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Inside Politics
Jeffries Zeroes In On How Dems Will Plot Path Back to Power; Huddling with Trump, Johnson Braces for Another Slim Majority; Doctors: RFK Jr.'s Anti-Ozempic Stance Perpetuates Stigma; Trump Picks New MAGA-Fed Cabinet To Carry Out Agenda; Trump's Choice Of Gaetz Strikes Nerve With House GOP. Aired 8-9a ET
Aired November 17, 2024 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:51]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
MANU RAJU, CNN HOST (voice-over): Loyalty test.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to clean out the corrupt, broken and failing bureaucracies.
RAJU: From Matt Gaetz --
REP. MAX MILLER (R-OH): The job that he has done here has been abhorrent.
RAJU: To RFK, Jr. --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump is making completely irresponsible picks.
RAJU: Trump's choices shocked Washington.
SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): It's just nothing but trolling.
REP. KATHERINE CLARK (D-MA): Exactly what he told us he'd do.
RAJU: The Republicans fall in line.
Plus, new details on RFK Jr. and Trump's pick for the Pentagon.
And fighting back. New reporting on the top House Democrat's plans to bring his party out of the wilderness.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I'm not interested in a blame game. I'm interested in solutions.
RAJU: INSIDE POLITICS, the best reporting from inside the corridors of power, starts now.
(END VIDEOTAPE) RAJU (on camera): Good morning and welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. I'm Manu Raju.
Inauguration Day is still 64 days away, but Donald Trump is already roiling Washington and unnerving many around the world, including some in his own party. While he's picked mainstream Republicans to lead some critical posts in government, his choices for Defense, Health and Human Services, Intelligence and the Justice Department show how Trump 2.0 is much different than Trump 1.0. So how will Republicans in charge of the Senate handle these controversial picks? And what does this all mean for how Trump will govern when he assumes office on January 20th?
Now, Trump last night took a break from Mar-a-Lago to attend a UFC fight at Madison Square Garden, where he was flanked by Speaker Mike Johnson. Elon musk and three of his most criticized cabinet picks, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz.
But Trump will soon return to making some critical personnel decisions. And so far, there has been one overarching theme, he is rewarding loyalty.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Matt Gaetz. Is Matt Gaetz -- oh, look at Matt Gaetz.
He's a great really a great person. And he's on the controversial side. But that's not bad.
This is a really great governor, a very successful governor. She has done a fantastic job as governor.
Tulsi Gabbard, thank you, Tulsi. Great comments there.
If you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it's the most important position, RFK, Jr. Bobby?
Don't get too popular, Bobby.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: All right. Let's break this all down with my great panel this morning.
"The Bulwark's" Marc Caputo, Julie Davis of "The New York times", Astead Herndon, also from "The New York Times" and "Politico's" Meridith McGraw.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for being here. A busy morning as well.
You, Meridith, you've been covering the transition in depth. Let's talk about this first controversy, this controversy that emerged overnight involving Trump's defense pick. This was a story that was first reported by "The Washington Post". Others at "The New York Times" and CNN have confirmed this, reporting about a -- about Pete Hegseth paying a woman who accused him of sexual assault.
Now, he was not charged in this -- in this case, he also didn't -- his lawyer also denies the allegations. But you've been talking to people in Mar-a-Lago. You've been getting a sense of what's going on with Trump.
How is this impacting Trump's thinking with this defense pick?
MERIDITH MCGRAW, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: Well, I think it's very clear that vetting was not the first priority for Donald Trump when he was making any of these decisions this past week. He was clearly back at Mar-a-Lago looking at things like how they perform on television. He was watching news clips from when they've been on TV and thinking about how they would fit into his priorities of, A, being loyal and, B, shaking up Washington.
RAJU: I mean, that is the transition. There's been this for months. They've been preparing this methodically -- methodical effort to essentially give Trump a menu of options on who to pick for his cabinet, and then he sort of going by the gut on some of these picks, upending things is this going to be a political -- it's going to come back to bite him in any way.
MARC CAPUTO, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE BULWARK: I mean, it could but this is not the first time that he's been given a menu of options. He's like, you know what? I'm going to go to a different restaurant, right? I mean, that's what Donald Trump does.
So I think what were going to have to see is whether he expends real political capital right now, it looks like J.D. Vance is the lead for him getting the Senate confirmation votes. But at a certain point, Donald Trump is going to pick up the phone and put the pressure on senators to vote for his picks.
RAJU: But will he back off any of these or is he dead set for every single?
CAPUTO: I find that highly -- highly difficult to believe that he would do that.
[08:05:02]
He has a history of not shying away from men who are accused of sexual impropriety.
RAJU: That --
CAPUTO: To put it charitably.
RAJU: And it's also a test of loyalty. This is so interesting, is how different this cabinet is compared to 2017, when he first came in right after the 2016 election.
Just a look on your screen about the difference in the makeup. There's General James Mattis, the Defense Department. Pete Hegseth, yes, he's former military veteran, but most recently, of course, a Fox News host.
You have Jeff Sessions. He did reward loyalty for Jeff Sessions, who was the Alabama senator who has sat on the Senate judiciary committee. Matt Gaetz is a different type of Republican than Jeff Sessions is.
Tom Price, he was the health and human services secretary under Trump, initially a mainstream conservative Republican. Now, RFK, Jr.
And it goes down the line even, in the last one here, Dan Coats, Indiana senator, someone mainstream Republican, typical Republican orthodoxy -- to Tulsi Gabbard who espouses almost completely opposite views.
JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CONGRESSIONAL EDITOR, NEW YORK TIMES: Right, and has been accused of pushing propaganda for Russia, which is not exactly an attribute that most presidents elect would be looking for in their incoming intelligence chief.
But I think Meredith is right that, you know, Trump was clearly not putting vetting first. He was clearly looking for loyalty, wanting to shake things up in Washington. But I would also add to that he is really testing the guardrails here with these picks. These are people who he knows are going to make the Senate very uncomfortable, who he knows would have a very uphill battle in any normal confirmation environment.
But he also knows from four years of being president and four years of not being president how thoroughly he has a grip on his party, and he's really trying to say, I think you know, I dare you to reject these people. I dare than I'm willing to provide. I dare you to say that this person is beyond the pale, and the question is going to be where does the Senate dig in its heels if anywhere?
I think Mark's right that it's very unlikely that he is going, that Trump is going to pull any of these people back. But I do think its a possibility that one or some of them are going to fall by the wayside in this -- in this next several weeks or even when the new Congress gets sworn in. And they have to really start that confirmation hearing process.
RAJU: And the question is, you know, if one goes down, it's hard to see more than one going on. If you're a Republican voting to block one of these cabinet nominees, because you say you don't like Tulsi Gabbard, how do you expend the political capital and the risk the backlash from Trump and take down RFK Jr., or take down Matt Gaetz? It's going to be very difficult for them and Trump knows that. He knows it's going to be difficult for them to block his nominees.
ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: He's flood the zone with these picks and force Republicans to choose and I think it's interesting to me that he brought Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. to the UFC event last night. He is frankly giving, I think, supporter based permission structure. And he's made these folks stars over the course of this campaign.
I mean, and in some ways it's easy to view this, I think, through a different lens. Like this is also just a person who won following through on campaign promises. He promised retribution he promised vengeance. And he promised these kind of figures having prominent places in his administration, and he's delivering it.
And for a lot of those supporters, that is the point of the Trump vote. And so I don't think that's the fullness of the electorate. We saw on Tuesday. I think for a lot of people, they rejection of the administration and weren't thinking of this as an endorsement of every single thing he's talked about.
But for the hardcore base, the folks he listens to the most, they voted for Trump for the purposes of RFK Jr. riling the big pharma, right? And so, the -- what they are going to force those Republican senators to do is make a choice on those calls, and they will be doing so with the backing of the electorate. I don't think it's -- I don't think we can just say that they won't get through. I will believe it when I see it.
RAJU: Yeah.
CAPUTO: I mean, and it really looks like ancient Rome here. This is sort of the conquering Republican Caesar who's going into the Colosseum and everyone's cheering, and he's got his political gladiators with him. That appearance isn't just about him enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to only are you entertained, but these are my people. And are you willing to fight? Because here's who I have.
MCGRAW: And are any of us surprised by this? I feel like for anybody who has been covering Trump's campaign or his movement the past few years, these picks, sure, they're raising eyebrows to say the least. But --
CAPUTO: A familiar character.
MCGRAW: Yes, exactly. They've been with him at all these rallies. They've played a key role in where he's at now.
RAJU: Yeah. And before you jump in, Julie, another person who was there, of course, was Elon Musk and the question is what role is he playing? Which seems to be a pretty significant role in all of this.
There was controversy that was stirred just yesterday, about as Trump is trying to figure out one of his critical picks, the Treasury Department. Elon Musk tried to put his finger on the scale.
He tweeted his support for Howard Lutnick for treasury secretary.
[08:10:00]
You can see his tweet on the screen there. And he was criticizing another -- another potential nominee Scott Bessent, who is actually was seen as one person that Trump was looking at now. And that's really caused a stir in Trump world.
The question is, how does Trump manage this relationship with Elon Musk as he becomes president? Is there a risk of this going sideways?
DAVIS: Well, I mean, Elon Musk now has a huge seat at the table both in Trumps ear and just sort of in general, given his role in this transition, given the business he is already doing with the United States government predating his relationship, his close relationship with Donald Trump.
So I think Trump will have to manage that. And he was joking on the Hill last week about how he can't get rid of Elon Musk. And Elon Musk is always at Mar-a-Lago.
RAJU: And the fact that he was even at the Hill says something, too, right?
DAVIS: It's a lot.
RAJU: To the House GOP.
DAVIS: Right, exactly, right he drew laughter, but he might not have been joking.
It is going to be a big factor. But I think it's also worth noting that, you know, if you put up that that chart of the picks from 2016 and remembering how upset and frustrated Trump was when he tried to do things in his first term and wasn't able to do them, and was getting pushback from his own administration.
So a lot of this is about him reacting to that not wanting to play that game again responding obviously to his base for sure. But whereas back then it was very sort of opaque who was really pulling the strings and calling the shots with, you know, who he was going to choose? This is all playing out very much in public, like you like you can see with that Musk tweet and people are in his ear and very outwardly saying to the world, this is who he's listening to and here's what I think.
RAJU: That's so fascinating. We'll see how that eventually plays out. But stick with us. There's a lot more to discuss, including Republicans in the House who are among the people who know Matt Gaetz the best.
So what do they actually think of him, and how are Senate Republicans going to handle his nomination for attorney general?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Senator Kennedy, what do you think of Matt Gaetz as attorney general?
SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): Happy Thanksgiving!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:16:24] RAJU: The Capitol is a clubby place. The relationships matter, and if you've burned bridges, it can come back to haunt you.
That's just one of the problems facing now former Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is Trump's pick to be attorney general.
Now, Gaetz has spent years sparring with fellow Republicans and unapologetically led the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as speaker, enraging many in his party.
His slash and burn politics and controversies such as alleged sexual misconduct, which he denies left Republicans at a loss of words as they grapple with the prospects of Gaetz becoming the nation's top law enforcement official.
Now, House Republicans don't have a vote in the confirmation process, but they know him very well. So what do they think of his expected nomination? Well, some were, shall we say, creative with their words.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU: You've had some pretty strong views of Matt Gaetz. You stand by what you said about him in the past.
REP. TONY GONZALES (R-TX): And that's kind of a quiet guy. We're all still trying to get to know who he is. But soon enough, the American people will get to know who he is.
REP. AUSTIN SCOTT (R-GA): And there were a lot, of lot of other people that I would have selected but I'm not -- I'm not Donald Trump, and he's the president. He's got the right to select his cabinet. It wasn't my decision to make, but I would have made a different one. I can tell you that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: My panel is back. A lot of Republicans say they would have made a different one.
Florida man, Marc Caputo, you've covered Matt Gaetz for many, many years. This is what you wrote in the bulwark. Donald Trump is dead serious about getting Matt Gaetz to DOJ. A Trump adviser tells you everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional BS.
Gaetz was the only one who said, yeah, I'll go over there and start cutting F-ing heads. Trump is not backing off.
CAPUTO: No, Matt Gaetz has a podcast where he calls himself firebrand. And as you pointed out, like the bridges he burns lights his way. And so he's not only just going full offense here, he is behind closed doors when he's talking to senators, presenting a different side of Matt Gaetz.
He's talking about his populism. He's talking about his support for marijuana legalization. Its a different character that you're seeing or that you're hearing about behind the scenes than you're seeing publicly. But ultimately, what you members, I think you're going to hear from the senators, which a lot of these guys are going to fold like a cheap suit.
RAJU: Yeah. We'll see if they do. And I spent last week talking to a number of Republicans and the feelings are just still so raw about Matt Gaetz especially everything that he did leading to the ouster of Kevin McCarthy.
One, a Republican, Max Miller of Ohio. I asked him how he viewed the Gaetz nomination.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MAX MILLER (R-OH): I'm looking at him as a member of Congress and the job that he has done here, and it has been abhorrent. I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I just say the quiet part out loud, and I wish other my colleagues would have the same courage to do so.
But him, as a member of Congress should not be the most powerful law enforcement individual in our country, and everyone knows it and he's not going to get confirmed. And so, this is solely based off of his job as a member of Congress. Within this body that has caused more harm, made us spend more money, has put us in more parallelization than any other member.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Now, he and Gaetz have a personal feud, and Gaetz has a lot of personal views. But he said, I just say the quiet part out loud, and I wish other of my colleagues would have the same courage to do so.
DAVIS: Well, Matt Gaetz has a lot of personal feuds with a lot of members of Congress. Obviously, Kevin McCarthy was one of them. Max Miller is one of them. There are many in the House. There are some in the Senate.
He spent a lot of the last several years trolling Republican senators on social media and on TV.
[08:20:01]
I think, you know senators are used to having nominees put in front of them that they think are not qualified, that they don't particularly think can do the job. But it is a kind of a unique experience. I think, for them to have somebody who they personally revile so much. I'm not saying all Republicans, but many of them.
I don't necessarily agree, though, with the last part of Miller's statement there that he can't get confirmed because you see Markwayne -- Senator Markwayne Mullin, with whom he has had a very public, very salacious feud going back for a long time just said last week that, you know, the president should have who he wants in his cabinet. This is not about our personal feelings. This is about the president's personnel picks. RAJU: Yeah.
DAVIS: And I think you're going to see a that road now, if they can couch this as an institutional prerogative, we need to see background information that were not getting. You know, the president is not, you know, playing straight with us, with this nominee, maybe they will make that call but as far as we know there doesn't seem to be a huge appetite for blocking him that.
RAJU: That -- that's well, that's true. However, a lot of members have not expressed their point of view. They're holding it in their point of view. You had mentioned the trolling on social media.
You're "The New York Times" did report about this criticism, about the number of tweets that Gaetz has attacking Senate Republicans, whose votes he needs right now. There's just a handful of them. Mitch McConnell, there was Markwayne Mullin, as you mentioned, Thom Tillis.
He sits on the Senate judiciary committee and also the incoming freshman Senator Tim Sheehy. You know, yes, perhaps they'll fold and fold and they'll back what Trump wants but this is a potentially a 53- 47 Senate. So, four senators could be enough to scuttle this nomination.
HERNDON: Yeah, absolutely and if it does, that's a problem of Gaetz's own making. But I mean, I think back to early parts of last year, I was at CPAC right after the big House speaker fight where Gaetz made the speech about the FBI and ATF coming to heel. And I think back from then to now, and his wing of the party has won.
I mean, Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, like, whoever you want to call it, who kind of made that play against the establishment, congressional Republicans who doubled down with Donald Trump at the time when some other people kind of waffled on him initially. They are being rewarded in this moment.
And I think for a lot of those Republican senators, they are torn between that kind of personal dislike and understanding of Matt Gaetz and the reality that for a lot of people, they see a mandate from Donald Trump's electoral map on last Tuesday. And so I just think its going to be a push and pull. But I don't think its the same type of fights we saw between these wings of the party eight years ago, because there's a sense now that I think Donald Trump and the Gaetz wing is ascendant.
RAJU: Yeah, no question about it. But there's a question about, as Julie mentioned about this ethics investigation that is in the House. Were about to release this report, vote to release this report, and Gaetz suddenly resigned last week. Now the committee does not have jurisdiction over any members -- over members.
They could still release this report even though the investigation essentially is over. The speaker of the House had said in told reporters last week that he was not going to be involved in what happens in ethics. So, there's lots of important reasons for that.
Now. That was on Thursday. On Friday, he changed his tune.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I'm going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that is not the way we do things in the House. And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.
RAJU: You do want to see that information.
SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): We should be able to get a hold of it. And we should have access to it one way or another.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Now, that last comment from the Senate, Republican mike rounds who wants to see that report? But Johnson says it would set a terrible precedent even though there has been situations in the past where the House Ethics Committee, also the Senate Ethics Committee, have released reports after a member has resigned.
What's interesting, though, is that Johnson was with Trump Thursday evening. Do we do you have a sense of whether Trump is leaning on the speaker to block this report?
MCGRAW: Well, I'm glad you pointed out the flip flop we saw and the important place that Johnson was, and that was Palm Beach in between those two comments about Johnson. I think Donald Trump has made clear that he is going to push all of Republicans in Congress to get his people through, no matter what that entails. But I think the big question over this ethics report is going to hang over Gaetz's confirmation fight. And whether or not that's going to come out, you know, whether or not senators are going to demand that they see that before they make any decision.
RAJU: We'll see. I mean, and, of course, Gaetz denies those allegations. But if you can imagine the shoe being on the other foot, if Nancy Pelosi had said that the House Ethics Committee should not release a nominee, I'm sure Republicans would have something to say about that.
All right. Coming up, my new reporting on the divide facing Democrats as they struggle to chart their path back to power.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:29:26]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Do you as leader of the party accept any blame for the Democrats' bad night?
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), MAJORITY LEADER: Look, when you -- when you face a setback, you have to pick yourself. Examine what happened. You have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off. You have to learn. We're going to spend a long time learning and then figure out where -- how to go forward and move forward. And that's what we're going to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: And Democrats are in the early stages in trying to determine what went so terribly wrong for them in the elections, and there's no consensus.
[08:30:00]
Moderate Democrats believe the party shifted too far to the left. Progressives say they struggled to properly convey the benefits of their agenda. And all sides agree they have failed to tap into the deep unrest over economic conditions and the direction of the country.
So Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, has kicked off a series of listening sessions with his members which have grown tense at times.
In the first postmortem meeting, several Democrats said the party had a lackluster approach to addressing issues like border security and crime. And Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar pointedly told his colleagues Washington language doesn't work.
My panel is back. So just to get a sense on the debate that's happening within the party, this is how two center left Democrats described what they believe went wrong for them a couple weeks ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: What was the biggest mistake that needs to be corrected.
REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): Well, obviously we've lost touch with the majority of Americans. Democrats have a habit of preaching down to people and telling them that if they don't, 100 percent agree with our orthodox view, often defined by the far left then they're just bad people. They're morally wrong.
And that's not going to win us any election.
REP. JARED MOSKOWITZ (D-FL): We have policy issues that are out of touch with the American people. Our tents got to get bigger. We got to be more accepting of positions all across the spectrum without the shaming and the canceling that goes on on our side of the aisle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Pretty blunt words there. I mean, how do they how do they accomplish that, though? It's easier said than done.
HERNDON: Yes. And I mean, it's interesting because I think there's ways to see this as a fight ideologically, but a lot of the people that folks are blaming are not literal members of the Democratic Party, more like activists and outside groups who sometimes speak for the Democratic Party and those things can get conflated.
But I mean it's not as if Kamala Harris, as a candidate, was walking around talking about deeply progressive issues or talking about identity or talking about big cultural things. I don't really -- I don't really see that.
If, you know, when I hear Representative Moulton and talk about the lecturing tone that comes from Democrats, I certainly think that can be true. But on the biggest issue that was probably true for in the last four years was inflation.
And I think for two years, the Biden White House was basically trying to tell folks their problems weren't as big or the economy was better than the indicators were telling folks felt.
And so it wasn't a right-left thing where that was happening. It was really a party that was in service of an incumbent and an unpopular administration, and a bunch of people across right and left who did not have the political courage to stand up and say that some of that was unpopular.
And that cuts across a lot of different groups. I just think some of the ideological handwringing isn't, to me, reflective of the last four years, because it was progressive and moderate who refused to face the evidence in front of them.
RAJU: It's an interesting point because there's also this debate about tactics and about messaging.
And I put that question about to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I asked her about, you know, why did some people in her district, a very liberal district, vote for Trump and vote for her?
And she boiled it down to a communication failure of Democrats.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): there are so many ways in which we couldn't be more different in terms of a policy stance. but I think there are things we can learn about digital communication, about constant direct communication with people, and about sending a very clear and easy to understand message, even if those messages are very, very different in their values, proposals and dispositions.
RAJU: So you think it's a messaging thing? It's not --
OCASIO-CORTEZ: No, I mean, I think there's a lot -- there's a -- its much more than just a message. There's the macroeconomic conditions that I think are inescapable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: But she also says easy to understand message like "make America great again"?
HIRSCHFELD-DAVIS: Right and --
RAJU: Or "Kamala broke it, Trump will fix it". HIRSCHFELD-DAVIS: Right. And I think that you know, one of the things that Democrats are grappling with right now is that they I think really expected that this branding they did of themselves as the responsible people, the people who were like keeping government running when Trump was trying to -- when the, you know, the hard right on, on Capitol Hill and Trump from the outside was trying to shake things up and, and things, you know, were going to be chaotic.
That that was a message that would really resonate with voters. Clearly what voters seemed to want was shaking things up and not this like brand of stability and we are the establishment and we are, you know, the people with the power that they thought was going to work.
And I think that's one of the things that they're really having to figure out right now is they do want to be seen as the responsible stewards of government, but that clearly did not win over the voters that they needed to, you know, win the presidency, keep control of the Senate, you know, win control of the House.
RAJU: How do you see the handwringing.
CAPUTO: I see the handwringing is a little overwrought. I mean, ultimately, campaigns rise and fall on those candidates. And in 2024, Donald Trump was a better candidate who ran a better campaign than Kamala Harris.
[08:34:49]
CAPUTO: And Democrats are, I think, are loathe to admit that Kamala Harris, you see it on another network. They talk about how she ran a flawless campaign. She didn't. She lost for a reason.
And so while these questions are important for parties to accept, the most important thing is you got to have great candidates. And if you don't have great candidates, you got to have better candidates than the other side.
(CROSSTALKING)
HERNDON: Can I just add, though, Democrats also in the last two elections have used this emergency lever framing that democracy was on the line, that Donald Trump had broken everything and that you had to -- and so it was a kind of gun to the head thing to voters.
And so one of the things I think they're wrestling with is they've used the nuclear option, and it didn't land.
And so it has to be a question of, you know of a broader message of a different type of candidate there has to be some level of introspection because the kind of forced urgency was clearly, to Julie's point, not motivating.
RAJU: Go ahead.
MCGRAW: And it's hard to make that argument when somebody can't afford their groceries. And they're worried about if they can pay for their babysitter or who's going to like, you know, cover for them when they're taking the second shift.
And so when you're like you said, when you're talking about democracy is at risk, we have this emergency lever for people who are making really tough decisions about their own home, their kids' livelihoods. It seemed tone deaf.
RAJU: Yes. So much they'll have to digest and how will they change or adapt? We shall see. A huge question in the next version of Trump and his administration.
So what's up next? Why is Mike Johnson meeting with Donald Trump this weekend? And how are they going to handle a major deadline looming over Washington.
[08:36:25]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
RAJU: Speaker Mike Johnson this past week quickly learned the first lesson of serving with Donald Trump. Be ready to be blindsided. As the House GOP clings to power with the narrowest of majorities with a 218 to 211 advantage over Democrats and six races still uncalled, Johnson thought Trump was done poaching House Republicans after selecting Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz to serve in his administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: President Trump fully understands and appreciates the math here. And it's just a numbers game.
I think he and the administration are well in tune to that. I don't -- I don't expect that we will have more members leaving but I'll leave that up to him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Then the next day Trump announced he wanted Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, making the slim majority even slimmer.
Now, this weekend, Johnson is meeting with Trump and is on a mission to get on the same page with an ambitious legislative agenda starting in January and as he tried to close out this year's business with Joe Biden still in power.
My panel is back. So, I mean what's key is that there are some major issues that Donald Trump needs to deal with early on his administration. And there's one that he's not even the president yet but he has huge sway over, which is to fund the government past December 20th.
Republicans have not made a decision on how to deal with that. And Trump's going to have huge say. Does he kick it into his new administration? Have to clean up the mess. They clean up everything that's been left over. And also raising the national debt limit to avoid a debt default. This happens time and time again. But Trump is going to have to confront this early in his administration. This is going to be a very complicated beginning of his administration.
HIRSCHFELD-DAVIS: Right. I mean, we are going to see a repeat, most likely of what we saw the last two years, which is this very tiny majority that Mike Johnson has to corral.
And there are many members on the Republican side who do not like to vote for spending bills. They do not like to vote to raise the debt ceiling. Whether that means a shutdown or a debt default. They don't particularly care. They don't want to do it.
And so it's going to be a very tricky dance for him the way it's been the last two years. And having Trump in the White House doesn't necessarily make it any easier because there's going to be a lot of pressure to, you know, hold the line and do what he wants where -- but the numbers still aren't there for them, I'm sure.
RAJU: And speaking of toeing the line, this is Congressman Troy Nehls who is an ally of Donald Trump's and talking about how Republicans need to essentially do what Trump is asking.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TROY NEHLS (R-TX): we have a unified government now because of Donald J. Trump. No one else. Donald J. Trump made that happen. And so now it is incumbent upon the House of Representatives and the Senate to look at president Trumps agenda and his mission statement.
He's going to have a mission statement. And we do not waiver off that mission statement. We follow it every single word of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Follow every single word of it.
CAPUTO: That is so beta, it's gamma. I mean -- but I think it's more indicative of what you're going to be seeing. But in the end as we were kind of talking about in the break, is these debt ceiling votes just basically need to be canceled.
They serve nothing. It creates congressional drama, which is just not needed. So we're just in the Kabuki theater.
RAJU: So we're still going to see it again.
But one of the things that will be also test the Senate Republican, the new Republican majority leader John Thune, who takes office. He takes that position at the beginning of next year, is what to do if these nominees go down, these cabinet nominees in the issue of recess appointments.
Now there is -- the Senate is unable to pass a resolution to actually go into recess. Potentially there's this untested legal theory that Trump could essentially call and force the Senate to go into recess. There's a section of the Constitution -- it's there on your screen that says the president can essentially do that if they essentially call for a recess point.
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RAJU: This has not been this has not been tested, forcing the Senate to go into recess. It would be rather unprecedented if he did it.
Do you have -- do you think that Trump would go down this route, essentially force these nominees through, force them via a recess appointment, short circuit the Senate if he has to.
MCGRAW: He's made clear that he would certainly like to. But I think if you are a Republican senator on the Hill, you're looking at any way to make sure that that doesn't happen and that they can still go through the normal hoops of getting some of these people confirmed.
RAJU: And that's going to be the complication for John Thune, right? He's going to have to weigh what Trump is demanding with the prerogatives of senators. They want to be able to review these nominees and vote on them.
And if they go down, those nominees should withdraw. They think -- Trump may not think.
HERNDON: He asked for it. Yes.
I mean, Mike Johnson -- I've been impressed with kind of how he's navigated the Trump relationship of it all. Senate Republicans are going to have a harder job on their hands.
So frankly, what is the political space they have to push back against Donald Trump like we are going to have -- it's going to be a test of their willingness to go beyond where a lot of their party is, because for the majority of the Republican electorate and the majority of House Republicans, Donald Trump will say jump and they'll say, how high? Right.
So, like Senate Republicans have to be willing to go past that. And I just don't know where that lands. You know, like you all have maybe more of an idea, but I think that we should assume that that courage or willingness is there.
RAJU: Yes, it's going to be so fascinating to watch. Significant of course, consequential. Thank you guys, all for chatting in.
But we're not done yet. We have more to discuss coming up, including what Dr. Sanjay Gupta who will join me with new reporting on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And a preview of his special on weight loss drugs.
That's next.
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(COMMERCIAL BREAK) RAJU: President-elect Donald Trump's selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sent shockwaves through not just the political world but also the public health community.
And who better to break down the fallout than CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who has a new special on weight loss drugs preparing -- premiering tonight.
Sanjay, great to see you this morning. --
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
RFK Jr. has said that he wants to tackle high rates of obesity and diabetes in the U.S. But RFK Jr. says it should be done with better food and not these new weight loss drugs.
GUPTA: Yes. I mean look, this is -- both these things can be true sort of at the same time, right?
I mean we have a terrible food supply. I think 70 percent of chronic disease in the United States is probably due in some ways to how we nourish ourselves if you look at the data.
And yet, at the same time, we know increasingly that for some people, not everybody, people who have obesity, it is very much a reflection of their genes.
There's now a thousand different genes that are associated with obesity in some obesity the way that we used to talk about depression which was also very stigmatized.
I mean you know, depression was one of those things where people thought, just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You don't need to take medications.
And maybe that's the case for some people, but for others, it's a clinical problem in which -- for which medications can be very helpful.
So, you know, it's just a -- it's interesting with him, Manu. It's sort of a reductionist view of the world. Taking these complicated problems and boiling them down to a single solution which, by the way, he's not the first person to say -- you know I've written books about this.
Many people have been talking about the food supply for some time in this country, saying that that needs to be addressed.
But at the same time we now have options for people for whom nothing has worked. They've been trying to eat right, exercise, done all the right things. It's not worked. And now these medications for that percentage of people may provide a real benefit.
RAJU: And Sanjay, we are looking forward, of course, to your special that's premiering tonight here on CNN and you've done extensive traveling and reporting about all these weight loss drugs and the like so what did you learn about how the development of these new weight loss drugs has changed our understanding of obesity.
GUPTA: Well, you know, first of all, Manu, can I just say, you know, it's great to be a journalist where you can just travel around the world for a year, investigate something and just dive deep into it which is what we got to do. It was really fascinating.
I think there were so many insights that I gleaned. I spent a lot of time in Denmark for example, where the original drugs like Ozempic came from, from Novo Nordisk.
Two things, you know the drugs have been in shortage almost since they started becoming popular. And part of the reason for that, Manu, is that they did not anticipate, these drug manufacturers, just how popular these drugs would become.
They thought, look, are people going to really want to inject themselves with medications like this for obesity. They thought not. These pens themselves. I don't know if you've ever seen one of these, Manu, but these pens, that's really what goes into shortage.
These are 14 different parts. Each one of them is patented. They have to be assembled. So the pens are really what's driving the shortage. They're trying to fix that sort of problem now.
So that was fascinating. But the biggest thing I think for me as a neuroscientist, Manu, is that you know, we're increasingly thinking of obesity as a as a brain disease, specifically an area of the brain around here called the hypothalamus.
Some people when they eat, they don't feel full. They don't feel full. While they're eating, they're already thinking about their next meal. They don't have enough food in the pantry they start to get anxiety.
[08:54:49]
GUPTA; It's really interesting. So for them, these hormones can actually send a signal to the brain that they've eaten enough food. And I thought that that was another just fascinating insight in terms of how we look at certain diseases like this.
And it's important because, you know, again, it can -- it can really help some people.
RAJU: Yes.
GUPTA: Not everybody, but some.
RAJU: It's just fascinating. Fascinating. I can't wait to watch this tonight, Sanjay. So much great reporting. A lot of people have so much interest in this too, as well.
Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much for joining me this morning.
GUPTA: Thanks for having me.
RAJU: Absolutely. And we'll be sure to tune in. Tonight everyone, please watch "DR.
SANJAY GUPTA REPORTS: IS OZEMPIC RIGHT FOR YOU?" Premiering tonight 8:00 p.m. Eastern here on CNN.
And that's it for Inside Politics Sunday. You can follow me on X @mkraju. Follow the show @INSIDEPOLITICS, follow me on Instagram @manu_raju.
And if you ever miss an episode, catch up wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for INSIDE POLITICS.
Up next, "STATE OF THE UNION WITH JAKE TAPPER AND DANA BASH". Jake's guests include House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator-Elect Ruben Gallego, SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN, and Senator-Elect Adam Schiff.
Thanks again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. We'll see you next time.
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