Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Now: Hearing On Dr. Oz Nomination For Medicare & Medicaid Admin; Pentagon Asked To Provide "Military Options" For Panama Canal; Trump Repeatedly Talks About Expanding U.S. Territory; Dylan Mulvaney On Gender Transition Journey, Culture Wars. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 14, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:31:35]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: He was once known as America's doctor. Now, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz is one step closer to leading the agency that oversees health insurance for almost half of all Americans, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Right now, Dr. Oz is testifying at his own confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Oz first rose to fame in the early 2000s when he hosted a popular talk show where he was known to push some questionable or debunked health remedies.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DR. MEHMET OZ, CARDIOTHORACIC SURGEON: What do we look for on the bottle so people don't get taken advantage of?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So it's really important to look for the words garcinia cambogia or GCE, which is garcinia cambogia extract.

OZ: So I was going to take your arsenic, put your hands up if you're thinking about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was arsenic in apple juice, now a new bombshell. Today on Dr. Oz, arsenic found in the food you eat every day. Dr. Oz reveals what it is and what you can do about it.

OZ: Let's just turn now to our nation. You know, part of the reason there was such a stink about arsenic in apple juice, and now I think there'll also be a lot of noise about arsenic in rice, is that we are starting to understand that our food supply is not quite as safe as it needs to be.

Sage leaf tea. All right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sounds good.

OZ: The stuff is great. It's -- you know, like a cup of this with breakfast will dramatically change the way your body's thinking about food.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: CNN's Meg Tirrell joins me now. Meg, this agency that Dr. Oz is nominated to oversee, it's involved in a lot of important work. Drug price negotiatios, decisions about what medications get covered, the Affordable Care Act, it has an enormous impact on millions of Americans and their access to health coverage. Where have we seen the lawmakers focus their questioning so far?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, it's really been sort of a more positively toned hearing than many of the health candidates for these agencies that we've seen so far. Dr. Oz cited his experience on his own show as preparing him for this moment to potentially lead CMS, and it really seems at least to have prepared him to do well in this hearing.

He's elicited laughter from the senators, really even on both sides of the aisle. He has been getting some heated questions from senators, particularly Democratic senators around Medicaid and whether that will be cut back. And that is something that has come up again and again.

But he's also gotten questions that are essentially the same question from both sides of the aisle, from Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, about Medicare Advantage and overbilling essentially in that program. But some of his past statements on his show did come up from Senator Maggie Hassan. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN (D), NEW HAMPSHIRE: In 2012, you enthusiastically recommended several supplements for weight loss on your television show, including a substance called green coffee extract, which we now know was fraudulently marketed. For the record today, can you confirm that you no longer believe that green coffee extract is a miracle weight loss drug?

OZ: I never said that that medication was a miracle weight loss drug, but I am --

HASSAN: Is it -- can you confirm that this was fraudulently marketed and green coffee extract is not a miracle weight loss drug? Yes or no?

OZ: Yes.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

[12:35:00]

TIRRELL: And Dana, it was really his history on this show that made a lot (technical difficulty) nominated for this role leading this huge health care agency that oversees health care for 160 million Americans. But I talked with Andy Slavitt, who was in the same position in the Obama administration. He said he was a little skeptical before Dr. Oz called him after he was nominated.

They now talk several times a week, Slavitt told me this morning. And he's really been won over by how he says Dr. Oz is approaching this from a thoughtful, sort of humble position, trying to learn and coming into it in what Slavitt describes as really an apolitical, nonpartisan position.

Dana?

BASH: Yes, of course, he ran for the United States Senate and could have been there if things had gone differently. What a moment in that hearing.

Thank you so much, Meg. Appreciate your reporting.

Now we're going to go to stories on our political radar. Canadians just got a new prime minister. Mark Carney was sworn in moments ago, taking the reins from Justin Trudeau, who led Canada for nearly a decade. Of course, this change is coming at a crucial moment for America's northern neighbor as President Trump sets his sights on Canada's sovereignty while threatening more tariffs.

Plus, new reporting into CNN, President Trump's plan to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay is facing serious hurdles. My CNN colleagues are reporting that there are concerns from both inside and outside the Trump administration over the unhygienic living conditions and the expensive process of making the U.S. naval base more suitable for deportees, and a crescendo of disapproval.

Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, were greeted by booze at the Kennedy Center here in Washington last night before a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra. Now, last month, President Trump seized control of the institution, replacing its board with staunch allies and naming himself the chairman.

Coming up, President Trump may be drawing a page from the history books. We're going to tell you why the little-known 11th president of the United States may be serving as a model for the 47th. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:41:52]

BASH: President Trump asked the Pentagon to come up with military options to ensure American access to the Panama Canal. It's yet another sign he's serious when he talks about using American might to expand American territory. He's talked about retaking control of the canal, acquiring Greenland, annexing Canada, and seizing Gaza.

Josh Dawsey has some new reporting on one man President Trump is taking inspiration from. His little-known predecessor, James K. Polk, he was a Democrat who served for one term from 1845 to 1849. There you see President Trump in the Oval Office with a portrait of Polk behind him.

Josh, you specifically asked about that portrait, and then that unloaded and unleashed a lot of information that you found. JOSH DAWSEY, POLITICAL INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes, so that portrait was hanging in the U.S. Capitol for a long time. And one morning last month, President Trump called Speaker Johnson and said, I want your painting of Polk. I want to hang it in the Oval Office.

And he said, in exchange for that, I will give you a painting of Thomas Jefferson, because I have two of them. So Mike Johnson took the deal, and then the curators and the staff traded paintings. And into the White House came James K. Polk.

And Trump, when he was unveiling the painting to folks in the Oval Office, said he got a lot of land. And that was what his desire to have Polk in the Oval was for, because Polk had expanded the United States footprint in some pretty significant ways. And people have sort of mocked and divided Trump for wanting Greenland and Canada and, you know, various, you know, the Panama Canal, Gaza.

But he really wants to expand the United States footprint in his presidency. I mean, he talks about it a lot. He's told aides that he really wants to see it happen. I don't know if he will be able to or not. But he might be more serious about this than people are thinking.

BASH: Well, let me just say that you made, one, Ben Gilden (ph), who's the executive producer of this program, very happy, because he is a -- he's a very big fan of President Polk. He's read biographies of him. So thank you so much for making his writing --

DAWSEY: I have a lot of readers write in.

BASH: I bet.

DAWSEY: I mean, I did not realize there was such a large fan club in America of --

BASH: Polk mania.

DAWSEY: -- of James K. Polk.

BASH: I mean, who knew?

DAWSEY: People want more Polk.

BASH: Yes. Well, you know what? We're going to give it to them.

DAWSEY: Yes.

BASH: We're going to give them more Polk right now. Beyond President Polk, just the notion of this expansion that we're hearing from Donald Trump, what do you hear from Republicans on the Hill?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There's so much skepticism about how you execute something like this. And I think, you know, your healthy skepticism of, we'll see if he does this or not is appropriate, because it's so unclear in the times that we're living in how you make that kind of thing happen without some kind of either willing partner who wants to sell it or some kind of military presence, right, which has become the huge question mark that so many senators had, especially after the comments about Gaza.

I mean, I remember there was a lunch right after that in which Republican senators were just heaving one question after another question at the administration because they were so confused about exactly how serious Donald Trump was.

BASH: Let's -- go ahead

[12:45:02]

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So I was just going to say some of the people who aren't taking this lightly as well are foreign leaders, too.

BASH: Yes.

KANNO-YOUNGS: You know, if you're in Canada right now, you know, we have reporting that Trudeau, you know, and in these final days, you know, as he was in power was saying, this is something that, you know, you have to take seriously.

Arab allies are typically allies of the United States also anxious about what this could mean, the real world consequences for this, for people involved.

BASH: Yes, we're not even talking about the Canada at all, which the president keeps talking about. Will you guys come back? Because I also want to explore the unmentioned fact that I think Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth, isn't it?

Yes, it is. OK. So I think King Charles is going to have something to say about this, or he hasn't yet. Anyway, we just went down a rabbit hole.

I'm going to come back out right now. She's faced enormous backlash from Conservatives. The center of what she calls beer gate, her partnership with Bud Light, it erupted, we remember, and now she is a reluctant activist.

We're talking about Dylan Mulvaney, speaking with CNN's Sara Sidner about the culture wars playing out over transgender Americans.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

[12:50:40]

REP. SARAH MCBRIDE (D), DELAWARE: I appear to live rent free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues. The American people deserve serious legislators, serious elected officials who are focused on bringing people together not to play games and not to engage in schoolyard taunts.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: That was Democratic Congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly transgender member of Congress. She's been targeted by Republicans since taking office in January. Some have referred to her as Mr. McBride.

CNN's Sara Sidner joins us now. The issue is playing out in Congress. It is of course playing out in a big way in society as a whole. And you spoke with one of the most well-known members of the transgender community about the culture war that keeps building and the questions about rights for transgender Americans.

Talking about Dylan Mulvaney, what did she say?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR & SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, she said she hopes that there comes a day in our history where we look back at this era and how America treated trans people and we're ashamed of ourselves. That's how she feels about some of these rules that have been put on trans people and some of the laws that have been stripped from trans people.

Dylan Mulvaney became famous for walking her TikTok and Instagram followers through her journey, as she puts it, to becoming a girl, her 365-day journey. And each day, she would show people what it was like to make the transition.

Now, her journey did take a turn that she never saw coming when she did a paid post for Bud Light, and all hell broke loose. Kid Rock began shooting beer cans because he was so upset that the beer company would have hired her for this one post where they put her picture on one of those beer cans. And it was really an out-and-out sort of war on the idea of companies supporting trans people.

She wants to make clear, though, that she doesn't speak for all transgender people, but she says this administration's push to snatch rights away from trans people and force an identity that she does not recognize on her, in her words, just cruel and unjustified. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DYLAN MULVANEY, TRANS INFLUENCER: Well, I just have to remember that no matter what my passport says or, you know, what government official is misgendering me, that doesn't change who I am and who I see every day and who my fellow trans folks are. Like, I think, you know, not to bring it back to Wicked, but they talk about finding a common enemy to kind of distract from what else is going on in the world.

SIDNER: It's really interesting because while that is going on, the first openly transgender member of Congress was put into the congressional building. Delaware made her a congresswoman.

MULVANEY: Well we actually met after I had interviewed the president, and he walked up to me and was like, I was talking to a friend about you. And I was like, Oprah? Like, who? You know, I'm like, what? And I write about me and Sarah becoming friends. And I think what's really special about her is there's very few of us who are, you know, at this level of exposure as a trans person in the public. And I think she really is playing the long game of, like, seeing better days.

And that's what I hope to do, too. But to have each other to kind of lean on --

(END VIDEOCLIP)

SIDNER: It's just fascinating. And when she said the president, she was talking about President Biden. Obviously, Sarah McBride is from Delaware, but that is a real friendship that grew out of controversy, really. Dana?

BASH: And you mentioned Beergate, that she posted something on Instagram, sponsored by Bud Light. You talked about all hell breaking loose. What did she specifically say about all that outrage?

SIDNER: Look, she was surprised by it, to be honest. She's like, I literally did one post, and this was the response. She was hurt by it, and eventually she feared for her life. She received threats. There was a bomb threat made on one of the Anheuser-Busch buildings, factories. It was a scary, scary time for her, but she got through it.

And she really -- what comes out when talking to her is that she was originally a comedian, and she's a theater geek. She's a theater kid and is used to doing theater, so she's quite engaging and quite funny.

[12:55:11]

It is why she has so many millions of followers following her journey. And the people who love her and the people who hate her are there and present, and it's been a really hard road for her. But going forward, she says she is just going to power through this the best she can.

She does not see herself as an activist. She sees herself as a trans person who is just trying to live her best life. And she hopes that people will let her and other trans people do just that, Dana.

BASH: What a great and fascinating and important interview that you did. You said she's a musical theater geek. The piece that you did for your show this morning, there was a clip of her singing.

I want a --

SIDNER: Yes.

BASH: -- Sara Sidner and Dylan duet because I know you have a fantastic voice.

SIDNER: A little Joni Mitchell goes a long way.

BASH: Sure.

SIDNER: I want to hear more and more Joni from her. It was quite amazing. She's got a great voice, by the way, and she's really, really funny. So there's that.

BASH: Sara, thank you so much for staying around for us.

SIDNER: No problem.

BASH: Have a great weekend.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. I hope everybody out there has a great weekend. CNN News Central starts after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)