Return to Transcripts main page
Inside Politics
Dems Divided Over Hunter Biden Pardon; Axios: "Hunter Biden Pardon Deepens Dem's Identity Crisis"; Filmmaker Behind "2000 Mules" Movie Admits Some Claims Are Flawed; Musk & Ramaswamy To Meet With House GOP This Week About Their New Roles Government Cost Cutters. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired December 03, 2024 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:00]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- giving up the moral high ground, but should they? We'll discuss, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BASH: Shocked and speechless, that's how many Democrats say they're feeling after President Biden announced he's pardoning his son, Hunter Biden. But to be sure, other Democrats are applauding the move. One saying, way to go, Joe, which is why Axios framed it this way.
They called it Dems identity crisis, adding, "Some Democrats believe Biden has sacrificed a moral high ground. Others see that framing as hopelessly naive."
[12:35:08]
Let's discuss with former Biden White House Correspondent Communications Director Kate Bedingfield and former campaign adviser for Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid, among many other Republican campaigns, Terry Sullivan. Nice to see you in person.
TERRY SULLIVAN, FMR. CAMPAIGN MANAGER, MARCO RUBIO'S 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Good to see you.
BASH: Nice to see you, too, but I see him less often.
I want to play some examples of Democrats who are coming at this from different directions, starting with Michael Bennet, who spoke to Kaitlan Collins last night. And then -- well, let's do that. And then I'll tell you who's coming next.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D), COLORADO: That is incredibly unhelpful when you think about the precedent that it's going to set for Donald Trump. It's a gift to Donald Trump because he's going to come here and claim that he's just doing what Joe Biden did.
BASH: OK, so now I want you to listen to Jasmine Crockett, Democrat from Texas, who argues like many others that Donald Trump is going to do it anyway. And we should be prepared to fight like they do. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
REP. JASMINE CROCKETT (D), TEXAS: The American people are tired of us bringing a butter knife to a real fight, a real war. I applaud the president because the American people have been so upset with Democrats not fighting back and not fighting with the same tools that the Republicans have been fighting with.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Kate?
KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I don't think that there is an equivalency here between what Joe Biden did in pardoning his son and what Donald Trump has campaigned on for the last year and a half in saying he was going to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.
So, you know, I think this argument, you know, that Senator Bennet, for example, is making that somehow this is -- this opened the floodgates for Donald Trump to do things he wasn't going to do that.
BASH: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: So I'm sorry, that's ludicrous. That is a ludicrous argument. That being said, I understand why Democrats are frustrated by this. And to me, the issue is not actually about the pardon itself, which I think is a completely valid and legitimate response to the way in which Trump has said openly that he's going to pursue Joe Biden's son.
But I understand the frustration about the President having said many times that he would not do this --
BASH: You know him well.
BEDINGFIELD: -- and then turning around and doing it.
BASH: Why? Why did he say that?
BEDINGFIELD: I think he genuinely -- I think he believes that this is something that he is doing to protect his son. He's willing to take on the political consequences. I don't think that he was intentionally misleading people.
I think he very much hoped that it would not come to this. But I think -- and look, I'm not -- I want to be clear, I'm not speaking for him.
BASH: No, I know.
BEDINGFIELD: But, you know, I think --
BASH: It's the reality.
BEDINGFIELD: I think the reality is when Donald Trump won this election and started to nominate people like Kash Patel, I think Joe Biden looked at that and said, I'm not going to allow my only surviving son to be -- you know, to spend a chunk of his time in jail for something that is, you know, has -- that he believes has been politically motivated.
We can debate that --
BASH: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: -- by the way.
BASH: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: But I -- you know, I think that's probably what happened.
BASH: And Terry, that -- the decision we're told happened Saturday night. Saturday was also the day that Kash Patel was formally picked to be FBI director.
SULLIVAN: I mean, look, you can come up with all sorts of excuses. I think the closest thing is once the Joe Biden thought that his party was no longer in power, you know, that's when suddenly it's, oh, I didn't mean what I've been saying for the past three, four years, like I take it back.
But the bigger problem here -- and this is a snapshot, a perfect snapshot of why the modern Democrat Party is in problem. Because it's the sanctimonious nature of -- if you elect Donald Trump, it's going to be the end of democracy.
He's going to use the justice system to weaponize and he's -- Joe Biden just did that. Like, the party of gun control is like pardoning someone who committed a gun crimes convicted of them and has staffers entering the Capitol with high magazine clips like -- but yet if I own a gun, I'm a bad person. And if it really is -- it's the double standard that Democrats have really ratcheted up, that's really the problem for that party in Middle America.
BEDINGFIELD: But I don't think these two things are comparable. You're talking about Joe Biden, within the scope of his presidential power, protecting his son, again, we can have a debate about whether that's politically right, whether it's morally right.
That is very different than Donald Trump's stated goal in terms of what he wants to do with the Justice Department, which is actively pursuing --
SULLIVAN: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: -- people who he says are his political enemies. Those are just fundamentally two different things.
SULLIVAN: Hold on.
BEDINGFIELD: Now, I will grant you, and again, I have just -- I've just said --
SULLIVAN: Right.
BEDINGFIELD: -- I think the fact that Joe Biden said many times he wouldn't do this, and then did it. I understand why people are upset about that. I wish that he had framed it differently when he talked about whether this was still something he was considering because clearly he was. But I think that suggesting the two are somehow equivalent.
BASH: Yes.
SULLIVAN: Well --
BASH: I want you to speak to, as you answer, to what Jasmine Crockett said. Just on the raw politics of this --
SULLIVAN: Right, right.
BASH: -- because that's what you do for a living. The American people are tired of us, the Democrats, bringing a butter knife to a real fight.
SULLIVAN: Yes.
[12:40:10]
BASH: And they're, you know, like it's Donald Trump's -- I'm just -- this is basically our -- it's Donald Trump's America --
SULLIVAN: Right.
BASH: -- never mind the questions of whether or not he would get in and really try to more aggressively pursue Hunter Biden which is why clearly the President had that very wide window of the time period where Hunter Biden was seriously ill and --
SULLIVAN: Longer than anybody else has ever been pardoned in history except for Richard Nixon. Like, that's a sweeping pardon.
BASH: But what about the politics of it?
SULLIVAN: That's what I'm saying. The politics of it -- and again, it really goes back to -- that the Democrat Party has become the party of the ivory tower, of the elite. And it used to be the party of being able to -- like the acceptance of everyone.
What I remember is when I was in college and first figuring things out as politics, like Democrats, one thing that was appealing is they were open to everyone and didn't judge, they were accepting. It is now become the party that judges everyone, how you use your pronouns, what you do for a living, what school -- like it is so sanctimonious. And so that's really been the problem in my mind of elections for the Democrats.
BASH: So that's why this to go on your sort of notion there, that this hypocrisy is so vast --
SULLIVAN: Right.
BASH: -- and so pronounced, it's not as if Republicans aren't hypocritical in other ways.
SULLIVAN: Absolutely.
BASH: Yes.
SULLIVAN: But Republicans didn't say if you elect Joe Biden, it's the end of democracy. This is an existential threat to America. And so that's the point, is that, look, it's a campaign. There's a winner, there's a loser. America will go on one way or the other. It always has.
And so it's this nature that this is a do or die kind of challenge and then turns around and --
BEDINGFIELD: But there's a difference between --
BASH: Real quick, yes.
BEDINGFIELD: -- Trump aiding and abetting people who are storming the capitol because they don't like the outcome of an election. And Joe Biden exercising a presidential power to protect his child. Those are just two -- I think those are two --
SULLIVAN: Yes.
BEDINGFIELD: -- really different things.
BASH: Yes, who, by the way, he, Joe Biden, feels genuinely guilty about.
BEDINGFIELD: Absolutely.
BASH: Because if not for him, politically --
BEDINGFIELD: Absolutely.
BASH: -- Hunter Biden would not have been in this. Also, we had addiction issues. That's a whole other conversation.
Everybody stay put. Coming up, a quiet confession. A major MAGA conspiracy theorist is now admitting parts of his film about the 2020 election lie were based on bad information. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:47:11]
BASH: It turns out the widely debunked movie that served as a central pillar of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen is based on claims that are flawed. CNN Senior Correspondent Donie O'Sullivan is on the story. DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Dana, so the key allegation in this movie, "2000 Mules", it basically uses cell phone geolocation data along with video surveillance footage to make this bogus claim that voter drop boxes that are used all across the country were sites of major mass election fraud during the 2020 election.
Now, the movie actually debuted close to here back in 2022 at Mar-a- Lago. It has been embraced by Trump and really across the entire MAGA movement as proof, they say, that the 2020 election was stolen. Nobody's been able to stand up the claims in this movie including authorities across the country and election officials who have investigated this.
And Dinesh D'Souza, who is the creator of the movie apologized over the past week because one person who is seen in the movie on video surveillance footage, who the movie alleges is a so-called mule, somebody who is stuffing votes into a voter drop box to steal the election.
That man sued, he sued the movie makers because he was not a voter mule, he was not trying to steal the election, he was just dropping off a ballot for himself and his family. He was a man in Georgia. So D'Souza, who by the way, D'Souza was pardoned by Trump, we should mention in Trump's first term as president apologized this week but still stands by, he says, the other false and bogus claims that are in this so-called documentary. Dana?
BASH: Thank you, Donie.
And coming up, Donald Trump's billionaire bestie plans to take a hatchet to government agencies. We're going to tell you what could be on the chopping block. Straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:53:38]
BASH: Two billionaires are gearing up for their new jobs as cost cutters. This week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will meet with House Republicans about their plans to helm Donald Trump's new Department of Government Efficiency, while federal employees wait trepidation.
CNN's Hadas Gold has done extensive reporting on Elon Musk. Nice to see you in person. Let's start with the agencies and what you're hearing that they are considering for the chopping block.
HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Well, just to put out there, a reminder that this Department of Government Efficiency, it's an advisory board. It's not an official agency. So they will make recommendations to the Office of Management and Budget.
And I do like to point out the sort of, Ironic hypocrisy of, you know, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy. They like to rail against the unelected bureaucrats making these decisions. But Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy themselves are unelected and they are going to be in this very important advisory role. But they put out, you know, some statements about the agencies and what they plan to cut. They wrote this Wall Street Journal opinion piece. They want to cut $500 billion in annual spending. Some of the agencies and the programs they've specifically mentioned are the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
That is a very important funder to NPR, to National Public Radio. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. International organizations, progressive groups like Planned Parenthood, and there's elements of plenty of other agencies that they plan to cut.
I've talked to people in the Department of Labor, EPA, all of them are girding themselves essentially for what they expect to be massive cuts.
[12:55:05]
Now there is a question because you can't just cut agencies because they are created by acts of Congress, so you would need Congress in order to cut these agencies as well. And also, the vast majority of the nearly $7 trillion that is spent in the federal budget is on things like social security, Medicare --
BASH: Yes.
GOLD: -- and of course, defense. So there's a big question, yes, you might be able to cut some of these agencies here and there, and that is a lot of money, but it isn't going to make as much of a dent as they want.
BASH: Unelected billionaires trying to cut the jobs of unelected bureaucrats. It's lovely. There is some concern, not just about people's jobs but about their personal safety, given the way that they are, particularly Elon Musk, is behaving on his social media platform.
GOLD: Yes, federal employees that you talk to, civil servants, they are prepared. They know that job cuts are coming. But something that they were not prepared for and that they're very afraid of is being personally targeted by people like Elon Musk.
And that's because just a few weeks ago, we saw Elon Musk posting, reposting some accounts on X that were posting screenshots of this publicly available federal database of civil servants. And they're pointing out what they say were sort of they consider them absurd jobs.
These are things like director of climate diversification, chief climate officer. We have some of these posts on X that he made, and we actually blurred out the names of these civil servants to protect their privacy, which is not something that Elon Musk did when he reposted this.
Now, he reposted these posts with comments like, so many fake jobs. But whatever you think of these jobs and whether they should exist or not, those people that he listed, they are private individuals, they are not public facing individuals, and now they are receiving a torrent of online hate and potentially even more threats offline.
BASH: It's really, really horrible. Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here.
GOLD: Great to be here.
BASH: Thank you for watching Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
