Kristen Soltis Anderson

Did my segment, then I went back to the green room.

Then the two guests did the main part of the show, Andrew Cuomo and Kristen Soltis Anderson, uh, were on.

And then afterwards they bring you back out and you do an overtime segment where you riff about, which was also cool.

That was us talking stoicism and politics and culture, how we deal with disagreements.

Yeah.

The former Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo.

And she's a CNN contributor and pollster at Charlotte Insight, Kristen Soltis Anderson.

[applause]

All right, Brian Stelter, Kristen Holmes, thanks very much for being there to start us off today.

My panel is here in the arena, CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, CNN special correspondent Jamie Gangale, and we are also joined by CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali.

So as we get started here, I do think it's worth just taking a moment.

We, of course, have seen President Trump attack the media over the many years he has been in public life and in public office, including using the phrase fake news repeatedly.

It even rhymes.

Let's discuss this with two Republican strategists, Shermichael Singleton and Kristen Soltis Anderson.

Give us another chance, Shermichael.

That's, I mean, it sounds like a desperate boyfriend, frankly.

I hope you made it through okay.

All All right, my panel's here in the arena, the host of the Chuck Todd cast, Chuck Todd, CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster, Kristen Soltis Anderson, CNN chief political analyst, David Axelrod, and CNN senior political commentator, Scott Jennings.

We do want to note that Scott Jennings is reportedly being considered for the White House press secretary role.

No word on whether he will talk about whether everyone is sweaty or not.

Guys, are you buying it?

I saw a tweet from, uh, Kristen Soltis Anderson today, which I thought was pretty apropos.

She's a Republican pollster.

She said, you know, "If, if, if Republicans are running behind Democrats with these sorts of numbers on the deficit, on immigration, uh, on war, these are, these are real gazing into the political abyss type results." I mean, they're really without a leg to stand on.

If, if, if voters truly have, uh, uh, uh, abandoned the Republican Party as the party of, you know, uh, one, one modicum of responsibility on these things, then they're just gonna get destroyed.

And it's, you know, from Kristen Soltis Anderson's lips to God's ears on that one.

Yeah, I guess my one caveat to KSA on that is the, uh, uh, the e- economy number could be worse, I think.

I was actually kind of surprised that the, uh, you would think that the economy number would be down around the Trump approval number.

My panel is here with me to discuss.

Kristen, what are you seeing in your data about Texas?

Well, Texas is a state where over the summer some public polling came out showing Tallarico up by a couple of points.

I've begun to see Republican enthusiasm closing in my data, but it's still Texas.

the overall question of the approval or not of the president's performance as president, overall 36%.

80% of Republicans, 24% of independents.

Kristen, I want you to sort of drill down on those two because 80% of Republicans approved, 20% disapproved, which is a pretty high number for a percentage for this president.

Well, in this polarized time, you really are used to seeing numbers where one party, almost no one likes the president, and then in the other party, you get a pretty sizable figure.

We have a Republican and Democrat, both who are, I think, really strong in this.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster, and Anna Greenberg is a Democratic pollster.

And we're going to ask each of them, I guess, to walk us through how they're reading this midterm cycle from their perspective and, you know, what they're really seeing and feeling.

There's been some big misses just in this cycle in the primaries, both in Wisconsin and Michigan in the last few weeks.

It was then.

Let's see what they've got to say.

Well, Bill, we're starting today's conversation with Kristen Soltis Anderson.

She's the founding partner of Echelon Insights.

We have quite a few folks at huge companies.

And then, you know, Kristen Anderson was at... was most recently a cash app.

The reality is companies are learning that having really smart employees has always made the difference.

But having really smart employees show they're really smart publicly attracts more smart people.

Let's get off the sidelines, head into the arena.

My panel's here, Capitol Hill correspondent for Puck News, Marianna Sotomayor, CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Democratic strategist and a former senior advisor to the Harris and Biden campaigns, Adrian Elrod, and Republican strategist, Matt Whitlock.

We're also joined by CNN political and national security analyst, David Sanger.

Welcome to all of you.

And so at some point, there's going to be a reckoning here where the president's gonna have to say, "Did you accomplish any of your goals?" His answer so far is, "I destroyed their air force, I destroyed their navy," but that wasn't what he was trying to accomplish.

Hm.

So Kristen Soltis Anderson, this, of course, 10 weeks out from the midterm election.

Uh, and if you talk to Republicans, uh, they will say they had hoped that this war would be out of the headlines by now.