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Hegseth Says Attack Details he Shared on Signal Were Unclassified, Three People Familiar with Matter Tell CNN They Were Classified; Growing Concerns Over Hegseth's Judgement and Experience; Trump: "I'm Not Sure" if the Information in Signal was Classified; Including Cuts of Nearly 20 Percent of FDA and CDC Workforces, 6 Percent of NIH; HHS to Cut More Than 10,000 Employees in Drastic Overhaul. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 27, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

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MANU RAJU, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on "Inside Politics" spin cycle. The White House is trying to recalibrate its strategy as the world sees proof that top Trump Administration officials discuss an upcoming military strike on that now notorious group chat. We have brand new reporting on how this scandal highlights intensifying concerns about Pete Hegseth's judgment at the Pentagon.

Plus, RFK Jr., about to announce 10,000 job cuts at America's top health agencies. We'll break down what his new priorities at HHS mean for you and your family. And trade war turbulence, President Trump is threatening more tariffs on all cars shipped to the U.S. if top allies follow through on their promise to retaliate.

Is it another negotiated employee or are Americans about to get priced out of the new car market? I'm Manu Raju in for Data Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

First up, brand-new reporting you'll see only here on CNN. Pete Hegseth, the 44-year-old Former Fox Weekend Anchor turned Defense Secretary is facing new doubts from within the Pentagon and from former and current national security officials about his judgment and his ability to do the job.

Hegseth as you may now know, used the Signal messaging app to share details of an imminent military strike in Yemen with other top members of President Trump's national security team. Now the White House insists those details were not classified, but three people familiar with the matter tell CNN that, in fact they were.

One defense official telling CNN, quote, it is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialled for this. My most junior analysts know not to do this. There is a lot to talk about from this new blockbuster report from our Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen and Jamie Gangel. You can read it for yourself @cnn.com.

And all three excellent reporters join me now, along with another excellent CNN Reporter, Phil Mattingly. Natasha, I want to start with you about this. What does this episode say? The Signal episode say about how Pete Hegseth is being viewed right now and whether he can continue on this job?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been a really rocky start for Pete Hegseth over the last several months. And with this Signal fiasco really underscores to a lot of current and former career officials I should note that we spoke to was his inexperience and in- many-cases, his lack of good judgment about the initiatives that he has been undertaking really obviously at the behest of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

But underscoring just how green he actually is in all of this; he's really struggled to get his footing. And I think a great example of that came really out of the gate for him when he took his first trip to Brussels as Secretary of Defense, and he announced to NATO that Ukraine was likely not going to join the alliance, prompting an immediate rebuke from the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, who called it a rookie mistake that really kind of set the tone for his appearances on the world stage and at home moving forward.

And then, you know, you have a number of other initiatives, very high- profile ones, that he has spearheaded here that have really gotten either unravelled or rescinded altogether, and that includes, of course, the DEI purge fiasco that we saw play out at the Pentagon last week and even earlier, where they were trying to remove all of this content from DoD websites.

And in doing so, they removed actually very critically important historical articles and photos, and now they're having to pull a lot of that back, saying that they're going to be republishing that. So that, again, was the result of a memo from Secretary Hegseth that was very vague, did not have a lot of instructions.

And then we see one of the top priorities for this administration, the military deportation flights, and, of course, the use of Guantanamo Bay to hold so many of these migrants that has been significantly scaled back. The military deportation flights have really slowed to a trickle, because DHS has it needed them. And Guantanamo Bay is basically empty of migrants at this point.

RAJU: Yeah.

BERTRAND: So, he's been -- he's been learning on the job, but experts and officials that we spoke to say, look, he's still showing a lot of his inexperience.

RAJU: And he - yet he's been defiant, as he said, just in the aftermath of the Signal controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Nobody's texting more plans. I know exactly what I'm doing, exactly what we're directing, and I'm really proud of what we accomplished, the successful missions that night and going forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, in your excellent article, you write several DoD officials told CNN that Hegseth seems more preoccupied with appearances than with substance, wanting to appear more, quote, lethal than his predecessor, and pulling resources from elsewhere in DoD to achieve that image. Jamie, you've spoken to a lot of military national security intelligence sources about this. What are they telling you?

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JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So, the words that keep coming up are amateur. They're also very concerned about his demeanor. So that may be something that Donald Trump likes, where you see all of that confidence, and he's not going to give an inch.

But when you talk to former very high level -- you know defense department officials, national security officials, they think that kind of bravado actually works against what a Secretary of Defense should be. Think about Lloyd Austin, you would never have seen him -- you know acting like that. It is not the kind of public face they think a Secretary of Defense has. They also don't think it's good for the troops.

RAJU: And one intelligence official is quoted here in your story here, it says, he says -- he or she, the source says the egress actor here is Hegseth. He is in the bull's eye now, because he puts all this out on a Signal Chat. So how -- what kind of protocol breach was this and how serious?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: One thing that we've heard from a number of current and former officials, it wasn't just they were sharing these operational details in an unofficial channel, but he was doing it before the operation had even started. And look, that's the thing that puts, potentially U.S. troop's lives, at risk.

The people that were ultimately going to carry out this mission. It opened the door for adversaries, or potentially anybody that wanted to try to breach that Signal Chat to learn of these details about an imminent operation. So that's really the thing that our sources really pointed to classified.

We've been told by multiple people that that information at the time that he sent it to the chat, to the chat, was classified. But Hegseth has not answered the question, when posed directly in the last 48 hours, did you declassify this information, which beyond whether it was or wasn't classified, suggests and speaks to his lack of experience, and also what people have told us is a lack of judgment, right?

More experienced, more seasoned defense official, national security person, would know that it is a risk to post information like that on an unofficial channel, and its exactly what John Ratcliffe even acknowledged their day during the Senate Hearing. He said that this is the type of information that's posted in classified channels to protect the troops lives.

RAJU: And speaking of -- you know his job security really couldn't come down to an audience of one Donald Trump yesterday at the Oval Office he intended -- he contended that things were going great for Peter Hegseth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this. How do you bring Hegseth into it he had nothing to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: What do you begin saying he has nothing to do with it when he was involved in the Signal Chat and was talking about these strikes before they occurred.

GANGEL: That's Donald Trump. He -- President Trump, used a tremendous amount of political capital to get Pete Hegseth confirmed. This is not -- this was not a candidate that most people were felt had the experience, the gravitas, the background to do this job. So, he's -- you know, this is early on the administration. He does not want him going anyplace. He was also a little faster to sort of put Mike Waltz under the bus for creating the Signal Chat.

But just one quick thing to add. It's really worth going back. And if you go on cnn.com you can read all the texts. It's really worth going to look at what Pete Hegseth said in those texts, because when I talk to top intelligence officials who have been involved in operations like that, they say that even on with this group, the military would not put that level of detail out before an operation. So again, that spoke to his inexperienced lack of judgment.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: I think what's interesting too, when you watch what we saw from the president, and the contrast between the National Security Adviser now the president framed Mike Waltz and how to frame Pete Hegseth is. There is no question that Pete Hegseth has been effective with the audience of one.

The difficulty in this moment is that investment in his confirmation was not just at 1600 Pennsylvania. It was on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue as well, and that's where what Natasha was talking about, in particular Senate Armed Service Committee Chair Roger Wicker -

RAJU: So much Capitol he used for this.

MATTINGLY: And has said it publicly that he really went all out, and was a little frustrated during some of the NATO comments that I did all this for you. Maybe take a beat before you start undercutting my critical priorities. And it's not just mad.

You know, Natasha had a great scoop a couple weeks ago about the consideration of consolidating combatant commands, basically stopping the transformation or modernization of the U.S. Japan force posture. Those are things that Republican lawmakers care deeply about. And that elicited a joint statement from the House and Senate -

RAJU: That was pretty remarkable.

MATTINGLY: -- Republican chairs, saying, no, that's not how this works. And I think the issue right now that you hear we talked about, say, look, Trump is happy. Hegseth is executing on the president's agenda. You hear that over and over again. He's doing what the president wants that makes the president happy, and that's obviously in contrast what we saw from national security officials in the first term. The problem is that's not the only audience anymore.

[12:10:00]

There, obviously is the entire U.S. Armed Forces, the Pentagon itself, but there are lawmakers on Capitol Hill, on his side of the aisle, who expect to be read in, who expect to have a voice. And those lawmakers are the ones we'll be calling the White House if they feel like it's gotten too far.

The one thing that you have to keep in mind, confirmation battles suck. No administration wants to go through them again. And so that's a little bit of a perspective layer right now as he continues to try and figure out this new role.

RAJU: Yeah. And Trump, of course, defended him controversy after controversy emerged throughout that confirmation process. He got Republicans to fall in line to barely confirm on that vote that J.D. Vance, of course, to break that tie, breaking vote. And then yesterday, Trump was talking about all of this and the aftermath of investigation that could happen here, and about the whether or not this information that Pete Hegseth revealed in this Signal Chat was indeed classified.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think it's all a witch hunt. That's all. I think it's a witch hunt. I wasn't involved with it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You still believe nothing classified was shared?

TRUMP: Well, that's what I've heard. I don't know. I'm not sure. You have to ask the various people involved. I really don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I really don't know means the president. What's your take away from that?

BERTRAND: That's a pretty baffling answer. I mean, Zach and I were told by multiple sources that this information was, in fact, classified at the time that Hegseth shared it, especially because of what Jamie had mentioned earlier, this operation had not happened yet.

And so, if Hegseth were to try to argue, hey, I declassified it prior to posting it in that Signal Chat, that also raises a lot of interesting questions, because why would you declassify information about an impending operation before that operation is successfully completed?

I mean, this is very much operational security 101, and it's something that Pete Hegseth kind of bragged about in the chat, saying we are clean on OPSEC clearly, they weren't.

RAJU: Yeah. I mean, I asked a number of Senators yesterday, was this class of information? As one Senator, Mike Ross, told me, said, you can look for yourself and make that determination. There is a widespread view among the president's allies that that was indeed classified information, as you're reporting suggests.

Thank you for bringing that excellent reporting. We have a lot more to discuss coming up. America's top health agencies are getting a "Maha Makeover". We have new details on RFK Jr., plan to cut 10,000 jobs at HHS. Stay with us.

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RAJU: We're following another breaking story, the Department of Health and Human Services just announced dramatic and drastic cuts and changes to the agency run by RFK Jr. The agency is cutting 10,000 employees and combining 28 divisions into 15, as well as creating an administration for a healthy America.

CNN's Meg Tirrell joins us live. So, Meg, as you know, HHS is a massive agency overseeing the CDC, the FDA, NIH, the Senators for Medicaid and Medicare, and that's just to name a few. So, walk us through these significant changes.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Manu, I mean, it's a large agency. It was 82,000 employees, and after this, it's going to be 62,000 employees, so about 25 percent smaller with these cuts, which are designed to save $1.8 billion per year, and as you said, consolidate 28 divisions into 15.

So where are these cuts going to come from? Well, 3500 workers at the Food and Drug Administration are going to be cut. 2400 at CDC, 1200 at NIH 300 at CMS. They are saying that Medicare and Medicaid services won't be cut, or neither will reviewers of drugs, medical devices and food at FDA or inspectors.

But Manu, people in the public health world we're talking with say it's impossible to cut this deeply in the federal government and not affect services. So, we're going to dig deeper to see where those are. But here's what RFK Jr., said about the reorganization and this new agency.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: We're going to eliminate an entire -- of departments and agencies while preserving their core functions by merging them into a new organization called the Administration for a Healthy America or AHA. We have two goals. The first is obvious, to save the taxpayer money by making our department more efficient, and the second is to radically improve our quality of service.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TIRRELL: Now, Manu, of course, AHA goes without saying sounds a lot like Maha.

RAJU: So, Meg, as you just said there, they're announcing this new agency called Maha so what exactly would that agency do?

TIRRELL: So, it consolidates five different agencies from around HHS under this one umbrella, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. We don't know exactly what it's going to do.

But you have to assume Manu, the way, what it's called, AHA, sounding just like Maha it was probably going to be one arm of how RFK Jr., tries to implement these priorities he's talked about around chronic diseases, but just a lot of skepticism and fear from the public health world, given his approach to vaccines and other scientific issues, where they worry this may not be based on sound science.

RAJU: All right. Meg Tirrell on the latest on a very significant move out of RFK Jr., Department of Health and Human Services. Thank you for that report. And I'm joined now at the table with a terrific group of reporters. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Tyler Pager with "The New York Times" and Abby Livingston with "PUCK".

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Good afternoon you all. Nice to see you. You know. RFK J., has sort of had sights set on FDA for some time. Look at just what he said last October on this long post on X, criticizing the FDA and also ultimately saying, if you work for the FDA, are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you, preserve your records and pack your bags. And seems like he's fulfilling that mission now.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Listen to what he said, and that will certainly illustrate what's happening. Now, look, this is something that they have previewed multiple times. They've been teasing it. He's acting on it. You were talking about, and Meg was talking about Maha don't underestimate the power. That is what buoyed him to this.

That is an incredibly important constituency for this president, this administration, and that is what they are acting on now. I think the other part of this, though, is he said, RFK Jr., preserving the core functions when he was describing all of these layoffs. That's going to take time to see whether that can actually be fulfilled when you are -

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: And what is that - core functions? ALVAREZ: -- exactly. And remember, this was something that came up during his confirmation hearings. Is what accountability being he going to have? This came up, for example, with Senator Bill Cassidy on the floor. That is going to be the question that we just can't answer right now, experts are obviously warning that if you cut this deep, they're going to be ramifications.

But this is something that will be seen over time. And the question is, how is the department going to be held accountable as to whether or not they can actually preserve those core functions and not have some of these services completely fall through the cracks from Americans across the country?

RAJU: And look, these are the number of cuts, job cuts, as Meg reported. But just to remind viewers, 3500 cuts to FDA, 2400 cuts to CDC, 1200 to NIH, and 300 for Senators for Medicare and Medicaid. How do you think Republicans are going to deal with this? A lot of them are expressed some concern about the how quickly they have moved to purge employees, given that some of them are in their own districts.

ABBY LIVINGSTON, WASHINGTON AUTHOR, PUCK: Well, I mean, we see Republicans are very reluctant to criticize anything in this administration. What I'm watching for is -- I spoke this morning with a source who works on health care policy. She said that these cuts are going to target hospitals, research trials, research and clinical trials.

I think the political implications of this are going to come months down the road, and they are going to be severe. If you're in experimental cancer research, this could be a very big problem, and Republicans will then begin to feel the pressure.

RAJU: What are you hearing from inside the administration on this?

TYLER PAGER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah, look, I think this is part of a broader strategy, not just to reduce the overall federal workforce, but to also take more control of what's going on within these agencies. One of the things that RFK Jr., said in that video was he was consolidating these departments that will then report more directly to him, instead of some of these sub agencies.

And so, it's not just about reducing the workforce to be able to tout I've saved the government, the taxpayers this much money. It's also to have more influence and power over these individuals. And I think that's what's really important here, as you guys were talking about what the impacts are going to be for Americans.

When you look down the road, there is going to be more influence of RFK's vision of what healthcare policy looks like. And there are some concerns, not just from Democrats, we should remember, but also from Republicans, specifically as it relates to his views on vaccines, vaccine safety, and what that and vaccine trials.

And so, if he has more control over data and personnel overseeing those matters, that could portend trouble, not just for Democrats who are critical of his views on vaccines, but we can't forget the hearings in the Senate. That was a question he was repeatedly asked, and there were some real concerns from Republicans.

RAJU: And Bill Cassidy, the Chairman of Senate Health Committee ultimately voted for him because he got some reassurances on vaccines. But there have been some concerns that have been raised, as you were, as Tyler was mentioning, because of some of the actions that have been taken. Just a couple of the headlines here.

Vaccine Skeptics Hire to Head Federal Study of Immunizations and Autism that's from "The Washington Post" story just a couple of days ago. And also, just there have been FDA meetings that FDA meeting to choose the flu vaccine that was canceled didn't really have any explanation to that.

Another one HHS said to have asked CDC to study vaccines and autism despite robust evidence showing no link. So perhaps his reassurances to Bill Cassidy that -- you know he wasn't going to try to push his own views to be more open to it, maybe -- he may be going back on it, that could be the concern.

ALVAREZ: Well and internally, what those headlines were sort of flicking at is that it is using officials trying to shore up an argument or to find evidence to meet the point that the secretary is making or the administration is making. I have seen this with HHS on immigration.

There was a time where the CDC was saying that there wasn't the threat of more COVID-19 with migrants, but they were put in a position where they had to get to yes for the administration. And so came the public health order that completely barred asylum on the U.S. Mexico border.

So, all of this to say that they are -- the effect of this is that some officials may be tasked with things that they know there isn't evidence, but they have to find it to make a point.

[12:25:00]

RAJU: Yeah, we'll see how that ultimately plays out. Or if they say, OK, there's no evidence, tell the public that there's no evidence linking the two autism and vaccines. We'll see how they proceed. All right, coming up, President Trump is revving up his trade war with a new threat on cars coming to the U.S., but trading partners are fighting back with their own horsepower. We have the details next.

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