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Trump Taps Anti-Vaccine Activist RFK Jr. For Top Health Post; Trump Weighs Nominating Fierce Loyalist Kash Patel To Lead FBI; Tulsi Gabbard Has Said Assad Is "Not An Enemy" Of The U.S. And Parroted Putin Rhetoric About The Russia-Ukraine War; Today: Trial Begins For Migrant Accused Of Killing Laken Riley; Inside Donald Trump's Hardline Immigration Plans. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 15, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:32:13]

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: President-elect Trump's cabinet choices so far have included some traditional conservative picks. Like Marco Rubio at State, or Doug Burgum at Interior. Along with some, well, it's safe to say, perhaps no other president would have considered. Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run Health and Human Services, Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General, Tulsi Gabbard to lead the Intelligence Community, and Pete Hegseth to run the Pentagon.

Trump will have to rely on his narrow Republican majority in the Senate to confirm them. But will they?

Joining me now is South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds. He's a Republican. He sits on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees. Senator, thank you so much for taking the time this afternoon. Really appreciate it.

So --

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I appreciate the opportunity.

RAJU: Absolutely. Let's start talking about the big news that came out yesterday. Trump's desire to pick Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department. As you know, he spread theories, often baseless theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

He's proposed replacing with 600 officials at the NIH with handpicked staff and you have said to me and to others, you want to give the president the benefit of the doubt. And these nominees will go through the vetting process. But when you were governor of South Dakota, you celebrated your state's rising child immunization rate.

So are you comfortable with someone who is seen as an anti-vaccine activist leading the Department of Health and Human Services?

ROUNDS: Well, it's true that I am in favor of vaccines. I think they work. I think we've saved millions of lives. I think it's moving in the right direction. I don't mind having someone question whether or not we're doing the right thing with regard to the processes or who's influencing our decisions about which vaccines are promoted and which ones may not get, you know, out into the public.

But, you know, look, as you indicated, the president does have the authority and the responsibility to make nominations. We do give the president the benefit of the doubt. I did that with President Biden, but there's another part of this, which is a very important part, and that is the process that we go through with every single one of these nominees.

We vet them. And I don't expect that the Senate as a whole is going to do anything except what they've done in the past, which is to vet each individual, to ask the hard questions, and then to decide whether or not there is a reason not to support their nomination. But --

RAJU: But do you have any --

ROUNDS: -- it is a process --

RAJU: -- off the bat (ph)? Do you have any concerns with RFK Jr.?

ROUNDS: Look, if he is not in favor of vaccines, most certainly we're going to find out what his thoughts are on it. And I'm not necessarily sure that it's so much that he doesn't agree with vaccines. It may be that he doesn't like the process that we go through to find out whether or not they're safe.

But that's the reason why you do this process. That's the reason why you vet them. That's the reason why you have specific committees with a huge amount of expertise in those particular areas that ask those questions.

[12:35:08]

And look, we do for these types of events. We do these publicly. The public are going to see it. They're going to hear the questions, they're going to hear the answers. And so the American people will actually get to hear directly from these candidates what they really do say, and not filtered in any way, but directly from them.

RAJU: I want to get --

ROUNDS: Sometimes that can be very interacting (ph).

RAJU: I want to get your thoughts about what Trump is thinking about doing with the DOJ, the FBI. The FBI director, as you know, is supposed to be in apolitical job. CNN is reporting this afternoon that Trump is now weighing, firing Christopher Wray, bringing in a loyalist of his, Kash Patel, someone who's actually threatened to go after some of Trump's critics.

Would you be OK if Trump fired Christopher Wray and replaced him with someone like Kash Patel who could target Trump's foes? Would you be comfortable with that?

ROUNDS: Let me begin. I respect Chris Wray. I know him. I've had numerous briefings from him. I have no objection to the way that Chris Wray works. Second of all, the incoming president always has the ability to make their own choices.

Kash Patel, I personally don't know, but most certainly would get to know him. I don't know what the president's plans are, but, you know, look, he's elected. We've said very clearly that we want to work with him. We want to bring in his people as best we can.

We want to make sure that the agenda that he's laid out for the American people and a lot of that has to do with the economic reforms that we want to get done and the elimination of bureaucracies. But there's something else as well, and Manu, I think this is important.

RAJU: Yes.

ROUNDS: There's a strong feeling among a lot of the parts of this country that there's a better way to do the justice system and the Justice Department than the way that it's been run in the past over multiple different administrations. And sometime --

RAJU: And let me ask you about that, Senator, if you don't mind --

ROUNDS: OK.

RAJU: -- about the Justice Department since you mentioned it.

ROUNDS: Yes.

RAJU: Because, you know, he's, of course, as you know, he's picked Matt Gaetz to be his potential attorney general. Most -- you said this actually to reporters in the Capitol, you said, "Most people would be less than honest if they said anything other than Matt Gaetz is problematic, but he still has been nominated by the president, still has been nominated by the president."

Today, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that he is not going to -- he does not -- he's going to urge the House Ethics Committee not to release the ethics investigation into Matt Gaetz to the Senate as the Senate considers Gaetz's nomination. Would you want to see -- you're going to have a vote on this critical nomination, would you want to see everything that has this committee, the House Ethics Committee, has come up with in its investigation into Matt Gaetz before you vote on this nomination?

ROUNDS: Yes. I think Senator Cornyn, who sits on the Judiciary Committee has indicated that very strongly that he believes that that there may very well be a way to compel the release of that through a subpoena. That committee and they do this all the time and it becomes very sensitive.

But we do have a process in place, which includes the ability to get that type of information in many cases. And what we want to do is make good decisions based upon all the relevant facts and information that we can get. So --

RAJU: So you do want to see that information. ROUNDS: For her (ph), we should be able to get a hold of it, and we should have access to it one way or another, based on the way that we do all of these nominations.

RAJU: Got it. So you do want to see that information. I guess overall, Senator, Trump was elected, as you know, over concerns about the economy. In particular, you mentioned that you want to work with him on the economy. With these picks, is there a risk that he is misreading his mandate here?

ROUNDS: I don't know as much as I -- I think the president likes to be unique in the way that he announces people. Look, he's made some really, really good choices. I mean, Marco Rubio, I can't think of anybody I'd rather have in secretary of state right now than Marco.

RAJU: But, Senator --

ROUNDS: And let me take look at John --

RAJU: Senator, if I could just jump in real quick. One person is --

ROUNDS: Yes.

RAJU: -- Tulsi Gabbard, who's the head of the Director of National Intelligence. And you sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. She has questioned whether Ukraine should be a democracy and she's -- and she met with the Syrian president, the leader of Syria as well, and questioned whether Assad is actually an enemy of the United States. Should she be in charge of overseeing the intelligence apparatus of the United States?

That is exactly the reason that we go through our due diligence. It's exactly the reason why we will have a process in place that we do for all of these nominees. And, look, this is not a new thing, and it's not like we're doing this process just for this particular president.

Every single president, when they make these nominations, the Senate has the responsibility for advice and consent. That actually translates into advice or consent.

[12:40:04]

And in each one of those cases, I think the vast majority of the members of the Senate takes that very, very seriously. ?And, look, there's going to be folks that are going to come in and say, look, the big picture here is to allow the president to have their people. I get that.

And we really do give the benefit of the doubt to the incoming president, but we still have a constitutional responsibility to go through that process that is well established in which we review and we look at each individual and make sure that all the relative information that maybe even the president doesn't have is brought out in front of us.

And then we decide whether or not we think that the benefit of the doubt goes to the president or if there should be a change and perhaps more advice than consent --

RAJU: All right.

ROUNDS: -- which occasionally does happen.

RAJU: All right. Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, thank you so much for coming out and sharing your views. Really appreciate it.

ROUNDS: Good to -- you bet.

RAJU: Good to see you well.

All right, coming up, prosecutors say he was, quote, "hunting for females." CNN is live at the murder trial of an undocumented migrant. That's next.

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[12:45:40]

RAJU: Happening today in Georgia, the trial has started for the undocumented migrant who's accused of killing nursing student Laken Riley. Riley was killed in February while jogging at the University of Georgia. Her death ignited a political firestorm over crime and illegal immigration. And now a judge will decide the fate of the Venezuelan man charged with killing her.

Rafael Romo is in Athens, Georgia. So Rafael, you've been listening to this testimony. Walk us through what we've heard so far.

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Manu. In the last hour, we witnessed what is by far the most shocking and emotional moment in the first day of the trial against Jose Antonio Ibarra, the sole suspect and the murder of nursing student Laken Riley.

And that's because the prosecution called Sergeant Kenneth Maxwell, he is with the University of Georgia Police Department. And he was the one, Manu, who found the body of Laken Riley. And what we were able to see in the courtroom was the body camera video that showed that moment. And it was just very hard to see.

Before the video was shown, the judge assigned to the case gave people in the courtroom an opportunity to exit at the courtroom because we were about to see something that was going to be very, very disturbing. And we saw how about half a dozen people exited the courtroom.

And what I can tell you is that the video showed the officer said that it took about 21 minutes for him to find the body when he found it. What we could see was that the body was partially naked. And one thing that the officer said, and here I quote, he said, "It looked more intentional as if somebody had attempted to either remove her top or maybe had used it to drag her."

Earlier, Manu, we also heard from the prosecution, Special Prosecutor Sheila Ross, said that she has very powerful evidence against the suspect.

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SHEILA ROSS, PROSECUTOR: He went hunting for females on the University of Georgia's campus. And in his hunt, he encountered 22-year-old Laken Riley on her morning jog. And when Laken Riley refused to be his rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly.

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ROMO: And Manu, just before we went to lunch break, we were hearing testimony from one of the roommates of Laken Riley's. Now back to you.

RAJU: All right, Rafael Romo outside the courthouse in Athens, Georgia. Thank you, Rafael.

And coming up for us here, expanding detention facilities and bringing back executive orders. New details on how Team Trump is planning for mass deportations. That's next.

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[12:53:08]

RAJU: Donald Trump's number one campaign promise was to secure the border and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. And we've got new CNN reporting on how that -- how he plans to keep that promise.

Priscilla Alvarez and Phil Mattingly are back to break down some of their great reporting. All right, Priscilla, take us through it.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, a lot of what you're going to hear from the two of us is that what's old is new. A lot of the policies that the Trump administration had previously implemented, they're making a comeback.

That is some of the preparations that are underway right now, according to sources who say, for example, reviving, remain in Mexico. That's when migrants had to stay in Mexico while they went through their immigration proceedings here. Limiting protections and asylum restrictions as well.

Detention, building that out. Making it mandatory. And also, using a national emergency declaration. We talked about this a lot the first time. That was a way that they unlocked those Pentagon funds and resources to build the border wall. Well, now they want to use that for detention, which is the fixation of the now.

And part of this is going to actually the key element of this is building out detention space because you can't do mass deportation without mass detention. So that is where a lot of the focus has been in these preparations with multiple of these border security officials behind the scenes, but also folks like Tom Homan, who has been named the border czar.

RAJU: Is this further than they did in the first term, is about the same as what they would do?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think the important context to everything Priscilla just laid out, which is spot on is, it is everything -- it's reversing everything that Joe Biden did, that reversed everything that they did, and then scaling, right?

The scale of what they want to do and how they want to do it, some of which Trump said he wanted to do in the first term but wasn't able to actually get across the finish line. He talked about mass deportations, it wasn't something that actually ever happened.

The extent to which the preparation over the course of the last year plus led by people like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, who have already been named to their positions, combined with the lessons that they learned in the experience of the first four years.

[12:55:03]

I think people don't pay enough attention to where they were on immigration, people other than Priscilla, where they were on immigration policy by 2019 was so dramatically different than the kind of clustering efforts of the initial stages of the administration and to get back to that and then build out further.

We pay a lot of attention to the kind of bonkers appointments and confirmation stuff and where everything is, and rightfully so. From a policy perspective, and from a personnel perspective, where the Trump administration or incoming Trump administration will be on immigration, what they have said they want to do, they have the capability, they have the planning, they have the legal resources, and I think they have the personnel know how at each and every single agency involved in it that people probably don't appreciate given that experience and given the preparation.

RAJU: And how much of it will be done by administrative action versus need for Congress --

ALVAREZ: And finally, these are not novel ideas. We've seen them before detention. We do it to this day, but it's all about building it up and they've got the guys to do it.

RAJU: Yes. All right. This is going to be obviously a huge issue in the new administration.

Priscilla and Phil, thanks for joining me.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. I'll be back Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m. for Inside Politics Sunday, also 11:00 a.m. Eastern. I hope you'll join me.

CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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