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Judge Briefly Extends CNN's Access To White House Through Tuesday; One-On-One With San Francisco's Mayor; New Pro-Rogers Ad Targets Democrats Who Don't Like El-Sayed. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired October 08, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- and CNN's Evan Perez who was inside the courtroom during the hearing. Evan I'll start with you. What happened?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well Dana, the judge briefly extended the temporary restraining order which prevents the White House from enforcing its ban on reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico. The judge simply just extended it by a couple of days until next Tuesday.

He says he anticipates being able to rule between now and Tuesday on this request for a preliminary injunction. This is something that would take this beyond next Tuesday, that's what the media companies are asking for. One of the things that we heard though from the judge is him expressing skepticism about the government's case.

He's already ruled of course that the White House did not go through and did not offer any kind of due process to the reporters before pulling their press credentials and he expressed concerns about that again today. He told the government lawyers it appears that the biggest hurdle you will have is that due process concern that he based his earlier ruling on.

So now we wait for this next stage which is the request for a preliminary injunction and of course the President and the White House have already said they're going to try to appeal all of this. A question that does really come up here though is whether the judge will address some of the other issues.

Right now, it's only a due process issue. Is he going to address the First Amendment issue? The questions of national security which is something the White House has brought up. He did not really explain whether he's going to do that but certainly that's something we're going to keep an eye out.

One other thing Dana, we were in this courtroom, it was pretty packed. There were five attorneys on the media side and there was one government lawyer Michael Velchik from the Justice Department and the judge joked that he's normally sees the government has a big retinue of lawyers in cases and one lawyer for a defendant and this is not that type of case he pointed out.

BASH: No, it's not. It's not a normal case in really anyway. Thank you so much Evan, appreciate it.

Brian, the good news is there is an extension through Tuesday that CNN can continue to go through the White House gates as other news organizations are, MS NOW and Politico as well, but ultimately the decision is still TBD and obviously --

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes.

BASH: -- has huge implications.

STELTER: And why are we here? We might be here because the President woke up on the wrong side of the bed. That's what Ted Boutrous said in court a few minutes ago. He's the attorney for CNN, MS and Politico.

He said he doesn't know what the President was thinking. Maybe he just had a bad morning or a bad day. So you have a situation now where the Justice Department feels compelled to defend this ban in court and to try to push this forward so that maybe other news outlets can be banned in the future.

And this is all about the President's own personal whims and feelings toward the news coverage that he constantly watches and reads and obsesses about. But most importantly here this is about a lot more than just the three news outlets that are named. It's about the President trying to pick and choose who can ask him questions, who can document his presidency, and who can hold him accountable.

Judging by his Truth Social posts and his public comments, he wants the power to replace real reporters with propagandists. But the federal courts do not seem inclined to give him that power. The federal courts are leaning on decades of precedent involving the protection that news gathering has in this country, and that's something that should be heartening to Americans because press freedom is all of our freedom. It involves all of our freedom to know what is going on in the United States.

Yesterday we know that the head of the White House Correspondents Association, Jacqui Heinrich, had a private meeting with President Trump where she was pushing for White House access and trying to get this ban nonsense to go away altogether. We don't know what the outcome of that meeting was, but it's notable that she had that chance to talk with the President directly.

We also know the new owner of CNN, David Ellison, who took control earlier this week, has said he supports this legal action by CNN. That was also an important statement by the new owner of this network. So you have these three banned news outlets once again today in court fighting for our rights and your rights at home as viewers.

And Dana, as Evan said, we should know more by Tuesday of next week.

BASH: Yes. And I just want to add that Jacqui Heinrich, who is working in her capacity as President of the White House Correspondents Association, has been doing an amazing job fighting for all of the things that you just said, Brian.

Thank you so much to you and Evan outside the courthouse.

What happens when a first time politician gets elected to run one of the most liberal cities in America?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR DANIEL LURIE (D), SAN FRANCISCO: We got so entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that we weren't taking stock of what was happening on our streets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I went to San Francisco to talk to Mayor Daniel Lurie. Our conversation is next.

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[12:39:33]

BASH: For almost two centuries, San Francisco was known as the place to make your fortune in gold, ride a cable car, enjoy the beautiful Bay views. More recently, San Francisco has been known for the problems plaguing it deadly drug crisis, rampant crime, homelessness and affordability and housing crisis.

But there's now a relatively new Democratic mayor of the city by the Bay trying a different approach. I spent time with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie at the city's iconic Ferry building.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Yes. So you say that this is what do you call the door way to this city?

LURIE: This is the front door to the city. We have people from the East Bay from Marin for coming in. This very building is such a -- it's a magical place.

[12:40:15]

BASH: For years, San Francisco has been the poster child, particularly thanks to Republicans, President Trump in particular on Democratic governance and big cities not working. High crime, homelessness disorder. You ran two years ago to turn that around, and you are.

There are statistics that we've seen. Homelessness is down 4 percent from 2024 violent crime. In 2025, fell 17 percent. What do you want other big city mayors, Democrats, to know about what you're doing here and why you think it's working?

LURIE: Dana, I've been clear, we lost our way as a city. We were focused on the wrong things. And today we're focused on common sense. We're focused on good governance. We're focused on delivering results for the people of San Francisco.

I said from day one, public safety was going to be my number one priority. The crisis on our streets, the mental health and drug crisis is another top priority of mine. And I want to get the basics of governance right. We have to be relentless in our focus on delivering for the people of San Francisco.

BASH: So is it as simple as that as focus and just changing your priorities, or is it about how you're doing it? For example, when you just said we didn't focus on the right things --

LURIE: Yes.

BASH: -- what do you mean?

LURIE: I mean, we got so entrapped in our progressive values and talking about progressivism that we weren't taking stock of what was happening on our streets. We had 810 people die of overdose in San Francisco three years ago. There's nothing progressive about that.

There's nothing progressive about 30,000 car break ins. Everyone had to deal with whether or not their car was going to be broken into. That number, by the way, has dropped by 90 percent. And instead of talking about ideological issues and instead of talking about like all the dysfunction, like, we are focused.

If you ask me a question, I'm going to focus on how do we keep that mother walking their child to the bus stop safe and also not seeing open air drug use? How are we going to make it easier for families to stay and afford to live in San Francisco? Because our families are creative class. Our artists make San Francisco the unique place it is.

I had never been in politics before. You know, first person elected to this position in 116 years that did not have any political experience.

BASH: That right?

LURIE: 116 years.

BASH: Wow.

LURIE: And again, nobody really thought I could win. And so whether you're talking about business or nonprofits or labor, I walked in not owing anybody anything.

BASH: When you say that your focus is on getting things done that you described and not progressivism, are those two in conflict?

LURIE: Well, I think too often in this country, we think about left, middle right instead of focusing on what is going to deliver. What do the people of San Francisco want from their mayor? They want them focused on every day issues like public safety. Like, am I going to walk to the bus stop and see somebody sprawled out, passed out from an overdose?

Our small business able to thrive in San Francisco. I mean, I can't tell you how many small business owners I've talked to that years ago would say that City Hall was an opponent to their being successful. And now we're cutting red tape. We're cutting permitting requirements so that small businesses can thrive.

By the way, our Union Square is coming back --

BASH: I was just walking around there this morning.

LURIE: You know, a lot of vacancies on there. It's much better, much better.

BASH: And even here, there were vacancies.

LURIE: There's vacancies here and that now I think we got 99 percent full.

And I think we lost our way as a city. And it's why I ran. I could not explain to my two kids what they were seeing on the streets of San Francisco. And now, we have that sense of pride back in San Francisco. We have that sense of hope and optimism.

BASH: You use the word progressive unsolicited. So I'm trying to understand when you say we were too focused on progressive ideals versus getting things done, how you define that?

LURIE: Well, I believe in our progressive values here in San Francisco. That means that we look out for one another, that we take care of our immigrant community, that we take care of our LGBTQ Plus community. And but we got to a point where we said, well, it's -- that person's right to be on the street using drugs or it's -- is that person -- it's OK for someone to just go in and take what they want from a small business.

[12:45:08]

In my mind, that's not progressive. There's nothing progressive about small businesses having to shudder because they're a victim of crime over and over again.

BASH: Homelessness is obviously one of the main things I wanted to talk to you about. Because when, again, when San Francisco had become Democrats not knowing how to govern, it was crime, but also homelessness. How are you helping to get people off the street but do it in a way that people are able to get real help?

LURIE: We have a drug crisis on our streets. That's the main focus right now. We have set up voluntary treatment facilities and we also need involuntary treatment facilities. We're not going to arrest our way out of this issue. We have to get people the treatment and the options to get into recovery.

But I also want to be very clear that -- and I've said this from the day I got in office. If you are expecting to come to San Francisco to deal drugs, we're going to arrest you and we're going to prosecute you.

BASH: You've gotten a little bit of pushback from some advocates of the homeless saying that they're not quite thrilled with the methods. Have you heard that? And what do you think that is? LURIE: Listen, what I'm not thrilled about was 810 people dying of overdose last year. That number dropped to 625. I know what works and what we were doing here in San Francisco wasn't working. The numbers are better. Do we have more work to do? Absolutely.

BASH: You were focusing a lot on trying to bring the cost of housing down here in San Francisco. The median sales price of a home is around $1.6 million. That's, of course, very out of reach for most people.

LURIE: Yes. San Francisco has had an affordability crisis for decades. We've said no to new neighbors and housing for so long. It's why the day I got into office, we started working on a new zoning plan. We called it our family zoning plan to create more density and more opportunities to build affordable housing in San Francisco and market rate housing.

That coupled with our reforms around permitting, shortening the time it takes to get your permit so you can get building more quickly, is starting to yield results. We're absolutely -- we're in a rental emergency in the city. It went up 25 percent year over year. That's not sustainable.

BASH: You talk about the clean and safe streets. You're very open about wanting more police officers.

LURIE: Yes.

BASH: You're part of a party that is still trying to figure out how to navigate either through or out of six years ago, some people calling to defund the police. So can you just talk about that contrast?

LURIE: I think people want good government. They want to feel safe on their streets. They want to feel safe in their homes. And that requires a strong law enforcement presence.

How you guys? How are you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How are you doing, sir?

LURIE: Thank you for everything. Thank you for everything. Appreciate you.

BASH: The fact that they're here walking around, is that part of your effort to --

LURIE: Always. We're trying to rebuild the ranks of our police when we can --

BASH: -- and make people feel safe.

LURIE: And then they -- make people feel safe. And that's the type of police where you want to see them out walking.

People are feeling safer in the city by a huge numbers. As you pointed out earlier last year, crime went down 30 percent. It's down another 20 percent this year. That's what people want from a mayor. And once again, I'm going to say this is not a left or a right issue. This is a, do people want to be here in San Francisco? Do they want to raise their families? Do we want people visiting from other places?

Hi, everybody.

BASH: This is just a Thursday afternoon.

LURIE: A Thursday. Hi, how are you? Nice to see you.

We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go, and I'm going to be relentless in getting this city back to where it is rightfully belongs, and that's the best city in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: More of our interview tomorrow.

Up next, an Inside Politics exclusive. A new ad targeting disenchanted Democrats to try to get them to cross party lines and vote Republican in Michigan.

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[12:53:45]

BASH: Tonight, the first of two Michigan Senate debates between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers. And if you're a Michigan voter watching, you might see a new 60 second ad from the Rogers campaign supporters who are trying to target Democrats, especially Jewish Democrats. Here's part of a new ad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son Madden (ph) was in his classroom when a terrorist attacked his school. He admitted his intention was to kill Madden (ph) and everyone in that school. I just felt my whole world crumble.

Abdul El-Sayed said "hurt people, hurt people." He gave an excuse to someone who wanted to murder children. I'm a lifelong Democrat, but this election I'm voting for Mike Rogers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is here now. Phil Mattingly, what do you think? This is obviously big money to go into something like this in and around the debate.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: They clearly see an opening. I think that's been the case from pretty much the jump once I'll say I get the nomination. But also, I think you have to pair this with the Rogers campaign ad from what one or two days ago where he broke --

BASH: Yesterday, yes. MATTINGLY: -- explicitly and fervently on some of the President's major issues and initiatives as well. It tells you what they're seeing. I think what they're seeing in terms of a race where there are movable pools of voters that are not necessarily significant, but will be enough to potentially push one way or the other in terms of who wins.

And they're trying to find where they are, target them and make sure that they get the message that Rogers is a better alternative to El- Sayed. And it will be interesting to see how it plays. More interesting will be El-Sayed's response, particularly in a debate forum.

[12:55:23]

BASH: Yes, exactly. And on in a new Fox News poll, the question is likely voters and it's broken down by party. Only 6 percent of Democrats say that they would support Mike Rogers. And 4 percent of Republicans say Abdul El-Sayed. It's obviously the Independents that are pretty split.

But if you go back to the only 6 percent of Democrats saying Mike Rogers, I mean, that's not that much. But if this is a neck and neck race, it could matter.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, definitely could matter. And that's where you see this ad trying to -- basically trying to improve those numbers by pointing to past comments El-Sayed has said that have obviously caused frustration. I do think it's worth adding. I believe he did apologize after --

BASH: He did.

KANNO-YOUNGS: -- making those comments.

BASH: Recently, he did. Yes.

KANNO-YOUNGS: The -- but the strategy is clear here for Mike Rogers, seizing on past comments that El-Sayed has said, also trying to attach him to Hasan Piker. Although New York Times poll from just two weeks ago showed that still most voters in Michigan don't really know who Hasan Piker is, even though those who do have disapproval of him --

BASH: The people who they're targeting in that ad know exactly who Hasan Piker is.

KANNO-YOUNGS: They do. And then also the other kind of -- part of this messaging, which is how he deals with Trump's policies, right?

BASH: Yes.

KANNO-YOUNGS: The tariffs and the Iran war.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: And it allows Mike Rogers to change the conversation back to El-Sayed. That's what's been so interesting ever since the primary in the early weeks. It was kind of all about Abdul El-Sayed.

He -- I think it's been pretty successful so far, shifting it back to Mike Rogers and the Trump administration. I mean, we've seen the reaction from Mike Rogers. He's been, I would say, a leading Republican Senate candidate out there who's been among the first to distance himself from the war, from affordability, the whole the Canadian issue.

But so it allows him to change the conversation. But, again, I think the -- it's a small slice of voters. Some other bigger questions hanging over this debate tonight. Has Abdul El-Sayed improved his connection with African-American voters?

BASH: Yes, they --

ZELENY: Which is a central pivotal core of the Michigan Democratic electorate. So all eyes should still be on Michigan there because that is going to be perhaps the majority maker.

BASH: When I get off the air, I'm going to Michigan. I'll be there tonight during the debate. So thank you all --

MATTINGLY: You should go south to Ohio, which is better than Michigan.

KANNO-YOUNGS: Are we talking about Ohio now?

MATTINGLY: Is there -- are we not?

BASH: Wait, are you from Ohio?

MATTINGLY: Nobody really talks about it. I mean, it's a really great state.

BASH: OK. I'm getting yelled at. We're going to say thank you. Thank you all so much.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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