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Trump's Pentagon Pick Says Military's Top General Should be Fired; Trump Taps Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy for Government Efficiency Post; Trump Offered RFK Jr. Health and Human Services Secretary Role. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired November 14, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

ROBBIE PARKER, DAUGHTER EMILIE KILLED IN SANDY HOOK SHOOTING: ... and the reason I felt like it was important to share my story was because in order to find that healing and connection for myself and other people was to embrace those uncomfortable places. And the more I shared that, the more people also felt like they could share themselves with me. People that I thought I didn't have anything in common with, we were able to bond and bridge these gaps that otherwise we would have thought were separating us.

And again, that brings healing. And what healing brings is hope. And so a message of hope and healing out of something that I've had to experience from the loss of my daughter and then having to survive Alex Jones and his followers, I think is a powerful message that I want people to understand and embrace.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Robbie Parker, we're so grateful to you for sharing your story with us and Emily's story as well. Thank you so much for joining us.

PARKER: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Stay with CNN. We're back in just a few minutes.

[15:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: President-elect Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense is likely to ignite a clash between his administration and current Pentagon officials. Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host and Army National Guard combat veteran, has long voiced his disdain for how the Defense Department conducts business.

SANCHEZ: He's even called for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General C.Q. Brown, to be fired for supporting what he calls woke policies. Here's some of what he's said in recent interviews.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, FORMER FOX NEWS HOST: The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is our diversity is our strength. HEGSETH: It's one thing to have DEI inside your corporation or inside

your university. It's a whole other thing to have it inside the 101st Airborne.

We only have one military, and if the military goes woke, then it is less equipped to fight the wars it needs to fight.

HEGSETH: I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective. Hasn't made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Joining us now to discuss this, CNN military analyst and retired U.S. Army Major General James Spider Marks. General, thank you so much for being with us. There are current and former senior military commanders who have described this cabinet pick as ridiculous and a, quote, effing nightmare.

What do you make of this decision?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, by resume, Pete Hegseth inarguably is not qualified for the position. We need to thank him for his service to the nation. He's been in combat a couple of times, I think. So good on him for that.

But he has been at a tactical level, which is essential. In other words, at the front lines, in direct action, whether it's on his officer record brief or not. But he has been in those positions.

When you look at the body of his contributions, he's never led a large organization. He's certainly not been in the D.C. apparatus. And certainly the Department of Defense is a monstrous, huge bureaucracy that doesn't necessarily embrace those that walk in and take over. There will be resistance and hesitation. And so the key ingredient there is to understand where he can provide the best influential leadership to include DOD is doing what needs to be done to meet the president's obligations and the National Security Council's obligations to maintain our security globally.

On the surface, you look at that and you go, I don't know that he's got the skills to do that. But let's assume for a second he's a smart guy. He's enthusiastic. He wants to do the right thing. But you have to be a little bit skeptical and dig pretty deep to find those qualifications that would give you confidence that he's going to be the right guy to step up.

KEILAR: What do you think he would mean for the culture in the military? And I'm talking specifically -- I mean, I don't expect that we think he's unilaterally going to be able to stop women from being in combat. They've been for a long time.

And in a lot of these highly specialized roles, they're up against the guys doing the same tests to get in them. But the woman thing, what does that do there? And then also the fact that he's pardoned or he's lobbied for the pardoning of convicted or accused war criminals. What does that do to the culture inside the military?

MARKS: Well, it fractures it big time. Let's go to the second part of your question. I mean, when you're when you're trying to pardon those that have been found by their colleagues, other soldiers, other service members to be guilty of a particular crime based on UCMJ, Uniform Code of Military Justice, it invalidates that process.

That's a significant problem where the military has forever taken care of its own problems and where they cannot, they acknowledge and they take those outside. So that is a crushing blow to those in the service that look at that as a method to correct problems to the first point.

My first question would be, show me the stats. Show me the data that says women are not acquitting themselves appropriately. And as you've indicated, Brianna, look, the state, you don't lower the standards in order for a woman to be a ranger. She goes to ranger school. She gets the crap beat out of her like everybody else. She emerges and she's a ranger. She's she has the opportunity like anybody else to meet the standard.

So if you want to take the heat out of this and the passion out of this, just say, OK, Mr. Hegseth, please lay out the statistics that back up your position that women should be removed from these various positions. And it's just not as an infantryman or ranger. I mean, we've got them in subs. We've got them on surface warfare vehicles. They're running propulsion units on carrier strike groups. They're across the board.

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And so lay that out and say, look, we're at risk because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters, the only thing that matters is readiness. If a unit's not ready, everybody that's paying for this, every American who's paying for our service should be outraged if our readiness is at risk. So lay it out. In some cases, we do have some readiness challenges. Lay those out. Address those. But it's all about the ability to fight tonight. And if we're at risk of fighting tonight, please explain that to us.

KEILAR: Big readiness issue if you turn a lot of women away from the military, I'll say that, though.

General Marks, thank you so much.

MARKS: Huge.

KEILAR: Yes. Thank you so much for being with us.

MARKS: You bet.

KEILAR: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:45:00] KEILAR: As President-elect Trump prepares to take office, he's looking to a man who helped get him there to carry out some of his most aggressive and ambitious plans. Elon Musk will co-lead what's being called the Department of Government Efficiency, along with fellow Trump supporter Vivek Ramaswamy. For his part, Musk has suggested some $2 trillion in spending could be cut from the federal budget.

CNN's Renee Marsh has been looking into this. All right, so, Renee, what would this work -- how could this work, I should say? And what agencies and programs might be on the chopping block?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, I'll start off by saying the full details, scarce at this point for this so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But the two men that President-elect Trump has tasked with running it have been pretty vocal and open about what they would like to see. So, here's some of what could be on the chopping block in this effort to cut some $2 trillion in government spending.

So, the Department of Education, Trump and Republicans have criticized the agency for, as they say, indoctrinating children with left-wing propaganda. Ramaswamy, on the campaign trail when he was a Republican presidential candidate in 2024, said that he would get rid of 75 percent of the federal workforce. Here's some context.

There's some 2.3 million federal workers. So, that would mean about 1.7 million workers slashed. More context for you, nearly more than half of that are federal workers who work at agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs.

Also on the list, eliminating the FBI and reassigning those agents to other agencies and getting rid of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and shifting its duties to other departments.

Again, that's some of what they have publicly said that they would like to see. Again, their quest is to trim some $2 trillion in government spending, but we spoke to a lot of budget experts and we said, you know, how possible is this? And across the political spectrum, they said impossible. Because when you look at, you know, what the federal government mostly spends its money on, one expert said this would require cutting one third from every program.

And when you look at what the federal government spends on, it's mostly spending to Americans for programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. So, you know, many of these experts are saying, you can't do this without taking away things like healthcare from some Americans.

KEILAR: So there's really no way to do this without a lot of hurt, especially from some groups that Donald Trump really would not want to target, like senior citizens, it sounds like.

MARSH: Exactly, I mean, the numbers, as they say, the young kids say, the math is just not mathing. And so they are saying that this is, you know, impossible to do when you're talking about $2 trillion. It's more like $150 to $200 billion would be more of a realistic number. KEILAR: All right, Rene Marsh, thank you so much for that.

And we do have some breaking news into CNN. President-elect Donald Trump has offered Robert F. Kennedy the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services.

SANCHEZ: Let's go live to CNN's Kristen Holmes, who's in West Palm Beach for us near Mar-a-Lago. Kristen, clearly a controversial set of picks for Donald Trump in recent days. And now, RFK Jr. tapped to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite his track record of peddling conspiracy theories.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Boris and Bianna. And I am told from a source close to the situation that RFK Jr. is expected to accept this position as we see this cabinet unfolding.

Now, a couple of things to note here about RFK. One is that there had been a lot of talk about what exactly he would do in the administration. He had indicated that he wanted a cabinet position, but we heard the head of the transition, Howard Lutnick, to our own Kaitlan Collins, essentially downplaying the idea that he would be offered anything within the actual administration, likely because of the fact that there was a big belief within Trump's transition and Trump's orbit that RFK Jr. could not actually get confirmed. So talking to these sources, they had speculated that he might get more of an oversight role.

Now, obviously, as we can see here, that is not how this played out. Donald Trump offering this very big position at the head of Health and Human Services to RFK Jr. And just a couple of things to note here.

One, RFK Jr. is incredibly controversial for a number of things that he has said about health, particularly the fact that he's questioned vaccines. He has said that vaccines lead to autism, something that there are no studies that back up. But the other part of this is the fact that he has been really pushing this Make America Healthy Again agenda as part of really what helped Donald Trump get elected to the White House.

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I cannot tell you the number of people who liked the fact that RFK was involved in the campaign, that they liked the messaging that RFK put out there, despite the fact that it is so controversial. And despite the fact that there have been so many things that RFK has said about health that are just simply not proven by any studies that we have. So of course the question now is going to be whether or not RFK can actually get confirmed.

One of the things to keep in mind here as we talk about this, RFK is not a Republican. He has been a Democrat. He has been an independent. He does not have the same ties to the Republican Party that someone like even Matt Gaetz has. So whether or not these controversial opinions, these just downright not accurate opinions that he has when it comes to health are going to be something that make it through Congress, that's going to be a big question here.

It is surprising to a number of people, I'm starting to get texts here, from individuals who say that they had been speculating, they had heard rumors that RFK was kind of going to be some sort of health czar, but instead he has been getting a very specific cabinet position and one that requires him to be confirmed by Congress.

KEILAR: All right, Kristen, stay with us. I want to bring in CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner. What do you think of this news? RFK Jr., the pick for Health and Human Services Secretary.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, it seems to be that he fits with a pattern that we've seen this week, which is the hiring of people that are not just unqualified for a particular cabinet post, but unfit. And as we've already, you know, heard in this segment, Mr. Kennedy has already shown over the last 10 years, his penchant for not just promoting unproven ideas, but promoting disproven ideas. He has loudly promoted conspiracy theories, such as the COVID virus being bioengineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.

He's promoted the completely disproven concept that vaccines are connected to autism. He's been a loud, not just skeptic, but denier of the safety and efficacy of all vaccines. Most recently, mRNA vaccines, which have been shown to probably have prevented one to two million deaths as a consequence of COVID in the United States.

So basically we're putting not just a vaccine denier, but a science skeptic in charge of all of the nation's premier health agencies, FDA, NIH, CMS, the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. It's literally putting the fox in charge of the hen house.

SANCHEZ: So Dr. Reiner, RFK Jr. has put forward this message, this idea that he wants to gear the federal government to combat childhood illnesses, to combat what he calls chronic illnesses. He's attributed some of that to all sorts of vague causes related to food and oils. I wonder what kind of impact you think having him as the secretary of HHS could have on just everyday American life.

REINER: You know, I think that a lot of good can come of somebody promoting a more healthy diet in this country. We've certainly seen an epidemic of obesity. And I think that approach is welcome.

But his well-documented, very, very loud promotion of theories that cause a great deal of doubt in people's mind about the efficacy of vaccines is incredibly dangerous. If you want to see an example of what happens when you hire a vaccine skeptic into a post like that, just look at Florida. When Ron DeSantis hired Dr. Joseph Ladapo in 2021, someone who was associated with a group called America's Frontline Doctors, a group devoted to vaccine skepticism. When they brought him to Florida in 2021, the rates of vaccinations for kindergartners plummeted over the last three years.

So we see what the impact can be on people who are, you know, maybe they're uneducated, maybe they've read things online that concern them. And those kinds of doubts are amplified when it comes to someone with such a large soapbox and a very famous last name. [15:55:04]

KEILAR: All right, Dr. Reiner, if you could -- what are we hearing in our ear? Oh.

SANCHEZ: Well, let's hold off on that for now.

KEILAR: Yes, let's hold off on that. I want to bring in Jeff Zeleny, who's here with us to talk about some of the politics of this, another bombshell here.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It is. And this is going to really test the Senate once again. We thought the Matt Gaetz thing would be the most unusual or out of the norm. This certainly is added to the list.

But look, I mean, when you think of the Senate committees that will be faced with the confirmation process here, these are asking some senators really to make a choice here. So providing they all go through the normal process, should this nomination actually happen, it will be a giant test for the new Senate Republican Majority Leader, John Thune here.

But I mean, we certainly will be getting reaction from various senators. But a lot of his ideas simply are out of the mainstream.

SANCHEZ: To say the least.

ZELENY: And dangerous, others would say, yes.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Jeff Zeleny, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, thank you both so much.

Thank you for joining us this afternoon as we got breaking news that Trump has offered RFK Jr. a role as the secretary of HHS. We're going to turn it over to "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper, which starts after a quick break.

END