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Democrats Win Big On Election Night In Key Races; Californians Pass Redistricting Measure That Helps Democrats Flip Up To Five House Seats; Dems Sweep Election as Government Shutdown Hits Record 36th Day; Trump's Tariffs Face Make-or-Break Supreme Court Test. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired November 05, 2025 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip. It is 1:00 a.m. here in New York, 10:00 p.m. in California and election night in have consequences for both parties and for the country. In New York, the capital of capitalism will have a democratic socialist mayor for the first time in its 400 year history.
And CNN projects that Zohran Mamdani will win the mayor's race in New York. This victory ends the attempted political comeback of ex- governor Andrew Cuomo. Mandani will also be the first Muslim mayor of the city.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ZOHRAN MAMDAMI (D) EW YORK MAYOR-ELECT: New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrant, powered by immigrants. And as of tonight, led by an immigrant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: His victory is part of a trio of triumphs for Democrats on the East Coast. In New Jersey, Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill beat Republican Jack Cittarelli.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKIE SHERRILL (D) NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR-ELECT: I raise my hand and I swore to defend the Constitution. And that moment defines me. It taught me that leadership means carrying the weight of other people's hopes, standing firm when it's easier to bend, and always putting the common good above personal gain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And joining her in making history, Virginia Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, who will become the first female governor in the commonwealth's history.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ABIGAIL SPANBERGER (D) VIRGINIA GOVERNOR-ELECT: We are built on the things we share, not the things that pull us apart. And I am proud that our campaign earned votes from Democrats, Republicans, independents and everyone in between. That's the Virginia I know. That's the Virginia I love. And that's the Virginia I will have the honor of serving your next governor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And out west in California, voters are backing Prop 50, the congressional redistricting plan to negate gains made by redrawn maps in the state of Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D) CALIFORNIA: We need the state of Virginia. We need the state of Maryland. We need our friends in New York, in Illinois, in Colorado. We need to see other states. But the remarkable leaders that have been doing remarkable things meet this moment head on as well, to recognize what we're up against in 2026.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, these results present new questions about the midterms and support for President Trump's agenda as the 36th day of the government shutdown drags on and becomes the longest in American history.
We were well into a conversation about Mamdani earlier and about what he means for, you know, the future of both parties. And Scott, I mean, I know that you think that Republicans are going to be kind of doing rain dances about this going into 2026.
But I also think that his victory was kind of a failure of the strategy to paint him as a socialist and have that be the only thing that worked to defeat him. Well, what's going to be the real plan?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't know. I mean, look who he ran against. Cuomo. Terrible. Ended his gubernatorial term in a terrible way. And he ran against the cat guy. I mean, who did he run against? Who was painting him as whatever he didn't run against, in my opinion, like a legitimate, viable alternative. He got to run against Cuomo twice, for goodness sakes. And who's terrible?
PHILLIP: I mean, he ran against Eric Adams.
JENNINGS: Oh, there's a powerhouse.
PHILLIP: I mean, look, Eric Adams was the sitting mayor, and this was a pretty tough campaign. I mean, it got pretty nasty at the end, I guess. But really, I mean, are Republicans going to just scream socialism until the cows come home, or is there going to be more strategy?
JENNINGS: It's a good question. I don't think Republicans are going to be the ones screaming it. I think it's going to be Democrats. They were screaming it tonight. Listen to Mamdani's speech. He's quoting socialist candidate for president. He's claiming I'm a proud Democratic socialists. I'll never apologize for it.
There are going to be some Democrats out there who look at this and say, look where the energy is in the party. We need to be more like Mamdani. And I know you guys refer to these other candidates as moderates earlier. I'll just submit they're not moderate.
PHILLIP: Well, OK, Scott's right to a degree. Look at where the energy is.
JENNINGS: Yes.
PHILLIP: What is the lesson? The energy is where Spanberger is winning by 15 points in Virginia. I mean, that's not -- I don't want to interrupt you, so go ahead.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: To suggest that there's only energy in the New York mayoral race and when Democrats just had a romp in all of the races where they were running, including in states where, you know, like I said earlier, in Georgia, where they're winning statewide races. So the idea that there's only energy in the. In the mayoral race, I don't --
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's just young voters, really, because a lot of the conversation around Mamdani is that he was able to excite young voters, but he's not the only one exciting young voters. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger won voters. Young voters, 2 to 1. In New Jersey, she won it by 66 percent, I believe, to 32 percent.
In the special elections that have happened in 2024 so far, 40 -- Democrats have won 46 out of the 47 special elections.
So there is more to this than just Mamdani. There is a clear rejection of the Republican Party's agenda across the board. And I will say some people might say it is just democratic states, et cetera. In elections before this, if you look at 2017, if you look at 26 before -- 2006 before that, if you look at the midterm elections after a Democratic sweep, Democrats always do well.
And so there is something to say about these critical states and what that might look like moving forward and what the Republican strategy is going to be about trying to win back the voters that they want in 2024.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: On average, yes, Democrats are performing 15 points better than the vice president. I concede that point. But one can also not deny, since World War II, the office, the party of the president has lost on average, 19 out of 21 midterms. Most of those losses were between 26 and 28 seats.
And so there is historic precedent for Republicans potentially to lose. Now, I'm hoping this gerrymandering stuff in Texas and North Carolina and other places could work out for us, but the reality is. (CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I'm sorry, but it is amazing that all of a sudden it's like we're going to lose, but I hope that we can just gerrymander the heck out of the country. That's a wild state plan.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We learned it from our democratic friends in Illinois.
PHILLIP: No, you didn't.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We learned it from Illinois.
PHILLIP: No, you didn't. At least your Democratic friends in Illinois did it when they were supposed to do it. So I guess during this actual redistricting process. I'm not saying it's better, but I'm just saying that this is, this, that part is unprecedented. And now we're just taking for granted that we're just going to redraw the maps because we don't like them. That's right.
ASTEAD HERNDON, HOST AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, VOX: Just one point on the question of being able to paint Democrats is too far left, which Republicans have done successfully. I mean, that's the reason Donald Trump is in office. But those issues specifically, at least in my reporting, when I was talking to people, were almost always on kind of like cultural issues. Right. This is almost always about trans women in sports, for example, or kind of backlash against DEI or wokeness or things like that.
That's not really Zohram Mamdani. That's not really Bernie Sanders. That world is willing to have the fight about left, right, center, because they think that puts them back on economic terms, which is a better place to be than the kind of cultural forward issues.
The part of the Democratic Party that became most obsessed with representation, most clearly talking about identity politics, was not the left. The biggest part of that shift in 2020 was a center, more establishment part of the Democratic Party.
PHILLIP: Educated.
HERNDON: Yes, yes, the college educated. That's the part that Trump.
PHILLIP: Yes.
HERNDON: That's the part that Trump backlashed against. I'm saying I would not say it's fair to put on Mamdani or Sanders to just the party has gone too far left and if they embrace that means Republicans get to win because their version of that is not exactly the same.
PHILLIP: That is very important and very smart point because I do think that if the moral of the story is that he's so left wing, it's never going to translate. I feel like that's kind of missing what happened here. What he did was convince voters in that city that he was going to address the one thing that was the most important to them, which was their sense of economic stability and well-being. And it doesn't really matter what he called himself. That works. It
works in New York, it works in Missouri, it works in California. It does work.
HERNDON: It worked in New Jersey. Mikey Gerald promised to declare a state of emergency and address electricity costs.
HINOJOSA: You make it about the voter and not about the candidate. When you make it about what you're delivering --
HERNDON: Yes.
HINOJOSA: -- for the voter -- those candidates do well and that's what these candidates have done.
SINGLETON: But even Democrats have stated in their own autopsy that their concern is that their party has moved too far to the left when compared to the number of Americans who view the Republican Party as being too far to the right. They acknowledge that. Your party acknowledged that.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: What I'm saying is that -- what I'm saying is that when we say left, right, the whole left right thing, if what you're talking about is a lot of the cultural issues, that's not the frame of this sort of populist progressive left.
[01:10:06]
That is the Sanders, AOC, Mamdani wing of the party. They are not talking about those issues. And so much if you -- but hold on. I'm just saying, if you oversimplify it as like too far left, you might miss that if you don't make these other cultural issues the forefront of what the party's talking about, that the other part of the message might actually work for people.
And I would argue, as I've said to you all in the past, that Donald Trump gets this. He gets it really well because he takes economic populism as a Republican and he does it. He literally snatches from Bernie Sanders platform and executes as president. That's how I know that type of populism isn't just a left wing thing.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. And I hear that argument, I think in the context of the results of tonight and looking into 2026 though, I think voters actually said he doesn't enact an economic agenda that solves our problems and makes us feel better.
Like if I'm a Republican looking at the results tonight and my solution is we are going to run against the mayor of New York being a socialist, like that is not going to feel to me like the salience of that is not going to translate to people across the country who do not live in New York City, do not really care what's going on in New York City.
And I'm not denying that Trump and Republicans have been effective at painting Democrats as leftists. I'm not arguing that has not been an effective line of attack. But typically they're attacking, you know, in 2024, they were attacking Kamala Harris who was running for president. I don't think that the translation to an elected official who does not have jurisdiction over or ties to these voters. I just don't think -- I just don't think the salience is going to be there.
JENNINGS: It won't just be him. You will have Senate candidates. I mean, who do you think is going to win this primary up in Maine? Now that you've seen these --
BEDINGFIELD: I think Janet Mills, now that you've seen these in --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Now that you've seen Mamdani and you see where the energy is.
BEDINGFIELD: In New York City, in New York City.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean, he's very clearly a unique candidate for this particular city. I mean, if you listen to the speech, you hear it. But I do think that the biggest problem Democrats face. And I take your point about the dissatisfaction with how Trump is handling the economy, because even while there used to be a time when Democrats were pro tariffs, they weren't pro tariffing the entire world in a sledgehammer manner.
And I think that has hurt Trump. And one of the things that he's tried to do to kind of inoculate himself from that is the health care thing. The health care thing is his way of trying to actually fix the economic approval rating problem that he has by trying to bring health care costs down.
So, I do still think for Democrats, they've got to figure out what is the message on the economic piece and can they actually find candidates that can do it? Because the candidates also matter. Hugely. Hugely.
SINGLETON: Well, I think Democrats are going to attempt to model some aspects of Mamdani's pronouncements about economics. I think there are a lot of Democratic voters, you guys, correct me if I'm wrong, who do feel disillusioned about their economic status. And I think there's a fundamental question for the American people. What economic model do you want to follow? A capitalist one argued by Republicans or one that's government controlled argued by my Democratic friends? That just simply does not work. It stifles innovation. It stifles growth.
HERNDON: Yes, I mean, there's an underrated part to me of this race. It's how Mamdani broke out in the primary early. And part of that is his willing to embrace that kind of pro-Palestinian advocacy. If I'm a Democrat who's thinking about 2027, eight, that's an interesting question because the party, and specifically Democrats, numbers wise, have completely changed about support for Israel and about criticism. And he that did not it was -- PHILLIP: Not American party to.
(CROSSTALK)
HERNDON: So while it was a general election question of the controversy, it was a primary benefit for him and helped consolidate support. And so if you're thinking about ways you're making that coalition among the national party, you're going to have to wrestle with that.
And I think Democrats have told themselves that voters only care domestically for too long. This is a changing electorate is increasingly born from outside of the United States. It's increasingly immigrant. And I'm like, those folks are changing the values of the party and the priorities of issues.
PHILLIP: Stand by everyone because Harry Enten is still with us. Harry, tell us more about what the data is showing us about how Madonna pulled this all off.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: You know, I was listening to your panel discussion, I think one of the things I want to note, you know, in Virginia and in New Jersey, the Democratic candidates outperformed their polling. In New York, it was the exact opposite.
Look, Mamdani got to a majority of the vote, but only 50.4 percent, only a 9.1, way less than what some of the pre-election polling was suggesting. And he did win four of the boroughs.
[01:15:02]
But, you know, the bottom line is it was fine, it was decent. But I think the thing that ultimately drove that victory, as we look at the exit poll data, is I want you to take a look here. I mean, what was the most important issue facing New Yorkers? Look at this. 56 percent, the clear majority said cost of living, which of course was what Mamdani ran on in the primary, what he ran on the general election.
Donald Trump, of course, tries to come in at the last minute and wants to argue, you know, crime. That's the big thing. But that was only 22 percent of the electorate. Now, how did those folks who felt about cost of living, you know, who did they think could necessarily handle it?
And what do we see here? If you said that cost of living was the most important issue facing New York City, look at this margin that Mamdani ran up against Andrew Cuomo. That is why he won this election. That, I think, is the thing that ties in New York, Virginia and New Jersey.
When you look at the polling, the economy was so high up on the list of issues, the costs of living, inflation, et cetera. And when you thought it was the economy, when you thought it was the cost of living, you went for the Democratic candidate. And that, in my opinion, is the reason that Zohran Mamdani is the mayor and not the disgraced Governor Andrew Cuomo. PHILLIP: So Harry, Mamdani, you know, as we've just been discussing,
he's a Democratic socialist. He made a lot of promises in this campaign. Did voters specifically expect him to actually carry those out?
ENTEN: Yes, I think this is the key thing, right? You know, sort of the discussion of why did Mamdami end up winning. I think the argument's pretty clear. It's cost of living and it is not necessarily his ideology on other issues.
I mean, take a look here, New York. See, Mamdani's policies are realistic or not realistic. Somehow the dude won despite the fact that the plurality of voters seem said that his policies were not realistic, but they liked the idea that he was talking about costs of living and that he was speaking to them, even if they didn't think he could necessarily carry out everything that he was arguing about.
And more than that, here's another little exit poll tidbit for you as I pull it up here. How about right here? Do you consider yourself a Democratic socialist? Look at this. The vast, vast majority of New York City voters that voted Mamdani in office, the same majority.
But look at this no comes in at 69 percent. Yes at 25 percent. I don't think that this is necessarily a New York City victory saying that democratic socialism is on the rise and is popular with the general populace. It may be -- maybe popular with parts of the Democratic Party.
But what we do see from the exit polling and what we do see from the results across the board is cost of living. Cost of living. Cost of living. If Democrats run on that in 2026 and going forward, they're going to do quite well. They run on democratic socialism. I think what happened in New York will stay right here and I will say the finest city in the world.
PHILLIP: Well, it is fascinating that his own voters think it's OK that his policies are not that realistic. Harry, that's super interesting. Continue to stand by for us, if you will.
ENTEN: I'm not going anywhere.
PHILLIP: He's taken a victory lap and throwing some jabs at Donald Trump in the process. Congressman Eric Swalwell is standing by live in California on that at the much more. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:22:37]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: And let me make this crystal clear. We can de facto end Donald Trump's presidency as we know it. The minute Speaker Jeffries gets sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives. It is all on the line. A bright line in 2026.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: California Governor Gavin Newsom making it clear that he thinks the midterms are a referendum on President Trump as he declares victory in his redistricting gambit. CNN is projecting Prop 50 will pass, clearing the way for California to redraw its congressional districts after Texas did the same thing under Trump's orders.
Now with me is California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell. Congressman, thanks for being here. Prop 50 passed by a pretty wide margin in California, but I also wonder, do you think that's going to be enough? Because Republicans have pretty they've expanded their ambitions in terms of redistricting and could end up netting way more than what Texas did.
Are Democrats actually going to be able to fight fire with fire in the places that they need to in order to counter that?
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): We have to. We just did tonight. It's a big statement that California made. And to your point, Donald Trump's not going to the ballot box at the midterms to argue that his big, brutal bill is helping anyone or that we're better served by disappearing hardworking immigrants in our community. He's just trying to make the math harder.
And so what I hope other governors see in what Governor Newsom did, if you're in Maryland, New York, Illinois and some of these other places, is that we can't fight these battles with one hand tied behind our back. And it's usually the upper hand as Democrats.
And so if this is going, you know, to be a midterm sweep, which we need it to be for the country, we need to all be in on what we do in the next couple weeks in these other states, because the clock's ticking and we don't want to wake up the day after the midterms with democracy in ashes and say, well, at least we preserved the redistricting method that we had in our state.
No, we need to match what they're doing in Texas, Illinois or Texas, Florida, Indiana, Missouri. We need to match it everywhere we can.
[01:25:00]
PHILLIP: I want to talk to you about the elections that we had in Virginia and New Jersey and also in New York. What is your take about the -- what the task is for the Democratic Party ahead? Can the party have both Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill and Zohran Mamdani all at once?
SWALWELL: Well, elections and governing is all about addition, not subtraction. And what I see that the through line in those three winners tonight is that they talked about affordability, that it costs too much in America right now under the Trump administration. It costs too much. Literally. We were promised costs would come down on day one.
The president is 0 for 300 as costs continue to go up. And it costs too much figuratively, as immigrant rights and rights for women to make decisions about their body are also being taken away. So if you run on an affordability message, if you tell the American people, we know you work hard and you bet on yourselves every day.
So your country should bet on your job and wages going up, bet on your health care and costs coming down, bet on your kids' education and their safety in the classroom and bet on their future. That's a winning message. It's a winning message in Manhattan, and it's a winning message in Manhattan Beach in California, and it's a winning message in every city in between.
PHILLIP: One of the critiques of the Democratic Party in the last couple of years has been that they are too focused on culture war issues. You know, Republicans successfully tried to paint them as being for more for the rights of trans people than for bringing down the cost of living. And you can -- I'm sure you would disagree with that characterization, but that is how they characterized it.
But do you think that it is true that the Democratic Party, based on what we saw tonight, should put those other issues on the back burner in favor of things that are more speaking to people's pocketbooks.
SWALWELL: It's all about affordability. And I say that as a father of three kids and a wife who works very hard in her job. I get, you know, the challenges people face every day, you know, to meet their bills at the end of the month. And that has to be and that's where we do best, particularly on health care, is we contrast ourselves with Republicans who want to take away your health care, charge you more for a preexisting condition.
And then to your point, you know, about, you know, some of the cultural issues, the way I see it is I'm going to go to the parade for the values that many of us care about, many of our friends and neighbors are going to go to the parade.
But we can't tell everyone who wants to be a part of our movement that parade attendance is mandatory. So it's very much a tone issue. And I think message has been received from most of my colleagues. And that's why we just had a big night sweeping California, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania especially important because that's a state that Donald Trump won just a year ago.
PHILLIP: All right. Congressman Eric Swalwell, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
SWALWELL: My pleasure. Thanks, Abby.
PHILLIP: And we've got a lot more to talk about on this election night as President Trump tries to blame the Republican losses on the government shutdown that is now the longest in American history. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:32:56]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: President Trump's first reaction to a sweep of Democratic wins across the country tonight came on Truth Social, of course, citing unnamed pollsters with claims that the president not being on the ballot and the shutdown were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight, while also reiterating his demands once again that Senate Republicans terminate the filibuster.
It all comes amid an election night dominated by familiar countdown clocks. But this clock is ticking up to a level that we have never seen in American history.
The government shutdown is officially breaking records for the longest shutdown ever, entering its 36th day and counting, a shutdown that is clearly on the president's mind tonight.
The panel is back with me.
Can I just say that Trump might be correct? That -- well, no -- that he was not on the ballot and the shutdown. And I'm not sure that he thinks that that's -- like it's not what he thinks it is.
I think the fact that he was not on the ballot and that voters are blaming Republicans for the shutdown is bad news for Republicans, right.
(CROSSTALKING)
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Made a difference in Virginia, 5.6 percent of the residents there are federal workers. You got to account for the thousands who were probably fired. If you're a contractor, you're furloughed. You're not going to get back pay. You think about SNAP benefits, the government being shut down.
I mean, those are going to have real implications. And if you're voting, you're thinking about that stuff in real time --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. That's right.
SINGLETON: -- when you're going to the voting booth. So I think the president's correct.
PHILLIP: Yes. And Shermichael, we're going to fix your mic while I get Scott Jennings on the record on this. Look, I again, I hear the point about Democrats just need to come to the table, all of that, right.
But if voters are not blaming them and they are blaming Republicans, that is a -- that seems like a practical political problem for Republicans.
[01:34:45]
PHILLIP: How are Republicans going to use leverage in their fight with Democrats when the Democrats are actually the ones with the upper hand in the eyes of voters?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Oh, I'm sure Democrats will be more than happy to open the government now. The election is over. I mean -- I mean -- PHILLIP: Are they?
JENNINGS: -- part of the reason they shut it down was to get through tonight.
PHILLIP: I mean.
(CROSSTALKING)
JENNINGS: And so I would suspect they'll be opening up by the end of the week.
PHILLIP: Adam Schiff he was like, hold the line, AOC --
JENNINGS: There's a lot of rumors of --
PHILLIP: AOC, she said, hold the line.
(CROSSTALKING)
PHILLIP: Look, I don't see what is the incentive for Democrats to back down when voters are basically saying Trump's not doing enough? It's the Republicans' fault.
And then they basically handed the keys in the last election, in this past election, to the Democrats. It's -- where's the leverage?
JENNINGS: Again, these are blue states electing Democrats. Not a shock.
Democrats clearly wanted this shutdown to get through election day. I do think they are facing pressure from their internal coalitions, the unions, the air traffic controllers, the government employee unions are desperate to get the government back open. They're feeling a little bit of internal heat.
But again, the election is now over. I'm sure tomorrow morning phones will start ringing and it will be open soon enough.
This was a political shutdown and that's what they did. And now were through the election.
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think the Democrats hand was strengthened, was strengthened tonight by the results. And Trump clearly thinks so too apparently. But you know, especially given both -- given the electoral success Democrats had, but also the fact that the elections really turned on this question about costs, the economy, prices. And so the argument that Democrats are making about health care, they've only been -- they've only been bolstered in their argument by the results tonight.
So I'm not -- I don't -- you know, we'll see what happens. Obviously there are real practical impacts of a shutdown on people across the country. And so Democrats and Republicans on the Hill are grappling with that. Eventually, at some point, the shutdown will come to an end. But I
don't think that the election results tonight weaken the Democrats' hand here at all, actually.
PHILLIP: Erick Erickson says on X tonight, "Lame duck status is going to come even faster now. Trump cannot turn out the vote unless he is on the ballot and that is never happening again." At least if the Constitution has a say.
ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, I definitely think if Donald Trump played by traditional political rules, all the signs are negative, right?
Like, I think the through line, as folks have said, about cost of living and I think his own actions on tariffs, even on immigration, we've seen a kind of public opinion shift.
The recourse for Donald Trump is that he's not playing by these rules. He is trying to expand executive power to make Congress seem irrelevant. He is trying to -- he is trying to execute his agenda through kind of a use of federal authority in a different type of way.
And so I guess in my sense, the evidence that they received this evening is not going to slow them down from their attempts to kind of reshape the kind of fullness of their agenda, even if that means they lose some seats in the midterms. I think this is why --
(CROSSTALKING)
HERNDON: -- the redistricting fight is very important, because it does provide an escape hatch from some of the electoral blowback.
PHILLIP: I mean, he wants the filibuster to go away because he wants -- I mean, as he's explained it on X -- he basically wants the next year or so, maybe it will be even less than that, maybe call it eight months for them to really just ram through everything they can possibly do.
But looking at the polls, looking at the results tonight, that feels like something that would -- that would -- the voters would respond to incredibly negatively and could mean even more disaster for Republicans going into the next midterm election.
SINGLETON: I don't think -- and Scott, I don't know what you think about this, and I'm curious because I've talked to folks on the Hill. And from my understanding, a lot of Republican senators aren't open to this idea because --
(CROSSTALKING)
PHILLIP: Yes. I think that's right.
SINGLETON: -- there's legitimate concerns about what happens when Democrats take control again and things are in the reverse. And then again, you're also thinking about the political backlash. There's a number of Republican seats up for grabs in the Senate. I
mean, there are a number of things that folks are assessing on our side to say, hey, Mr. President, we get it. But let us try to figure this out --
(CROSSTALKING)
PHILLIP: But isn't this also -- but it's also it says something about how Trump sees politics. That he wants that, not because it's good for his party, but because it's good for him.
And that's the biggest problem for Republicans going forward is that he's not really -- he doesn't really care how Republicans do in the midterms. He's like, I just want to get my agenda. And I don't --
(CROSSTALKING)
JENNINGS: I think that -- can I just disagree with that?
PHILLIP: I mean, because that's effectively what he is saying.
JENNINGS: Well --
BEDINGFIELD: He cares about more oversight.
He's worried about the oversight. He's worried about not getting his agenda. He does not care about the seats.
JENNINGS: His presidency will grind to a halt, they will impeach him. He knows the wages of having Democrats run Congress when you're the president. So I disagree.
I think he deeply cares about it because he knows if Democrats win next November, either chamber, you know, it comes to an end. That's I think they're going to they're doing everything they can do to win.
PHILLIP: But he cares about it for personal purposes.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think, he cares about the midterms.
JENNINGS: Doesn't every president?
I mean, every president cares about what kind of president he's going to be.
BEDINGFIELD: They care about their party. They care about their party.
He cares about the midterms. He does -- he -- I would to your point, I think he probably does not care about the post-Trump Republican Party.
[01:39:48]
BEDINGFIELD: I think he cares intensely about the midterms. But I think the long term, the impact that getting rid of the filibuster would have long term on the Republican Party, I think Donald Trump's probably, like, not my problem.
HINOJOSA: Well, and also just to what you said about how Republicans don't want this. Republicans also didn't want redistricting. They didn't want to open up in Texas and elsewhere.
This whole everything that we're seeing, which is a race to the bottom on redistricting. And they privately, what I've heard from people is push back on the White House.
But that's what Trump wanted. So they had to go through with it. So I am not Sure that Republicans will push back on Trump's calls to end the filibuster. I mean, that just seems like if the president wanted it --
SINGLETON: He did in the first term. He did in the first term.
HINOJOSA: Well, will he -- will they actually --
JENNINGS: He demanded --
(CROSSTALKING)
HINOJOSA: I'm not sure this Republican Party will do it.
PHILLIP: I do think this might be the one thing that he's not going to get from them. And that's not saying much. But I do think that, first of all, I don't know that Trump really understands the consequences as well as others do.
I mean, even Mike Johnson opposes getting rid of the filibuster, and he's been willing to do virtually everything that Trump wants him to do. So it might stop there, but we shall see.
Everyone stand by. The battle at the polls was today, but in just a few hours from now, we'll see a battle at the Supreme Court as Trump's tariffs face their biggest test yet. That's next.
[01:41:04]
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PHILLIP: We are now mere hours away from what's set to be a blockbuster case at the Supreme Court that will decide whether or not President Trump's sweeping emergency tariffs are even legal. Tonight, the president says that the stakes of that case are high when it comes to his economic agenda.
He posted this quote, "Tomorrow's United States Supreme Court case is literally life or death for our country.
Harry Enten is back at the Magic Wall.
Harry, as Trump put it, life or death for the -- for the country. I wonder how do Americans feel about that?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA ANALYST: I'm not quite sure they necessarily think its life or death for the country, but leave it to Trump to, you know, Truth Social, whatever he wants.
But what I can tell you here is that Trump is losing the tariff argument with the American people. I mean, take a look here. New tariffs on imported goods. You go back a year ago, right. What do we see when Trump was elected for the second time, it was 52 percent favored, 48 percent opposed.
Jump over to this side of the screen, hello. What do we see? We see the opposition jump way up through the roof. We're talking about 62 percent, more than 3 in 5 Americans now oppose new tariffs on other countries compared to just 38 percent who favor them.
I mean, we're talking about a 24-point gap here. It was a four-point gap in favor. So that's a 28-point switcheroo on the margin.
Now the question is, Abby, why -- why did Americans turn against the tariffs? Well, it simply comes down to this. Trump is losing the argument. He is losing the argument when it comes to prices.
Impact of tariffs on prices. Look at this in the short term, 71 percent of Americans believe that tariffs increase prices in the short term.
Look at this on the decrease. You can literally count it on your two hands -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 -- only 6 percent of Americans believe that tariffs in fact decrease prices in the short term.
And even in the long term, which, of course, Trump has made the argument. It may hurt you in the short term, but in the long term it will help you out. But look at this. The majority, 51 percent of Americans believe that, in fact, new tariffs will increase prices in the long term compared to just 23 percent who say decrease. No wonder Trump is losing the tariff argument, Abby.
PHILLIP: And where does he stand on this issue compared to some of the other key issues that voters care about?
ENTEN: Yes, ok. So why don't we just look at Trump's net approval rating on the different issues. And I think this sort of gives the game away, right?
Trump's net approval rating. We have a list of issues for you here. It's a lot of text. But it's crime, immigration, foreign policy, the economy, trade and tariffs.
Look at what rates at the bottom here a negative 18-point net approval rating for Donald Trump on trade tariffs. When you combine that with the negative 16-point rating that he has in the economy, which of course was a big issue in the off-year elections this past evening, you know, in New York, in New Jersey, in Virginia, you combine these two. All of a sudden, Americans feel like Trump is not adding money to their pocketbooks. He's taking it out.
Tariffs -- not a winning issue for Donald Trump. We'll see if it's a winning issue for him at the Supreme Court. But I know which way Americans hope the Supreme Court rules, Abby. PHLLIP: All right, Harry. Thank you very much.
My panel is back with me.
You know, Donald Trump once again being the two-by-four president where rather than just doing the thing in a moderate way, he just takes a two-by-four and just smacks everyone over the head with it.
And that's kind of what's happening with tariffs and putting aside -- I mean the Supreme Court's going to rule how they rule. But Americans have decided. They think this is bad for them.
And Trump is not backing down, frankly.
BEDINGFIELD: Yes. And I mean, I think part of the issue is, you know, if you look at the approval that Harry was just talking about, sort of flipping from when Trump took office, I mean, part of the -- I think part of the reality of that is Trump was, was not describing tariffs accurately, right?
Like it was always the companies are going to pay. It's we're going to make money off of this. And it was a hypothetical. People weren't feeling it.
Well, fast forward. Now, people are feeling it. And so his inaccurate description of it doesn't land.
It's that mismatch that he -- that's the same problem he has on the economy writ large, which we've talked about, you know, which Biden had as well, that if you go out and tell people that, you know, the economy is humming and they're not feeling it, it's not going to land.
[01:49:51]
BEDINGFIELD: And so there's a mismatch on how he's talking about tariffs. And it's dragging -- it's dragging him down.
PHILLIP: He also discounts the degree to which these days in this economy, everybody is a little bit of a mom-and-pop seller. People are on Etsy. People are -- people are doing -- they are engaging in commerce in ways that will make them be affected by tariffs.
And I don't think Trump takes that into consideration either.
JENNINGS: Let me tell you something. All this polling, all this punditry, he does not care. I have talked to him about this this year --
PHILLIP: I'm aware.
(CROSSTALKING)
PHILLIP: I'm also aware that he does not understand how tariffs work.
JENNINGS: I was just pulling up the transcript. I asked him right after it was this -- the appeals court ruling happened. I said, what are you prepared to do if this doesn't go your way? I said, I'm not even going to be thinking about that.
He said, if it'll be a disaster, if we lose for our country, our country will be weak, pathetic and not rich.
And then he attributed the peace deals that he has negotiated to tariffs. It is his longest-held and most deeply-held view that tariffs are not just an economic matter, but they are a tool of the presidency to achieve national security and national diplomacy.
So we'll see what happens at the court. I'm just telling you, my view is the polling he doesn't care about. He thinks it's working. The government has made money off of it. By the way, we have taken in a lot of revenue.
But he will be apoplectic if this thing does not go his way.
HINOJOSA: But Americans aren't feeling what he said would be gains, to Kate's point. And I think that it's clear because now we're looking forward to the next year.
We're looking forward to how Democrats are going to message the next year, and we know they're going to message it on cost of living and how we need to bring down prices, and how Donald Trump hasn't done that.
He wants to message on not the economy, because you just saw those numbers, that right there -- he's doing terrible on the economy. He wants to message on crime and immigration.
The problem here is Americans are clear what they want. They were clear tonight. They were clear 2024. Donald Trump's not giving that. He wants to go with crime and immigration. Let me tell you, when it comes to immigration, the exit polling from CNN shows in Virginia that when it came to immigration, Spanberger won more than 9 in 10 of people that cared about immigration and half the electorate in Virginia cared about immigration. She also won Independents.
And so I think that on issues that even Donald Trump believes that he can win right now, he is not doing as well as he did in the 2024 election.
And I think that will be very telling in seeing what happens in the midterms.
HERNDON: Donald Trump has succeeded in his diagnoses of problems that the American people agree with, mainly being the economy.
But even at the time when he was saying how much he loved tariffs from the stage, I remember being asking people after, what do you think about the whole tariffs thing? And they would just kind of wish it away.
There was never agreement about the solutions. And I think we're seeing that kind of disconnect as we continue to go right now. But there's been a shift on several issues that I think add up to an American electorate that is increasingly not feeling the Trump sequel. And so he came in with a clear I think, I think there was a legitimate
mandate about prices, about the economy. I think he has put the American people into his own ideological project, a vision about how he wants to change kind of country, culture broadly.
That is not why he was elected, but that is his firm belief, which is, I think, what Scott is talking about. Whether he cares or not, like whether -- he's going to go for it.
PHILLIP: What I like to remind people is that he's been talking about this very much for decades. In the 80s, he was complaining that Japan was cleaning our clocks and trade, and guess what. He was wrong.
Japan was not cleaning our clocks. We were cleaning their clocks. We are doing better as an economy, even in light of globalization.
And so Trump has had this deeply held belief, but fundamentally it is not accurate. He diagnoses the problem of what is going on in terms of, you know, towns that have lost manufacturing. But his solution is not correct. And history and economics has shown that.
So now the Supreme Court is going to have to decide whether this statute, which literally says that Congress has the power to tariff, allows him to tariff the entire world at insane levels.
Yes, it might ruin his day, but I think it also is going to address a really important constitutional line that Congress just doesn't even bother to address.
SINGLETON: I think you're right about the pronouncements of the president. I think you're also right that there was a mandate to address costs.
I would advise the president to be more surgical. I agree with him on the focus being China. I think the best way to address that would be to build coalitions with some of our allies.
I think the president is 100 percent correct on his focus about the refinement of rare earth minerals. We need to lessen the reliance on China I believe 70 percent is exported from the Chinese. I believe.
That's just not good national security strategy for us or any of our friends in the West.
[01:54:48]
SINGLETON: And so I think we can accomplish what the president wants to accomplish while still being targeted and addressing cost and the cost of living for everyday people by just being more surgical.
And that's the best advice that I would give the president on this. We can still move forward with this, but let's do this in a very different operational way.
HERNDON: This is the same blowback on immigration, by the way. Like I think the electorate response is that it has not been surgical. And I think the administration has done that on purpose.
(CROSSTALKING)
HINOJOSA: It's not just violent criminals. It's not just violent criminals.
HERNDON: Yes. And it's at odds with their kind of performative nature, sort of.
(CROSSTALKING)
PHILLIP: -- like this ideological project that other people like Stephen Miller have about changing the way that we even view immigration in this country and I think Trump shares a lot of that. But it's clearly being operationalized by other people in the administration.
Thank you, everyone. Great conversation over the last couple of hours.
Thank you very much for watching. Elex Michaelson is going to pick up our night of coverage right after this.
[01:55:41]
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