance given the kind of intensity of the pursuit, which is driven, of course, by the person who sits in the Oval Office. It's also important to note that there is a distinction between non-citizens on voter rolls versus non-citizens that vote. Non-citizens are not allowed to vote, it is illegal. That should be stopped and prosecuted any time that happens. The numbers that have been presented in terms of scale simply don't have a basis that we know of. Although, if they exist, love to report on.

All right, coming up. Republicans are so worried about the midterms. They're trying something unheard of, staying in Washington to work. I'm sorry, Sarah Ferris. We have new reporting next.

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MATTINGLY: That music obviously signifies we're close to the election, like 39 days close. And we're tracking the races, candidates, stories that could shift the balance of power here in Washington and across the entire country. Here's what's on our midterm radar.

The Cook Political Report is shifting its ratings on 15 House races toward the Democrats. That includes multiple districts that President Trump won by double digits in 2024. Still, Cook said that thanks to gerrymandering, a massive blue wave is unlikely, and that Democrats could end up picking up just five seats, five to 15, is the current range.

Some vulnerable Republicans are quietly tiptoeing away from President Trump on Iran, but few are willing to actually vote against the war. Yesterday, the Senate rejected a measure that would have directed President Trump to end the war of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans. Only Maine Senator Susan Collins voted with Democrats. Dan Sullivan, Jon Husted, Roger Marshall, Pete Ricketts and Darline Graham, all voted against ending the war.

Their GOP colleague, retiring Senator Thom Tillis, warns that their party should be prepared to pay a price for the war in November.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): I think the American people are frustrated because they hear about the injuries, they've seen the peaceful transfer or the dignified transfer of our fallen soldiers, but they're not seeing any end in sight. The only thing they're seeing is no end to the increase in energy prices and the economic uncertainty that that provides. And any time you got economic uncertainty going into October of an election cycle, generally speaking, it's not good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:25:00] MATTINGLY: The main Senate Republican campaign super PAC is amping up its efforts in Texas and could end up spending $200 million to help Ken Paxton. That's according to Punchbowl News. That's in addition to tens of millions of dollars coming from President Trump's Super PAC and Elon Musk's super PAC. Meanwhile, in an interview yesterday with the Texas Tribune, Democrat James Talarico challenged Paxton to a debate on Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES TALARICO, (D) TEXAS SENATE CANDIDATE: Let's go to Ken Paxton's safe space. Let's do -- let's do Bret Baier on Fox News. I'll go into the lion's den because I know what I believe. I am proud of my record, and I'm not afraid of hard questions. And Ken Paxton is running from a fight, and that sounds like low T behavior to me. I don't know if I'm -- I don't know if I'm doing that right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Paxton has not accepted any debate invitations thus far. Well, Alaska Senate candidate Mary Peltola is getting a lifeline from an unlikely source, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski. Peltola has been on defense since a New York Times story published Wednesday detailed allegations of staff mistreatment, outburst, and offensive language when she was a member of the House.

Even though Murkowski is backing Peltola's opponent, incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, she told CNN this, quote, I think there are many parts of this story that I find inflammatory. And said Peltola's grief over losing her husband while in Congress amounted to, quote, pressure that is hard for anybody to bear.

My great panel of reporters is back with me now. And jumping off the YOLO life that is Thom Tillis as your retiring Republican senator. I want to start with Sarah Ferris. We've got a great piece of non-YOLO caucus Republicans basically saying flat out, like, you know, we have a problem here.

I want to start with some great reporting you had from inside the Senate GOP campaign headquarters on Wednesday. Dozens of Republicans gathered for a strategy session. Senator Jon Husted of Ohio made an urgent plea to his colleagues. He told them to stay in town, demanding they do something real and tangible on affordability. It's the buzzword everybody's been talking about for the entirety of this cycle, like the sudden light bulb realization of like, oh, we need more stuff here. Explain it.

FERRIS: Well, we have seen Republicans month after month tell us privately the economy is going to get better, gas prices are going to go down. This is -- we have a way to mitigate a disaster that could come in November. And suddenly, we're less than 40 days away, and Republicans are starting to realize, they're looking at their polling, they're looking at their internals, which are not -- they're not a disaster yet, but they're not great. And they're really starting to tell Senate Republican leadership, like we have not done enough. And as of just 36 hours ago, the Senate was on track to leave town. They were going to go and go out on the campaign trail, just like the House, and leave until after the elections. But folks like Senator Husted, folks like Susan Collins spoke up in this meeting with Senate Republican leadership as kind of their last chance to try to do something and try to change people's opinions.

I mean, they -- people don't like what Congress is doing, which is not much. People don't like what the Republican Party is doing, which is not much right now to address the economy, and they're saying, we have to try something. And we actually saw Senate leadership accept that, which it shows you. I mean, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is reading those same internal polls. And so, this is the first sign that we've seen that that anxiety is real and it's trickling into the agenda.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. Just to contextualize for people who don't live in the weird world, myopic world that is Capitol Hill, like staying and working in with 39 days until a midterm election is like a big deal. Not sure what that says about society. Adam, there was one quote in Sarah's piece that obviously, it was from John Kennedy because any great quote comes from John Kennedy at this point in our lives. But he says, quote, I've been chasing my friend Senator Thune like he stole Thanksgiving. John Kennedy asked there to do more on cost of living because we haven't done a damn thing and it's biting us in the ass right now.

HARRIS: You know, I think what we -- what we have really been seeing Republicans responding to is this sort of national cry, right, affordability, of course, is the buzzword, but that's because people are actually feeling the squeeze. They feel it when they're going to the gas pumps. They feel it when they are going to pick up a carton of eggs, right? And Americans are relating that to the policies that are coming from the White House.

I think what's interesting about this Republican retreat from the sort of president's policies as well as the sort of pushback that we're kind of seeing -- that we're finally sort of seeing is that they are hearing from constituents in their districts who are saying, what are you doing to help us as we have this war that's waging overseas, right?

We're -- you said no more forever wars. Now we have a forever war. We're seeing the ways that and we're hearing about the ways that AI is going to impact us negatively. And so, what are we actually getting positively that's going to help our bottom lines? And I think that there is a increasing sort of view of cynicism in America, where it's