Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

New Details of U.S. Strikes on Iran's Nuclear Facilities; Trump Says, Hope Congress Can Pass Agenda Bill by July 4; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) Won't Say If They Will Endorse Mamdani. New CDC Advisers Vote On Flu, RSV Vaccine Recommendations. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired June 26, 2025 - 18:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:00:00]

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

This hour, we have some new CNN reporting. About secret negotiations happening right now to try to bring Iran back to the negotiating table for nuclear talks. This comes as the Pentagon is sharing new details about the U.S. strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and whether officials think anything was removed from the Iranian facilities before they were bombed.

Plus, Republicans are forced to go back to the drawing board to a degree on Trump's one big, beautiful bill. But if they do find a way to keep their major Medicaid changes intact, one Missouri mom is warning that her daughter could die.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do not have my daughter enrolled on Medicaid so that we can have fancy things. I have my daughter enrolled in Medicaid so that we can keep her alive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Hear our family story in their own words. Our own Jeff Zeleny went to Missouri. We'll bring you that reported moments.

And two important votes today from the CDC's brand new vaccine advisers who are handpicked by RFK Jr. One about RSV vaccines for babies, the other about flu shots for both kids and adults. We're going to break down what they decided ahead.

The Lead Tonight, the Pentagon is releasing new details today about the extent of the success of the U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth emphasized an initial battle assessment showing that the sites were severely damaged, but provided no further information about the status of Iran's overall nuclear weapons program.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand has more on what the Pentagon did reveal today. Natasha?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, military officials did provide some new information about the planning of the strikes, and that particularly came from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, who really laid out a detailed picture of the operation and the decade-plus of planning that went in to this kind of very, very delicate and detailed operation by these B-2 bombers to drop these, bombs, these massive ordinance penetrators, at precisely the right point on top of Fordow nuclear facility in Iran so that those bombs would actually penetrate deep under that facility, the core components of which are buried about 250 to 300 feet underground.

So, we got some information from General Dan Caine who said that the bombs went through the ventilation shafts of that facility. So, why is that important? Because, again, a lot of the most important stuff is buried deep underground.

But when it comes to the actual battle damage assessment, so, okay, the bombs hit their targets, what does that actually mean now? Do we know for a fact that things were actually obliterated, in President Trump's words, underground? And how far does that actually set back Iran's nuclear program? Neither Caine nor Hegseth could really provide new intelligence to that fact. And that is because both of them emphasize it is still pretty early. And also because, according to General Dan Caine, you know, that is the job of the intelligence community who's going to be continuing to gather information in the coming days and weeks about this.

But here's a little bit of what he's told reporters earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: So what has changed? Would you use the term obliterated as well?

GEN. DAN CAINE, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: Sure. Like I said, we don't do BDA. I'll refer that to the intelligence community. And --

REPORTER: When you're talking with them, I mean, what changed in the past three days and make you so, you know --

[18:05:03]

CAINE: Sir, I think that's --

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I mean, I think I explained what changed. There was a great deal of irresponsible reporting based on leaks, preliminary information in low confidence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: Now look, the pr the primary objective of this Pentagon briefing was to discuss the operation against one nuclear facility. That was part of this military operation. There are two others that the military targeted as part of these strikes, and those went completely unmentioned. And so the extent to which this did in fact set back Iran's nuclear program, that is still unanswered, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Natasha, Bertrand, thanks so much. Let's discuss further with my panel. We have with us former Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, U.S. National Defense Policy Expert and Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute Rebeccah Heinrichs and CNN National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood.

Sabrina, let me start with you. Given your days at the Pentagon, what did you -- what was your big takeaway from the press conference we saw earlier with Secretary Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Dan Razin Caine?

SABRINA SINGH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Honestly the takeaway was it was almost two separate press conferences. It was one from Pete Hegseth, which was, you know, for an audience of one, which was the president, and then the other was for the American people, which General Caine, I thought did a phenomenal job of really laying out, not only how the military operation unfolded and how some of the ordinances landed and the choreography of the entire operation, but really laying out the fact that that DIA assessment was an initial assessment, but there's more still being knitted together on the intel picture.

And I think the biggest takeaway from that press conference that I got most importantly was that there's a lot still being collected. There's going to be signals intelligence, there's going to be human intelligence that's going to paint the picture of how extensive this battle damage assessment is. But I think importantly, the Iranian nuclear program was set back of course, and that is a good thing.

TAPPER: Yes. I mean, the Iranian nuclear program was set back when the Israelis started attacking. It was set back like we had the former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, saying that it was set back years. That's before the U.S. strike on the facilities.

What do you still want to know?

REBECCAH HEINRICHS, SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON INSTITUTE: Well, I still want to see the BDA, obviously, but I think what was really compelling about this briefing --

TAPPER: BDA is battlefield damage assessment.

HEINRICHS: That's right. And you have to actually have people in the ground go and kind of look to see what was in there.

But I think what was really compelling about the briefing today was that General Caine explained that the GBU-57, that is the bomb that they dropped, it was designed to be the most explosive bomb, conventional bomb for the B-2, and then they made it designed specifically for Fordow and to drop it down the ventilator shaft. They've simulated that so they have a really good idea in simulation what it would do, and it behaves to the extent that they can tell exactly the way it's performed, which gives them pretty high confidence, they have to be careful because these words mean something in the intelligence community that everything that they wanted to destroy was destroyed, and that that facility is no longer usable for a nuclear program.

TAPPER: And meanwhile, Kylie, you're out with new exclusive reporting today about the Trump administration's potential plans to get Iran back to negotiating table five days after the Trump administration bombed their nuclear program. Tell us more.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there were secretive meetings happening on these new terms that are being discussed just the day before the Trump administration carried out the strike on Iran's nuclear sites, and those conversations have continued after the strikes occurred.

So, what we're learning is that there are discussions about sanctions relief for Iran. There are discussions about freeing up $6 billion in Iranian funds that are currently restricted from use. There's also discussions about providing access to the Iranians to $20 to $30 billion to rebuild its civilian nuclear energy program, you know, nuclear energy that is used, of course not for any sort of aggression purposes.

Now, administration officials say that all of this is very preliminary. There are a lot of ideas being floated, but we did hear from Steve Witkoff in an interview yesterday. He talked about in investing, and building -- rebuilding Iran's nuclear program without any enrichment capabilities. We should note that's still their red line.

But we also heard from President Trump that there are going to be talks between the U.S. and Iran next week. The Iranians are not saying that they are aware of any discussions that are set to take place, but at this moment, the Trump administration working really hard on what these new terms would actually look like that they would put on the table.

TAPPER: Do you think that's realistic to expect the Iranians to come to the table?

HEINRICHS: Well, so far the Iranians have not said that they're willing to do that. They have not been cooperative. I think what's interesting is both the Israelis and U.S. officials have said, look, more strikes could be coming, so they have the sort of threat that more could come. But, clearly, President Trump wants some sort of diplomatic solution. They want that whatever enrichment is still going inside the country, they want it out. They want inspectors in there. And they want Iran to choose a path of peace. And President Trump is clearly willing to hold out that as an option. But so far, there is no budging on the part of the Iran regime.

TAPPER: What do you think?

SINGH: Well, it's unclear. You know exactly where the enriched uranium is. And I think that is what General Caine and Pete Hegseth -- I mean they, they both sort of had different --

18:10:00]

TAPPER: Where all of it.

SINGH: Where all of it is.

TAPPER: Yes.

SINGH: And I think there was early reporting that they might have moved it.

So, I think, you know, we are trying to, or this administration is trying to get Iran back to the table. But Iran has also drawn a very clear red line on enrichment and they want to maintain that.

Now, they are in an incredibly different place than they were --

TAPPER: Pretty weak position. They don't even have control of their skies.

SINGH: That's right. And the Israelis have been messaging that, you know, we control the airspace.

So, I think this is a moment to get Iran back to the table. They are incredibly weak, militarily and economically. So it's a bit of let's see if they bluff at this.

TAPPER: And, Kylie, Iran's supreme leader, Khamenei, he spoke today on camera for the first time since the ceasefire began between Israel and Iran. What did he have to say?

ATWOOD: Prerecorded message from an undisclosed location saying what we would've likely expected to hear from the Iranian supreme later, that Iran is not going to surrender to U.S. pressure here.

TAPPER: Right, that they're winning. The Israelis are losing.

ATWOOD: They're winning, the Israelis are losing, and also then going on to say that Trump effectively exaggerated the damage that has been done to Iran's nuclear program, but not providing any details really in terms of what the actual damage looks like there.

TAPPER: Yes. I mean, I don't think there's any question that the program's been severely damaged. It's a question of how much and to what extent.

Thanks one and all for being here. I really appreciate it.

President Trump says he still hopes Congress can pass his massive domestic agenda bill by the 4th of July. And if you're counting, that's only eight days away. Will today's major roadblock derail those hopes?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:15:00]

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, President Trump hosting an event at the White House this afternoon as he pushes the Senate to pass his major domestic agenda bill, the so-called one, big beautiful bill, but Senate Republicans are facing something of a setback today. The Senate parliamentarian found that in order to use the simple majority vote Senate rules that Republicans want to use, need to use, if they want to get this passed, they need to rework a key Medicaid change in the legislation.

But even before this ruling, the changes to Medicaid were controversial among Democrats and even some Republicans because of the major impacts it could have on their states, impacts that CNN's Jeff Zeleny saw firsthand when he went to the great state of Missouri.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COURTNEY LEADER, DAUGHTER RELIES ON MEDICAID: I know that they're saying that they're not planning to cut Medicaid, right? I reached out concerned that if any changes are made, there will be this trickledown effect that will impact families like mine.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The frontlines of the Medicaid debate are right here in Courtney Leader's kitchen.

What is the face of Medicaid, do you think? And it is it different than you think some people may assume?

LEADER: I mean, we are the face of Medicaid.

ZELENY: The Missouri mother of five wrote her Republican Senator Josh Hawley to explain how slashing benefits would be devastating to her nine-year-old daughter, Serena, who lives with brain damage and cerebral palsy.

LEADER: Our private insurance won't cover the formula. It doesn't cover the feeding tube pump. The hit on our budget, it would be over $1,500 a month just for the formula, just for the pump rental. And those are things that we have to have to keep my daughter alive.

Oh, there's my beautiful smile.

ZELENY: We came along for the ride sitting behind Serena's nurse who's funded by Medicaid, as they drove to weekly therapy sessions also paid by Medicaid, which more than one in five Missourians rely on for health coverage.

LEADER: We cannot let people like my daughter lose her benefits. And if anybody tells you that, oh, she's covered, she's protected, I would really encourage you to say how? What provisions have you made to make sure that those who meet eligibility requirements are covered?

ZELENY: We visited Ozarks Food Harvest, which distributes food across one third of Missouri.

What is the demand like for food?

BART BROWN, CEO, OZARKS FOOD HARVEST: Unfortunately, Jeff, right now. The demand for food is quite a bit higher than it was even at the height of the COVID crisis.

ZELENY: Congress is weighing billions in cuts to food assistance programs, like SNAP, once known as food stamps. That will increase demand at already crowded food pantries like this.

How important is this food to you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, it really helps us get through the month and they have a good variety of things.

ZELENY: Your husband got hurt in an accident?

JUNE OWENS, MARSHFIELD, MISSOURI RETIREE: Yes, he fell between 10, 11 feet then on top of his head, but it kind of changed everything. We were in the process of getting all of our ducks in a row, so to speak, for retirement, and then he got hurt really bad and it just upside downed everything. And so food pantries do that have helped us through this situation.

ZELENY: Another hotly contested piece of the spending bill is deep cuts to rural hospitals. Inside a maternity ward in Clinton, Missouri, Dr. Jennifer Blair worries for her patients.

DR. JENNIFER BLAIR, GOLDEN VALLEY MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE: Missouri has the fourth largest number of maternity care deserts. We actually are surrounded by several maternity care deserts. That's defined as a county that has no, or very limited access to obstetric services for their patients. If we were to lose that access, the birthing center here at Golden Valley, our patients would have to travel more than 60 miles.

CRAIG THOMPSON, CEO, GOLDEN VALLEY MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE: And four out of five babies, they're delivered in our hospital are covered by Medicaid, and that's not unique to us a lot.

ZELENY: Craig Thompson is CEO of Golden Valley Memorial. He said many rural hospitals in Missouri and across the country are at high risk for closure.

Is your hope for what happens over the next couple weeks in Washington in this debate?

THOMPSON: Well, I think the thing that, again, would be beneficial is for better understanding of who Medicaid serves and what the real Medicaid face looks like. Because, again, I think that's been lost somewhere along the way.

ZELENY: Courtney Leader shares that hope too.

LEADER: She is good girl. Oh my goodness.

I did not have my daughter enrolled on Medicaid so that we can have fancy things.

[18:20:00]

I have my daughter enrolled in Medicaid so that we can keep her alive.

ZELENY: What are you worried about the most?

LEADER: We are working. I'm worried that the red tape is going to affect our Medicaid because of just the oversight burdens, and that as a result, I'm going to lose my daughter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY (on camera): So, when Courtney Leader says she is afraid she will lose her daughter, Jake, what she's talking about is to a home or a facility of some kind. Because of the Medicaid that assistance she has, she's able to have her daughter at home.

And she's speaking for so many others. One in five Missourians are relying on Medicaid coverage. Missouri is very interesting, of course, deep red Trump country, but they also, four years ago, voted to expand Medicaid. So, that's why it is so interesting. But talking to people across Missouri, the rural hospitals is a huge piece of this, and that's what Senator Josh Hawley is fighting for. It's one of the things that's actually holding up this bill.

So, the president this afternoon at the White House, he sort of, decried the grandstanders. It's not necessarily that. It's the policy differences here. So, we will see how this plays out. But there is no doubt this is a huge gamble, at least particularly in Trump country.

TAPPER: Well, yes. There are a lot of Republicans out there who think this bill, if it continues as it is, is going to hurt Trump voters in places like Missouri.

Jeff Zeleny, excellent report, thank you.

The top Democrats in both the House and the Senate will not say whether they will endorse Zohran Mamdani in the race for New York City mayor. And this comes as the city mayor, Eric Adams, officially is announcing his reelection bid as an independent. All this drama is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:25:00]

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, Democratic Congressional Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are stopping short, at least as of now, of officially endorsing the presumptive Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, so far, as of now. Schumer did call the campaign impressive. Jefferies did say it was strong. But both declined to answer CNN when we asked explicitly about official support or endorsements.

Former US Ambassador to Japan and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel joins me now.

So, already establishment party members seem to be hesitant to officially endorse Mamdani, even though New York voters, New York Democratic voters picked him. Why do you think that is? And would you endorse him? And what do you think Mamdani's success on Tuesday means for the direction of the Democratic Party?

RAHM EMANUEL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Yes. So, let me start backwards. And one is you got to respect the voters in the same way. You got to respect the New Jersey primary voters and the Virginia primary voters who have picked nominees for gubernatorial races in 2025.

I happen to think on a national level, Jake, as you look to the both presidential battleground districts across the country, New Jersey and Virginia are going to be more informative of how to win. I don't think what happens in the Upper West Side is informative, like the way the Upper Peninsula is informative.

Second is I think he did run a strong race, and I think that's what's important is to take away the issue that, as you've heard me repeatedly say, the American dream unaffordable, it's inaccessible, and that has to be unacceptable. He focused on that. That's the lesson to learn from this.

I can sit here and I can tell you Andrew Cuomo ran a flawed race. He was a flawed guy. He shouldn't have been in the race, et cetera, et cetera. But I respect not only the voter's choice, but also that's important. He showed the importance of focusing on the idea. It used to when you and I were growing up, if you worked hard, you could get ahead. Today, if you work hard, you just run in place, you're on a treadmill going nowhere fast. And that's a fundamental problem to people. And a lot of people feel the fix is in.

Now, I do think it's informative, the Bronx, which is heavily African- American and heavily Hispanic, voted for Cuomo. Brooklyn, on the other hand, higher income more white, more college educated, voted for the socialist can. So, I think that is informative.

But in the end of the day, when you look to the presidential, you look to the battleground districts, what's going to be informative and important for the Democrats are the two conservative to moderate candidates that have been our nominee. That to me is the telling sign.

And it's not like, so goes New York City is how goes the country. It's the inverse and that's a hard lesson for New York City. How goes the country is informative to New York City.

TAPPER: I want to turn to --

EMANUEL: And that they have to learn.

TAPPER: I want to turn to Iran. Senators were briefed today about the extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear program after Trump ordered those U.S. strikes over the weekend. Senate Democrats are questioning the president's assertion that the Iran nuclear program has been totally obliterated. What do you think and what do you make of the politics here?

EMANUEL: Yes. So, Jake, let me just walk back. There's some significant wins here, significant losers here, and some unanswered questions. On the losers, the one big loser in my view is not only -- is not just Iran, and I'll get through that, but is Russia. Russia, if you take a step back, all their weapons at S-300 did not protect Iran. They've been proven to be a feckless ally. They didn't come to their defense. They've been kicked out of Syria. They're now been shown to be weak, not only in Iran. They have a war going on. Three 3.5 years on a country a tenth of the size, they can't win. Their intelligence was wrong about Syria. Their intelligence was wrong about Wagner. Their intelligence was wrong about Ukraine. They've become dependent on China and they've lost Europe. They have had the worst record here strategically, militarily.

[18:30:00]

And if the president would press the point, you could actually not only end the war, you could actually set back Putin's desire.

Second, this is not the Persian Empire recreate. Everything that's been done over 40 years by the Ayatollah has been blown up. The nuclear program costing a hundred billion dollars lost, lost in Hezbollah, lost in Hamas, hundreds of billions of dollars obliterated. They have a brain drain in Iran. They have a weakening economy, major loss. I don't agree with the president of the United States, do not, on many, many issues, but you have to admire that when the United States says all options are on the table, he just proved all options on the table. And China and Russia and even North Korea have to step back because that has a level of deterrence so the blast radius of this goes much farther.

Now, the question to the president is, are you going to use the military window diplomatically and politically to strategically make this win significant and lasting? Saying you're not going to have an Iran nuclear agreement is crazy and it's wrong. You are not -- are you going to press the point in Gaza and end the war? Are you going to press the point in Ukraine now that you have leverage or are you going to fitter it away because of your relationship with Putin?

And lastly, I don't ever remember, Jake, a situation where the president of the United States took military to action on a foreign country's intelligence, not American intelligence. They in the Situation Room should have said, why are our intel over here? Israel's intel over here? What did they know that we don't know? What do we know what they don't know? Not only after the fact, but before.

And I think there's a real question here. You know, America's intelligence was degraded in 2003 in the Iraq war when it was manipulated. It resurrected itself in Ukraine showing we knew a lot and post-Ukraine. We just took military action as a country, and I just gave you my view of the consequence of that, and we did it based not on our own intelligence in other countries.

TAPPER: Yes.

EMANUEL: And so to me, beyond the Senate briefing, that is a real step for the United and we put -- hasn't proven to work, but it could have put our troops at risk. There's a real, in my view, unanswered question here that needs to be really dug into.

TAPPER: Yes, fascinating stuff.

Former Ambassador and Mayor and Congressman Rahm Emanuel, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Next, I'm sitting down with one of the few Republicans who has been willing to criticize President Trump. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska's here to talk about what she really thinks of the president, how their working relationship has changed since his first term. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:35:00]

TAPPER: And we're back with more in our Politics Lead. The Republican Party of Trump's second term is defined in many ways by loyalty to President Trump. But my next guest, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has seldom been one to hold back her criticism through her decades in Washington, as she details in a brand new book out this week.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): Yes, it's a big deal, long time coming.

TAPPER: It is a big deal. So, there's a lot in this book. It starts off, you're visiting a small native village new talk Newtok, in Alaska, and it's quite a culture shock from Washington, D.C.

I do want to start with the complicated relationship you have with the president and that you've had with him over the last decade. You highlight a story from his first term when he tried to convince you to vote to repeal Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act in exchange, he's a businessman, he does deals, in exchange for a plan for an Alaskan oil exploration initiative. And you write, quote, by ignoring his threats, I may have improved my hand. Trump responds to strength. He bluffs and bullies for what he wants, but if he doesn't get it, he moves on and bluffs and bullies someone else.

You are in a different position now than you were ten years ago. How has your relationship changed with him, if at all?

MURKOWSI: You know. President Trump in Trump 1 had -- he and I had a relationship that was, I think, based on, I've got a set of priorities for Alaska, he has a set of priorities for the country, and where we were able to come together and sync them up, I think we did some good things. I think he recognizes that. I certainly recognize that.

Having said that, I am not one that is, is shy to hold back if I feel that statements have been made that should not have been made, a direction that has been taken. I will weigh in and speak up. And so he was not supportive of my reelect in 2022. He recruited a candidate against me. He came to the state. But at the end I won my election just as he won his election.

And so we're kind of back to where we were at the beginning of his first term where I've reminded him, sir, I've won. I'm going to continue to try to do good things for the state of Alaska. You have won, you are returned to be president. You want to do good things for the country. We can work. I appreciate the focus that he has given to Alaska's resource opportunities.

TAPPER: Yes.

MURKOWSKI: And I want to work with him on that, but I'm also not going to hesitate to speak up when I feel that we in Congress need to be doing more to be true, to be faithful to our responsibilities.

TAPPER: Well, and to be a check on the executive branch.

MURKOWSKI: To be a check, to basically fulfill that role that we have in these three separate but equal. Let's behave like that equal branch of Congress.

TAPPER: But so few of you do.

MURKOWSKI: Not one that just rubber stamps what our president does.

TAPPER: So, you take us through in the book two of your toughest Senate votes.

[18:40:00]

One of them was against the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the other one against the conviction in the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Is there anything you wish you had done differently in either of those votes?

MURKOWSKI: I don't spend a lot of time thinking about political regrets. Should I have done something different? Should I have taken a different vote? We don't get a redo. What I have to figure out is, all right, that happened. Now, do we learn from this? Do we need to do something different next time?

TAPPER: Did you learn anything from either of those votes?

MURKOWSKI: Yes. I think with the -- particularly with the impeachment vote when we were talking about -- when we are in the midst of determining whether or not witnesses should be called. There was a point where this was right after John Bolton had basically confirmed what was outlined in his book, which was yet to be released.

There was a moment there that if I had said, you know what, we should call witnesses, it may have promoted others to move forward at the same time, and that possibly could have made a difference. But it was a moment in time I didn't take it. And I think we saw the outcome of that where there were no witnesses that moved forward.

Now, in retrospect, in fairness, I don't think that the outcome would have been different given the way that the articles had come down from the House, given the challenge that you have in actually finding sufficient votes to impeach a president, I don't believe that President Trump would have been -- the votes would've been there to impeach him on that first impeachment. And so it would it have made a difference in the outcome. I don't believe it would have made a difference at all.

But I'm a process person. I am a process person, and I think that that helps as I am -- as I navigate through some challenging and hard issues. And I want to have a fidelity to my oath. I want to have a fidelity to rule of law, and I want to have a fidelity to just an honest and a true process. And I think that was one where I think our process could have been better.

TAPPER: The book is Far From Home, an Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C. You have a play on words there, the extreme climate of Washington D.C. You're talking about the partisan climate.

MURKOWSKI: Yes.

TAPPER: But climate change is a very real phenomenon and there are people in your home state who are -- their livelihoods are disappearing because of climate change. Do you think that more of your colleagues who are either skeptical of the fact that humans are contributing to climate change or just reluctant to do anything about it would change their view if they went with you to one of these villages?

MURKOWSKI: I invite people up. I say climate change is not some theoretical argument because we are seeing it. In the very first chapter in my book, introduced the readers to this small village, Newtok. The reason I am there is because we are in the process of moving this community of 350 people nine miles upriver because their village is crumbling into the water.

TAPPER: Right.

MURKOWSKI: Because the permafrost is melting around them and it is literally disintegrating. And so when you think about a climate refugee, they are real. They are in Alaska. It's not just the community of Newtok. There are multiple villages that live in real threat of the next fall storm and how much it may eat away the land in front of their village, in front of their airstrip, in front of their school.

TAPPER: The book is Far From Home, an Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C. Senator Lisa Murkowski, thank you so much for being here.

MURKOWSKI: Good to be with you. Thanks.

TAPPER: Our small business series today takes us to Maryland next. We're going to go to a company that makes products specially designed for members of the military and first responders. How have Trump's tariffs affected their bottom line?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:48:33] JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Time for our daily "Business Leaders" series, where we hear from small business owners coast to coast about President Trump's tariffs. Some are satisfied, excited, many tell us that they're struggling.

The CoverBag is a small business unique to Annapolis, Maryland, home to the United States Naval Academy. Their niche product is specially designed to protect military and first responder dress hats.

Creator and founder Murph McCarthy joins us now.

Murph, you are a former marine or a retired marine. You developed this idea yourself. Can you tell us about how you manufacture your cover Bags and how the tariffs are impacting your business.

MURPH MCCARTHY, FOUNDER, THE COVERBAG: Yes, sir. Jake, thanks for having me and thanks for doing this small business segment. It's great that we have a pretty big voice in this.

So, yeah, I had a dress cover and I wore it like once a week at most, and it was pretty easy to take care of. And then I became a midshipman, and I had to wear a white cover every single day. And I thought, you know, we need a bag for this. So, over the course of the next couple of years, I kind of like, sketched it and put it back in my bag.

But then I got one put together and I actually started manufacturing cover bags in the U.S. I was at Newark, New Jersey. It was a HUBZone. It was a union run shop, and they did a great job of helping me kind of develop the product.

[18:50:00]

But over time, the cost just kept going up and I wasn't really a priority as far as you know, when they were going to manufacture.

And then the prices kept going up. And this was a friend of a friend who wanted to help me, and he even at one point when I was complaining about pricing, sent me like a step-by-step process of what it took to make a cover bag, how many employees involved time moving machines. If you ever have any issues falling to sleep, I can send you the PDF on that.

But anyways, I had to figure out a new solution because this was neat. This was something I came up with. It was like my baby, but it was like an unprofitable hobby at the time.

And then I had met somebody who helped me with manufacturing in China, and I've been doing that for about 13 years. And ever since it wasn't an unprofitable hobby. It's been something that's been helping out support my family.

TAPPER: So, we only have about a minute left. But what's the impact been like of these tariffs on your business?

MCCARTHY: So, without talking percentages or spreadsheets its like getting robbed the day after Christmas. You know, a whole month of sales can get gobbled up if you're going to take the cost of the stuff that you're selling and mark it up so significantly, you know, because all the extra money at the end of the year with a business that is selling merchandise goes back into inventory, that's your one source of income. Everything else is expense.

So, if you take a huge cut out of that, you're really going to cripple small businesses. And by small business I mean two employees. So it's very significant and hard to absorb.

Luckily, my buyer, my manufacturer, have helped out on this recent shipment that showed up, so it -- the next one is the one that were really worried about. We're just hoping this is going to figure itself out soon.

I just can't figure out how the small business owners are the ones that are going to take the strain while we go ahead and try to make a move, to move manufacturing back to the U.S.

That doesn't seem like something that we should be. You know, taking the strain for. But hopefully, this will work itself out.

TAPPER: All right. The product one more time is the cover bag. It's a business based in Annapolis, Maryland. The owner, Murph McCarthy.

Thanks, Murph. Really appreciate your time.

MCCARTHY: You bet. Thanks for having me, Jake. I appreciate it.

TAPPER: All right. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:56:53]

TAPPER: In our health lead, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s new vaccine advisory panel concluded its first meeting today by highlighting debunked vaccine skepticism, skepticism that may now guide health policy in the U.S.

CNN's Meg Tirrell has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this two-day meeting of this newly assembled group of vaccine advisers to the CDC concluded with probably the most controversial topic that was on the entire agenda, and one that had been added as kind of a last-minute addition by this new group of advisers.

And it concerns a preservative in vaccines called thimerosal. This was actually taken out of vaccines about 25 years ago from most vaccines over theoretical concerns that there may be a safety risk because it contains a form of mercury.

But no risk had ever been seen from this preservative, and no one has actually been seen since. However, it became a focal point of people who believe that this vaccine preservative could be linked to neurodevelopmental issues like autism, and decades of research and multiple studies have found no link.

But people like health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have focused on that, and he actually published a book about this vaccine preservative in 2014. And so, this new panel of advisers that he handpicked added this to the agenda. And they took a vote recommending that people in the United States not receive vaccines with the preservative thimerosal in them.

We should note that its still only in very few vaccines, multi-dose vials of flu vaccines, and only about 4 percent of influenza vaccines given last season actually contains this preservative. Still, there was concern around this vote, including from one of the panelists, Dr. Cody Meissner, who's a pediatrician at Tufts and probably the best respected panelist when it comes to vaccine expertise by peers in public health.

And here's what he had to say about it.

DR. CODY MEISSNER, CHIEF OF PEDIATRIC INFECTIOUS DISEASES, TUFTS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: The risk from influenza is so much greater than the non-existent as far as we know, risk from thimerosal. So, I would hate for a person not to receive the influenza vaccine because the only available preparation contains thimerosal. I don't -- I find that very hard to justify.

TIRRELL: He was the only panelist to vote no on this recommendation.

We should also add that groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics worried about the addition of this topic to the agenda, saying that, quote, false information and faulty science about thimerosal are frequently used to mislead parents in an attempt to scare them out of vaccinating their children. The American Academy of Pediatrics has typically participated with this panel in terms of guiding vaccine policy in the United States, but this week they were breaking with that, saying that they were concerned about its scientific integrity.

Meg Tirrell, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: All right. Thanks to Meg Tirrell for that report.

The TV broadcaster once described by none other than Walter Cronkite as the conscience of the country, Bill Moyers, has died at the age of 91.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL MOYERS, ACCLAIMED JOURNALIST: Unless we see the truth and act on it, we are going to run out of oxygen. Truth is, the oxygen in the air of democracy and we're going to run out of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: That was Moyers making an appearance on CNN in 2020. He served as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, then became a journalist. His son says Moyers died after a long illness. His wife, Judy, of 70 years, was by his side. May Bill Moyers memory be a blessing.

"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts now.