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Interview with Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA): Comey Vows to Fight Back Against Federal Indictment; Doctors, Caregivers Warn that Cutbacks Threaten Veterans' Care; Humberto Grows to Category 1 Hurricane as New System Brews; Scientific Look Into Woman Who Live to be 117 Years Old. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 26, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: President Trump is stepping up his attacks on James Comey following the DOJ's historic indictment of the former FBI chief. The president calls Comey a dirty cop and worse than a Democrat. But Trump also insists the indictment is not about revenge, but justice.

We're joined now by Democratic Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania. She was an impeachment manager in Trump's second impeachment trial. Congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us.

You have heard Trump say this. He says there will be others. Who do you think may be next? And do you worry you could be one of the people considering you're a former impeachment manager?

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA), FORMER TRUMP IMPEACHMENT MANAGER: Good to be with you, Brianna. Not good to have the subjects that we have to talk about.

What happened here with the indictment by DOJ of Mr. Comey has crossed an extraordinary red line of vindictiveness, of vengeance, of using the Department of Justice for the president's own political revenge. It's staggering. And it's being done so openly and in the public.

Do I worry about myself? I actually asked Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, about his hit list, his enemies list that he shared with the president, I think built for the president, and said, when do I expect you at my door? I don't worry for myself. I'm sorry for Mr. Comey.

But take a look at his statement. It is a statement of American strength. Bring the trial on. He will be proven innocent. And I have to tell you, take a look. I hope the public will take a look at this indictment.

It is the thinnest of indictments, vague, nonspecific. You would have thought they had something big here, but they didn't. And you saw literally in the president's own words, he wanted Eric, I'm forgetting his name now, his self-appointed head of Eastern District of Virginia, he wanted him to bring the charges forward.

And when he said, I've done the investigation, there are not sufficient evidentiary points to bring charges forward, Mr. Trump made sure he was pressured to resign and put in an attorney who was his personal attorney, and that's what's going on with DOJ. It's his personal set of attorneys on a revenge tour. This is a very, very dangerous line for America.

And we don't have to stay here. I think back when I was a little girl of the days of Nixon, when Republicans went to Nixon and said, you've gone too far. Where are my Republican counterparts in the House and the Senate to say, Mr. President, you're going too far?

KEILAR: If a jury does find Comey guilty of this, they'd be finding him guilty of lying about authorizing an alleged leak about the investigation into what that two-person indictment, as you point out, outlines, person one, who very well could be Hillary Clinton.

[15:35:00]

If that's a jury deciding that, will you accept that verdict if Comey is convicted of lying about leaking, not about, you know, potentially Donald Trump, but about Hillary Clinton?

M. DEAN I still have faith in our system, even as I see the president and those around him trying to tear down our system of rule of law.

So that's a long way down the road. This thing was filed within minutes of a statute of limitation about to run, and a president just so upset and filled with revenge. I will accept the rule of law and a jury verdict, and I pray to God that we don't get to the point where we can no longer trust a jury of our peers.

We are on a very dangerous path with this president.

KEILAR: I do want to ask you about this looming government shutdown because we're just a few days away now, and Trump says, quote, if it has to shut down, it'll have to shut down, but they're the ones that are shutting down, meaning your party, Democrats. Do you -- would you support a shutdown?

M. DEAN Well, of course, what the president is saying doesn't reflect logic. They have the trifecta. They have the Republicans, this is, the majority party.

Republicans have the White House, the Senate, and the House. The speaker of the House strangely dismissed all of us last week. We were supposed to be in session this coming week.

I want you to know and I want your viewers to know Democrats are going back to Washington because we know the end is September 30th. The president apparently doesn't care about that. He's out golfing today, and he doesn't care and is failing to meet with leadership to try to come to something so there isn't a shutdown.

So this is not on the Democrats as shutting it down. You know what was really revealing, Brianna, was what the administration said just yesterday, which is when we go into a shutdown, we're going to fire people. This -- they nakedly exposed what they really want to do, fire more

federal employees after they have DOGEd tens of thousands of federal employees. This is on the Republicans. The Republicans have skipped -- House Republicans have skipped town. House Democrats will be in Washington, D.C., and the Senate Republicans and Democrats are ready to do our job. We've got three of us ready to do our job.

Republicans are on vacation.

KEILAR: Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, thank you for being with us.

M. DEAN Thank you.

KEILAR: Jessica.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: All right, let's take a look at growing concerns about the care of the nation's veterans.

Hundreds of current and former VA doctors and nurses and other caregivers have now signed a letter warning about the negative impacts of recent staffing cuts and other policy changes at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The letter was sent to the VA Secretary Doug Collins, the agency's inspector general, and congressional leaders. Now CNN has obtained a copy of it.

Let's bring in CNN's Brian Todd, who has details, who's read this letter. What does it say? What are they worried about?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jessica, this is an extraordinary letter signed by about 350 current and former VA doctors, nurses, psychologists, occupational therapists, and researchers. They are warning VA Secretary Doug Collins and the agency's inspector general that all the staffing cuts and all the new policy changes that they've undertaken are going to take a serious toll on veterans.

Now, many of these doctors, nurses, and others, they signed this letter by name, risking retaliation from the VA, but many others signed it anonymously. Here is a quote from the letter.

Quote, We write to raise concerns about proposed policies which, in addition to ones already enacted, will undermine VA's health care system, overwhelm VA's budget, and negatively impact the lives of all veterans, end quote.

Now the doctors are also concerned about the VA's growing and fast- paced moves to outsource veterans' medical care to the private sector.

That process is known as, quote, community care. Now here is another quote from the letter.

If this trend continues, VHA facilities may be forced to close, and veterans may be forced into costlier, often overburdened community health care systems, ill-equipped to meet their specialized needs.

Jessica, they are really kind of laying it on the line to the VA and many risking retaliation. DEAN: What did the VA say?

TODD: Well, VA Secretary Collins and his allies and some officials at the VA have always maintained that these moves that they're doing are designed to help veterans, not to harm them.

They're designed to cut the bureaucracy and make the agency more efficient. Here is the VA's response to the letter that CNN obtained after the letter was sent.

Quote, VA is serving veterans much better under the Trump administration than it was under the Biden administration, and the numbers prove it.

Now on those moves to send veterans to the private sector for care, the VA also responding strongly to the criticism of that. Here's a quote from the VA's response.

VA has made it easier and faster for VA-enrolled veterans to access care from non-VA providers at the department's expense.

It is true, Jessica, that the VA does pay for that when they send veterans to the private sector, but it's a very controversial policy. The VA says it gives a lot of veterans more flexibility.

[15:40:00]

They can get care nearer to where they live. They can get care that's not offered at the VA. The critics of this say that the veterans have a tough time navigating the private health care system on their own. They are used to the VA being kind of a one-stop shop for everything they need.

A lot of these veterans are elderly. They have a tough time, you know, navigating their private health care system. That's kind of the direction it's going right now.

DEAN: Very interesting. All right, Brian Todd, really important stuff. Thank you so much.

Still ahead here, there is a new threat brewing in the Atlantic. It's inching closer to the U.S. We have the latest forecast for you.

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[15:45:00]

KEILAR: So much for a quiet hurricane season. Humberto is now a Category 1 storm and is rapidly getting stronger. At the same time, there's a new tropical system that's brewing in the Atlantic and it's headed toward the U.S.

CNN's Allison Chinchar is watching all of this for us. What are you keeping your eye on here?

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right, so you take a look at the map behind me and there's one very clear, obvious, very organized system, and that is Humberto. But then this one, very disorganized. Oddly though, this is the one that we are keeping a much closer eye on because this is the one that is more likely to have a much bigger impact on the U.S.

Here's why. So you've got two kind of steering mechanisms, if you will. This high-pressure system here focused over Bermuda and this very deep trough and the associated cold front with it over much of the U.S. right now. Here's the thing.

As these two storms continue to make their trek to the north and west, they're going to end up both going through this very narrow funnel. That's where they'll end up going to be steered over the next few days. The problem is when they get very close together like that, you can end up having what's called a Fujiwara effect.

Now, typically speaking, if the storms are of equal size and strength, they don't really do all that much. They just kind of spin around a common center and then eventually just go their own way. But if one of the storms is larger or stronger, it can end up influencing the weaker, smaller system.

Maybe it could perhaps pull it off course. It could veer it somewhere else. It can have an impact, and that's one of the potential scenarios we have with these two systems.

So let's take a look because the models do vary. So this is the American model, and it's not really leaning into that Fujiwara very much. You can see the two different systems right through here, and essentially over the next few days, it just kind of has them going their own separate ways.

One dives into the U.S., the other heads out towards Bermuda, and that's about it. The European model, however, is a little bit different. So here is Umberto, and this is what will become future Imelda.

Notice it starts to slide up the coast, and it almost looks like it's just about to make landfall. But Umberto, because it is a much stronger and much larger storm, is able to kind of pull it back a little bit eastward just before it makes landfall over the coast, and it essentially just kind of sits there and hugs the coastline for several days. Now, this is not the scenario we want to have, because then what it does in turn is it dumps a tremendous amount of rain over several days right there along the coast.

So you could be looking at some of these areas that pick up 10, even 15 inches of rain because that system never really makes true landfall. It just kind of sits there on the coastline. The models, again, aren't really sure what to do with the secondary storm.

Most are in pretty good alignment with Umberto. It's future Imelda that you can see. We've got several lines that take it inland and several that get it up to right about here and then make a sharp turn to the right. So we really just don't know what to make of this storm yet, and a lot of that is because we don't know where the center of the storm is. It hasn't fully formed just yet and knowing where the center of the storm is really kind of gives us a good starting point. So really, we won't really have much a better handle on these models until we get to about the next 12 to 24 hours from now when that secondary storm can kind of get its act together and we can see where it initializes and sets up.

KEILAR: Yes, what a difference between those two sets of lines there. Allison, thank you so much for taking us through that -- Jessica.

DEAN: All right, let's take a look at some other headlines we're watching this hour. New surveillance video shows the moment a van carrying immigration detainees came under attack in Dallas earlier this week. Officers can be seen ducking for cover as the shots rang out.

An interior camera showing shackled detainees stumbling and falling while running from that gunfire. At one point, federal agents are seen crouching behind the van while trying to get people to safety. One detainee was killed. Two others were wounded.

Also, Assata Shakur, the first woman to be added to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list, has died in Cuba. Officials there say the cause was, quote, health ailments and her advanced age. She was 78 years old. She was serving a life sentence for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, but she escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba where she was given political asylum. Shakur was also the aunt and godmother of slain rapper Tupac.

Amazon will pay an historic $2.5 billion settlement for alleged deceptive business practices. The Federal Trade Commission is saying Amazon tricked its customers into signing up for a prime account and then made it tough to cancel. This is the second highest restitution award obtained by the FTC.

Affected customers could get up to $51 and Amazon will have to come up with easier ways to cancel subscriptions.

Still ahead, the key to a long life. Scientists are studying the DNA of a woman, this woman, who lived to be 117. What her genes say about longevity.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DEAN: So what is the secret to living a long life? The scientific journal Cell Reports Medicine took a close look at the DNA of a woman who was the world's oldest living person.

Maria Branyas Morera was a U.S. born Spanish woman. She was 117 years and 168 days old when she died in August of 2024.

KEILAR: And just to put that in perspective, when she was born in March of 1907, Teddy Roosevelt was president. The Ford's Model T was a year away from being invented and Oklahoma wasn't even a state yet. Also television wouldn't even be invented for another 20 years.

DEAN: Wow!

KEILAR: So after researching samples of Branya's blood, saliva, and more, then comparing that with 75 other Iberian women, the journal's conclusion is that she had great genes and that she lived a healthy lifestyle. I know, right?

DEAN: In the end, it's kind of, that's what it is. There you go.

[15:55:00]

KEILAR: So let's learn a little bit more about that and what it could mean for all of us with cardiologist, Dr. Eric Topol. He's the author of Super Agers, an Evidence-Based Approach to Longevity and a professor and executive vice president of Scripps Research.

All right, Dr. Topol, you probably knew this then, right? Winning the genetic lottery, there is some luck to it, but also this healthy lifestyle is a choice. So talk to us about what the study means to the average person.

DR. ERIC TOPOL, CARDIOLOGIST: Yes, there's a couple of really interesting facets as you alluded to, lifestyle. Maria was a walker, an hour every day. She followed a great Mediterranean anti- inflammatory diet.

She didn't drink, didn't smoke, and she had three yogurts a day. I'm not sure how much that contributed.

On the other hand, she's the most characterized, longest living person in history, deeply, as you touched on. And it wasn't just the genes. They played a minor role, it appears, in her remarkable longevity and health span. Her immune system was incredibly intact, the integrity that of a much younger person and the low, low level of inflammation in her body and her gut microbiome.

These are features that are really quite remarkable in a woman of her age.

DEAN: Yes, it is really fascinating to just kind of think about, like, you know, for her to submit to all of this really helps so much of us learn. So people are living longer now, and more and more people are reaching triple digits. Over the years, we've heard from others on what their secret was.

This is a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the secret of 107, I never got married. I think that's the secret. My sister says, I wish I never got married, she says.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're drinking Dr. Pepper right now. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's exactly right. That stuff is good. It's

got sugar in it, and two doctors have told me that if I drink it, I will die. But they died first.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been drinking coffee for 106 years. Black coffee for 106 years. Still going.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: All right, so there are some words of wisdom. You have done a lot of research. You've written the book on this.

What evidence do you know? What do you know to be true when it comes to a long, healthy life?

TOPOL: Well, all these super centenarians and people who have had remarkable healthy aging, they have a theory, you know, it could be eating Hostess Twinkies or like you had never getting married. But the real science takes us to the immune system because as we age, we're much more prone to our immune system losing its protection and getting dysregulated, which sets up these age-related diseases like cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and cardiovascular.

And the other thing is inflammation. And that goes along with the immune system that as we get older, our body is prone to inflammation both throughout the body and also in our brain. So what appears to be so helpful in this particular case report, which is so extreme, 117- year-old, no one has studied like this, to see all the other studies back it up that having low inflammation and an intact immune system is a way to avoid these age-related major diseases.

KEILAR: OK, so let's say you've been doing it not right for, I don't know, decades, maybe four and a half. No, I'm just kidding. OK, let's say you've been doing it not as well as you could have, right?

Or you've been doing it poorly as a lot of people have been. Can you turn it around? Can you turn that around to make sure that your immune system is going to protect you?

TOPOL: Absolutely. You know, I reviewed in Super Agers the many studies that showed if you turn it around at age 50, you get 10 more years of healthy aging --

DEAN: There we go.

TOPOL: -- without these diseases. So it's never too late. And if you do it earlier, you'd expect even more than 10 years. So yes, absolutely.

DEAN: OK, and so that's great. So turning it around just before we go quickly is what would you say?

TOPOL: Well, the things that our 117-year-old woman did, which is a healthy diet, a lot of physical activity, avoiding smoking for sure, keeping alcohol intake quite low, and having a purpose, you know, being a person that is out in nature, social engagements, all those things are really important for healthy aging.

KEILAR: That is so helpful. Dr. Eric Topol, thank you so much.

[16:00:00]

We have a lot to think about this weekend as we make healthy choices and either stay on the right track or completely turn it around. Thank you for being with us.

DEAN: Good to see you. We're going to turn it around.

KEILAR: What are you -- three yogurts a day?

DEAN: I don't know if I can do three yogurts, but maybe we'll start with -- I eat yogurt sometimes. Maybe I'll just make it daily. That'll be -- that can be --

KEILAR: A daily yogurt and a walk.

DEAN: Yes.

KEILAR: And a walk.

DEAN: And a walk, walk, yes.

KEILAR: We can do this. We're going to be younger next time you see us. We are.

In the meantime, "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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