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Inside Politics

Trump Picks Fox's Jeanine Pirro as Interim U.S. Attorney in DC; Trump Allies and Ex-Lawyers Running DOJ, Key U.S. Attorney Offices; Trump Picks Doctor Aligned with MAHA Movement for Surgeon General; LEO XIV Begins First Homily as Pope in his Native Speech; New Pope Calls for "Missionary Outreach," "Building Bridges". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 09, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on "Inside Politics", the DOJ's MAGA makeover. President Trump names another top ally whose push for investigations of Trump's perceived enemies to a job where she can do just that, even as the president keeps baselessly accusing his predecessor of weaponizing the judicial system against Republicans.

Plus, a star-spangled papacy, the Vatican is turning a page with the first American born Pope now leading the world's 1.4 billion Catholics. I'll talk to a member of the most famous American Catholic family about the decision that sent shock waves around the globe. And tax hikes have never been part of the Republican playbook.

But is President Trump really going to overturn decades of GOP Dogma. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics". The president is replacing one controversial choice to be the top federal prosecutor in D.C. with another Fox Host, Jeanine Pirro, known as judge. Jeanine, to Fox viewers, she does have experience.

She's a former county prosecutor and a former judge, but more importantly, for the White House, she's one of President Trump's most outspoken supporters, known for pushing conspiracies about the 2020 election and for slamming the very department she'll be joining.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: The stench coming out of the Justice Department and the FBI is like that of a third world country where money and bullies and clubs decide elections.

What you've got is a weaponized Department of Justice, Department of FBI and CIA. We saw it from the time he came down that escalator.

Letitia James is out of control. She is unethical. She is inept. You do not pick a person and say, I will find a crime I don't like you. I'm going to fight.

I want to thank Donald Trump, not only for teaching the Republicans finally how to fight, but for putting up what the nonsense said he goes through every day for the rest of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: As for the president's failed first choice for the job 2020 election denier, Ed Martin, the president is appointing him to a top DOJ role running what he calls, quote, the weaponization working group to investigate the Biden Administration. I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here on this Friday.

CNN's Phil Mattingly, Laura Barron-Lopez of PBS News Hour. CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere, and CNN's Elliot Williams, who is, of course, our legal analyst. Hello. Thank you all for being here. I'm not used to calling you Edward-Isaac Dovere. I know that your byline -- very formal on Fridays, Isaac.

OK, so we just heard the some of the litany of things that Judge Jeanine has said over and over, and that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg, which, again, as we said, is a big reason why she was fake. She's close with the president, in addition to what she says on camera, and it's very interesting.

And I'll start with you, Elliot that so we definitely got a hint yesterday, when the president was in the Oval Office, of the fact that he would pull Ed Martin and he said he had other people up his sleeve. It kind of seems like what he is saying is, OK, you don't like Ed Martin. I'll give you somebody else who is maybe similar, but maybe different, but maybe similar.

[12:05:00]

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Different, but maybe similar, and maybe more likely to get confirmed part of the problem or the issue is that Ed Martin was so extreme and so, quite frankly, woefully unprepared or unqualified for the position that virtually anybody is going to seem reasonable thereafter.

Now we should be clear about Jeanine Pirro. She certainly nominally got the qualifications to be a senior government official or a top prosecutor. She's been an elected prosecutor in Westchester County. She served as a career prosecutor, that's fine, and that's great, and you want that at the Justice Department.

It's all the other nonsense. And a lot of what you saw and showed there on air showing a staggering lack of independence, or at least professed lack of independence, from the President of United States, which is quite dangerous in that biggest U.S. Attorney's Office in the country.

BASH: And look, the reason why Ed Martin was polled is because he didn't have the votes. And that started with Thom Tillis, the Republican Senator of North Carolina, saying he wouldn't support Ed Martin, because Ed Martin was a leader and stopped the steal and because as interim U.S. attorney in D.C., he helped to sort of do away with a lot of the convictions of a lot of the January -- all of the January 6 rioters.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yeah.

Here's what Thom Tillis said about Jeanine Pirro. Jeanine Pirro has had a long and storied career as a prosecutor, and she is a great choice by POTUS to serve as U.S. Attorney for D.C.

MATTINGLY: Yeah, Elliot, knowingly or unknowingly, set up beautifully what we just saw in that social media post from Senator Tillis, who was really the linchpin of Ed Martin's nomination going down. And I think on some of what's interesting that the president, despite some of his biggest supporters, biggest allies, biggest advocates, saying you have to fight for this nomination.

You have to fight for this nomination. The president, somewhat pragmatically, I guess, in some level, saying, like, I don't get it, and I have much more important things to be dealing with right now. This isn't worth it. But the other piece of it is kind of the unintentional or intentional shift of the Overton window in terms of what's acceptable in this position.

Jeanine Pirro, and you could supercut her Fox comments for the better part of the next decade and always land in the same place. Underscore something that I've thought about often over the course of the first three months, which is we used to joke in the first term about like, oh, what's going to do next?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Name Jeanine Pirro, the Attorney General of the United States. And I don't say that in jest or with any level of snark. I say it to underscore and remind people kind of the moment we're in, where the things that used to be, even in the craziest times, the first term you would say, like that, can't be possible. That's totally out of left field are now the reality.

And the other thing, of course, is that Ed Martin has not disappeared. He's now in a position at the --

MATTINGLY: -- fascinating where it is.

DOVERE: He doesn't need to be confirmed into that position, and he can do quite a bit in there. He's going to work on the weaponization of the Justice Department. We know that Donald Trump thinks a lot about these things. We know that Ed Martin thinks a lot about these things.

There's a lot -- now he has the whole Justice Department to at his disposal to move on that potentially more powerful than what he would have been as U.S. attorney in Washington. It does seem like it's sort of a Democrats who are opposing him, being careful what they wish for.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: On Senator Tillis, it's just striking that he appears ready to potentially support Pirro, given that his opposition to Ed Martin was about Ed Martin's support of January Sixers, his involvement in and around the insurrection.

And yet Pirro, who also spread lies about the 2020, election, to the point where she was named in the defamation lawsuit that was against Fox that they ended up settling. And yet he is OK with Jeanine Pirro, it's hard to see that big of a difference between the two when you compare them on specifically January 6.

BASH: Yeah.

WILLIAMS: Sounds like somebody who is toeing the line between running in a primary in a purplish state and also having to, you know, having to worry about his right flank, but also appeal to swing voters in North Carolina --

BASH: How political of you, Mr. Justice Department?

DOVERE: -- no --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: -- you know where you are, you know the show you're on, but I'm just going to reel you back into DOJ.

WILLIAMS: -- "Inside Politics" --

BASH: -- because I want to put up on the screen, the Trump lawyers who are in DOJ jobs, of course, the top at the DOJ Pam Bondi, Attorney General, Todd Blanche is the DAG, Emil Bove, John Sauer, Harmeet Dhillon and Alina Habba. It goes down, and what they all have in common is that they represented a president who has been involved in his fair share of lawsuits.

WILLIAMS: I would even step back and say it doesn't matter that he's involved in his fair share of lawsuits. What matters is their proximity to the president. Dana, I can't say enough. It is an affront to the institution to have people with that level of proximity to the president running the Justice Department.

This goes back to Watergate. We have talked about this, quite frankly, for the last several years. This even though the Justice Department is in the executive branch, the president appoints the attorney general. There is a long, decades, generations long history in America of a measure of independence of the Justice Department so that they can carry out.

[12:10:00]

BASH: But he doesn't see it that way --

DOVERE: -- that it's not theoretical. Donald Trump talks about all the time. He said, oh, Eric Holder was Obama's lawyer. He wasn't. Eric Holder was the attorney general, right? But Trump talks about how he wants the Attorney General to act like his lawyer, that he wants the Justice Department to be doing things in his favor and in his agenda.

WILLIAMS: And I want to be clear, every president comes in four or eight years and can install their folks, Republicans come and shift to the right, Democrats come, and that's OK, and quite frankly, quite good for America. It's the personal lawyers, the fact that they've represented him in a personal capacity, that really is a problem in an unprecedented in Justice Department. BASH: So, it's Friday, and there was a lot of news this week. I don't

know if anybody noticed, but there's a new pope and many other things happened. So, you might have missed a lot of kind of it wasn't just Ed Martin being pulled. There were other changes in the president's lineup on people who have not yet been confirmed by the United States Senate, starting with his attorney, excuse me, his Surgeon General.

Casey Means was -- Dr. Casey Means was nominated as Surgeon General after he withdrew Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, who was the Surgeon General nominee. The Library of Congress, the head of the Library of Congress for quite some time, Carla Hayden was fired. Also, the Acting Director of FEMA was fired, who Cameron Hamilton, who apparently was fired after he went before Congress and said that he doesn't think that FEMA should be dismantled.

And then, of course, what we were just talking about, Jeanine Pirro in for Ed Martin, but I want to focus on that first combination on your screen, and that is the U.S. Surgeon General and Casey Means, because this is fascinating. The reason why she was put in there is because the president said point blank, he trusts Bobby Kennedy, who is HHS Secretary and the effective head of the so-called MAHA movement. Listen to what the president said on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, can you explain why you picked her to be America's top doctor?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Because Bobby thought she was fantastic. She's highly she's a brilliant woman who went through Stanford, and Bobby really thought she was great. I don't know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby. I met her yesterday, and once before, she's a very outstanding person, a great academic, actually. So, I think she'll be great.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, there are kind of two levels of drama here, first and foremost is there are a lot of people in the conventional medical community who are saying that Casey Means should -- maybe not be the top doctor because she hasn't practiced medicine. She is a doctor, but she quit before her residency, and that was in large part because she didn't like what she saw in the medical field, and she went more to functional medicine and beyond.

The other drama which is really interesting is within the MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again movement, and you're seeing pushback from some in RFKs, I guess maybe former orbit, including his former running mate when he was running for president, and Laura Loomer, who say that they don't think that she is the right person, and that is because she's not anti vax enough.

So, there is kind of a litmus test inside the MAHA movement, and that is really playing out in public. If you look on Twitter, what's going on between those individuals and not Casey Means but her husband, her brother, sorry, sorry Means' siblings. Her brother Calley, who is a top advisor to RFK.

MATTINGLY: I'm just like chuckling as you explain this rabbit hole currently living in it --

BASH: -- it's really -- yeah.

MATTINGLY: -- that actually makes a ton of sense as you're explaining it, as somebody who's covered this stuff, both from the campaign side, but also from the administration side, in general, when it comes to, I think the thing I was struck by yesterday about in the president's comments, beyond the fact he's like, Man, I don't even know that person, but hey, good luck.

And Surgeon General, is when the president said during the campaign, after RFK Jr. endorsed him, like I'm going to let him run wild in these spaces, and he's proving that right now that's actually not disconnected with all of the photos you put up on what's happened this week, right?

An acting FEMA official saying, I think FEMA should exist, and then immediately getting fired, 24 hours later. Everything we've seen with Ed Martin and Jeanine Pirro, the connectivity of kind of the unitary theory of the executive that kind of underpins all of this. Don't you dare jump in on that.

But I think the MAHA movement kind of split or divide or whatever, if you understand or paid any attention to the RFK Jr. team and MAHA in general, and kind of the social media space and we've talked about it before, offset in terms of the dominant nature of it.

[12:15:00]

Casey and Calley Means, I think, are much more important, central and able to unify that movement than the Laura Loomer's or those types. And I don't often question Laura Loomer's power in this moment with this White House, but in this case, specifically, it'll be an interesting test. But I think that's kind of the standing.

BASH: And Calley Means is some was one of the few who had worked in politics before.

MATTINGLY: Yes -- traditional Republican politics.

BASH: And so, he's trying to navigate traditional Republican politics. So, he's trying to help navigate it all beyond the people who are just plain old anti vaxers, which for now, RFK Jr. is pushing back against that wing. OK, everyone go -- don't go away. Coming up. This is so interesting. A brother's phone call. You don't want to miss this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN PREVOST, BROTHER OF POPE LEO XIV: I was able to speak to him yesterday afternoon for about 30 seconds. I said, congratulations. And he said, where have you been -- outside talking to people. So, I didn't hear the phone ring.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: We'll talk about that first American Pope, that individual's brother, when we come back.

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[12:20:00]

BASH: It's Da Pope. That's how the "Chicago Sun Times" summed up Leo, the 14th who was born and raised in the Windy City. This morning featured another historic moment. The first American Pope began his first homily in English.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XVI, HEAD OF CATHOLIC: Begin with a word in English, and the rest is in Italian. But I want to repeat the words from the responsorial psalm. I will sing a new song to the Lord, because he has done marbles and indeed, not just with me, but with all of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back, and we're joined by Stephen White, the Executive Director of the Catholic Project at Catholic University. Welcome back. It was just a few days ago. You were sitting right at this seat, and we were saying, oh, there's probably not going to be an American Pope, and here we are.

STEPHEN WHITE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CATHOLIC PROJECT AT CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY: We were hoping for a jersey pope, and turned out to be a pope from Chicago --

BASH: Yeah. But you're happy. You're happy about --

WHITE: -- on that one. Yeah.

BASH: So, I mean, what are your sort of feelings about this, as somebody who literally studies the American Catholic population as strictly as you do.

WHITE: Yeah, it was interesting to see right when he came out on the loggia, when he was first announced to the world as Leo the 14th, there were a couple symbols he was clearly sending. One was he talked a lot about the themes that were big in Pope Francis' pontificate. But he was also dressed in a way that Pope Francis wasn't when he came out.

He was dressed in a way that sort of signaled a continuity with Benedict the 16th and John Paul the second and previous popes. So, I think he was signaling a kind of synthesis of the two. We're going to keep going forward with being close to the poor, and looking to the peripheries like Francis did.

But the church didn't start when Pope Francis was elected, and then we're going to build on what's solid and secure. I think there's an interesting thing in the church United States. We see this uptick among interesting Catholicism, among young people. There's a slight rise and small but there's a notable rise among young people going to mass.

You see an interest among a generation that, frankly, people who are 40 years old and younger have grown up in a world where the big institutions of society haven't really been working all that well. Our politics are increasingly polarized. The church has gone through a horrible abuse crisis here in the United States.

I think they're looking for something solid, something that can allow them to put roots down deeper, and the church can provide that by saying, look, we're here through all of that, and gives us a firmer foundation, not absolute certitude, but something solid to build on. And we see that here in the United States.

We see that among younger Catholic priests who are theologically very conservative, but politically moderate and ethnically diverse, more so than older priests.

BASH: Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the P word politics, because we have seen the tweets from an account posting in Prevost. Name Prevost is Pope Leo's previous name, birth name, and in these posts, he or the post, at least, talks about JD Vance's Ordo Amoris and what the gospel asks of all of us on immigration. Another said, JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, again, as you said, it's an account that looks like it's being posted by the new pope, but across the board, it's taking a very different position than what the Trump Administration is taking, very similar to Pope Francis, and you know, saying that countries like the U.S. should be welcoming to refugees, should be welcoming to immigrants and migrants, because we heard Pope Francis basically say he was not necessarily on board with this administration's deportation or immigration policy.

And so, it would be interesting to see how much Pope Leo now decides to carry that on and to be a slight opposition force to the administration, if at all, in terms of how he thinks countries should treat the poor and immigrant.

BASH: And it seemed through a different lens, because he is American. But as you mentioned, Pope Francis was very, very clear that he did not like the Trump Administration's immigration policies.

[12:25:00]

And it was interesting to see JD Vance, who is now a devout Catholic, tweet about Pope Leo, and he said, I'm sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the church. He didn't say he would. He's a Catholic.

MATTINGLY: I'll give him a little bit of leeway here, and assume that he is as a Catholic. I mean, as also as a Catholic, regardless of our personal views of the pope's very specific personal positions, we tend to pray for the pope and hope for his success, just as I think Americans probably do for the president in general. I think that your point about younger people, the uptick there.

Washington has always been a fascinating dynamic in Catholicism, the kind of open and very public discussion about the faith and how the faith should go or trend with the newer converts in particular, the younger members in particular, people like JD Vance, is a shift that group.

And you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but this, my sense is far more conservative, I think, in terms of how we in the faith would think about it, and would disagree, as you've seen JD Vance do in the past, with some of the positions of a more Jesuit aligned kind of direction of things.

The one thing I would say is immigration in general there's a pretty unified view on that within the church.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: That is diametrically opposed to where the Trump Administration, is. I think the thing that I'm fascinated by beyond the discourse about White Sox or Cubs, which is why, probably the most important thing that we understood yesterday is --

BASH: He's White Sox.

MATTINGLY: What is emphasized by Pope Leo, not necessarily kind of the core beliefs. The core beliefs are going to be the same. What he decides to emphasize, talk about and focus on.

DOVERE: And it does seem to me like we're talking about the immigration positions now. He does not seem to be where a lot of Democrats, for example, would want him to be on gay marriage or --

MATTINGLY: -- Catholic --

(CROSSTALK)

DOVERE: I think what it really comes down to is, it really says something about the political moment that we're in in America and beyond, but in America where it's right away, is the pope. Is he more with Trump or not with Trump, right?

BASH: Yeah.

DOVERE: It's he's the pope.

BASH: But that's also coming from MAGA world.

WHITE: For sure. To go back a word in defense of the vice president, in that very tweet.

BASH: Yeah.

WHITE: He said, may God bless him.

BASH: He did. WHITE: That's a prayer that's in asking God to bless him.

BASH: OK. I'm glad you said that.

WHITE: I think you know the pope has spoken in the past. There's sort of limited public statements. And his position on immigration, as I've understood him in the past, is this. It's very similar to what the USCCB has said and said, not everybody who arrives here needs to be let in or allowed to stay.

But that, having been said, the one absolute thing that must happen is that these people who come here, most of them needy and looking for a better life, must be treated with dignity and with respect. And I think that's the point of emphasis you'll see over and over. It's not going to be that Rome wants to dictate this or that particular policy on immigration.

But the emphasis and insistence that these are human beings who must be treated with dignity and respect, because that's what they deserve. That also says a lot about us, whether we treat them that way --

DOVERE: -- and for people to call that position woke, which is like it's a new way of thinking about things, he's going I'm no expert on Catholicism or the pope, but that's not reflecting like a revelation of the Catholic Church in the last couple years. That's the going back millennia.

BASH: We're going to have to sneak in a break. Read his lips, no new taxes, or is it? Yes. New taxes. It's hard to tell what is going to happen with President Trump and most importantly, the Republicans in Congress when it comes to attacks on the richest Americans. We'll discuss that after a break.

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