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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Reframes Epstein Case as a Democratic Hoax; Trump Calls Supporters Questioning Epstein Files "Weaklings"; Trump Claims Jeffrey Epstein a Hoax; Senate Weighs DOGE Cuts Package as Deadline to Pass It Looms; GOP Sen. Hawley Tries to Roll Back Medicaid Cuts He Voted for; Emergency Food Aid Going to Waste; Bernie Sanders Says Vast Majority of People Who Are Being Sent to Detention Centers Do Not Have Criminal Records in the U.S.; The Obamas Joke About Their Divorce Rumors. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired July 16, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHELLE OBAMA, ATTORNEY AND FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: ... Obama because I was like, I'm perfect. But marriage counseling was a turning point for me, understanding that it wasn't up to my husband to make me happy.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I was in a deep deficit with my wife, so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Arlette Saenz, CNN, Washington.
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ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Thanks so much to Arlette and thanks all of you for joining us. Ac360 starts now.
[20:00:40]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, President Trump calls his own supporters, raising doubts about the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, weaklings and stupid, his words. And now he says he wants the Epstein case investigated as a Democratic hoax, with himself, the victim.
Also tonight, Senator Bernie Sanders joins me with the senate voting on making steep DOGE spending cuts official. And one Republican senator seemingly having second thoughts of some aspects of the massive tax and cut spending bill the Republicans have made into law.
And, how cuts to one agency left hundreds of tons of American food aid enough to feed a million and a half children for a week, rotting in a warehouse and now about to be destroyed.
Good evening, thanks for joining us. Tonight, after hyping the Jeffrey Epstein investigation for months and some of his supporters for years, then trying and failing to make it all go away, the President seems now all in on the next new thing. He is reframing it as a Democratic hoax and not what lengthy investigations and prosecutions have shown it to be. Here's what John Solomon asked him tonight on something called "Real America's Voice" along with his answer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN SOLOMON, FOUNDER, JUST THE NEWS: The FBI under Kash Patel has opened a grand conspiracy case looking at the last decade of weaponization against you and the protection of Democrats like Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton has one ongoing criminal conspiracy. I want to ask what you think of that approach, and whether you think a special prosecutor might be warranted.
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Well, I'm happy that they did that. I don't know much about it, but it deserves to be done.
SOLOMON: What are the things or most important that you would like to see the FBI get to the bottom of?
TRUMP: I think they could look at all of it. It's all the same scam. They could look at this Jeffrey Epstein hoax also, because that's the same stuff that's all put out by Democrats. And, you know, some of the naive Republicans fall right into line like they always do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So, this is part of a new line. The President began rolling out this week, lumping the Epstein case facts notwithstanding, together with all the other investigations he has railed against over the years as politically motivated or outright phony.
Posting online this morning, he writes, "Their new scam," meaning Democrats, "is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my past supporters have bought into this" he use the word "bullshit" -- "hook, line and sinker." He goes on to say, "Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don't even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don't want their support anymore."
So, that was this morning, by lunchtime he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's all been a hoax that's perpetrated by the Democrats and some stupid Republicans and foolish Republicans fall into the net.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Again, this seems to be the new line. The case is now a hoax, that it was cooked up by Democrats, and that Republicans fell for it. What makes it so surprising or stunning, I guess, is that in saying so, the President is, for all intents and purposes, asking people to forget that he is one of those Republicans and asking people to forget everything that he and members of his administration now, and many of his fiercest supporters in the MAGA ecosphere and podcasting sphere, have been saying on the subject for months and years -- Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and Donald J. Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Yes, I'd be inclined to do the Epstein. I'd have no problem with it
J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Seriously, we need to release the Epstein list. That that is an important thing.
KASH PATEL, DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: Put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are.
DAN BONGINO, UNITED STATES DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: I'm not ever going to let this story go because of what I heard from a source about Bill Clinton on a plane with Jeffrey Epstein. I'm not letting it go ever, ever.
ALINA HABBA, INTERIM U.S. ATTORNEY FOR NEW JERSEY: We have flight logs. We have information, names that will come out.
PAM BONDI, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL: President Trump has given a very strong directive, and that's going to be followed.
BENNY JOHNSON, AMERICAN COMMENTATOR AND YOUTUBER: Wow, okay, so --
BONDI: A lot of documents.
JOHNSON: Yes, okay, all right. So, people can expect actual movement on this. It's not just empty promises.
BONDI: Oh Donald Trump doesn't make empty promises.
JOHNSON: Yes, right.
JOHN ROBERTS, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients. Will that really happen?
BONDI: It's sitting on my desk right now to review. That's been a directive by President Trump.
The FBI, they're reviewing there are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child porn and there are hundreds of victims and no one victim will ever get released. It's just the volume and that's what they're going through right now.
TRUMP: A lot of people think that he was killed. He knew a lot on a lot of people.
(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Well, as you just heard, none of those people, the President included, thought the Epstein case was a hoax, apparently, at least not in their public comments. Some perhaps because a number of prominent Democrats were connected with Epstein and it fed into the QAnon conspiracy movement, which the President has given head nods to over the years.
What made this tricky for President Trump, of course, was that then citizen Trump's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship going back to the 1990s in New York and Mar-a-Lago. But many of the President's supporters, especially Republican lawmakers, want to know in a fuller sense what the FBI and Justice Department uncovered in their criminal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, because at the end of the day, this is a story about many crimes with many victims, real victims, and his latest claims notwithstanding the President of United States does not appear to be one of them.
[20:05:49]
I want to start with the view from inside the White House. Let's bring in our chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins. So is it clear why -- I mean, does it seem to you that this is the new line, this is a Democratic hoax and are we going to be hearing more about this from them in the days to come?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Anderson, it was a line that even surprised some of the President's own supporters and officials who work inside the White House, because, obviously, he's used this before. He's blamed Democrats for things previously, for different issues that he's faced even since taking office.
But with something like this that his supporters are so intimately familiar with the ins and outs and dynamics of the Jeffrey Epstein case, including half the people who work for him and are senior officials in his government, from the Justice Department to the FBI to his own Cabinet and Vice President. I think that has surprised people a little bit, because the problem is they're having a difficult time making this argument to their supporters, to their base.
And, one thing the White House kind of uses to gauge how something is playing and, you know, whether or not they're getting backlash is how it's doing with the base. And they don't often get concerned unless, you know, Republican Senators are criticizing them on something or what they're hearing from House Republicans. And we're really starting to see that from the people who helped President Trump in the election and, you know, touted it and interviewed him on their podcast and their deeply influential networks with people on the right to these members of Congress who we are hearing more and more respond to what the base is saying, which is saying that more should be released.
I mean, even the former Vice President, Mike Pence today was saying that all of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein should be released, regardless of whether or not there's criminal wrongdoing for someone who might be in those documents. He was saying that they should be withheld or held up to public scrutiny because of that. But the President, as you can see today in that very angry post, calling them weaklings and saying they've been conned by the Democrats.
He does not seem to be registering or does not seem concerned with the level of anger that is coming from his base right now.
COOPER: The thing that's interesting to me about this line is it's been used by certainly, you know, people, conspiracy theorists and QAnon conspiracy theorists about the Epstein story for years that it's linked to Democrats. I mean, there were phony flight lists that were repeatedly put out online that were an ever evolving cast of characters.
My name appeared on phony flight lists. There, like a whole bunch of people. Anybody who happened to be viewed perhaps as somebody who was standing up to things the President was saying or was critical of then President Trump in the first term, suddenly would appear somewhere online on one of these phony flight lists. And when the actual flight lists were released by the Justice Department, none of those names, including my own, of course, were actually on any flight lists.
COLLINS: Yes, I mean, and that's the thing, I think that's what is at the heart of this is, it's the hypocrisy of hearing from a lot of these top officials who are running the Justice Department and FBI for years, saying this is being withheld from you by the government, it's a conspiracy, if we are back in power, we're going to change that. And now that they are back in power, they're not changing that.
And that's why -- I mean, what's remarkable is that we're watching a fracture happen inside the top of the federal government between the DOJ and the FBI, where that relationship is seriously deteriorated. But we're seeing a fracture in the President's coalition among his own base. And it is something that no one was expecting would get to the point that it has gotten to today. They thought the people would stop talking about it by this point.
We reported earlier this week that the President was telling people, just let the story die down. It's obviously not dying down, and were only seeing that anger continue to grow. And people saying, well, members of Congress are going to force them to do this, or there should be a special counsel appointed in this case.
We don't have any indication that that's going to happen. But I do think right now it's an open question inside the White House about how to handle this and how to quiet this anger, because right now, even direct requests from the President to people to stop talking about it are not working.
COOPER: Yes, Kaitlan Collins, thanks. Kaitlan is going to be talking to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren at the top of the hour. We'll watch that on "The Source" at nine o'clock.
Joining me now, CNN chief political analyst David Axelrod, a former senior adviser, of course, President Obama, also CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig and CNN senior political commentator David Urban, a Republican strategist, former Trump campaign adviser.
Elie, let me start with you, just for the legal thing. The idea of there was rumblings of, you know, is the President going to call for a special counsel? Some in Congress have or some people have suggested there should be. Would that even -- does that even make any sense? Special counsels don't really do that.
[20:10:20]
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It makes no sense. It would be purely a fig leaf. It would cure nothing. It would solve nothing. All it would do if there was a special counsel appointment, would be to enable the administration to say, look, we did something. We did something really dramatic. But this has no relationship to the actual reason special counsel have been used by both Republicans and Democrats over the last 50 plus years.
The reason you bring in a special counsel is if you have a live criminal investigation that poses a conflict of interest for the bosses at DOJ. What would a special counsel even do here? You're not going to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein, he's dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for 20 years. All the other potential criminality is almost certainly too old outside the statute of limitations. So, it's a cover.
COOPER: David Axelrod, what is so fascinating to me about this is that we are now in a situation where so many of the people who were spreading conspiracy theories about this and lies about this and, and raising questions about it, some of which may be valid questions are now in a position of power. They were doing it on podcast. They are now the leader of the FBI. The number two at the FBI, the President of the United States and they are now -- they've reaped what they have sown.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, they've built a movement that is based on antigovernment suspicion and conspiracy theories, and now they're the government, and they're finding that that creates discomfort. But we should go to the kind of the main thing here, which is Pam Bondi. I mean, anybody who's been watching for the last six months knows she did not decide on her own. She didn't wake up one day and say, I'm going to poke the MAGA movement in the eye and say, there's nothing there.
She was instructed to do that. I feel confident that that's the case because she is responsive to the President in every way, and clearly he does not want these files out there. He thought that her word would then end the thing, it hasn't. He tried to calm people and quietly chill them out, that didn't happen. So now he's gone to his favorite party trick, which is to turn it into a big Democratic conspiracy to tar him, notwithstanding the fact that it was his administration that indicted Jeffrey Epstein. It was his administration that was in charge when Jeffrey Epstein died, it wasn't Democrats, he said somehow, well, Comey and Obama, who was President years before all this, slipped things into the files.
I mean, he looks like a guy who's trying to find his footing here because he does not want these files to be released.
COOPER: David Urban, how do you see this? I mean, if this was a hoax or a scam, why didn't the President say that on the campaign trail?
DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, Anderson, you know it is -- they've painted themselves into a corner here, really, this administration has, as you correctly point out, you know, the videotape doesn't lie. You ran all that tape at the beginning of the segment of -- so many people saying, we're going to release this, we're going to get to the bottom of this.
And as David correctly points out, this the campaign, the movement was built on distrust of the deep state, distrust of the government right there, holding things back from you. They're protecting the rich -- they're protecting the rich and powerful. And we get in, we're going to fix all that.
And now, those folks who are calling for the rich and powerful to be held accountable aren't holding them accountable. And I think that's really what's rubbing the MAGA base the wrong way. And they are not going silently, not just the MAGA base, but very influential podcasters -- Theo Von, Joe Rogan, so many of these people that Trump relied on to get his message out and to really campaign hard, they're calling for transparency, as you said, the Vice President put out, if there's something there, it should be put out. The American people deserve to know what's going on. If we're going to try to reestablish trust in the Department Of Justice and with our federal institutions, these are the kind of moves that you need to undertake.
They may be painful for some. I understand, Alan Dershowitz makes the point that many people on these lists have committed no crime, and they're going to be painted with a broad brush, but so be it. The American public needs to hear and see. For Pam Bondi and see what's in these files and to really understand and to regain the confidence and trust of American people and the base.
COOPER: Right, he interesting thing about this, you know, Elliott, is that there's -- there is -- Elie sorry, I called Elliott. Elie, there is no -- apparently there is no client list. I mean, this idea of a client list has taken on a life of its own. There was a Jeffrey Epstein's address book, a black book, which some online media outlets published years ago, and people's names were in his address book. And those names are out there. There's obviously a lot of depositions and a lot of evidence that is not known. How much is the federal government's -- how much are their hands tied to some degree? Because you're talking about witnesses who may have wanted anonymity, victims who may not want their identities out there.
HONIG: In an ordinary case, if this was not the Jeffrey Epstein case, DOJ's answer would be easy. We don't do this. We put our documents out in court. You're welcome to those. We have our indictments, but we don't let people into our private criminal closed case investigative files. That is absolutely forbidden.
[20:15:42]
COOPER: And I saw you say this earlier, if there was a special counsel, they would redact the names of people, too.
HONIG: Of course, and the big question to me, to really to Urban's point, just there is, well, what changed though? I mean, I agree with everything, David Urban just said, but what caused this complete 180 from the clips we just saw, everyone led by Pam Bondi saying has to come out to what we saw starting last week. This memo from the FBI saying what you just said, well, we have to be careful. There's nothing that can come out, there's no further --
COOPER: I mean, Kash Patel was saying directly, oh, you know, the black book is in the hands of the FBI director. Day one in the Trump administration, that should be out there.
AXELROD: You know, you say, well, normally the department policy would be this. This is not a normal Justice Department. And it was the attorney general herself who promised to release all of this information. So, that's why -- that's what changed, I think and I suggest -- Pam Bondi is not someone to suddenly shift directions and take on the MAGA movement and she probably had some sense of what the reaction would be.
And you know what? What's really interesting is -- it is always hard to go after the king. It's easier to go after the courtiers. So, everybody's, you know, we ought to fire Bondi. Bondi should go and so on. She is not an independent actor here. She is responding to a higher power.
COOPER: David Urban, what do you see -- where do you see this going.
URBAN: Yes, so you know, Elie's point begs the question, right? He's saying, you know what's changed? Well, that's the $64,000.00 question. What is so sensitive, what is so highly sensitive that it can't be released? You know, I understand that there's going to be things, you know, that have to be redacted, that are, you know, the victims don't want to have their names released. It could be redacted, but Pam Bondi or somebody in responsibility needs to stand behind a podium and walk the American public through this and say, listen. Here's what we can release and here's why we can't release it. Here are the things we have, and here's what we don't have.
There needs to be a fulsome explanation and a real accountability and some transparency. Anderson, until that happens, this will not go away. It will it will remain -- It will fester beneath the surface in the MAGA-verse for quite some time.
AXELROD: Can I ask you a question, Elie? If the President of the United States said, I want all of this released, would she not release them? I mean, wouldn't the attorney general release them?
HONIG: Pam Bondi is a heat shield right now for Donald Trump. He absolutely has the power.
COOPER: Let me ask you about this, because we just learned that a federal prosecutor named Maurene Comey was fired from her job today. She just so happens to be former FBI director James Comey's daughter. She just happens to have been a prosecutor in the case against Jeffrey Epstein.
HONIG: Right.
COOPER: We don't know anything more than this. What do you make of that? So, with him saying it's a Democratic hoax.
HONIG: Yes and let me be careful here because you're right. There's a lot we don't know. I've been talking to people who are in that office right now. All they know is she's been fired. As you said she is Jim Comey's daughter, and she was the prosecutor on the Epstein case and the Ghislaine Maxwell case.
If, and I want to underscore that word, if, a bunch of times, if this is some effort to strike at Jim Comey, it's an absolute act of cowardice. It's a low blow, it's absurd. If this is the beginning of some sort of effort to turn Maurene Comey into the scapegoat, to say, well, she handled the Epstein and Maxwell prosecutions, she screwed it up. And she's the cause of all our problems, that's a travesty, that's nonsensical.
She prosecuted these cases four years ago. What does that have to do with all the hypocrisy about production of these documents now.
URBAN: And Elie --
COOPER: Go ahead, David.
URBAN: Yes, Anderson, I was going to say and Elie I don't think that, you know, Maurene Comey is going to you know, solve be the be the salve or the ointment that solves the wound here, you know, solves the wound because, so you fired, they still say make the documents public. We want to see the names. If there's a list of all these people say we know this list exists, they want to see the list. People want heads on pikes.
COOPER: Yes, David Urban, Elie Honig, thank you. David Axelrod as well. Coming up next, the facts behind the case. The President is now calling a hoax from the reporter who's been investigating it from the beginning. Julie K. Brown joins us. She knows everything about this case.
Later, Senator Bernie Sanders on Republican efforts tonight to turn DOGE's budget cuts, which were done without going through Congress into law.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:24:28]
COOPER: The President continues to face blowback from within his own base over the Justice Department's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Now, earlier this morning, he claimed it was a hoax created by his political opponent. In an interview tonight, he appeared to open the door to investigating the investigation. Joining me again is "Miami Herald" investigative reporter Julie K. Brown's work exposed the extent of Epstein's alleged sex trafficking ring and led to prosecutors reopening the case. She's also the author of remarkable book "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story".
Julie, someone who knows this in depth, who's covered this, who's responsible for keeping this story in the public consciousness? What do you make of the President calling this now a hoax perpetrated by Democrats?
[20:25:10]
JULIE K. BROWN, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, "MIAMI HERALD": It doesn't make any sense at all. This case predated, you know, the investigations into this even predated, Trump's administration, his first administration. There were investigations by the DOJ for the past, probably off and on. They've looked at it for the past 20 years. So it doesn't really make any sense.
Look, the reality of this is that sexual assault doesn't discriminate based on political parties. This should not be a political issue. This is a crime that was perpetrated against a lot of young girls and young women over decades. And to politicize it like this and that includes firing prosecutors, by the way, he forced Comey's boss, Geoffrey Berman, who was the U.S. Attorney in New York, who actually reopened the case and arrested Epstein back in 2019, after my story. He also forced him out of the Justice Department.
So, these kinds of things, you know, the Justice Department was always looked upon as an agency. I think that, of course, you always have political appointments, but for the most part, it was independent of the White House.
And so, these kinds of things that are happening right now are, I think, should be troubling to all Americans, especially with this particular case, which should not be politicized.
COOPER: In terms of, you know, there are many people who want more information about this and want information released. To your knowledge, is there information that could be released that wouldn't necessarily -- I mean, just or even kind of theoretically, should there be information that could be released that wouldn't reveal a witness who didn't want their name used, or a victim who doesn't want their name out there.
BROWN: I think there's always something that you can release. You can release information about steps that certain, you know, agencies have taken in order to investigate this.
COOPER: What would you like to see released?
BROWN: Well, for one thing, I think they should release his autopsy report. You know, autopsy reports are routinely released.
COOPER: Why haven't they done that?
BROWN: I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. It seems like there are so many questions surrounding it. And that's the key, when there's so many questions surrounding a case, you have to look at it a little bit differently. For example, the grand jury testimony in the original Epstein case, grand jury testimony in Florida is kept secret. But the weight was put on the fact that this is a case of intense public interest, and it serves the public interest at times to release some of this information.
Now, you know, for the most part, during the Biden administration, the criminal case was still under -- was still under investigation. So, therefore they can always use that and they often do to say, we can't release anything because it's still under investigation.
But now, it's clearly over. So you have to wonder why they can't release certain portions of it with -- by redacting the names of perhaps victims or witnesses.
COOPER: And their support for that in Congress. I mean, Speaker Johnson said that today that all the credible information should be released. The President himself also indicated that Bondi should release all credible documents. I mean, the autopsy report that would seem to be kind of a no-brainer.
BROWN: Yes, I think that that's especially what the victims believe. I had a chance to talk to some of the victims' attorneys today to kind of gauge what their thoughts are, and they're terribly upset about this and disappointed in the Trump administration making all of those promises. You know, they --
COOPER: Let me ask you. Let me ask you about this video, because you've been critical of the prison security footage that the Justice Department released, which was from the day Epstein died. The DOJ said there was no evidence that he was murdered, wired, you know, looped into this and pointed out a number of things about this video. You say the footage doesn't tell the whole story?
BROWN: No, because I went back to the report twice to make sure that I was speaking correctly about this. But all the cameras, except for one in that whole entire unit was not recording that night and for months before that. In other words, you could see things happening in real time, but they weren't kept. None of the footage was kept, except for one. But the one camera was not in Epstein's wing. It was in another area, and it showed another couple of cells and it looked down upon what they call the common area where the guards are.
But that was not the area that Epstein was in. His cell was in another wing. And the report actually contains a diagram that shows you where Epstein's cell was and shows you where was at the end of his hall, and it specifically says that that camera was not recording.
[20:30:23]
COOPER: So, is this the video we're showing -- the video we're showing, which was the video that was a released, of the two green doors, are those not -- is not -- was that not Epstein's cell?
BROWN: No, they're not Epstein's cell. But and the fact that, people are talking about a minute is missing, they were doctored, if -- if that in fact happened and that must show that they were really trying too hard to try to make something like this work because this view that they show in it is not of Epstein's cell. I've seen cell (inaudible).
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: So, what is it off?
BROWN: (inaudible).
COOPER: What are we looking at?
BROWN: We're looking at the common areas sort of between those bars that they show and they were trying to show, look, here's a figure of Epstein walking. So that showed that at that time, he was walking to his cell, but I couldn't make it out to be Epstein. And I don't think it proves anything because they're not showing the catwalk, they're not showing the hallway where his cell was.
I mean, I covered prisons in Florida, prison deaths, suspicious deaths for a long time and anybody can get into another cell if you leave another inmate's cell unlocked. He could have gone next door. I'm not saying that's what happened, but it is kind of curious why they would put that video out there when it wasn't even of his cell.
COOPER: And as you said, the autopsy might indicate something as well. Julie K. Brown, thank you so much, again, just extraordinary reporting. Thank you.
Coming up next, with the Senate voting on budget cuts tonight and one Republican trying to reverse major cuts to Medicaid, which he himself voted for. We'll talk about it with Senator Bernie Sanders next. Also, later Nick Kristof on the story of hundreds of tons of food aids senselessly going to waste and about to be destroyed.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:36:45]
COOPER: The Senate is working late tonight, voting on amendments to the president's legislation to formalize a portion of the Department of Government Efficiencies, DOGE's spending cuts. Also now in the Senate calendar, legislation introduced by Missouri Republican Josh Hawley to reverse big Medicaid cuts in the president's bigger tax and spending bill, which Senator Hawley himself voted for. Today, Senator Hawley explained that vote to CNN's Manu Raju.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY, (R-MO): I liked all of that, but there are aspects of it I didn't like. And I think these future cuts to hospitals with Medicaid is a mistake. So I said when I voted for it, I said, I'm going to try to reverse these. That's exactly what I'm doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, it's Senator Hawley earlier today. I spoke with Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders about that and more just before airtime. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Senator, when you heard that Josh Hawley introduced a bill to reverse some of the cuts to Medicaid that he himself voted for just two weeks ago, mostly focused on rural hospitals, what did you think?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I-VT): Well, I think I live in a very crazy environment. That so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the reconciliation bill is, in my view, Anderson, the most disastrous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country. And I'm not exaggerating. What it does, as I'm sure Senator Hawley know, is it throws 17 million people off the healthcare they have, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. It makes massive cuts to nutrition and education.
And what studies have shown is that when you throw 17 million working- class and low-income people off the healthcare they have, up to 50,000 Americans will die every single year. And on top of that, it's a disaster for rural hospitals, for nursing homes, and for community health centers. So, bottom line for me, and I suspect Senator Hawley knows this, our healthcare system today is broken. It's dysfunctional. This bill makes it a lot worse.
COOPER: It is interesting because a number of the Republicans who voted for this, essentially when asked about what the Congressional Budget Office said on this, or any number of other groups on different sides of the political aisle, in some cases, some libertarian groups as well, in terms of the cost of this to the deficit, which Republicans used to care about, they say, well, look, the CBO is compromised. It's -- and that all of these things, everything is compromised. And so, there is now apparently no authoritative source for anything, so anything goes.
SANDERS: No, I beg to differ. No, no. There is an authoritative source; its name is Donald Trump. And one of the things that should worry people, and I don't care what your politics are, is that right now, within the Republican Party, you have what I might almost call a Stalinist type party, a cult of the individual, where people there feel no matter what their heart tells them. Do you think that every Republican thinks that this is a great bill that they don't know the harm it is going to do? They do. But they are afraid to stand up to Donald Trump.
[20:40:00]
And by the way, if occasionally, when somebody does like the Thom Tillis, Senator Tillis from North Carolina, Trump will go after them. The billionaires will threaten to primary them and in Tillis' case, he decided not to run for re-election.
COOPER: How concerned are you about these continuing ICE efforts that we are seeing videos of? A number of Republicans continue to say -- Republican governors I've spoken to continue to say, well, look, they are going after the baddest of the bad people. We have wiretaps on people in investigations. I read a piece in The Atlantic that says they're actually pulling people in FBI or elsewhere in law enforcement, who are actually doing investigations on really bad -- people who are here illegally, in order just to get body counts, in order to get the 3,000 people a day that Stephen Miller has told multiple people in the administration that he wants.
SANDERS: Look, this is where I think the American people are at. If you are a drug dealer, if you are somebody in this country undocumented or has committed a crime, I think most people think, Hey, have a nice day. You're out of here. And I support that. But the truth is that the vast majority of the people who are being picked up, put on -- put in vans, sent to detention centers, and God knows what else, these are people who do not have criminal records in the United States of America.
And I should tell you that many of them, many of them, the majority of them are hardworking people doing some of the most difficult, dirty, underpaid work in this country. They are the people who are harvesting our crops. They're working in meat packing plants. They are working in nursing homes for starvation wages. They're working in childcare centers for inadequate wages. During COVID, in many respects, this is a group of people who are the essential workers. They kept our economy going and some of them died in the process. They're raising their kids here.
So I think the American people feel, yeah, we need a strong border. Yeah, we need to get criminal elements who are undocumented out of this country. But I think the American people are sick and tired of seeing hardworking people being treated the way they are treated. And in some cases, Anderson, if you can believe it, picked up and send to Sudan. Now, what is that about? I mean, how cruel is that to send people to a country they don't know the language, they know -- it's a country in -- falling apart. So, I have a lot of concerns about what Trump is doing in terms of mass deportation.
COOPER: Finally, Senator Sanders, I wouldn't normally ask you about this, but Jeffrey Epstein's case is now front and center for this administration. It is tying up the FBI it seems in knots with Pam Bondi, the Justice Department, the top two leaders of the FBI who've been on podcasts spreading conspiracy theories about this for years, now in a position of authority, people are turning on the president. Where did -- where should this go?
SANDERS: To be very honest, you know, I don't know a whole lot about this, but all that I do know is that you're right, Trump and his friends campaigned and said, when we are elected, we are going to open up all of the files and you're going to see all these terrible things, presumably Democrats and so forth and so on. That's what he said to his people, and they say, OK, you are the president, open up the files. And now, they're saying, no, we can't open up the files. We choose not to open up the files.
So, I think above and beyond what may or may not be in the files, whether there are any files, who knows? I don't know. But I think people perceive that Trump has lied to them. He said one thing during the campaign and now, he is saying something very different.
COOPER: Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for your time. SANDERS: Thank you, Anderson.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Coming up next, an update on the USAID cuts by DOGE. We've been following this for months. Now, the warnings are becoming a reality. The U.S. is set to destroy nearly 500 tons of taxpayer funded emergency food meant for starving people around the world, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth, and it's going to cost $100,000 just to destroy it. Those details ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:48:59]
COOPER: As we mentioned, the Senate is considering a portion of the DOGE cuts this week, which would effectively codify them into law. The effect of DOGE cuts dismantling USAID is a story we've been reporting on for months. The closure of that agency, according to one recent study, could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030. Enacted largely by a department essentially created for government efficiency, a story first reported by The Atlantic details waste actually created by DOGE.
The Trump Administration is about to incinerate 500 tons of emergency food. That's the headline. The article reads "nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food, enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week, are set to expire tomorrow. Within weeks, the food meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be ash." This was in The Atlantic. Now, the cost of the food that will now never reach starving people, $800,000. The additional American taxpayer dollars that will now be charged to destroy that emergency food is $100,000.
[20:50:00]
For more on all this, I want to bring in Nicholas Kristof, Columnist for The New York Times, who reports on humanitarian issues for decades. Nicholas, first your reaction to this reporting.
NICHOLAS KRISTOF, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Oh, it just breaks my heart. Anderson, a child dies of malnutrition somewhere around the world every 15 seconds. And it's a terrible thing to watch that these are young children, their skin is peeling, their hair is falling out, and they're in tremendous pain, but they don't cry. They don't wait because the body is using every calorie of energy just to keep the major organs functioning. And if that is heartbreaking, it is doubly, doubly so, to find out that the U.S. has all this high-nutrition food meant to alleviate those deaths, and now is destroying it at taxpayer expense.
And in a larger sense, Elon Musk, Marco Rubio, and President Trump said that they were going to eliminate waste in USAID and instead, they've created it in many ways, in many places. And it's a waste not only of money, but of human lives around the world.
COOPER: Right. These are highly fortified nutritious biscuits that could be essentially handed out and can bring kids back from the brink of starvation. It could be in Gaza, if it wasn't for this. You've traveled to Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone to see how these cuts to humanitarian aid are impacting people. You went to a warehouse where medicine is sitting undistributed. I want to play the clip from The New York Times.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KRISTOF (voice-over): This is Ivermectin, drug donated by Merck that has vastly reduced river blindness across West Africa. We have all these donated drugs. And why are they sitting here? Because they can't be used because President Trump suspended the distribution, the program that distributes these drugs to actual people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So, the distribution points have been eliminated in many places?
KRISTOF: Yeah, that's right. I mean, those are donated medicines. It's one of the most cost effective programs you can have. Every dollar spent on distributing the drugs leverages $26 in donated medicine. And yet, there were a total of 10 million doses of three different medicines in that warehouse. The first of those expire next month. And then, there'll be costs of destroying them. And likewise, again, in the -- back in the malnutrition realm, there are 678,000 boxes of high-nutrition miracle peanut paste for severely acutely malnourished children that the U.S. is actually paying storage costs on.
The U.S. purchased this peanut paste, and it can't seem to figure out how to get it out. It doesn't know what to do with it, the non-profits who were holding it say, and so it is sitting in warehouses in Rhode Island and in Georgia, even as a child is dying of malnutrition every 15 seconds.
COOPER: And in some cases, like with this -- these biscuits that The Atlantic first reported on, because it's stamped USAID, they won't let other aid organizations take it because it says USAID and you'd have to remove each label on every packet and every box.
KRISTOF: That's right. I know that this peanut paste in particular, because the U.S. already paid for it, because it's just gathering dust in warehouses, some other non-profits were asking whether they could have access to it and distribute it, and save lives with it. And the U.S. said no. The Trump Administration said no because you'd have to remove the gift of the American people, the USAID logo from each box and that's just not practical. And so kids die. And in this conversation we've had just so far, there have been, I don't know how many kids dying of malnutrition.
COOPER: And the administration refuses to say that anybody has died, that anybody has actually paid with their lives at this point. Nicholas Kristof, thank you for your reporting as always. Thank you.
Coming up next, the Obamas address rumors about the state of their marriage.
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[20:59:00]
COOPER: Former President and Mrs. Obama are poking fun at rumors, which have been spreading for months, that they are headed for divorce. They began after the First Lady was not with her husband at several public events, including President Trump's second inauguration. Now, the Obamas, on her and her brother's podcast, have cleared things up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: If it is my husband, you all.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: She took me back.
(LAUGH)
M. OBAMA: Now, don't start.
CRAIG ROBINSON, ACTOR, COMEDIAN AND BROTHER OF MICHELLE OBAMA: I can't --
B. OBAMA: It was -- it was touch and go for a while. These are the kinds of things --
M. OBAMA: Yeah.
B. OBAMA: -- that I just miss. Right?
ROBINSON: Yes.
B. OBAMA: So I don't even know this stuff's going on.
ROBINSON: Right.
B. OBAMA: And then, somebody will mention it to me and I'm all like, what are you talking about?
ROBINSON: Yeah. Yeah.
M. OBAMA: There hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting my man and we've had some really hard times where we had -- have had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, the Obamas have been married for nearly 33 years. That's it for us. The news continues. I'll see you tomorrow. "The Source with Kaitlan Collins" starts now.
