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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Third Pentagon Appointee Placed on Administrative Leave; Sources Say, IRS Making Plans to Rescind Harvard's Tax-Exempt Status; Stocks Slide as Fed Chairman Warns of Tariff Impacts. Internal Trump Admin Doc Reveal Plans To Cut Billions At HHS. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired April 16, 2025 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

What a Pentagon source described to me as a purge happening at the Pentagon after a third Pentagon employee has been placed on administrative leave in just the last 24 hours. What is behind these staffing moves?

Plus, an exclusive interview with actor and prominent Democratic activist George Clooney, the parallel he sees between his new Broadway play about legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow and the state of politics today.

[18:00:11]

Also, new reports that reveal steep cuts coming to the Department of Health and Human Services, and $40 billion that could be slashed from just this one agency.

Our Lead Tonight, a top Defense Department official escorted out of the Pentagon. That's the third person in just the past few hours to be placed on leave like this. A DOD official telling me, quote, this is a purge of people who had disagreements with the Pentagon chief of staff, unquote.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand is here with more details. Natasha, what's going on?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you said, Jake, three top Pentagon officials have been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into their conduct. We know that for at least one of them, Dan Caldwell, he's a very senior advisor to Secretary Hegseth, has known him for over a decade, has worked with him very closely. That investigation has to do with leaking information, the unauthorized disclosure of information.

For the other two, we have not been told with any specificity what they're actually under investigation for, but Darren Selnick, he is the deputy chief of staff at the Pentagon, and he was, until last month, performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, and Colin Carroll, who is the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense. So, they were all escorted out of the Pentagon. And the Pentagon is actually being very cagey with details about what they're under investigation for, what they're suspected of leaking, if that is the case. But as of right now, of course, a lot of questions being raised about how three people so high up and so close to Hegseth, seemingly, have been escorted out of the building. Jake?

TAPPER: What else do you know about this alleged investigation into leaks that the chief of staff at the Pentagon is carrying out?

BERTRAND: Well, Pentagon Chief of Staff Joe Kasper, he issued a memo last month saying that the department was going to be carrying out a wide ranging investigation into unauthorized disclosures following that New York Times report that revealed that Elon Musk was going to be receiving a classified briefing at the Pentagon, something that really angered Donald Trump and other senior officials. And so following that report, they announced that they were going to be carrying out this investigation to include the use of polygraph tests to try to root out any officials inside the Department of Defense who had perhaps been leaking information to the media.

Unclear if that specific incident was actually leaked by any of the individuals placed on leave at this point, but, clearly, they were caught up as part of this investigation, it seems, according to all of our sources. Jake?

TAPPER: All right. Natasha Bertrand, thank you so much.

Also in our Politics Lead today, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled today that, quote, probable cause exists to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court for allegedly violating his orders to halt deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Let's go to CNN's Jeff Zeleny, who is at the White House for us. Jeff, how is the White House reacting to the judge's ruling?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, so far at this hour, the president himself has not reacted specifically to the judge. Of course, this is a judge who the president has had much to say about. He has called for his impeachment. He described him as a radical leftist judge. But as of now, the White House Communications Office is doing the responding. They're saying that they are going to immediately appeal this to a higher court, so we shall see.

But the bottom line to all of this is that Judge James Boasberg here, who is appointed by President George W. Bush, elevated by President Barack Obama, has ruled that this administration may be in criminal contempt of court. That's a very serious allegation, a serious charge.

Of course, it dates back to, as you were saying, the Saturday afternoon, early evening hearing a couple months ago when the administration officials, in the judge's view, effectively ignored his order to turn those planes around that were deporting some of the migrants from here in the U.S.

So the criminal contempt charge will be appealed by this administration. And we'll be, of course, waiting to see if the president weighs in specifically on this, as he often has in many immigration cases. Jake?

TAPPER: Yes. It's tough to keep track of all of the institutions President Trump is feuding, fighting, taking issue with, on the one between the Trump administration and Harvard University. Tell us about the IRS now looking to rescind Harvard's tax-exempt status. I assume there needs to be some sort of process. They can't just do that willy- nilly, right?

ZELENY: The IRS can do this, Jake. And we are learning, our team is reporting that the acting IRS director, who the president has just been named, and, of course, his name is a Gary Shapely, he's that whistleblower, if you will, from the Biden administration. He's the one who accused the Department of Justice of slow walking an investigation into Hunter Biden. But we are learning that the IRS is looking at, is actively reviewing and inching toward a decision to revoke the tax-exempt status of Harvard University.

[18:05:08]

That would be an extraordinary move.

The experts that our colleagues have been speaking with this afternoon say that they can only remember one other time that this happened. It was back in the 1980s of one specific school. They say they violated the tax-exempt status by a political activity. Of course, this would be a slippery slope in terms of churches, in terms of religious universities and others. But the IRS, we are told, is actively considering and moving toward trying to revoke the Harvard tax-exempt status. And some announcement might be coming soon on this, Jake.

TAPPER: Yes, that really would set a precedent, though, I understand, not a lot of people at this White House seem to think far past tomorrow afternoon.

Jeff Zeleny at the White House, thank you so much.

Meanwhile, U.S. stocks fell today as the Federal Reserve Chairman gave a stark warning to the nation and the world about the impact of President Trump's tariffs on the economy and inflation and higher prices for consumers.

Let's bring in CNN's Phil Mattingly. Phil, what exactly did Chairman Powell have to say?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I want to put this in three parts, because I think it's helpful contextually, the past, the now and the going forward. In the past, the chairman made very clear, the U.S. economy right now is in a solid position, and that backs up everything we've seen in economic data over the course of the last several months, on inflation, on unemployment, on growth. It's in a solid place. So, the Fed doesn't feel any need right now to move in large part because the now.

What Powell was saying about the level of uncertainty out there, not just for business leaders trying to figure out investments or which way to take their companies, but for Fed, for the Fed, for the policy officials about what to do next, he said, historically unique developments with great uncertainty. This is the guy who's going to be critical if things go bad, and they have no idea and nothing to kind of tether it to as they think through their next steps.

And then he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAIN, FEDERAL RESERVE: Unemployment is likely to go up as the economy slows in all likelihood, and inflation is likely to go up as tariffs find their way. And some part of those tariffs come to be paid by the public.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Now, that obviously runs counter to what President Trump and his economic team have said. Powell went on to say he believes it's going to stay that way for the balance of the year. So, he expects this to be sustained over time. And the problem becomes, if that starts to spiral on some level, right, where inflation is going up, growth and unemployment are sluggish or problematic, that runs directly into the dual mandate of the Fed. They're going to have to make a choice, and it's a very difficult one which side to help.

TAPPER: And, usually, it's one goes up but not the other. This would be a double-barrel shotgun.

MATTINGLY: If inflation is high, you raise rates, pull things down. If unemployment growth is problematic --

TAPPER: To have high unemployment and high inflation.

MATTINGLY: It is at -- the worst case, stagflation.

TAPPER: It's a double-whammy.

Looking at the broader picture here, the Trump administration's taking on a lot and they're facing a lot of heat all over the place, the economy, pressure from the courts on the deportation efforts. Now, obviously it is the Trump administration's want, indeed the want of every politician to act as if they're confident, everything's going great. Are they feeling that way behind the scenes?

MATTINGLY: They believe right now that what they have seen in the early stages of what countries are willing to put on the table is exactly the type of response that they would've wanted. The caveat to that is the rollout was not what the top economic officials would have thought or planned. The process going forward is so heavily contingent on making progress on bilateral deals that traditionally take years, that the stakes are really high, and this is a high wire act without a net.

And they're also seeing things that I think underscore the market volatility right now. You know, retail sales numbers were at their highest level in two years. People are stocking up, right? They're trying to get in front of this. They're trying to front run inflation in prices that they know is going to go up.

And then you have NVidia, the chipmaker, taking a $5.5 billion charge today because of export controls that they thought their chips were created to cut underneath, meaning they believe, and this is showing, they are dead serious about the China element of this trade war, and it's probably going to be for a long time.

TAPPER: Phil Mattingly, thanks so much.

Coming up next, my exclusive interview with George Clooney, why he felt compelled to bring this story of veteran journalist Edward R. Murrow to a Broadway stage, he also has a lot to say about politics, including his op-ed last summer that called on Joe Biden to drop out at the 2024 presidential race, and folks who claimed that former President Obama was actually the one behind it.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:10:00]

TAPPER: In our Pop Culture Lead now, there's a lot in the work of legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow challenging Senator Joseph McCarthy that continues to resonate today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No one familiar with the history of his country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating. But the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: George Clooney is currently appearing on Broadway as Edward R. Murrow in a stage production of Goodnight and Good Luck, which highlights the importance of journalism as a check against government corruption, also asserting the importance of facts and evidence and careful, diligent news broadcasting.

Goodnight and Good Luck opened not even two weeks ago and already has broken the weekly record for the highest grossing play in the history of the United States.

I sat down yesterday with George Clooney at the Winter Garden Theater to discuss Murrow, journalism courage, the op-ed he wrote last July calling for President Biden to drop out of the presidential race and the state of the nation today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: I can't believe that the movie, Goodnight and Good Luck, was 20 years ago.

GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR: 20 years ago, I know, 20 years ago, this year.

TAPPER: Yes. What would make you, because obviously you didn't start doing this the day after Trump got elected, right?

[18:15:04]

You started two years ago.

CLOONEY: Yes.

TAPPER: What would make you want to rewrite that and turn it into a Broadway show?

CLOONEY: Well, I can make the argument that this storyline and what we are dealing with hasn't really ever gotten out of the news, you know, starting with Jefferson and Adams. I think we've been having these arguments about how we inform ourselves and holding truth to power.

So, I just felt like doing the -- telling this story again and talking about the story again. You know, we -- Grant, and I watched the movie a couple about a year-and-a-half ago. We were -- for some reason, there was a screening someone did and asked us to show up and comment on it. And we were watching it. We thought, boy, this is still -- everything we talked about then, and that counted in 1954, it still counts. And we thought, well, we've been trying to do it as a play for a while. And then we thought, well, it's not a bad time to talk about these things, holding truth to power and the importance of journalism, you know?

And I grew up as a son of a journalist. I grew up running a teleprompter in the --

TAPPER: Oh, you did that?

CLOONEY: -- in the newsroom at my dad's news. You know, it's crazy at the time. You know, it was like you would just feed paper in and then if they cut a scene, there was a paper cutter at the end of it. And you would just cut it and tape it.

TAPPER: I can't believe you did the -- how old were you when you did teleprompter?

CLOONEY: 12.

TAPPER: Seriously?

CLOONEY: Yes.

TAPPER: And people don't -- might not remember, but you and your dad actually did journalism together when you went to Darfur.

CLOONEY: Yes. Well, I would argue that my father did journalism. In fact, I called my dad up. We had -- we were going to go with some reporters and they bailed out because there was a --

TAPPER: Because it was dangerous.

CLOONEY: Because it was a threat and they didn't want to go. And so I called my dad and I said -- you know, he used to talk about when he was a young guy, he got -- he did a news story and it got bumped for Elizabeth Taylor story. And he was pissed off about it. And I said, I'll tell you what, pop, and I talked about that and I said, remember how that worked before? And he said, yes. I said, so let's go to Darfur because no one could get in there. Then I said, let's you and I go in and you be the newsman and I'll be Elizabeth Taylor, and we'll get the story out.

TAPPER: Did you first hear about Murrow from your dad?

CLOONEY: Yes, my dad -- when I was a kid, my dad would stand on a chair when I was six years old and do the box of lights and wires.

TAPPER: Oh really?

CLOONEY: The whole thing. It's like half-an-hour or something. And it was actually longer than that. He would do his selected version of the box of lights and wires. He would do that and he would do Julius Caesar, and what was the other, and he would do Hamlet. He would stand on a chair and do those three things for us. So, I grew up really aware of it.

Also my father held high Murrow and Cronkite because --

TAPPER: Although they hated each other.

CLOONEY: Yes, of course. But the reason was because Cronkite also was a journalist who, you know, when Johnson didn't run for office again, he said, well, if I've lost to Cronkite, I've lost the country. He was another of those sort of most trusted men in America.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: And my father was a great and good friends with. We all became really good friends with Walter later in life, you know?

TAPPER: So, you have a lot of acting and directing and producing awards. But in the Playbill here, all it says is that your last time in an equity theater was in June, 1986, a play called Vicious in Steppenwolf. He has never appeared on Broadway. So buckle up.

CLOONEY: That's it. I think that's a pretty fair assessment of my theater credentials.

TAPPER: Were you especially nervous?

CLOONEY: Sure. Look, this is -- it's a funny thing because I do speaking gigs for our foundation to raise money. I'm in front of much bigger crowds of this all the time for, you know, an hour at a time and speaking, but it's sort of off the cuff and you have to kind of be entertaining a little bit. This is a very different thing. There is a -- every single show, we have a group of people, A lot of times, it's young kids who know these speeches by heart.

TAPPER: Really?

CLOONEY: Oh, yes. And journalism students who come in. And if you screw it up, they let you know. They really -- I had a kid come over and he goes, he didn't say that, he said this. And I go, I know, I messed it up. And it's hard to adlib, you know, Murrow. So there's a -- yes, people really hold that. I don't know. They hold those speeches to their heart.

It's an interesting thing. You can feel the audience kind of lean forward, you know, when you hear certain things. It doesn't matter what political bend you are on when you hear things like, you know, we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. And we will not walk in fear one of another and won't be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

[18:20:01]

I think those are extraordinarily powerful words for who we are at our best.

Even now, I have people have, some knuckleheads, you know, saying, well, he thinks he's a journalist. I don't, I have never claimed to be a journalist. And I just go, who -- we have a montage at the end. I say, you should come see it. You're in it. You know, we use your words. We don't change it. We don't tell people what to think.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: We don't -- it's not taken out of context. We just say, here it is. You guys can decide what you want with it. I think that's a proper way of doing it.

TAPPER: The montage is interesting. They're, I'm in it, of saying something about a chilling effort or something like that, but it's just -- it's decades of news. Sometimes it's people just commenting. Sometimes it's obvious lies being told to the American people. There's the Dominion software stuff. There is people maintaining that Joe Biden is fit as a fiddle. I mean, there's a lot of stuff. You guys must have taken care in what you picked so as to try to not be anything other than this is everything.

CLOONEY: What we thought, what Grant and I thought when we were putting that together was, you know that frog in the water and you turn up the heat?

TAPPER: Yes. CLOONEY: So when you first start and you see Lucille Ball, it is funny and people do laugh in the audience when they see her, and they should, because it's innocent and sweet. And then as the history of our watching television goes and we're watching it happen, and you see all the, you know, Kennedy's assassination and man landing on the moon and you see sort of these amazing moments. And you see goofy things too.

But then there's this moment it turns, the O.J. Chase and Jerry Springer, and people are laughing, and I always look at them when they laugh because now you're laughing at him getting -- they're laughing at people's expense. You're laughing at cruelty. And from that moment on, it becomes much more about how we decide to inform ourselves and how we decide to talk about people.

I think you could -- and it relates all the way to this point we're at right now, which is, it's not just about trying to, you know, fix, you know, questionable problems, but it's also about being cruel. The cruelty is the point. I think the idea is if you make it cruel enough, people won't, you know, want to come to the country or any of those things. And we may be very effective in that too.

So, I thought that the montage, in a way, was us slowly understanding how we all participated in letting this kind of -- this idea of the Wild, Wild West, you know?

TAPPER: What's also interesting about it is that one of the themes of the show is the pressure that Bill Paley, the chairman of CBS, was under, and he supports Murrow up until he wins against McCarthy.

CLOONEY: Yes.

TAPPER: And then Paley pulls the plug and lets him go. And like those same pressures are going on right now, except we seek big corporations, bigger than just CBS, writing checks.

CLOONEY: It is an interesting thing. I had conversations, we've had CBS reporters here who are grateful for the play. And, certainly, as you understand, because you are a -- as a reporter and as a newsman, you see there are much higher paid people trying to, you know, protect their jobs, trying to protect their business, and I understand it, and Paley had to do all those things as well.

And there is a balance. Penny Traiski (ph) wrote about it with the balance between commerce and news. It's always been there and it's been a big issue. The questions I had for the CBS guys, because they're really facing it right now, was if it's a payment, that's one thing, that's billionaires, paying billionaires and, you know, who cares?

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: The question is, do you apologize? Because I don't think you can be, 60 Minutes or, you know, I don't think a news organization can apologize for doing their job. I don't think you can do that. And so -- and thus far they haven't, and, hopefully, they won't, you know? (END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Coming up, what Clooney, a prominent Democratic donor, says now about that op-ed he wrote calling on President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race this is last July. And we also talked about -- talked to him about who he thinks should be the next to lead the party.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:25:00]

TAPPER: Still in our Pop Culture Lead, we're going to bring you another second part of my interview with actor and director and producer and prominent Democrat George Clooney.

Clooney's op-ed calling for President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race last July marked a real watershed moment last summer. I asked Clooney about why he decided to go public with concerns and whom he thinks should lead the Democratic Party moving forward.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: One of the things that Good Night and Good Luck reestablishes is however much Murrow is deified in our culture, and especially by journalists. His story's actually a tragic one.

CLOONEY: Oh, yes, he loses.

TAPPER: He loses. I mean, he wins against McCarthy or McCarthy loses, at least in Murrow's part of that, but he loses his show.

CLOONEY: Yes.

TAPPER: By 1961, he's working for the United States Information Agency, and by 1965, he's dead.

CLOONEY: That's right. And McCarthy was dead even sooner, you know, from --

TAPPER: Drinking.

CLOONEY: From drinking.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: Look, nobody really wins in this one except this.

[18:30:00]

And we're here doing this play because there was a standard set by a journalist who said, I'm not going to cave, and it will cost us our jobs. And he's not a dummy. He knew what he was up against. And that's -- look, I respond, and most of the people I know respond to actual courage. And that's actual courage. This is a guy that was the first person into, I think it was Auschwitz, but one of the camps, broadcaster there, he broadcast from the tops of buildings during the London Blitz, brave man.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: Great writer. And, honestly, to see him say, we're going to go -- and word for word, he said, you know, we're going to go with the show because the terror is right here in this room.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: And that's a courage that we all -- I certainly, you know, am attracted to and watching.

TAPPER: You yourself did something that a lot of people would call brave when you wrote your op-ed.

CLOONEY: Well, I don't know if it was brave. It was a civic duty because I found that people on my side of the street -- you know, I'm a Democrat. I was a Democrat in Kentucky, but I get it. When I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth, I thought that was time to --

TAPPER: Are people still mad at you for that?

CLOONEY: Some people, sure. It's okay. You know, listen, the idea of freedom of speech, you know, the specific idea of it is, you know, you can't demand freedom of speech and then say, but don't say bad things about me.

TAPPER: Right.

CLOONEY: That's the deal. You have to take a stand if you believe in it. Take a stand, stand for it, and then deal with the consequences. That's the rules. And so when people criticize me, they criticized me because of my stance against the war 20 years ago, and people picketed my movies and they put me on a deck of cards and I -- you know, and that's -- I have to take that. That's fair. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with criticism for my -- you know, for where I stand. I defend their right to criticize me as much as I defend my right to criticize them.

TAPPER: You were in the news recently. There's a book that says that after somebody on Morning Joe said that the op-ed, it sounded more like Obama than it sounded like you.

CLOONEY: Oh, yes.

TAPPER: That this report said that you called up a producer at MSNBC and yelled at the producer.

CLOONEY: Right.

TAPPER: Is that accurate?

CLOONEY: That never happened. Now, it's an interesting thing. You know, here's a funny thing about this. You're writing a book, you know, and all I have to do is tell the truth. I have emails. I was ticked off when it was Mika Brzezinski, who I like, a perfectly nice woman, but she said that, you know, that President Obama was behind me writing the op-ed, and that's not true at all. It has no basis and fact.

And I wrote Mike Barnicle and I just said, what is that about? And Mike just said, I don't know. I know -- and I said, the one thing you know about me is that, you know, I don't take my marching orders from anybody. And that's the only person I know over there, and I wrote him. We have a four-email exchange, and then this guy says, I called up a producer who I don't know how to call a producer there. I don't know any producer there. And I yelled at them, which isn't true.

And here's the problem with that. What that does is it calls into question any other facts in this book. And that's the thing about what Murrow does too. He talks about this constantly, reliable sources, how do you, you know, back your information. You know, there's a whole story that these guys try to run that Murrow says, you don't have it.

TAPPER: One other thing about your op-ed I just want to ask, because you called for a robust primary, mini primary.

CLOONEY: Yes.

TAPPER: I know there were a lot of people that wanted that. Obama and Nancy Pelosi were saying so publicly that that's what they wanted after Biden dropped out. But the way Biden dropped out immediately endorsing Kamala Harris there, that didn't happen. That didn't get to happen. Do you think it would've been better if there had been some sort of contest?

CLOONEY: Yes. And if you think about it, and she may have ended up winning that contest, and here's the problem that that we were facing with that. It's very hard to -- whether or not you agree that that administration was successful or not, that's a different thing. But the perception was, and what was being -- how they were running was that it was a failed administration. I could argue that it's not.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: But that's a different argument. You can't run against yourself, right? And that's why that was a difficult campaign. It's hard to run against yourself and say, well, yes, I disagree with all this stuff. And, in fact, impossible because you're also, you know, not there to try and run down, you know, her president at the time. So, it was a very difficult campaign.

I think we should have seen from some people that I think we have some really good governors.

[18:35:00] And I would've liked to have seen an expedited, quick primary. I think we would've sustained it. And she may have come out on top. I don't know.

TAPPER: Who do you have your eyes on?

CLOONEY: I really -- there's one person in particular I think is spectacular. There are a few. I like Andy Beshear. I like --

TAPPER: Oh, you're Kentuckian.

CLOONEY: I'm a Kentucky guy. I like him. He's a good guy. And they're smart. And he's won in a red state. He's a Democrat. I like Gretchen, I think is very good. But who I think is levitating above that is Wes Moore. I think he is a guy that -- he's handled this tragedy in Baltimore beautifully. He had two tours of duty in Afghanistan, active duty. He speaks sort of beautifully. He's smart. He ran a hedge fund. He ran the Robin Hood Foundation. He's a proper leader.

And Democrats, you know, the thing is we say Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Although I think Republicans have fallen in love a little bit. I like him a lot. I think he could be someone we could all join in behind.

We have to find somebody rather soon, you know, because we need to redo -- look, the other side, the side that I'm, you know -- that I don't support one and they're, you know, running through government and doing their thing. So, it's our job now to put together a proper team to stand up because we're right now polling very poorly, you know?

TAPPER: The show, doesn't -- it doesn't -- it's not heavy handed on the Trump --

CLOONEY: We don't mention his name.

TAPPER: Yes. There are no -- like whatever parallels there might be, whatever echoes or rhyming there might be, that's for the viewer to come up with on their own.

CLONEY: Well, there's an interesting thing. You know, these aren't just -- you know, when it came out as a movie, it was about -- you know, it was holding truth to power in the sense that, at that moment, the executive branch and the legislative branch of the judicial branch were not holding the administration to power in 2003 about going to war in Iraq.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: They weren't. And it was -- we required the fourth estate to hold them to power. And, remember, there was embedding journalists at the time. There was a lot of confusion, but there were still good, solid journalists holding, you know, truth to power. And that's why we wrote the movie about that.

And so this play was -- is basically talking about literally how do we inform ourselves and holding truth to power. That's the number one thing you can do. And, you know, when I was growing up as a kid, my dad had one rule and it was it. He just said, I don't care what you do, I don't care. You're going to be anything you want to be, but you have to defend people with less power than you, and you have to challenge people with more power. That's it. If you do that, you win in life.

And, you know, I try to do that. I'd fail a lot at it, but I try to do it and I believe in it, you know?

TAPPER: Has your dad seen the show?

CLOONEY: No. He's coming next week or the week after. I'm excited for him to see it because, originally, when Grant and I first wrote it, it was a real tribute to my dad. So, I'm excited for him to be here to see it.

TAPPER: That's great. Well, thank you so much for your time.

CLOONEY: Well, thanks for coming up.

TAPPER: I think you're going to show me this --

CLOONEY: I'll walk you around the set.

TAPPER: We're doing a little walk on set.

CLOONEY: Sure. I'll show you some tricks.

TAPPER: So, first of all, is any of it real?

CLOONEY: Well, we have -- so, you know, when we shoot this, we have some good copies of a bunch of like Murrow memos. It's -- I mean, it all -- it's actually fun because I had -- you must have had a typewriter. Top is the band up there.

TAPPER: It's real.

CLOONEY: None of it's real. It's all just this one live.

TAPPER: Yes.

That's the director. Thank you so much. This is so much fun. I really appreciate it. It is such a good show. I hope everybody come see it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: All right. Thanks to George Clooney and his entire team, plus everyone at the Winter Garden Theater. And you can Catch Goodnight and Good Luck on Broadway. It's through June 8th.

Longtime Democratic Strategist James Carville is standing by. We're going to get his reaction to Clooney's comments about the future of the Democratic Party and much more. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [18:40:00]

TAPPER: Just moments ago in that exclusive interview, actor and Democratic Party heavyweight George Clooney called Maryland Democratic Governor Wes Moore, a, quote, proper leader when discussing Democrats who he would like to see run for president in 2028.

With me now, veteran Democratic Strategist James Carville. James, what do you make of Clooney's high praise of Wes Moore when talking about the race for the White House in 2028? And is it too soon to be talking about such things?

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, first of all, his praises of Governor Moore is justified. I saw him as a good identity. He was great. And I think that Governor Moore would be the same, say the same thing. If I run for president, the competition's going to be stiff.

There's an enormous amount of talent in the Democratic Party. He mentioned governor Beshear, who is one of -- you know, a lot of -- Governor Whitmer. There's a lot of talented people. And I think it's going to be fun watching these different candidates go out and present their vision and let Democrats choose who they think is the best of the lot. And I think that's what should have happened in 2024, by the way. And I think President Obama agreed, George certainly agreed, and he tried to say we could have a -- even abbreviated processes late as July the 21st to be exact, a date I'll never forget.

So, I'm looking forward to having competitive contest for president and let the best person win.

TAPPER: Clooney -- speaking of Biden dropping out, Clooney said that he thought it was his civic duty to write that op-ed in July, calling for the president to drop out of the presidential race. He said Democrats were lying and he needed to come to truth. And I wonder, do you think that whole experience, all the gaslighting and everything having to do with Biden's acuity that was obviously revealed to not be accurate at the debate.

[18:45:09]

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yeah.

TAPPER: Do you think that's something Democrats still need to contend with? Is that still holding the party down when it comes to approval ratings, do you think?

CARVILLE: Well, first of all, I'm going to read your book and find out what I think, but --

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: Comes out May 20th, comes out May 20th. Yeah.

CARVILLE: On May 20th. But you know, sometimes people want to believe something and they'll

disregard all evidence to the contrary because they want to believe something or they have a position, and they want to maintain that position.

So, I have a somewhat open mind. I think this should have never happened. I think we should have had an open process back in the spring of 2023. If that would have happened, I think we would have won the presidency. I don't think it had been close.

But you know, as I say, as late as late July, President Obama was desperately trying to get some kind of competitive process to pick our nominee. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

TAPPER: The vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, David Hogg, the young activist from Parkland, has announced that his organization, which is called Leaders We Deserve, is launching a $20 million effort to start primarying incumbent Democratic officials who he says are, quote, failing to meet the moment right now. Hogg says he would only target districts that are safe for Democrats.

What do you think of that?

CARVILLE: Well, I don't know, Jake. I went to law school a long time ago, but he is an officer of the Democratic National Committee, I think I might look it up. I'll talk to lawyers.

He has a fiduciary duty, and so he has a fiduciary duty to the Democratic Party, and he's going to raise $20 million in primary Democrats? Does he really think the problem that we're facing in the United States today is because of we got 65-year-old Democrats in office?

Why don't you take on a Republican? That's your job. Well, it's the most insane thing -- I've honestly, I've just do a slight rant here.

The most insane thing I ever heard is the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee is spending $20 million running against other Democrats. Are we supposed to run against Republicans?

I mean, maybe I'm old-fashioned, antiquated. I'm not part of the hip generation. I'm not very accurate. But I actually thought our job was to beat Republicans.

How quaint. How quaint of me. But I don't think I'm going to change.

TAPPER: Yeah, I think you're all (INAUDIBLE). Thats just my person. But I'm old. But I'm an old man myself. So, you know, James Carville.

CARVILLE: Thank you.

TAPPER: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

CARVILLE: Thank you, Jake. You bet.

TAPPER: And we have, David hogg was supposed to come on the show today. We had some scheduling issues. He's obviously welcome to come on and talk about this plan.

Coming up, CNN has just confirmed plans for the massive cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency, led by Secretary RFK Jr. About a third of HHS's budgets could soon be slashed,, including some lifesaving programs, potentially. We're going to talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:51:57]

TAPPER: In our health lead, newly revealed internal documents show that the Trump administration plans to cut nearly one third in discretionary spending at the Department of Health and Human Services.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard joins us now.

Jacqueline, how much of an impact could that have? A third?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Oh, Jake, yeah, this could have significant impacts. That third includes more than 40 percent of a reduction in the CDCs budget and more than a 40 percent reduction of the NIH budget.

And keep in mind, NIH is the biggest public funder of biomedical research. And this is a preliminary memo. It was dated April 10th. So, keep in mind, we don't know whether these plans are final, but this could give insight into what federal health agencies might look like under the current Trump administration.

We know that there are plans to transition the Department of Health and Human Services to what they're calling the "Administration for Healthy America". This may give us insight into that.

And these cuts also include impacts on specific centers under the CDC, impacts on specific institutes under NIH. It looks like it includes possible preliminary plans to reduce the NIH's 27 research institutes down to just eight. We know that this could have impacts under CDC programs, including programs related to gun violence, injury prevention, a drowning prevention, minority health, and also youth violence prevention.

So, these impacts could be significant. And as you know, Jake, just weeks ago, we saw some CDC employees receiving a RIF notices. And that could have been the start of some of these budget cuts.

TAPPER: All right. Jacqueline Howard, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

A massive blackout is impacting the entire island of Puerto Rico. How long crews say it could take to get the power back on. Thats next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:58:16] TAPPER: In our last leads, you're looking at stranded passengers in Puerto Rico today after commuter trains ground to a halt. The entire U.S. territory is dealing with a major blackout. Right now, 1.4 million customers do not have any power. And since there is no power, 78,000 customers don't have water just days before Easter holiday weekend. Officials estimate getting electricity restored could take 2 to 3 days.

In our world lead, the first confirmed footage of a colossal squid in its deep sea home. Although this particular one is a teenage colossal squid, only a foot long and kind of rude and surly, like teens tend to be. It's expected to grow to be about 23 feet long. A remotely operated vehicle captured this video off the South Sandwich Islands in the Atlantic near Antarctica.

An excited scientist on the project said he started hyperventilating when he saw the footage. It really is something to see. Imagine if you saw a grown one.

In our national lead, how about this for a community coming together? About 300 volunteers lined up on the streets to create an assembly line. This was this past Sunday in Chelsea, Michigan, about an hour's drive west of Detroit.

The goal? Helping a bookstore move -- move -- move more than 9,000 books to the stores new location down the block. The move took less than two hours, thanks to the help from small town neighbors. Those Midwesterners, man, I'll tell you, greatest people in the world.

I have two books coming out next month, "Original Sin", about President Biden's decision to run for reelection and the cover up of his decline. You heard James Carville say he can't wait to read it.

In October, "Race Against Terror". That's about the hunt to prosecute an al Qaeda terrorist who killed Americans and was out to kill more. You can check them out and preorder them at jaketapper.com.

Until tomorrow, you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Substack, X, and on the TikTok. It's all @jaketapper. You can follow the show on X @TheLeadCNN.

If you ever missed an episode of the lead. Well, you don't have to just sit there sad. You can listen to the show, all two hours, just sitting there wherever you get your podcasts.

"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts now. She's got another great show for you. I'll see you tomorrow morning.