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Collins, Jackson Clash Over Trump's Tariffs; New Senate Rating Lists Kansas As A Toss-Up Race; El-Sayed Privately Predicts He'll Win Michigan By 7 Pts. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 07, 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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DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: The Republican stronghold for nearly a century is now up for grabs as a new forecast shows the battle for the U.S. Senate shifting towards Democrats. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and inside politics.

There are 27 days until the election, and we're tracking the races, candidates, and stories that could shift the balance of power here in Washington and all across the country. Here's what we're looking at on the midterm radar.

First up, President Trump is heading back to Texas today for the third time in less than a month. He'll rally in San Antonio with his Senate pick Ken Paxton, who's locked in a razor-tight race against Democrat James Talarico in a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator in nearly four decades. It's another sign Republicans are becoming increasingly worried about ruby red states they usually just count on. But President Trump, he says he sees things differently. Here's what he said in Baltimore yesterday.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: By the way, I'm going around doing rallies. The Republican Party is starting to go right through the roof. Somebody said today, I wonder why. Well, I started -- I had to get out. I had to do. We had to explain what we're doing. There's never been a time like this in our country.

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BASH: Now to Maine, where tariffs and eating road salt made headlines in last night's Senate debate. Incumbent Republican Susan Collins tried to pitch herself to voters as someone who can bring money back to Maine and persuade President Trump to do right by Mainers. Democrat Troy Jackson argued that's not enough.

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SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete, pulp, and road salt removed from the tariff list. TROY JACKSON (D), MAINE SENATE CANDIDATE: I didn't mock the fact that she got road salt back. I mocked the fact that what about everything else? I mean, we -- we can't eat road salt.

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BASH: And former President Barack Obama is unleashing a new wave of midterm endorsements, starting with Deb Haaland, who's running for New Mexico Governor against Republican Greg Hull.

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BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As governor, Deb will lower costs, strengthen education, build safer communities, and protect your health care, because she knows what families are up against.

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BASH: Politico reports President Obama cut ads for two dozen Democratic candidates for Senate and governor, and the main Super PAC backing Senate Republicans is jumping into the South Carolina Senate race, with its first attack ad against Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, it's part of the new $5 million investment by this PAC in Republican Darline Graham's campaign.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Andrews' supports letting biological men use the women's locker room and spending your tax dollars on sex change drugs and surgeries for minors.

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BASH: Andrews says she opposes trans women playing in women's sports and gender surgery for minors. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here. I mean, again, just the fact that there's any spending going on in a general election for a Republican in South Carolina is one of the -- it tells you everything you need to know moments, and there are a lot of those moments and dynamics going on across the country.

Speaking of, the Cook Political Report has new ratings out, which we teased, and we'll show you what they are. In Kansas -- Kansas, they are moving it from lean GOP to toss-up in Kansas. New Hampshire toss- up to lean Democrat, and North Carolina lean Democrat to likely Democrat. North Carolina, of course, a state which is -- is red because Thom Tillis is currently the senator, he's retiring. Republicans last week, already pulled their money from there, so now it's sort of become official.

Let's just stick with Kansas for a second. Kansas in 1932 was the last time it elected a Democratic senator. Three is the number of Democratic Kansas senators in history, and Kansas, of course, you know this off the top of your head, Ron Brownstein became a state in 1861, which you know -- RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. Right. So, you know, other than Susan Collins in Maine, every other Republican the Democrats are seriously targeting in this election is in a state that voted three times for President Trump, every one of them. Right now, in those 25 states that voted three times for President Trump, Democrats have zero of the 50 senators.

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And which gives you a sense of how effective he has been over his career in consolidating the Republican grip on places that were red leaning when he got on the scene. The difference is the polling that came out last week in the New York Times/Siena or yesterday in YouGov, his approval is well under 50 in Kansas, Texas.

BASH: The president?

BROWNSTEIN: The President. Trump's approval is under 50 in Kansas, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, who knows, South Carolina, possibly. And it is just worth noting that in his first term in 2018 and 2020, Susan Collins was the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won in a state where his approval was net negative.

Now these places, some of them may revert to their Republican DNA. I mean, these are places that still --

BASH: It happens.

BROWNSTEIN: -- they are suspicious of Democrats. They probably do not want a Democratic majority in the Senate. But it is the breadth of Trump's decline. Not only with the groups that moved toward him in 24. Latinos, young men, non-college, non-whites, but among his core groups, non-college whites and rural voters, in a way we did not see in 2018, that is allowing Democrats to expand the map, and maybe they don't land all of these planes, but the fact that they're circling the airport, as you said, is -- is pretty revealing.

BASH: Yes, it is revealing, and yet I'm going to be -- I'm not going to be Debbie Downer for Democrats, but maybe a little bit more sort of pump the brakes a little bit right now, Isaac. And we're going to talk specifically about Maine in one second and that debate last night. But so many of these are razor thin in the Senate, and that means it could go either way. It means, as Ron was saying, that the sort of Republican DNA could, you know, come up and point the finger or pull the lever for the voters who just aren't really sure.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah, look, what you see out in the country, and as I've traveled around, is that people are not saying that they like Democrats for sure.

BASH: No.

DOVERE: They are not even saying that they don't like Donald Trump. They are feeling abandoned by everybody. They feel like Donald Trump made a lot of promises to them about how things would get better, and none of them came true. They feel like the Democrats talk and talk, and none of that mattered for them either, and it didn't matter with Joe Biden. They don't like what happened with Joe Biden.

They don't like what's going on with Donald Trump. They more than anything, don't like that they are paying more at the grocery store. They're paying more at the pump, and they want to do something about it. And the question here is how much of that energy gets harnessed into Democratic campaigns?

How much of it is people saying, "I'm just not going to vote," and you see then the potential for base turnout for Trump to, or for Republicans who are still there and are hearing from Trump to maybe get there. But to Ron's point, even among Trump supporters, in a lot of these places, they are saying, "I don't like this. I'm done."

BASH: And -- and it's not just about Trump. I mean, we all know, and we say it, and we'll say it till we're blue in the face. Candidates matter. And going back to Kansas, which was kind of the headline in these new Cook ratings, going from lean GOP to toss-up, the incumbent Republican is Roger Marshall.

He went fishing with a reporter from the Washington Examiner, thinking that you know he's fishing. It shows that he's you know a man of the people, but what he said while he's gone fishing is not necessarily something I think that any Republican wanted him to say. Let's listen.

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REPORTER: Do you have time to come fishing?

SEN. ROGER MARSHALL (R-KS): Boy, I wish I could. You know, it's -- it's a Saturday evening -- morning, and there's just not much else campaigning I could do. If there was a function or something, then we would do it. But you know, we worked hard all week. We've been working 14 hours a day campaigning. We'll do an event tonight. So, this I call this debate prep. So, I'm out here prepping for my debate.

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JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON SUN: Well, in the background of that clip, what you hear is all of his aides screaming, Please stop talking, because that is the exact opposite message that I think his campaign wants to deliver. Look, time and time again, we've heard from folks that they don't believe that their lawmakers are working for them.

The campaign is meant to one, show their ideas, but also show how hard they want to go for their own voters, and a statement like that does not help. Obviously, candidate quality matters. Obviously, a candidate who is actually seeped in the moment that people feel so much pain at the pump, people feel so much pain at the groceries, those types of things matter.

That's where you see that kind of organic engagement and chemistry for other senators who are really trying to take the incumbents out on both sides, right? That's what to Isaac's point. One thing that we focused on in the Washington Sun Newsletter this morning is just how the map is expanding beyond what the Democrats thought that they would be.

We are -- we're going to talk about Maine in a second, but obviously Maine was a main target for Democrats this election, and now we're not even talking about it that much.

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Not just because of the Graham Platner scandal went away, but because of the fact that there are just so many more possibilities across the map that Democrats did not expect to happen, and it's fueled by perhaps comments like that.

DOVERE: And in Kansas, I think it also matters. Candidates matter, and the Democrats --

BASH: Yeah. Thank you for saying that.

DOVERE: -- Democrat. And look, we -- we can -- your stats are right about the last time that Kansas elected a Republican senator, but the last 16 years there has been a Democratic governor of Kansas.

BASH: Yeah.

DOVERE: Right? There are Democrats here. There's Democrat in Congress from Kansas. There is an ability to get Democrats vote, and Adam Hamilton, the candidate there, who is a Minister and who has been the kind of Democrat that seems to be appealing to Kansas --

BASH: And not just a Minister, he's the pastor of a megachurch. Yes, I want to go back to Maine because I don't want to lose sight of this really interesting debate that happened last night. I want to play a couple of clips. First, this is a back and forth about the issue that Democrats think is the most harmful to Susan Collins, the fact that she supported Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.

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JACKSON: What I'm curious about is what will it take for you to admit that you were wrong, you know, especially whenever Kavanaugh went out and did what he did. I mean -- and you don't regret that today. So, what -- what will it take for you to admit that you're ever wrong?

COLLINS: I do not feel that he lied, but I think that he should not have said it was settled law because, to me, that meant that it would not be overturned.

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BASH: Ron, your -- your thoughts on that, and then I want to play a clip, which is kind of the tables were turned a little bit. But go ahead, your thoughts on that.

BROWNSTEIN: Look, Susan Collins has defied gravity in the past. The gravity is pulling her down even harder now. Trump is less popular than he was in 2020 when she won. It was 58 percent disapproval. Now it's usually over 60 percent in Maine. Brett Kavanaugh had not yet voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. She survived in 2020 because women over 45 voted for her 15 points ahead of Donald Trump.

That kind of gap doesn't really exist anymore. That's when, like in the 80s, you would see that kind of thing. And you know, a Southern Democrat John Barrow (ph) might do that relative to Ronald Reagan. You don't see that anymore. But all those things have changed. I thought even more effective than that, the rock salt comment, I think crystallized -- I mean, really crystallized the choice for Maine voters.

BASH: Did you say rock salt crystallized?

BROWNSTEIN: Rock salt is crystallized. Yeah.

WRIGHT: Rock band.

BASH: You don't even know how good you are.

BROWNSTEIN: But like, OK, that's her argument is you need someone in the room who can nudge Donald Trump a little bit and sand down the edges of their -- I can get them to ease up a little bit on ICE enforcement. I can get money for the state versus you're giving us crumbs and allowing him to pursue policies that are fundamentally inimical to the state, and so that he did -- I thought he did much better. I don't know what you thought. I think he did much better than I thought. Yeah.

BASH: Yeah. And so on, that it -- it -- it is a kind of an upside-down world in many ways, this race. One of which is that Susan Collins is for abortion rights, which is why the Kavanaugh thing is such a thing, and she pushed him, a Democrat, on his past views being anti-abortion. Let's watch.

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JACKSON: As Senate President, I did fight like hell to protect abortion care.

COLLINS: It is Troy who, until 2013, supported such extreme positions that he would not allow for exceptions for a woman to have an abortion, even if her life were at stake, or in cases of rape and incest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: What would you like to ask your opponent is an amazing question for debate, A. B, I mean, yes, it shows just how you know upside-down this race is. But fundamentally, Susan Collins did vote for Brett Kavanaugh, right? We talked to a couple operatives after the debate last night who said that they believe that Troy Jackson did better than expected, but they aren't sure that this debate is going to move the needle all the way.

They'll have more, but you know, Susan Collins is kind of a unicorn in the state, and so is a performance like that actually going to shift people off bases and move her away from there? I think that that's kind of the question we ask after the debates. BASH: Yeah, and there will be more debates. Don't go anywhere because

we have some terrific and important new reporting from Isaac. Why a black leader in Detroit says F-Abdul El-Sayed, and how El-Sayed is responding. Plus, marking three years since the brutal Hamas terror attack on Israel, the deadliest days -- day for Jews since the Holocaust. I'm going to speak to a journalist in Jerusalem about how that day changed Israel and the world.

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BASH: Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, has a bold prediction. He says he thinks he will win that Senate contest by seven points, but as our great Isaac Dovere reports in his news story, that confidence has some Democrats a bit worried that he's underestimating what it takes to overcome deep divisions in the party left over from a brutal primary campaign. My panel is here, including the great Isaac --

DOVERE: The aforementioned.

BASH: The aforementioned Isaac. First of all, just broadly set the scene for what you -- what you took away in this great article.

DOVERE: I spent a couple of days in Michigan last week and talked with both El-Sayed and with Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate, and a lot of other people, black leaders, Jewish leaders, all sorts of other people, went to a bunch of events that both of them were doing, and you can see there that this race is still very much in play.

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And it is kind of what we're talking about in the last segment that we're talking about Kansas being an up for grabs Senate race at the same time we're talking about Michigan being an up for grabs --

BASH: Right, they're on defense.

DOVERE: -- is pretty nuts now. El-Sayed had told me, as you say, that he does not feel any concern himself. He said to me as we were finishing lunch on Friday, I'm going to win by seven points. And I said to him, you were predicting you were going to win by double digits the day of the primary, and he won by one digit, 1 percent. And he said, yeah, but I'm here, and there's something to that, right? And he has built up a lot of support from a lot of places.

There are people -- I watch people run up to him wanting to take photos with him. People at events that he was at just cheering the moment they saw his face pop into the room. He has generated a lot of excitement, but there are a lot of people who feel like he hasn't taken them seriously or their concern seriously enough, and he hasn't done some basic outreach.

BASH: Yeah, so I'm going to get to that in one second. But just to kind of bolster what you're saying, if we can go back in time, just starting with two years ago in 2024. Now Donald Trump is on the ballot, which always helps Republicans. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic senator, she only won by three-tenths of a percentage point. It was a very, very close race in 2024.

2020, the -- Gary Peters, the Democrat who's retiring, leaving this open Democratic seat, won by 1.7, and then back in 2018, Debbie Stabenow, this was a Democratic wave year, and she won not by seven percentage points, but by 6.5. And then just looking at some of the recent Michigan polling, Fox News, Marist, New York Times/Siena, all of these show no -- except with Marist has El-Sayed up a little bit more, but the other two show no clear leader.

Now back to what you were saying about some of the -- the key constituencies in the Democratic electorate that he really -- El-Sayed really needs. I'm going to read part of your story. One black leader in Detroit who asked not to be named told CNN about a conversation with El-Sayed, which left a feeling, in his words of, they believe they don't necessarily need to work as hard to get the black vote.

He never received an invitation he was promised by El-Sayed to join a roundtable with the candidate. "I felt so bad. I texted him," the leader said of El-Sayed, "But I didn't hear back. So, F-him." I should say that you also have a quote from your conversation with El-Sayed. "Every community that I've met with, I've said, leading for and with your community is a concern and a key consideration with me. I could spend all my time with any one community, and it probably wouldn't be enough. And that's perfectly fair. People deserve a U.S. senator who's going to show up and listen but I've showed up and listened."

DOVERE: Yeah, and I met with two rabbis who are part of a group that is leading a pushback to El-Sayed's candidacy, and one of them is a rabbi. He pointed out that he called himself an activist rabbi. He said he's demonstrated on the border. He's met with Palestinians in the West Bank, and he said he just feels very uncomfortable about where El-Sayed not importantly for those rabbis and for others, it's even past the issue of Israel at this point, but really about Jewish safety.

And the synagogue where I met with those rabbis is 10 miles down the road from the synagogue that was attacked in March, and where at first El-Sayed had sort of written off that attack as "hurt people hurt people."

BASH: Yeah, I mean, as you said, the Jewish vote is big. The -- the -- the black vote, perhaps just percentage wise, is even bigger.

DOVERE: Much bigger.

BASH: He had Kamala Harris there. He's going to have Barack Obama there, and then you're hearing what you're hearing from that black leader.

BROWNSTEIN: Look, I was in -- I was in Michigan the weekend before the primary, and I was in a black church in Detroit where they were having a meeting of the statewide Al Sharpton's National Action Network, and the minister excoriated El Sayed, said he was more concerned about Gaza than about Detroit, but also made a point that raises this beyond an individual candidate.

He talked basically about the way Arab-American shopkeepers treat black patrons, right? So, there are issues that go beyond. I will, however, point out that Mike Rogers today is cutting an ad denouncing Trump's trade war and has also broke with him on Iran. El-Sayed may well underperform Jocelyn Benson by a lot.

BASH: Yeah.

BROWNSTEIN: But Donald Trump is --

BASH: Jocelyn Benson running for --

BROWNSTEIN: Governor.

BASH: -- governor.

BROWNSTEIN: By the way, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota, Troy Jackson in Maine, the three far -- farthest left Senate candidates may all underperform more centrist gubernatorial candidates in the same state. But to the -- to the point, Mike Rogers is not doing that because he wants to. He's doing that because he has to, and he has to because Donald Trump is more unpopular in Michigan today than he was in 2018 when Debbie Stabenow won by six and a half, and that is a big under tone --

BASH: Let me let Jasmine --

BROWNSTEIN: -- even with all these problems.

WRIGHT: I mean, just on the black vote, I think that we have the same question about Republicans. They may be frustrated right now. They may be telling the pollsters that call their cell phones that they're upset that they don't want to vote for Trump today. Who knows what happens in November 3rd?

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The same thing could be of black voters when it comes to the Democratic Party. I've talked to a lot of black operatives on both sides who are seeing this sense of a growing restlessness among a sector of black voters who actually, instead of identifying with the

Democratic Party, feel a bit more politically homeless, right?

Ideologically not based in either party right now. But the question is, is whether or not voters in that state, where a Democrat does need a majority of Black voters to win in that state, whether or not on November 2 or on November 3, they say it's better to sit at home or it's better to grit our teeth and vote for El-Sayed, even though El- Sayed, even though he hasn't necessarily paid us the most attention or necessarily won our vote through his arguments.

BASH: I don't want to end this conversation without getting to a really good nugget of news that -- interesting nugget of news that you got. El-Sayed recently called Piker and warned his rhetoric was costing El-Sayed votes, asking him to stop. That's according to two people you spoke with, Isaac, who told you about the conversation. Did he also say maybe it's because I invited Hasan Piker during the primary that that anybody even cares about what Piker says?

DOVERE: He campaigned a lot with Piker, including the day before the primary in August. I was at an event with El-Sayed, and he arrived to the event with Hasan Piker. So, the distancing from him now is definitely a post-primary shift here. I do think, though, the other important thing to point out is I talked to Dana Nessel on Monday night. She's the Attorney General. She's Jewish. She has been very vocal about her frustrations with El-Sayed and didn't go to the August Democratic convention in Michigan because she -- she said she didn't feel safe.

But she has now said that she will be supporting El-Sayed. She told me that she was so worried about how -- what the response that that would generate that she didn't even go to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services this year at home. And I said to her, but you're going to vote for him, what do you say to people?

And she said, I -- said this is not the choice we wanted, but it's the choice we have. And she said there are so many issues on the line beyond this that she said I feel unsafe as a human. I feel unsafe as an American, and I have to factor that in and live with this decision.

BASH: And we're going to go to break. But Rogers, the Republican candidate for Senate, told you that he could get 50 percent of the Jewish vote.

DOVERE: That was his prediction.

BASH: Which is -- yeah. I mean, there are a lot of predictions in that -- in that story that you have. Thank you. Terrific reporting.

Up next, President Trump just put a post on his social media platform, distancing himself from the two men in charge of his midterm strategy. One that helped him get elected twice. Stay with us.

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