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Trump Picks RFK Jr. As HHS Secretary; Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) is Interviewed about Trump's Picks; Democrats Reckon with GOP Control. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 15, 2024 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Elevated fire risk going forward.

Here's a look at your temperatures for today. The nation's capitol at 56, 65 for Atlanta. Warmer as you head towards Florida and into Houston.

I want to give a quick update on Tropical Storm Sara. You remember earlier this week a lot of our models had this storm system potentially impacting Florida. The good news is, it's staying away from the mainland as any kind of tropical entity. The bad news is that it's impacting Central America with significant amounts of rainfall as it skirts the coastline of Honduras. Get this, Kasie, they've already had over 17 inches of rain along the coastline of Honduras. This is an area that's very susceptible to mudslides and landslides. So, thinking of them at this time.

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, for sure.

Derek Van Dam for us this morning.

Derek, have a wonderful weekend. Thanks very much.

VAN DAM: You too.

HUNT: All right, still coming up here after the break, Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago. How much influence does the billionaire really have over the Trump transition?

And, RFK Junior could get the top health job in the nation. What does that say about trust in our public health system. We're going to talk live with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENT-ELECT: He's a great guy, RFK. And he's going to do pretty much what he wants as far as I'm concerned. He wants health for women, for men, for children. And he - I happen to agree with a lot of the things he says.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:43]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENT-ELECT: Today, I nominated him for, I guess, if you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it's the most important position, RFK Junior.

We want you to come up with things and ideas and what you've been talking about for a long time. And - and I think you're going to do some unbelievable things. Nobody - nobody's going to be able to do it like you. And boy does he feel it in his heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Trump's political rival turned ally, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, could become the nation's top public health official. He is also a known vaccine skeptic.

I spoke with him last year when he was running for president as an independent candidate, and I asked him about his stance on mandates for vaccinating children.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, do you think schoolchildren should not be required to be vaccinated?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: And no advertising -

HUNT: In public schools.

KENNEDY: No, I would be against mandates that all.

HUNT: For any vaccines for children?

KENNEDY: For any vaccine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, joining us now is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, it's wonderful to see you.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

HUNT: I'm so grateful to have you.

I'd like to kind of, big picture here, with the possibility of RFK Junior in this role with a stance like that, what are the real world implications of, for example, lifting mandates for vaccines, for public school children? What does that mean, if you are an American who just wants to send your kids to school and have them come home healthy?

GUPTA: You know, the issue is that you can sort of project the number of people who would get sick, the number of hospitalizations and deaths based on, you know, what we've seen in the past.

So, for example, we've pulled some data looking back 30 years, going back to 1994. Children born between 1994 and 2023, and saying, what impacted did those vaccines that children had - what impact did it have on the real world? And we can show you some of the numbers there, but basically the headline was around a million deaths were prevented as a result of those vaccines. Thirty-two million hospitalizations and 500 million illnesses.

So, that's going backwards, Kasie. If you start to go forward and you see that there's already been dips, for example, in some of these vaccinations, including measles, you want about 95 percent measles vaccination, not only to protect your child, but for all the other children around them to protect your child, that herd immunity. We're starting to drop below herd immunity in several places.

So, it's tough to anticipate with public health because success means you don't see anything, right?

HUNT: Yes.

GUPTA: I mean you're trying to prove a negative when it comes to public health. But that - that gives you an idea at least. I mean these are some of the most impactful, preventative tools that we've seen in the world, these vaccines.

HUNT: Sanjay, one thing I've thought a lot about, and I'm really curious to - from your perspective, is the way that trust in our public health officials, but also trust in things like vaccines and the actual science, declined in the wake of Covid and the way that the pandemic has contributed to more people being more skeptical of the science that these agencies are relying on, of some of the tools that they provide.

How big of a problem do you think is declining trust in our public health authorities? And what can we do about it and what does the RFK appointment say about that?

GUPTA: Yes, I think it's concerning. There's no question. You know, when you look at some of the Pew data, for example, that sort of evaluates this very question. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, it was sort of the highest, 87 percent of Americans based on that data had either a lot or a fair amount of trust in their - in their scientific - their leaders in science. It dipped through the pandemic, down to 73 percent, and it's come up a little bit, 76 percent.

I think what is interesting is the people who don't have trust, that's become a much more sort of entrenched group concerned about things like conflict, concerned about some of the policies that they saw during Covid. That - that's what's happened.

I think what is also interesting is that scientists have also increasingly been perceived as arrogant. That was one of the things that jumped out in some of these surveys, which was - you know, that's - that's heartbreaking, as - as a doctor myself to hear that, this idea that people are being to didactic, they're being too authoritarian, dogmatic, whatever it may be, that is problematic as well.

[06:40:11]

So, I think that, you know, he's - he's feeding into that I think in many, many ways. And at the same time, I watched your interview that you did with him in December. I thought it was one of the best interviews on vaccines.

HUNT: Thank you.

GUPTA: That is a point of contention. The idea of making America healthy again overall, I think he's going to have a lot of support behind something like that. I don't know what it means exactly, but the idea that we spent in this country $4.5 trillion on healthcare and we have some of the worst outcomes in the developed world is something that a lot of people seize onto as well.

So, the problem is, I don't know what it translates to. Even in your interview there was a waffling of sort of the position. I think it changes from day to day. There's been a softening of his stance on vaccines, for example, over the past few weeks. We'll see, I guess, if he can get confirmed and then what he'll do with all of that.

HUNT: Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to get at, because when he was trying to kind of gain political power, he was trying to tell voters that he didn't actually believe the things that he clearly does believe when he is in, you know, different form and thinks that he's dealing with different audiences. So, it raises a huge question, to your point, as to what he would actually do in this kind of a role.

GUPTA: Yes.

HUNT: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, so grateful to have you. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend.

GUPTA: You too.

HUNT: And, of course, a reminder for all of our viewers, Dr. Sanjay Gupta ventures across the globe to see how the new weight loss medications are transforming lives. "Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Is Ozempic Right For You?" It premieres Sunday at 8:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

All right, still ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING, Elon Musk played a key role in helping get Trump back to the White House. Now there are reports about the world's richest man taking on even more influence.

Plus, as Democrats wrestle with the fallout from last week's election, Congressman Seth Moulton joins us with his take on how his party can reconnect with voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): We've got to do a better job, of course, of working hard to lower food prices, lower gas prices, lower housing prices. And that's something that we're going to lean into.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:18]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN TOWER, FORMER TEXAS REPUBLICAN SENATOR: I will be recorded as the first cabinet nominee in the history of the republic to be rejected in the first 90 days of a presidency, and perhaps be harshly judged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That right there, the last and only time a new president's nominee was rejected by a Senate vote back in 1989 when George H.W. Bush's defense secretary nominee, John Tower, was undone by reports of his excessive drinking and, quote, "womanizing." How quaint.

Now, as some Republicans question whether Donald Trump's cabinet picks will be able to pass a Senate confirmation process, there's talk among the president-elect's allies of using the little known tool of recess appointments to circumvent any opposition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): If they want to avoid a recess appointment scenario - and, by the way, that's in the Constitution. The president has total authority to make recess appointments. It's right there in the Constitution.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I don't think we should be circumventing the - the Senate's responsibilities, but I think it's premature to be talking about recess appointments.

SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD), MAJORITY LEADER-ELECT: All options are on the table, including recess appointments. Hopefully it doesn't get to that, but we'll find out fairly quickly whether the Democrats want to play ball or not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, joining our panel is Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts.

Congressman, thank you so much for being here.

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Good to be here, Kasie.

HUNT: To start on the recess appointment point. "The Wall Street Journal" actually has an opinion piece this morning. Their editorial -- talking about this quote/unquote scheme. And they say, because the founders had to travel to and from the national capital by horse, they also granted the president the power to fill any vacancies that may happen during a recess of the Senate.

Obviously, this is a very different world that we live in now. Do you expect that from - from what you hear on Capitol Hill, what you may know about especially this ethics report investigation into Matt Gaetz, whether this is something that's going to be used, and whether, in particular, Gaetz can get confirmed.

MOULTON: Well, what I'm hearing is he probably won't get confirmed. But - but I don't know because this really comes down to a question of how loyal Republicans are to Trump. I mean a lot of people don't like Matt Gaetz. And the idea that our top law enforcement official in the country would be someone who's under criminal investigation. I mean in Matt Gaetz's defense, he's been under criminal investigation, he has a House Ethics probe about human trafficking, literally, sex crimes and whatnot, he's at least not a convicted felon like Donald Trump. But that's the best you can say for him.

And the reality for members of Congress is that, we don't like someone who is considered among the worst getting elevated to a position like this.

I think the Senate wants fundamentally to retain its power. It wants to show that it's going to be a check against the administration, even against Trump. But it comes down to loyalty for Republicans to Trump. And will they be loyal enough to him? We've seen in the past that they pretty much do whatever he asks.

HUNT: So, another controversial pick landing yesterday in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary. And because he ran for president, in no small part, a number of headlines, situations that he has found himself in came to light, including a variety of run-ins with animals over the years.

Let's just hear kind of some of the things he had to say. And these are the headlines, "RFK Jr. admits to dumping a dead bear in Central Park, solving a decade-old mystery." "RFK says doctors found a dead worm in his brain." "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sawed the head off a whale and drove it home, daughter says." "RFK Jr. denies eating a dog while sidestepping sexual assault allegations in Vanity Fair article." There's a lot in that particular headline.

I mean then here he is on tape. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: And then a woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it. A young bear.

[06:50:01]

So, I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear.

And ever since that guy wrote the article about me saying I ate a dog, it hasn't been the same.

Daddy would never do something like that.

It was a goat.

From the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you killed any whales in - in your lifetime?

KENNEDY: No.

Maybe a brain worm ate that part of my memory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Do you think any of this is going to be disqualifying for him?

MOULTON: I mean, compared to Matt Gaetz, he looks pretty good. That's the problem. I mean there's such a crazy cast of characters that Trump has put up. You know, in ancient Rome, Caligula apparently made his horse into a council. I mean that looks pretty tame compared to this cast of characters.

And so the - I think, you know, just a few days ago people were saying, oh, that Pete Hegseth, he's never going to make secretary of Defense. He doesn't have any experience with the bureaucracy, he has a history of politicizing the military, which is very un-American, the military officers don't want him, the DOD doesn't want him, he's not going to make it. Now he looks like a shoe-in just because of how many nominees can Senate Republicans actually agreed to stop.

HUNT: So, let me talk to you a little bit about Democrats and sort of the depth of obviously the defeats that you had. They're - you are all back together in Washington this week. I know you also met last week. Do you get the sense that there is a understanding among your colleagues, among your leadership of the depth of the defeats and what to do about it, or not?

MOULTON: Not really. I think there's a lot of Democrats going around, especially in the House, justifying how we did by saying, oh, we did a little bit better than Harris.

But let's put this in perspective, OK. The Republican Party has been in a civil war for the last year. The Trump faction with the traditional Republicans, culminating in the House, where we couldn't even have a speaker. They couldn't elect a speaker for three weeks, all right. This party is led by a convicted felon. So, Democrats should have had the easiest election in our lifetimes. We should have cleaned up from president of the United States down to local school boards, Democrats should have swept this, and yet we got defeated across the board.

So - so, seriously, we lost a big. And we've got to come to grips with that if we're going to be willing to change. We cannot keep the same strategy if we want to start winning elections again.

HUNT: You have, of course, been in - had significant blowback from some comments you made in "The New York Times." You told them that Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend rather than being brutally honest about the challenges Americans face. I have two little girls. I don't want to see them getting run over on a playing field by a male or a formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that."

Now, "The Washington Post" put this - put it this way in an editorial board that they - they publish this yesterday. "Mr. Moulton's remarks sparked an immediate backlash within his own political camp. His campaign manager quit. A state legislator accused him of scapegoating transgender youth. A city council member in Salem called for him to resign. The Bay state governor opined that Mr. Moulton was playing politics. Even Tufts University got in on the act when the chair of the political science department reportedly called Mr. Moulton's office and told him not to contact the university to recruit interns in the future."

Now their headline is "Needed: A respectful debate on trans women in sports."

Is this backlash to your comments evidence of what you were trying to say?

MOULTON: It completely proves my point. I mean I was using this as one of many examples where the Democratic Party has lost touch with the American people. But the problem is that we're so insistent on, you know, policing our words, and even refusing to engage in debates about contentious issues, that we're just losing on them. I mean it turns out in an exit poll that this one particular issue was the number one reason that swing voters chose Trump. And yet Kamala didn't have an answer. The vice president didn't even respond to these vicious attacks from the Republicans against trans people.

We're the party that wants to protect these folks. We're the party that's going to stand up for minorities all across America when they come under assault from the Republicans, and yet we can't even engage in a debate about the policies that we can win on, that we can actually win over the American people to support our position, not only to start winning elections again and get power back in Washington, which is really critical if we want to support and protect minorities, but even just to win this debate.

HUNT: Let's open this - this up.

Matt Gorman, I wanted to - to the congressman's point about the trans issue being at the top of the list. Clearly that message that the Trump team put so much money behind Kamala's for they them, Donald Trump is for you, seems to have broken through.

MATT GORMAN, FORMER TIM SCOTT PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: It did. I mean, look, in an era where - (INAUDIBLE) don't break through as much any more. This isn't the '80s, you know, or the '90s where you - that would break through in a real way. That one didn't. And I think it would play on Sundays, targeted towards men, especially men of color, right, African American men, Latino men, during football games especially is when I would - I would see it all the time. [06:55:05]

And, you know, one of the things - it was I think broader than that pure (ph) policy. And again, it goes to what the congressman says. It was about culture. It was about priorities. It was - it was not really a - in just about trans. It was - it was, as you said, who's - what are the priorities here for Kamala versus Trump.

HUNT: Um - go ahead.

MOULTON: This felt like a culture election.

GORMAN: That's fair.

MOULTON: I said that to my team the morning after the election itself. I said, this is - this is a culture election. There are some issues where we really do just have better policies, like on the economy. Our - our policies will bring down inflation. Trump, with his tax cuts for billionaires and his massive tariffs will raise inflation. And yet the American voters trust Republicans more on the economy.

So, we've got to really - understand, why do American voters just fundamentally not trust us? I think it's because we're in the business of preaching as opposed to listening. We're a party that's very arrogant. If you don't agree with us 100 percent with our dogmatic views on certain issues, then you're not only wrong, you're - you're a bad person. That's the attitude that I think a lot of American voters are hearing from Democrats, or that's what they perceive. We've got to change that.

HUNT: Chuck Schumer, actually, according to "Axios," had - they reported this, "outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer heard a consistent, urgent alarm this week from Democrats who felt ambushed by GOP attacks on transgender people participating in women's sports." "Axios" has learned, "in two private postmortem meetings convened by Schumer, Democrats said the party was caught flat-footed by the attacks, even as many campaigns aired ads pushing back."

I mean it - it is - it does seem as though this is something that has legs.

MOLLY BALL, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Well, and this is - like, Democrats knew that this ad was having an effect. It was showing up in their testing. They were seeing that these Trump ads, which, by the way, were not about trans athletes, they were about taxpayer-funded surgeries for transgender prison inmates. And so that's an even more, I would suspect, issue on which people overwhelmingly agree that this is - this shouldn't be a high priority of the government or something that taxpayer funds are spent on.

And yet, you know, there was a feeling that it was too dangerous even to respond, even to take a position, even to try to rebut what Kamala Harris was on tape saying in this interview from 2019. And so I think it does prove the congressman's point. It does prove that - and voters see that. They see that this is a party that is so afraid of certain small groups of activists that they are - aren't willing to speak to the majority of the American people.

MOULTON: Right. And that's the point is the danger, when you say it was too dangerous to respond, that's not coming from Republicans.

BALL: Right.

MOULTON: The danger is coming from - from ourselves. It's this fratricide. I mean it's that we're going to shoot our own if we even bring this issue up for debate.

Now, I have to say, I do think our leadership gets this now. I mean you heard the acknowledgment from Schumer. I've had great conversations with Hakeem Jeffries, who's our leader in the House. He said, no, we have to engage in these conversations. You're right. We've got to figure it out.

And I've had some great conversations with LGBTQ advocates who really recognize that this is a problem and we need to win on this issue, not ignore it, not dismiss it, not refuse to respond. We can win on this, just like we did on gay marriage. I mean we can move this forward. We can settle it in a reasonable way that American voters respect and then the Republicans won't have an effective attack. And, most importantly, we'll be able to protect these people because Republicans won't be able to just fundamentally take away their rights.

HUNT: Want to jump in?

GORMAN: No, I mean I think that's an interesting point. And the other part I would say is - I guess my question was, is that a matter of changing your position, changing your message on it? Because we have these issues on the right, too, right? We've talked ad nauseum about how abortion has kind of hurt us electorally, things like that. And, you know, some of the folks are like, well, you know, is it a matter of six weeks versus 15 weeks or whatever, or is it a matter of simply talking more about women and families.

I guess I'm curious kind of if you were kind of making a suggestion, is it a position change, message change, all the above? How you kind of see that.

MOULTON: I mean, look, on these particular issues, I'm not an expert. I don't know. All I was trying to do is say, let's have the debate and figure out if we need to change our policy.

GORMAN: Yes.

MOULTON: I think there are some places where our policies feel out of touch with the American public. But I think there are other places, like I mentioned the economy, where we do actually have good policies that would help the American people, that would help the working class, but we just can't connect on a cultural level to say, you should trust us.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And I think that's the power of that ad from the Super Bowl. Matt, you and I have talked about this.

GORMAN: Well, yes.

WILLIAMS: It - I think it's the Willie Horton of 2024.

GORMAN: I agree.

WILLIAMS: Only - and the Willie Horton, the ad in the, what was it, '88 election about Michael Dukakis is soft on crime and so on that -

HUNT: Saying Michael Dukakis and crime - yes.

MOULTON: That's personal to us in Massachusetts.

WILLIAMS: No, I'm saying -

GORMAN: Yes.

WILLIAMS: But why it's so relevant to the point you're making, Congressman, is that it distracted from far higher priority issues and labeled one party as being in the tank or in bed with an issue - forgive the metaphor, but it labeled a party and was quite effective for a generation on a vulnerability that that party had.

[07:00:14]

And I think it's sort of the same thing here.

Even if it - even if it was rooted in something sinister, it still was immensely successful.

HUNT: All right, well, we, unfortunately, have to leave it there. This has been a great conversion. Congressman, I really appreciate you participating with us.

MOULTON: Thank you.

HUNT: All right, thanks to all of our panel for joining us. Thanks to you for being with us as well. I'm Kasie Hunt. Don't go anywhere. "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.