Superpowers Super Meeting

Americans are feeling more pain from the government shutdown every single day, and it's about to get a lot worse. Air traffic controllers aren't getting paid, and yesterday there were control tower shortages all across the country. This weekend, millions of Americans who receive food stamps will lose their benefits. 42 million Americans rely on them. House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed that deadline this morning.

On Saturday, this gets very real. Snap benefits will stop flowing to all those who need it. You're talking about tens of millions of Americans at risk of going hungry if the Senate Democrats can continue this gambit. The largest union representing government workers, many of whom are now relying on food banks while not getting paid, is telling both sides enough is enough. But Democrats still say they won't budge until Republicans agree to their terms.

on health care. My panel is back now. And I think that because it's been so long and there's so much back and forth and so much finger pointing, I think it's... good to take a moment and reset and something we were talking about during the break, Jeff, is that none of us can remember a time when the government is shut down because Democrats are...

forcing a policy change. And that is what they are unabashedly doing right now. And that is, among other reasons, I think a big reason, maybe the biggest reason, Republicans are saying no. Because I've been told that they don't want to set a precedent by giving in to policy changes on a government shutdown. Exactly. And the policy change obviously is on health care, but it's an issue that crosses.

party lines and we've talked so much during these last 27 28 days about how there hasn't it hasn't really felt like a government shutdown in some traditional respects because you know there's been a lot that's happened in the last month a lot of a demolition

at the White House. A lot of paychecks are still coming. However, those pressure points we talked about, those pain points, those are coming. And this weekend, of course, is a first... installment of those or one of the the most profound perhaps and the idea that uh that the food assistance benefits snap um a supplemental nutrition assistance which used to be called food stamps that is what i was talking to

a top Republican official this morning, he believes that SNAP is going to sort of break this. And Democrats do not necessarily disagree with. So I don't know what will happen in the next... coming three or four days. But you get the sense that there is movement here happening. But Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri, has a very compelling op-ed in The New York Times again. He said, no Americans should go to bed hungry. And he talks about.

this uh well you know this is something that resonates with all i was thinking back to i was at a food bank in missouri earlier this year just a couple months ago and the people in line um you know who didn't necessarily get snap benefits some did a lot of retirees a lot of others and food banks are just jammed over the last month so i think this is about to get a lot more real for people here

Democrats, they've been unified so far. I'm not sure if that will continue or not. And let me read a quote from that op-ed from Josh Hawley. Again, he's among the most conservative Republicans in the U.S. Senate. He said, What he is saying...

is let's bring legislation to the floor to at least fund this program through November. The question is whether or not... that is i mean it certainly makes sense just on a humanitarian level but on a strategic level whether that is something that people will agree to given the fact that if they don't perhaps this would be the thing that would break the shutdown fever

yeah picture and listen you would ordinarily think that this is a democratic issue right reading that op-ed listening to my johnson uh there talk about uh snap benefits possibly expiring i'm like wait, this is usually something you hear from Democrats. It isn't typical politics that Republicans are sort of on the side of the very poor. So we'll see if that kind of pressure point, and this will be bipartisan pressure, a lot of mega folks.

are on uh snap just like folks in in in blue states uh as well we'll see they've been looking for five Democrats to switch sides, but they've been looking for those five Democrats for weeks and weeks and weeks. And so when you listen to the pressure points, when you listen to Thune talk about it. it kind of still feels like it's its status quo. It doesn't really feel like there's movement. Yeah. And, you know, when I mentioned that this is the first time Democrats

have used the shutdown to push a policy proposal. Republicans, of course, have done it several times. Sometimes the policy is just cutting the budget which is very much related to funding the government other times it's been about immigration and so forth but The reason Democrats feel that they are on political sort of terra firma here is because it is about

Obamacare, which is popular. It's about subsidies to help people get their health insurance, which is popular. And according to KFF, we're talking about a 114 percent increase in

the people who get these premium support benefits increase in what they have to pay out of pocket if everything does expire, which is not set to happen until the end of the year. I think the thing that I got wrong... at the very beginning of this was thinking the analog was Obamacare repeal in 2013, which was when Republicans wandered their way into a box canyon, got their tails kicked for a very kind of...

regular basis over the entirety of the shutdown and eventually cried uncle. The numbers are not showing that for the Democratic side. Democrats, particularly outside of the Capitol, believe The laser focus on this issue has been one of the better political moves that they've had over the course of the last couple of months. And also that this is like.

their pain point is coming as well people are now seeing what those premium increases are going to be like and so there's competing pain points here the one wild card here is the administration has done things without precedent related to moving money around to pay troops law enforcement movement around to help farmers.

cutting Democratic programs or moving to cut Democratic programs in states. And you talk to Republicans on Capitol Hill, some of them say, look, if we pass the threshold on SNAP, they can move money around and make something happen. Democrats are saying there's a $5 billion contingency fund. Use it. pain points. Can I just quickly say that it is, and David Challion mentioned this this morning to those of us here listening to him speak to us this morning, and it's kind of amazing that we're still

talking about Obamacare. And it is also amazing that Republicans still, even though they don't like it, still don't have an alternative. We're going to go to break, but before we do, I want to go in the CNN Inside Politics Wayback Machine. Ten years ago, it is one of the Republican primary debates. I'm asking then-candidate Donald Trump about his health care plan.

If you could talk a little bit more about your plan. I know you talked about the interstate. No, no, we're going to have many different plans because there's going to be competition. There's going to be competition. There is going to be competition among all of the states and the insurance companies. They're gonna have many, many different plans. Is there anything else you would like to add to that as part of your plan? No, there's nothing to add. What's the add?

He's not alone. Republicans have not come up with an alternative for Obamacare in 15 years. So that is part of the story here. All right. Up next, CNN is trekking to the areas hit hardest by record-breaking hurricane.

Melissa, how the storm is creating chaos from Jamaica to Cuba. And JD Vance swears he doesn't wake up and think, how do I make myself president? But he does. He says think about how he could run against one of his self described best friends in 2028. Hey friends, this is Audie Cornish, host of CNN This Morning and The Assignment, and guess what? Every story you care about, every angle you want unpacked, is now streaming on CNN.

That means you can catch my show or other CNN programming whenever you want on your favorite device. And a subscription also gets you access to exclusive video series and unlimited articles. So subscribe to CNN at CNN.com slash subscription. We're following breaking news in the Caribbean, where we're just getting a sense of the chaos created by record-breaking Hurricane Melissa. CNN's Derek Van Dam, who weathered the storm in Jamaica, put it this way.

What we've seen unfold is truly catastrophic. Some communities will likely be isolated for days. Those hard hit areas are where he is trekking now. You can see just some of the overwash here on the roadways. We've encountered a lot of rock slides and mud slides. downed trees, some power lines over the roads, and it's difficult to navigate this area. I mean, here's an electrical wire dangling right in front of us as well.

obviously very typical of hurricane damage, but as we get further and further into the disaster area where the core of the hurricane struck, we anticipate the destruction to be more widespread. And these are pictures of Black River. Officials say that community in particular and others. known for their tourism, like Montego Bay, were, quote, very, very heavily impacted. Authorities say at least 30 people have died across the region, with that number expected to rise.

Hurricane Melissa is now a category two and it's tracking toward the Bahamas after slamming through Cuba. We're going to have much more on that, and we'll be checking in with our reporters on the ground as we hear more from them. Up next, no means no. The Republican candidate for New York mayor is refusing to bow out of the race.

You could be impaling me and say I'll stop if you drop out and endorse Andrew Cuomo and I would say finish the job. Does that make it perfectly clear? Stick around. Curtis Lee will be here with us live after the break. Live from New York, it's a mayoral election. The city is seeing a surge in early voting. As of last night, more than 297,000 people had voted during the first four days of early in-person voting.

far outpaces the 2021 election when only 55,000 people had voted by this point. This morning, former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo went on conservative media with this appeal to Republicans. It's really getting Republicans to understand what President Trump said, that Sliwa is not ready for prime time. He is not viable. Don't throw your vote away. It's between me and Mom Dami. Joining me now is the Republican candidate himself, Curtis Sliwa. Thank you so much for being here.

You just heard what Andrew Cuomo said, appealing to your Republican base, saying a vote for you is a vote for Mamdani. What's your response? Desperate people do desperate things. Here is the disgraced governor who's like a political zombie come back from the dead, who now can't get enough Democrats. He was decisively beaten in the Democratic primary. by Zoran Mandami, who when he first announced, nobody really even knew who he was.

because Andrew Cuomo did not run a campaign. He's not running a campaign again. He's been missing 10 days on the campaign trail. And his whole campaign now is to convince people not to vote for Curtis Lewa. That would suggest... that you don't have a base to begin with and you'll take votes from wherever you can. And that's the beauty of democracy, Dana. is that we are going to let the people choose the next mayor, not the billionaires, not the insiders, not the influencers. I trust people.

They should have a right to vote in the next mayor. We've got six days to go. I'm spending 20 hours of a 24-hour day on the campaign crisscrossing New York City. And I will be satisfied with the outcome on November 4th because I know the people... would have chosen the next mayor. Cuomo is the choice of the billionaires who have wine-dined and pocket-lined him. He has no freedom of thought.

He is a prisoner of the billionaires who put him back into the race when technically, politically, he was dead and buried. Let me ask you about the people. I have an example. John King spent time with voters in all five boroughs. And I want to play part of a conversation that he had with Republican Kevin Marshall, who is a retired corrections officer. in Staten Island. Listen.

I don't know. I am, you know, I'm just stuck. I'm stuck in purgatory here. Make your case to Kevin Marshall. Kevin, I have the Republican principles, law and order. It is Andrew Cuomo, who is the architect of No Cash Bail, that has led us to the crime crisis we're in. His apprentice is Zohan Mandami. Raised the age which almost killed my oldest son, juveniles, who almost killed him in the streets.

Because of Cuomo and Zohan Mandami, they were released back into the streets because they went to family court, not criminal court. And Andrew Cuomo, 10 years ago, wants to close Rikers Island. He was the architect, Zohan Mandami believes. in that to release inmates into the streets. So Kevin has a choice as a former correctional officer. He knows they have the toughest job because the inmates now run the prison here. With Curtis Lee, we're in charge. It's going to be Rudy Giuliani, 2.0.

who was able to save this city and get us back on track because of his law and order initiatives. And that's who I am. Let me ask you another policy.

question. And one of the big ones that Mamdani is talking about is calling for fast and free buses. You say that will destroy the city's public transit system. Why? Well, first off, I laugh because half the people don't pay the bus fare to begin with one third don't pay the subway fare there's no enforcement so if you're going to use the city's bus system and the city's subway system you're going to pay now there are all kinds of measures to help the

pouring the energy in, half fair, two-thirds fair, but you have to apply to those programs. But if you're going to consistently be a fair beater, which is robbing the other taxpayers who have to subsidize the fare to the tune now of a billion dollars a year in lost fare income, well then you're going to get ticketed, and if you're a predicate violator, you're going to go to jail.

cannot allow people not to pay the fare. Zoran Mandami is fantasy, which when reality hits, he's not going to be able to do it. And by the way, it's the state that has to do that, not the mayor in the city of New York. Well, the state has to approve it. Right. The governor. Yeah. And by the way, there's no money. There's no money in the state coffers.

They have to make up for a $30 billion budget gap. They have to balance their budget. Trump is already taking money out of the city for NYCHA, for food stamps, and for Medicaid. And he's promising to take even more. more money. Without that money, you got to cut taxes, corporate taxes. You got to cut property taxes, income taxes, and you have to shrink the budget. These two, Andrew Cuomo and Zora Mandami are like two peas in a pod. They just want to spend, spend.

spend and there's no money to spend and then they'll blame it on Donald Trump. Okay, speaking of Donald Trump, he hasn't endorsed you. Here's what he said when he was asked last week. Are you going to endorse anybody in New York? Well... Cuomo or Sliwa? Yeah, I guess I haven't made a decision, really. Sounds like you're leaning towards somebody else. Well, I think it's not good to have a communist, okay? Would I rather have a democrat than a communist?

Barely. They're almost becoming the same thing. What about a Republican, Curtis Sliwa? Well, you know, look. I mean, I don't know. He's a Republican. Is he really a Republican? You know, am I a big fan? This isn't exactly ideal where he wants to make Gracie Manchin a home for the cats. You are the Republican candidate for mayor of his hometown. He's the Republican president. I know you are both New Yorkers who may have a history, but did you try to get his endorsement? No, I have not.

Look, the president has bigger issues to deal with. Peace with Russia and the Ukraine. Peace in Gaza. Conflict has broken out again. We hope that he can clear the path for peace in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. And with all the visits he's making to Asia, dealing with the trade initiatives, especially with Red China. Those are priorities. Getting involved in the mayoral race.

is only strengthening Zohan Mandami because he wants to be David versus the Goliath. Andrew Cuomo wants to bump chess with President Donald Trump. You're not going to win against the president. You've got to get money from the Fed. government to help the poor and the indigent. And by the way, I have a individual line, a independent line, first ever in electoral history, protect animals.

no-kill shelters and animal abusers go to jail. Now, the president has made fun of the work that my wife and others have done in their life to rescue animals in distress. Mahatma Gandhi said, A society that does not take care of its animals, does not take care of its people. Look, homeless people, emotionally disturbed, veterans we don't take care of. We don't need a tough guy to be mayor. We need a compassionate, considerate, concerned person. And that's...

Kurdish Sliwa. Look at me. Compare me to my adversaries. I mean... Andrew Cuomo is a dystopian viewpoint of New York City. He's cold-hearted. Cuomo, angry. Nobody votes for anger. They want to vote for people with compassionate, caring, and concern. That's not Andrew Cuomo.

Curtis Lewa, I just want to say that President Trump is a very busy man, but he's gotten involved in things a lot less consequential than the mayor of New York City. But I take your point. I appreciate you being here. I know it's very, very busy for you right now. now. Thanks again. Oh, my pleasure. Anytime, Dana. Up next, we all have a best friend at work. So who is J.D. Vance's White House bestie? The answer coming up.

Vice President J.D. Vance is giving Secretary of State Marco Rubio a new label while downplaying any 2028 tension. In an interview with the New York Post's Pod Force One, vance weighed in on president trump's idea of joining forces with rubio on a presidential ticket he mentioned it probably six months or so ago and i mentioned to the secretary in in jest but

It feels so premature because we're still so early. The president doesn't mention who will be running for president and who vice president. Now, everyone assumes it would be you, but Marco Rubio is 13 years older. He's run for president before. Would there be any tension there? First of all, no, there's not going to be any tension. Marco is my best friend of the administration. He and I work a lot together.

And my panel is back now. Luckily, you know, we all have best friends at work and we don't have to worry about running against each other for president. We don't. I mean, look, the old adage is what? Keep your friends close and your rivals closer, perhaps, or enemies or something. Look, I mean, he said in the administration, so that's not a huge pool of people there. Wow. But in the...

space of that, I think that JD Vance is also kind of laying down a marker here, offering an embrace to Marco Rubio and perhaps keeping him on board. It's hard to imagine the idea of Rubio

stepping away and then running against Vance. But we have no idea what the political... It's not hard for you to imagine at all. I mean, I think 2028 is going to be lit. I think it's going to be a crowded field on the Republican side. And I think Vance and Rubio... will both run you know rubio and trump have a kind of bromance going on not not rubio and vance i think trump has taken a real shining to rubio he has a certain charisma i think that trump likes vance can come across

is a little bit thirsty, like he's trying a little bit too hard to be MAGA. So I think the race is on. I reject the cynicism. I am pro-friendship. OK. I'm very happy that two dudes can become best friends over a period of time in close quarters where they're sharing phone calls and meetings, signal chats. I am supportive of this. There's a loneliness crisis.

country and i am supportive of friendship cynics i'm just picturing you with your with your bros braiding each other's hair somewhere in a corner so i mean i don't let anybody touch my hair but yeah single chats Up next, 1929 Deja Vu. The man who wrote the book on Too Big to Fail is warning that today's economy bears some scary similarities to the start of the Great Depression. Andrew Ross Sorkin is coming up.

Let me set the scene for you. New, never-before-seen technology promises to transform the economy. Businessman president welcomes a parade of larger-than-life CEOs to the White House, and stocks hit record after record with more and more Americans. pouring their money into equities. I'm not talking about today. I'm talking about 1929. It is the subject of a new book by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who describes the optimism, the excess and the bad decisions that ushered America.

from the roaring 20s into the Great Depression. I talked with Andrew about 1929 and the lessons it can teach us today. I'm so excited that you're here. So much to ask you about. Let's just start with something that you write in the introduction. You said, if the characters, issues, and policy choices from that time appear to echo our present moment a little too clearly, that's because they do.

What do you think are the most striking similarities between 2025 and 1929? Oh, goodness. Well, I think actually the way you began this segment is really the parallel and similarity, the euphoria that we're living with.

today around AI, for example, the remarkable sense of democratizing finance, this idea that people are now getting into crypto and private equity and venture capital and access to things that historically ordinary investors and Americans didn't have access to at the same time that guardrails are coming down at the same time that tariffs.

are being put in place something that happened in 1930 and the result was uh you know trade that dropped by 60 percent and on top of that a conversation about the role of the federal reserve and its own independence and and political pushback and all of those issues, all of those issues were taking place in 1929 and are happening all over again today. So one of the other lines that is really striking is the following.

Quote, lengthy uninterrupted booms like the one in the 1920s produce a collective delusion. Optimism becomes a drug or a religion or some combination of both. People lose their ability to calculate risk and. distinguish between good ideas and bad ones. That term, collective delusion, is that your version of Alan Greenspan's irrational exuberance?

I think that's a little bit of where I'd go with that. And I think to some degree, in terms of where we are today, the AI bubble and just the AI boom, there is a delusion to it. There's just... hundreds of billions of dollars that are being spent somewhat indiscriminately that's not to say we shouldn't be excited about this technology back in 1929 they were excited about the future of radio

And it was a technology that is with us today. The Internet we were excited about in the 1990s and it changed our life. But there was a boom bust cycle that happened in 2000. And so. I think we just need to be cognizant that these things can and often do happen. They don't have to be as bad as what happened in 1929, which is really the first domino that led to the Great Depression.

There were a number of dominoes after that, terrible policy choices. So it's not to say we have to have that happen again. But I think this sort of everything goes up always. That might be a collective delusion. So let me bottom line it as so many have done for you, at least tried. And I've heard you say the following. You've said it's not a question of if there is a crash. It's just when and how bad.

Where do you feel, where do you sort of sit or stand on that line right now? I think that we are looking at a world that's maybe like 1999 with the internet. and the excitement around that and the fact that there was a crash. Remember, as I said, we don't have to have a crash that's as deep as 1929. The good news actually is there are things like the SEC, hopefully, and capital requirements.

and bank acts and all sorts of legislation that we didn't have back then you know back then insider trading was legal you could manipulate the market so those things are hopefully off the table but that doesn't mean that we are spending money correctly and investing it appropriately and I think in this moment it is possible not to say it's cabin tomorrow it might happen in a year or two from now but that there will be some form of a crash but I will say this

Historically, it's the optimists who have won over the skeptics and Cassandras. So here I am telling us that there's going to be a crash of some sort, and that's possible. But if you can look out long enough, the truth is actually that things do get better. Before I let you go, I have to ask about the Fed, which of course plays a major role in this story. You say in 1929 the Fed knew.

that the stock market was rife with speculation, didn't do enough to rein it in because the Fed was afraid that policymakers would retaliate. Now, where we are is that President Trump is very much overtly trying to influence the Fed, really more than any president since Nixon. How much does that worry, or should that worry you when regular people were investors? So I think almost singularly, beyond, beyond.

the leverage issue meaning how much loans are being taken which really is that the match that starts the fire of every crisis i think you got to worry about the fed in this context because when you look at what happens when a federal reserve is politicized and whether that's the president pushing them, or even members of the Fed thinking about what the political class is going to do to them.

That's when things run into trouble. And in 1929, one of the reasons that the Fed sat on its hands is because it was such a new institution. People called it an experiment.

was born in 1913, they were so scared, not that they were just going to get called up in front of Congress, but that the experiment would be eliminated because they would have been at fault for ending what seemed like a boom time. And so anytime... politics gets involved with these things, especially when you need to make politically unpopular choices, as frankly Ben Bernanke did in 2008 after the financial crisis, effectively bailing out banks.

you know as politically unpopular as that was economically practically effectively it was the right thing to do yeah well you certainly know about that your your other best-selling book too big to fail uh talks a lot about that this one is 1929 andrew i'm so grateful that you came on thank you so much congratulations i know you've been working like a decade on this and uh it shows thank you thank you Thanks for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.

One year after Trump's election, voters head back to the polls for New York City Mayor, Virginia Governor, New Jersey Governor, and more. Which party has the momentum? Election Night 2025, Tuesday, November 4th at 5 Eastern on CNN.