Full transcript of "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Sept. 20, 2026

On this "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" broadcast, moderated by Margaret Brennan:

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MARGARET BRENNAN: I'm Margaret Brennan in Washington.

And this week on Face the Nation: President Trump bars three major news organizations from covering the White House, as Republican concern over the impact of his policies continues to grow.

The countdown clock to the midterm elections continues to tick down, but the rest of the numbers affecting the economy continue to go up. We're now 200 days into the war with Iran, and gas prices remain high, with diesel prices at new record highs.

DONALD TRUMP (President of the United States): Actually, that's the war that's driving up the diesel prices, but it's all going to end very soon.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That's a promise that's wearing thin with some Republicans, especially in Iowa, where farmers are struggling and where two House Republicans in tight races voted last week to oppose the president's open-ended war in Iran.

Trump's deportation policy is an issue for Republicans in some districts. Florida Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar made a direct appeal to the president in a campaign ad.

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR (R-Florida): The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We will talk with Congresswoman Salazar, California Democrat Ro Khanna, plus Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, and Trump's first-term economic adviser Gary Cohn.

Finally, we will hear another viewpoint in the debate over how to manage the fast-moving pace of artificial intelligence development, as our Jo Ling Kent spoke with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation.

We begin what could be a pivotal week for President Trump with respect to foreign policy, especially when it comes to the conflict with Iran, Russia's war with Ukraine and U.S.-China policy. He will head to New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly Monday, then host Chinese President Xi Jinping here in Washington later this week.

The energy shock from production and oil supply disruptions is intensifying, and we have seen assaults on Saudi Arabian infrastructure from Iran-affiliated forces. The struggle over control of the Strait of Hormuz continues, and, overnight, new attacks from Ukraine on a Russian energy facility as well.

With midterm Election Day now just 44 days away, that pressure over high gas prices is hitting the president and his party hard. All 435 seats in Congress are up on November 3. So, perhaps that explains why Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home until mid-November.

We begin today with California Congressman Ro Khanna, who is the top Democrat on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and he joins us from Fremont.

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA (D-California): Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, China and the U.S. are in an arms race. You have proposed this idea that Chinese AI firms should cooperate with American companies. You sent letters to DeepSeek, Alibaba, other firms urging them to follow the lead of the American firms like OpenAI and Anthropic to slow the rate of AI advancement until society develops guardrails, as you put it.

Have any of these Chinese firms responded to your proposal?

Winning an AI war is like winning a nuclear war. It is catastrophic for civilization. And what we have asked is that they agree to some basic terms. Look, there are two dangers to AI, either the loss of control or misuse. And the Chinese firms have taken no actions on either of them.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I'm looking at what the FBI, the NSA and Homeland Security, their division CISA – they have all warned that China-based AI companies are targeting and copying American artificial intelligence at what they describe as an industrial scale.

So how can you ask competitors to collaborate? Isn't it inherently at odds if they're stealing technology?

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA: Well, they're right that they are engaging in distillation.

Basically, they are copying American models. That's one reason, frankly, to regulate American models. Because they're copying them, some of the safeguards would protect the world. But, at the same time, we also need an international agreement with Xi Jinping to have basic standards.

That should include international monitoring. It should include checks through the data centers, where you can tell whether a model is being used for inference or training. And it should use enforceable and verifiable tools.

Now, obviously, you can't just trust the Chinese. But, like any agreement, like an arms control agreement, as Reagan said, you need to trust and verify. And the world has done this before. There's no reason we can't do it when it comes to AI.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I'm looking at Bloomberg's figures. They report China's preparing to spend about $300 billion over the next five years to build data centers across that country, which will be operated by state-owned firms.

As you know, there's really no wall between the state and industry in China. So, when you are acknowledging they commit human rights abuses and their AI firms help the state to commit those abuses, aren't you asking the CEOs to do something that's at odds with what Xi Jinping is seeking to do?

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA: Well, the first ask is of Trump and Xi Jinping to come up with an international agreement.

And two of the core principles should be, one, banning any self- improving AI, recursive self-improving AI. That's basically AI that continues to improve itself and where we could lose control. The second is to have safeguards so that AI can't be misused by people for biological nuclear weapons.

The letters to the Chinese companies were simply seeking information about what they're doing. It wasn't intended as a solution. What it was intended to do is highlight the need for the Chinese government and the U.S. government to come to an agreement, and that needs to be the first agenda item on the Trump-Xi Jinping summit.

Well, we know it's going to come up. We just don't know the details of exactly what it is the U.S. is proposing at all. We're going to watch for that in this next weeklong set of meetings with China.

You sit on the Armed Services Committee. Yesterday, President Trump posted on social media that his plan is to create an AI czar and form the AI Force, "much like I did the Space Force."

I'm not exactly sure where he's going with that, but you yourself have called for a new government agency to be set up to deal with AI. So you both seem to agree that the existing infrastructure isn't enough. Why can't you just have Cyber Command handle all of this? What does the executive branch or Congress actually have to do?

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA: Well, we need to set up an AI agency like the FDA. I mean, I don't know what Trump's – President Trump's vision is.

I don't know if he's using AI in an offensive capability, which would give me a lot of pause, especially because, when you have things like the shooting of the Iranian school, where you had AI information basically feed something into a – into a general, and then you had pro forma sign-off, that gives me concern.

What I'm talking about is what Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI, has said, which is that this can be regulated, like we regulate nuclear energy, electricity, aviation. Have independent technical experts make sure AI is safe.

And, Margaret, one of the things that really annoys me is when you have these tech CEOs out there saying, oh, this is too complicated, people in Washington don't understand this.

Give me a break. We have regulated very complex things. We know we can appoint independent, smart people from universities. This is not complicated. We need to have an independent federal agency.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, respectfully, Congressman, Congress hasn't regulated a lot of things or come forward with much legislation of late. But, to put that aside, I take your broader point.

I want to ask you about another important topic at this meeting with Xi Jinping and President Trump, and that is the fate of Americans who do business or travel to China. Secretary Rubio has designated two U.S. citizens as wrongfully detained by China, and one of them is your constituent, scholar Min Zin.

He has been held for 100 days now by the Ministry of State Security without access to a lawyer. He has no court date. And I spoke with his wife on Friday. Take a listen.

SYLVIA ZIN (Wife of Min Zin): He's been charged with endangering national security, and that's all we know.

SYLVIA ZIN: It's a huge charge. It's – my daughter looked it up, and she – I think that really freaked her out. That's when she was like: "What is going to happen to Dad?"

And, yes, it's a shock, right? I mean, he's a scholar. He's an academic. He's not a spy.

MARGARET BRENNAN: What did you think when the U.S. government explained to you this charge?

SYLVIA ZIN: That was what I asked. Like, what does that mean? And they – they're like: "We don't have more information. This is all we've been told."

MARGARET BRENNAN: When the U.S. government says that the safety of Americans is their highest priority, do you believe that?

SYLVIA ZIN: Well, the president has brought home over 100 wrongfully detained Americans home, right? So I'm hoping my husband is the next one.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Now, this scholar was disappeared shortly after he landed to a conference he was invited to.

A lot of Americans go to China to conduct business. What are you and others in the government doing to help those who are detained when they're doing work there?

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA: Well, it's appalling.

And while I have my disagreements with Secretary Rubio, in this, I stand in complete solidarity with him, as does the China Committee. We cannot have American citizens or scholars in America be detained or disappeared because of what they say.

And when I was in China about a year ago, we raised this issue, not on this specific case, but we had heard cases of Chinese students in the United States who were not being allowed to continue because they may have engaged in some protest or had an errant social media tweet.

We had heard cases of people who were detained, business leaders or people doing business, because they disagreed with the Chinese government. And that is unacceptable to the United States.

And then, of course, there's the whole situation with the Uyghurs. We just had a hearing last week on the Uyghurs situation.

REPRESENTATIVE RO KHANNA: Extraordinary human rights abuses. And we need that to be front and center in this meeting as well.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman Khanna, we thank you for your time today.

And we turn now to Florida Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who joins us from Miami.

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR (R-Florida): Good morning.

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: Thank you for the opportunity. have you.

I want to talk to you about a number of issues, but let me just start up front, because you are a former journalist, I'm sure you saw yesterday journalists from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW were blocked from entering the White House after the president objected to the content of their organization's reporting.

Do you agree with the president's order to do that?

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: Well, I think that the president has a different type of style.

But, at the same time, I think that he is the most accessible president in the later years that has been – that has been talking to the media. You know, he talks to everybody. So, may – he may not be allowing for some journalists to go into one place, but I'm sure that he's going – he's going be talking to everybody at some point.

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: … very accessible, not like Biden.

MARGARET BRENNAN: No, I – I understand that point.

But when it comes to saying you can't attend press briefings because I don't like what you said, doesn't that premise violate the spirit of the First Amendment?

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: Well, I think that he has his own style, and that he will determine who he wants to talk to.

But with social media and with all the different outlets out there for people to receive information, I am sure that those journalists are going to be able to cover the president the way that you – free speech, the way you determine, because you know, you – the media…

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: … has a way of – of showing up right now.

And you know that the American school of journalism is not so vigorous as it was during the time that we started this career. So, I have my – my different opinions as to what's happening on television…

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: … and the coverage of this presidency.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes. Well, I understand your views, but I don't think proximity is going to stop these journalists from doing their jobs.

Let me ask you about something you put out there this week. You have been speaking for months about your concerns regarding President Trump's immigration policies. But in this ad you put out, you're more direct. You said, the same Hispanics who helped Trump get to the White House in 2024, feel betrayed. His enforcement efforts have gone too far, and half of the 50,000 people detained in July had no criminal record.

You spoke to the president after this. Did he take any of your…

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: Yes, I did.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Did he take any of your advice?

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: Listen, it was a very good conversation.

He was a gentleman, very courteous, very receptive. And I told him exactly what you just repeated: "Sir, you have this – this moment in history where you can keep the pot of gold that you brought to the GOP in 2024. No other president" – and you know I covered for 35 years Spanish television.

"No other president was able to convince the – the Hispanics to vote 55 points for a GOP president. Please preserve that fortune that you have brought to the party."

Why? Because we need to continue winning elections, because we have this very big threat called the socialists on the Democratic side. And if you want me, we can talk about that later. I belong to the Miami community. I'm the daughter of political refugees. I'm first-generation American, and I want to preserve the American values that are entrenched in the GOP…

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: … and that the Hispanics share.

"So, remember, sir, that you are the only guy who can do this."

And that – and then we had a fantastic conversation. I certainly hope he listened to what I was saying. But he listened.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But he seems to have a different definition of criminality than – than you do, right?

Because the administration argues anyone who entered this country undocumented should be deported. You're saying no.

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: Well, and – and – and, well, you know, and you know very well immigration is a very toxic topic. It's a very complex topic.

And the average American, the normal American who is watching right now knows two things, that 70 percent of the polls say that the average American wants some type of immigration reform law, which is…

REPRESENTATIVE MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR: I was – I presented that legislation called the Dignity Act five years ago.