hello, i m dana bash with wolf blitzer in washington. a historic courtroom clash. right now former president donald trump is testifying in his own defense in his new york civil fraud trial, and within minutes of trump taking the stand, a battle with the judge quickly unfolded. judge arthur engoron accused trump of making long-winded speeches, the judge told defense attorneys, i beseech you to control him, if you can. if you can t, i will. the former president of the united states is accused of inflating the value of his various properties by billions of dollars to acquire loan and insurance benefits, and the stakes for trump are high right now. he potentially could lose his certificate to do business in new york, and pay very hefty fines, in the millions and millions of dollars. cnn s kaitlan collins is just outside the courthouse, long with chief correspondent paula reid. paula, what are we hearing from trump s testimony so far today? has it been smoother this hour? repo
comes to the infrastructure vote and then the secondary build back better act. so the white house and top aides here are of course discussing what went wrong, what they could have perhaps helped messaging-wise to do better. but remember, this was a race that the president did go campaign for terry mcauliffe a couple of times, he again was bullish about the results here. but he did try to argue that the impact of whether his agenda was passed or not was not going to really resonate with voters. and in exit polls we did ourselves, nbc news, yesterday, it was true that about 50% of voters said this the president was not a factor in who they ultimately decided to support. but i think the major question going forward, since this is seen as of course a bellwether for next year s midterms, the critical 2022 races, is what the white house and democrats have learned that they will want to do differently. and that is what the president will of course have to reflect on, since he does bear respon
or out? a lot of things are still being negotiated. that s still under negotiation. okay. how the state and local tax deduction, raising the cap? is that in or out? i feel very good based on my conversations including last night that that will be in. it s got to be in if they want the votes of some of us. how about this billionaires tax as a way to replace some lost income due to opposition among some democrats to, for instance, raising the corporate tax rate? is that going to be in? there s still a lot of conversation going on around that and a lot of debate still happening on the specifics. so i think you ll see some counterproposals coming up. okay. big picture, messaging-wise, as you know, the president s approval rating is down, down in the low 40s, averaging mid to low 40s based on cnn s poll of polls.
getting out of washington and i think that can t be overstated enough. he is very isolated here. there s no question about it. he doesn t have many people around him that he trusts. he has advisers. he doesn t have many family members. he always fuels himself by the energy of those crowds. he was at his best. he was at his best in campaign rallies. now, at his best is something that bothers many democrats and many independents, even some republicans. but at his most trumpian successful messaging-wise, getting in front of a crowd, this is a performer. he is more so than others. somebody who is a reality tv star before this. i think they are smart, to gloria s point, it s an easy win. he s not going to lose a lot of votes here. the people who don t think he should speak to the nra will
48% say they the end to side more with the labor unions, 39% with the governors here. you know, what is it that the governors have gotten wrong in this fight? obviously you don t like the policy but messaging-wise seems like you are getting your mess message out there and they are not. why do you feeling like you are winning the pr battle? the numbers are higher than that and people that support us but they have gone to almost trying to create a darth vader image out of public workers, and you know, they re your neighbors, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters. they re not evil people, not darth vaders. they try and talk about the union bosses look. our union bosses are police officers. the president of the fop is a full-time police officer in marion, ohio, so i think the public is seeing through this image they re trying to create for public workers and teachers and police officers and firefighters and a bunch of nonsense, all about politics and all about ruining the unions,