On Sunday, CBS's 60 Minutes aired a pre-taped interview with President Trump, and on Monday, all of the broadcast news morning shows used it to go after the President and his new Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller. On Sunday night, CNN's special, Midterms 2026, did much of the same, but during their focus on the immigration issue, an ugly accusation against white people was made by CNN's Van Jones.
VAN JONES: Look, Stephen Miller dynamited the Trump coalition by attacking all these Latinos. The reason that we were scared of the Trump coalition this last time was they had attracted a bunch of brown voters, and he blew up that whole thing by being so vicious. And listen, and my brother is correct. You got white folk in Mississippi voting for Democrats, which means you had -- there are not enough black folk in Mississippi to win that race.
So there were white people who said, there are white people in Mississippi who said, we hate orange more than we hate black. That is a complete sea change. How bad must orange be for white folk in Mississippi to say, we hate orange more than we hate black?
Jones is saying that the norm is for white people in Mississippi hate black people. That would make them racists. But of course there was absolutely no pushback from host Brianna Keilar, or from anyone else on the panel, as Jones was allowed to continue.
JONES: So he has completely destroyed his coalition. That guy you saw is a chasing president. Usually he doesn't admit to any fault. He said -- I think Democrats take it very seriously. He said we were too tough.
Now Democrats, don't laugh. If there is an opportunity to get some kind of relief to our immigrant community based on that statement, you should grab it and run with it. He could be Nixon going to China on this. Don't assume that it's just going to go away. He said -- he admitted a mistake. We were too tough. That's a big deal.
What Jones said should have been considered a big deal. It wasn't. Just as it wasn't a big deal when on election night he called the results, "Jonestown for the Republican Party", who "drank the Kool-Aid."
Host Brianna Keilar began the show with a clip of Trump weighing in on why he felt the GOP suffered such huge midterm losses, before throwing it to White House reporter Kevin Liptak, who played a 60 Minutes exchange on immigration, with Trump saying that his policy "was too tough", and that a deal with Democrats was possible going forward, which led Liptak to Stephen Miller, of course.
LIPTAK: So the President saying that the deportation agenda went too far. Now, how that comports with the decision that he made on Friday to elevate Stephen Miller to Chief of Staff, to the top aide in the entire West Wing, not exactly clear. Stephen Miller, of course, was the architect of the President's hardline immigration agenda. He is focused on it every single day, trying to get deportation numbers up.
Keilar then asked CNN's Maria Cardona about what she heard Trump say, and she zoomed in on Miller, of course.
CARDONA: It doesn't make any sense that Trump would say that about the possibility of doing a deal on immigration. I wish that were true. And then appointing Stephen Miller, the architect of the most violent immigration policy that we've ever had in this country, as the new Chief of Staff.
To me, that the appointment was a kick in the face, not just to Latino voters, not just to immigrants, but Americans across the board who saw what they saw in these last two years and were disgusted. And that was part of their vote.
Now, I have always thought that if Trump wanted to, he could be transformational on the issue of immigration. But that will never happen as long as Stephen Miller is in his ear.
When it was his turn, Republican Strategist Shermichael Singleton presented some disturbing numbers for Trump and the GOP.
SINGLETON: The President had 55 percent approval among Hispanics in Texas, lost all of them all across the south. I mean, there's some interesting numbers here from Scott Rasmussen for another critical group. White men in particular, their support for candidates who supported Trump-style policies declined by 17 percentage points. White men without college degrees support declined by 25 points. You go on and on. White men with evangelical Christians declined by 25 points. That's a cohort part of the president's base.
This is not all about race and racism. But this is CNN!
