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Michael Scherer is Interviewed about Loomer's Comments about McCarthy; Brandon Scott is Interviewed about the Racist Message he Received; Judge Rules Habba Unlawfully Serving; Democrats Need their Own Stephen Miller. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 22, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:32:31]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING.

It's half past the hour, and here's what's happening right now.

Later today, Lyle Menendez will go before a parole board to argue his case for freedom. Yesterday, his brother Erik's request was denied. They were convicted of murdering their parents in 1989. California Governor Gavin Newsom could reverse the board's decisions.

Later today, Kilmar Abrego Garcia could be released from criminal custody. He's been behind bars in Tennessee since he was returned to the U.S. after being unlawfully deported to El Salvador. The Trump administration has said it aims to deport him again if he's released.

The Justice Department is expected to begin handing over Epstein case documents today. The DOJ missed the original deadline earlier this week, but argued they needed extra time to make sure the victims are protected.

And Laura Loomer wants to make McCarthy great again. In case you're not familiar with her, Loomer is a political activist who has been banned from several online platforms for hate speech and spreading misinformation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Laura, how are you? You look so beautiful, as always.

You don't want to be Loomer. If you're Loomer, you're in deep trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And as you can hear, Loomer has President Trump's ear. During his campaign last year, she suggested that Haitian immigrants were eating people's pets in Ohio. And then this happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're eating the dogs, the people that came in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Loomer's influence on Trump is undeniable, and that's what makes her latest comments notable. Loomer telling Michael Scherer of "The Atlantic, "Joseph McCarthy was right. We need to make McCarthy great again." McCarthy was a Republican senator from Wisconsin who destroyed countless lives and careers in the 1950s with baseless claims about communists and Soviet spies infiltrating the government and universities and the film industry. He was ultimately censured by the Senate in 1954.

Joining me now to discuss is the author of that article, Michael Scherer.

Good morning, Michael.

MICHAEL SCHERER, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": Hey, Audie, how are you?

CORNISH: Great. And I want to -- I'm glad you did this. And I'd like to know more because Loomer, as we now heard, is a verb to be rumored. Can you speak about how her work, like, manifests itself in the administration itself? She speaks to them about what and what ends up happening?

[06:35:02]

SCHERER: Well, actually, it goes both ways. I mean people in the administration reach out to her at this point because they're concerned about someone they work with or want to get back at someone they work with. Really what this comes down to is she has a single sponsor and champion, the president of the United States, who likes her role. She -- he wants somebody in a position outside the White House to -- to basically serve as an external check on loyalty in his administration. Both Loomer and Trump, obviously, believe that the first term was hobbled because there wasn't enough loyalty, because disloyal people were allowed to work in the bureaucracy.

And so he's sort of empowered her. He's raised her up. He has his senior advisers, you know, Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, Sergio Gore, the personnel director, speak with her regularly. The various departments and agencies pay attention to her Twitter account, and they respond rather quickly. And -- and -- and now it's, you know, we're going on week four or five now of almost every few days someone else leaving government service because she's called them out, often on sometimes flimsy grounds of, you know, having once done something that she believes is disloyal. And -- and they have to leave government service or some government policy has to change.

CORNISH: What's interesting about that is the analogy you raised to her about McCarthyism. You know, the senator was pursuing people who had a certain ideology, right? It wasn't just about being disloyal. At the same time, how do you see and how does Loomer see her role? Like, why would she be like, y es, McCarthy sound -- sounds great. We should be rooting out disloyal people the way we, at one point, were trying to root out communists.

SCHERER: Yes, I mean, if you go back to the red scare, and it wasn't just McCarthy. She -- she tweeted yesterday that we need to bring back the house un-American affairs committee, which, you know, preceded a lot of what McCarthy was doing, going after people in Hollywood as well.

There was a similarity in method, right? Like, the idea behind the red scare is if you could find a past association, something they had said, someone they were friends with, someone they defended, that was enough to prove communist sympathies. And once you prove communist sympathies, they were disqualified from government service.

So, I think there's something -- something like that here. I mean, Loomer has gone after people simply because they've, in the first term, done something that Trump didn't like, even if it was totally within bounds of their job. I mean if they raised concerns about election interference, for instance, that's enough for her to say they're disloyal.

You know, if -- and -- and the -- the -- the -- the fear that was created by that period in American history is not dissimilar from the fear that is being created now. I mean it -- reporting this story, the number of people who didn't want to comment to me or talk to me because they don't want to tangle with her, they don't want to be on her radar, they don't want to tweet about him was -- was rather high. I mean there's -- there's a great concern now that just -- just having your name come out of her lips can cause you professional harm.

CORNISH: You know, in the end, with McCarthyism the -- the president himself, Eisenhower at the time, kind of undermined McCarthy in a variety of ways. And then, of course, those famous hearings in 1954, where Joseph Welch, who was the special counsel to the Army, kind of lashed out at the senator and spoke in a way that reflected backlash.

I just want to play some of that for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH WELCH, SPECIAL COUNSEL TO THE ARMY (June 9, 1954): Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: It was this moment that reflected the sense that, like, OK, it's all fine and good for look at communists, but now it just seems like these are just hitting at people you don't like, that this is just getting rid of people who you think are a problem from one -- for one way or another. Do you think Loomer could eventually see some kind of similar backlash to that?

SCHERER: Well, there certainly is backlash within Trump's tent. I mean, in that case, he was defending a junior lawyer at his firm who had once been a part of a group that was associated with the communist party and -- and -- and was outraged that his name had been uttered in public.

You saw just a couple of weeks ago Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a congressman very close to the president, deeply identified with the president's movement, go on a real rant saying we have to realize what Loomer is doing here, what she's really about. This is really dangerous. This isn't real reporting or journalism. This is smearing people.

You know, she's gotten into a fight with Tucker Carlson, who's -- who's also called her dangerous, you know, saying she -- she wields Twitter like a -- a child with a weapon.

And so there certainly is pushback. So, a little different in that she is not in the government. She tried to get a job at the White House.

[06:40:02]

Senior staff to the president blocked that. She's still quite bitter about it. So, she is outside and she doesn't, in every case, do what the president says. I mean she's been pushing for quite a while now to push Attorney General Pam Bondi out of office. Someone the president continues to stick with because she's unhappy with how Bondi handled the Epstein situation. So, there are lots of differences here.

I mean, I think what was interesting was, when I raised the comparison -- it's an imperfect comparison of McCarthy with her. She immediately embraced it and said, you know, we have to make McCarthy great again.

CORNISH: Michael Scherer of "The Atlantic."

Michael, thanks so much.

SCHERER: Thank you.

CORNISH: I had to bring it back here because, obviously, my political panelists, you're familiar with the world of, like, oppo research. There's a world of people -- an industry that does a version of what she does. Why is what she does so distinct? Is it just her access?

ROB BLUEY, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE EDITOR, "THE DAILY SIGNAL": Well, she has amassed a huge following, as many of these social media influencers do, Audie. They -- they command influence not only with those in power, but also, look, we're talking about her this morning on -- on television. I mean it's --

CORNISH: Right. Like, usually we don't know the oppo people's names.

BLUEY: Right.

CORNISH: Yes.

BLUEY: So -- so I will say that I think you're going to see more of this on the right and the left because she has been effective in influencing the conversation and the narrative that's shaping our politics. And so, as people want to look for new models of media, those of us who come from traditional backgrounds in journalism might be facing some competitors like her.

CORNISH: Do -- does any president want to cultivate a world where an outside source pushes you to make decisions this way?

ANTJUAN SEAWRIGHT, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I think it's scary because of the type of behavior and the people she cuddle and play footsie with politically. Most of them are extremists. She gets deep down into some of the dark, dangerous places and people, white supremacy, white nationalism. We've seen her flirt with those things.

I think we have to separate, like, trying to be an influencer (ph) and influencing policy, influence politics versus just doing what's bad and not long term good. Attention is the most powerful drug in Washington, and I think she is overdosing on it right now. The question is, what happens when life after Trump kicks in? Because she's attached her brand to Trumpism and the extreme wing of the Republican Party. And I'm not sure how that survives.

CORNISH: Yes, I'm actually even fascinated, the things Michael mentioned earlier about Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Like --

SEAWRIGHT: Even they -- when -- when they think it's scary, we all should be scared as hell.

CORNISH: OK, you guys, stick around. There's more to discuss.

Next on CNN THIS MORNING, could the federal takeover move out of D.C. and, say, to a place like Baltimore. We're going to be talking live with that city's mayor.

And, "I was dreaming when I wrote this. Forgive me if it goes astray." The new lawsuit involving Prince's estate and his "Purple Rain" co- star.

And we want to know what's in your group chat. Send it to us now on X. We're going to be talking about ours after this.

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[06:47:13]

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CORNISH: The president has singled out several cities, places like Los Angeles, Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, saying they're so far gone they're -- they too are ripe for a boots on the ground approach to crime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD STARNES, HOST, "TODD STARNES SHOW": Is there anything that you can do to help cities like Memphis? DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, I will be. I --

we're doing a -- sort of a test right now in D.C. It's working unbelievably. Much faster than we thought. We've arrested hundreds of criminals, hard line criminals, people that will never be any good, and we got them out of the system. And, you know, unfortunately, we have a lot of cities like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: The messaging that these cities are overrun by criminals flies in the face of the work mayors say they have been doing to bring crime numbers down after the post pandemic spike. Since the focus has been on Democrat-leaning cities, their leaders are facing the brunt of the anger.

Joining me now is Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott.

Mayor Scott, thank you so much for being here.

MAYOR BRANDON SCOTT (D), BALTIMORE: Thanks for having me. Good morning.

CORNISH: One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is because you actually posted this voice message you released on social media. It's actually from June. But -- and I'm going to warn people about what they're about to hear, but it gives a sense of the vibe out there, so to speak.

Here we go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How about you stop making Baltimore a place for worthless piece of worthless (EXPLETIVE DELETED) like you who just shoot each other and sell drugs? How about you (EXPLETIVE DELETED) do your job (EXPLETIVE DELETED) job and actually stop crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Why did you release that now?

SCOTT: Well, I think that folks have to understand what their elected officials and ordinary black people go through this country every day, right? And those are not uncommon for me to receive.

But when you have the president of the United States singling out black cities and black mayors of black cities, you can see how this is being fueled across the country. And they're adding fuel to the fire of something that we all know already exists. These folks are more and more comfortable. But I wanted folks just understand what we -- what we go through and what we have to live with each and every day because the reality is, is that, as you and I are talking this morning, Baltimore has the fewest amount of homicides through this date that we have seen on record. We have historic reductions in gun violence, and that's still not enough for us. The president is so far off base and wrong about this. D.C. has a 30

percent reduction in violent crime, and we are seeing that in all of these cities, not just here in Baltimore, but the most important part of that is that you don't hear from me or my brother or sister mayors that we're celebrating and that we've solved the issue.

[06:50:07]

We're acknowledging this historic progress for us. That's all time, 50 years since they started to keep that kind of data progress. And we are saying that we have to go even further into that work. And that's what our commitment is each and every day.

CORNISH: I've done a lot of reporting in Baltimore, specifically around the issue of crime. And I know you guys have a robust kind of community policing, local activists on the ground, type approach. But there were already questions about whether that was bringing the rate, the crime rate down or whether it was sort of better, smarter policing. Is this kind of forcing the pendulum back to policing versus those other approaches?

SCOTT: No, we're staying with our -- with our plan. It's all of it. And I want the American people to know that what you're seeing in D.C. is a dog and pony show. You're seeing ATF and FBI agents taken off of their actual cases where they work on drug organizations, violent organizations, people that are bringing guns into communities to just go walk around D.C. and -- and do something that they didn't sign up to do. For us it is our comprehensive violence prevention plan. It is that we have better law enforcement partnerships. We work with our -- even our law enforcement officials from the federal level here every day.

But we focus that. We have our group violence reduction strategy, where we first give those who are the most likely to be a victim of the perpetrator of gun violence a chance. They get a letter from me. And if they don't take that, then we remove them. And at the same time, we're making gun arrests, going after gun companies, right? We're attacking every single angle.

But we also have a -- historic amounts of investments into our community violence intervention ecosystem, where we pay people who used to be those folks pulling those triggers to prevent things from happening. We're also making historic investments into recreation and parks, into job opportunities for young people into our school system. It's all of it.

CORNISH: And, Mayor, I think I do understand how much you're leaning in that direction. We're just seeing a movement otherwise. And I don't know if you're talking with other cities, because there's a lot of cities with violent crime rates, Memphis, as we mentioned, Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee.

SCOTT: Yes.

CORNISH: Are you hearing from other people saying, am I going to have to be hearing from my governor soon? Am I going to be having National Guard on my street soon?

SCOTT: No. I think the great thing about those cities that were called out, whether it's Chicago, whether it's Oakland, whether it's Baltimore, we all have similar strategies. I know that Mayor Bibb in Cleveland has a similar strategy. The mayor of Memphis actually sent folks here to look at our strategy and talk with our folks. So, they're going to implement some of the similar things.

There is a connectivity with these reductions for us. And in Baltimore, we didn't have a spike during Covid, but we had -- we're already historically high. There's the connectivity from all of these folks who are doing all of these things, working with law enforcement, working with community violence intervention, investing in community. And that's what works.

We've lived this in the '90s where we had this zero tolerance policing, where people like me, when I was a -- a 3.5 GPA student in high school, and a college student later on, getting just set down in handcuffs just because I was black in my community. That didn't make us safer. What makes us safer is focusing in on the people causing the problem, removing them, removing those guns, and investing in the community at the same time.

CORNISH: That's the mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott.

Thank you for your time.

SCOTT: Thank you.

CORNISH: Now to New Jersey, where a federal judge says former Trump attorney Alina Habba overstayed her 120-day term as the top federal prosecutor there. The job requires a Senate confirmation. The judge said the Trump administration used a novel series of legal and personnel moves to keep Habba in place. Attorney General Pam Bondi says she'll "immediately appeal" and vow to protect Habba from "activist judicial attacks."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALINA HABBA, ACTING NEW JERSEY U.S. ATTORNEY: It's not surprising, but it's disturbing. The attorney general said it today, we will not fall to rogue judges. We will not fall to people trying to be political when they should just be doing their job, respecting the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, it might be one of the legal stories you missed this week. That's why we're going to lawyer up now with Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.

In a way this is kind of related to the crime story. We were talking about this. When you have these questions about legality, that's something that defense attorneys are, like, what's that?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Avoiding (ph) --

CORNISH: Wait a second. Should I appeal?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: Like, tell me about the implications.

WILLIAMS: Licking their chops, ready to challenge any action taken by the office.

When the head of an office is improperly installed, a defense attorney or anybody in the public really can say that the actions of the office are themselves tainted. You actually saw this in the context of Donald Trump's prosecutions last year in Georgia, where -- in Florida, pardon me, where Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, his actions were invalidated because the court said that he wasn't properly installed.

[06:55:02]

And so, there's going to be a lot of litigation over everything the office does while she is in charge.

CORNISH: OK.

So, we are going to turn to another topic here, and I think we're going to be looking at this issue of Prince, and the Prince estate and Apollonia --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: Which is deep cut for some people.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: But.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called trademark. And there is --

SEAWRIGHT: Elliot.

WILLIAMS: And --

CORNISH: I mean --

WILLIAMS: Apollonia. So, there's -- there's an individual named Apollonia, sort of Patty or Patricia Apollonia Kotero. She was a star in Prince's movies who went by the name Apollonia.

CORNISH: Of course.

WILLIAMS: Now, the -- Prince's estate, Paisley Park, is suing for the rights to the name Apollonia, right, saying that we -- we made the thing that is Apollonia, this character, and, therefore we own the rights to it. She says that's my name. This is a trademark lawsuit pending right now.

CORNISH: It's interesting because he had so many muses in that style, right?

WILLIAMS: He did.

CORNISH: We all remember this kind of churning --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: Sort of role of women in his life.

WILLIAMS: Yes. And if it sounds crazy, right, let's go crazy, as it were. But -- but, no, but it -- but if it --

SEAWRIGHT: Elliot.

WILLIAMS: If it sounds crazy to be trademarking somebody else's name, or a name, think about Oprah, right? Yes, her name is Oprah Winfrey, but the word Oprah is a registered trademark of Harpo, her corporation. So, it's not out of the question.

Look, this is her name. I don't know how they do here.

CORNISH: OK.

WILLIAMS: Yes, but --

CORNISH: As much as I want to stick around for all of these puns and lyrics --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

CORNISH: I'm going to move on.

WILLIAMS: Yes, because it is -- it is such a shame their friendship had to end in -- in that way.

CORNISH: OH, OK.

Ever since losing the presidential election, Democrats have argued over the reasons Trump managed a political comeback for the ages, and a second term running roughshod over his opposition. So, do they need their own Joe Rogan-style podcaster, their own Heritage Foundation- style 2025 project? Do they need their own Stephen Miller?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF (May 30, 2025): Democracy does not exist at all. If each action the president takes, foreign policy, diplomatic, military, national security has to be individually approved by 700 district court judges --

MILLER (October 27, 2024): Who's going to stand up and say, the cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone? America is for Americans and Americans only.

MILLER (August 20, 2025): These demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies, they're not part of this city and never have been.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, "The Atlantic" is posing this question this week. Miller is Trump's loyal and trusted deputy chief of staff. He's responsible for the look, messaging, direction of Trump 2.0. He's considered the architect of the mass deportation program, the use of military at the border and on city streets, and the push to end birthright citizenship. And he's also behind all of these executive orders that have allowed the administration to push the legal boundaries of presidential powers.

So, what would a progressive version of this even look like?

Group chat is back to discuss.

Antjuan, coming to you for this fan fiction. What do you think this would be?

SEAWRIGHT: In the words of Drake, "they not like us."

I don't think that our homework is graded the same. I mean, Stephen Miller and those type, they cuddle and they play footsie to the most extreme of the extreme in this country. Democrats do not have that kind of base. And so, it'll never work.

But here's what I think a lesson we can learn from the Trump era or the Trump movement, loyalty. Because come hell or high water, the Trump base and his soldiers and his disciples, they are very loyal to his cause.

CORNISH: But they are loyal, but you have to be loyal to something.

SEAWRIGHT: Well, it's -- it's his cause.

CORNISH: And it -- but it feels -- no, no, but he's coalescing it around an ideology of thinking. That's what all these things have in common.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and that's -- those of us who've known Stephen Miller for quite some time know that he's been saying the exact same thing forever. This has been the -- this is the same person who worked for Jeff Sessions, who we used to run into in the Senate hallway. The difference now is the most powerful man in the world has anointed him and has empowered him. So --

CORNISH: It's a little like our Laura Loomer discussion from earlier.

KUCINICH: Exactly. It's exactly like that.

CORNISH: Yes.

KUCINICH: In a lot of ways, except he's in the administration, of course, and he's much more on the policy side of this. But if they're looking -- if Democrats are looking for, you know, an avatar, they need a Donald Trump. Someone -- and someone who the party will follow, you know, no matter what.

CORNISH: Yes. Let me get Rob in for the last moment, because, again, I'm -- I'm arguing that it's a way of thinking they want people to coalesce around, right? Rogan represents something. Loomer represents something.

BLUEY: It's a cult (ph).

CORNISH: What is it that the left has that they are gathering around and that they represent?

BLUEY: Sure. And I just think copying, as we've seen Gavin Newsom do with Trump's tweets and through social posts is not going to --

CORNISH: While amusing. While very amusing.

BLUEY: Amusing. It's not -- not authentic as Vice President Vance said.

And I think, ultimately, if they can find somebody like that, they need to focus on the policy issues that the American people care about, particularly those independent voters who are so critical in the swing states that will ultimately decide the next election.

SEAWRIGHT: But, Rob, if policy mattered, Trump would never be president.

[07:00:02]

And that's why --

BLUEY: Trump focused on the bread and butter issues that --

SEAWRIGHT: But -- but -- and that's -- and that's why we can't do what they do. But we have to find our own lane, our own style, and just stay loyal to that because we can't find consistency in our party. That's our problem.

CORNISH: OK.

You guys, we talked about a lot today. Cracker Barrel, cheerleading, the Menendez brothers. And there's even more news to come. So, thank you for waking up with us. I'm Audie Cornish. And "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.