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Inside Politics

Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo Is Favorite To Win Dem Primary Next Month; FBI Ratcheting Up Investigations Into Cocaine Found At White House, Leak Of Dobbs Decision, DC Pipe Bombs; Democratic House Candidate Uses AI Actors To Mock Opponent; CDC & FDA Make Significant Changes To COVID Vaccine Policies. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 27, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:33:18]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Andrew Cuomo left the New York governor's office plagued by scandal barely four years ago. Now he's hoping to chart his way back to power and he may very well do it. He's the favorite to win the Democratic primary next month in the New York mayoral race.

Cuomo, you recall, resigned from his office as governor after a series of sexual misconduct allegations, allegations he denies. He says his competent leadership is what New York City needs right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK MAYORAL CANDIDATE: I believe we need to fix this city. I believe the time is now. I believe we need to make change and make dramatic change and make it fast and let people believe in this city once again and save lives that we're losing out there every night unnecessarily.

I know how to make change. I've done it before, I'll do it again. But I need you beside me.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: My smart reporters are back around the table. New York City native and political expert on all things especially New York, Isaac, the floor is yours.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: I covered the last Cuomo comeback after his 2002 gubernatorial campaign crashed and burned and his marriage broke apart on the front page of the New York Post and then he worked his way up to being attorney general and governor and was sort of the king of Albany in many ways including having a lot of people hate him.

I remember when the sexual allegation -- the misconduct allegations came out. I was talking to a state senator then who said I think he should resign and I said but you thought that anyway and he said, oh yes, definitely. It has been not even four years --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- since Cuomo's resigned.

[12:35:06]

One of the stunning things that has come up in my conversations with people who were working on the other mayoral campaigns is that when they are doing focus groups and they ask people, what do you think of the sexual misconduct allegations?

So what do you think about the scandal about the people who died in the nursing homes during COVID? That people are saying like, oh yes, I remember something about that but not really. I think there is this block on the memory of Cuomo except for the parts that he has been stressing which are competent management.

People might challenge whether he actually was a competent manager but people have this sense of that in New York. The city has been really battered in a lot of ways by the continuing fallout from COVID and crime rates and there is this turn toward him as a kind of strongman to stand up to some of the forces in the city, some of what's been going on with migrants in the city and to stand up to Donald Trump.

We'll see what that actually amounts to. It's a month left until the primary. A lot can change but he has had a consistent lead. The one wrinkle here is that ranked choice voting --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- exists in New York and that may change things a little bit.

BASH: OK. So at ranked choice voting exists and it is not a small field. It is a very large field. We'll just put up on the screen how big it is. It doesn't mean that it's impossible for Andrew Cuomo to win, it just means that like we have seen in recent history, it might take a little while longer because of the way the ranked choice voting works.

The other factor -- and this is what three weeks away?

DOVERE: A month -- yes.

BASH: A month away, a month from today -- is AOC, Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, who has not endorsed yet. And again we're talking about the Democratic primary. This is New York City, so the Democratic primary is very, very important.

The mayoral endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be one of the most arduous to get but it is worth it because with the Democratic primary less than a month away, few moments are left that could change the trajectory of the race. This is from New York magazine this morning. Phil, you have covered AOC for a while now and she has, you know, very clear strategy and how she wants to make an impact or sometimes not make an impact.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: And I think the latter part is going to be the thing that I think is kind of interesting here at this point and I'll say this my source being the guy who's sitting across from me who's from New York and has covered New York politics for years. Is this actually, like, what's this going to mean when or if she endorses? Am I allowed to quote you here?

DOVERE: You got it (ph).

MATTINGLY: I'm not sure it's going to matter. And I think that's what's interesting is, OK, so if that's going to be the case or if that's one of the elements here that she has to consider to your point methodical understands strategic kind of goals and what she's going for.

You can never mistake Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as somebody who's not thinking through kind of the long game. I think which is what to a credit to her I think when you talk to Democrats around her even those who aren't necessarily always a fan.

How does she thinking with that as kind of the baseline here, think about her own endorsement if one comes at all? And which -- what role she wants to play in this race particularly it seems like Cuomo is at the very least going to win the primary.

And if you're going to win the primary probably have a pretty good shot against the guy who's running as an independent who was indicted and then made a deal and then all -- a lot of different dynamics.

BASH: OK, we're going to take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. My voice will come back. Stay with us.

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[12:43:09]

BASH: Tapping our political radar, cold cases. FBI Director Dan Bongino says additional resources -- the deputy FBI director, says additional resources are being steered to Biden era cases that double as MAGA world obsessions.

The 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House. The 2022 leak of a draft Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case. The ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. And the pipe bombs found near both the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters on January 5th, 2021.

When Bongino was a right-wing podcast host, he suggested the FBI may have been complicit in planting those bombs.

Plus, pardon scrutiny. The president used his pen to wipe away the conviction of Scott Jenkins, a former Virginia local sheriff. A jury convicted Jenkins of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes for handing out no show jobs. The evidence included video of Jenkins taking bags of cash and firsthand accounts from co-conspirators turned witnesses for the prosecution.

The president claimed without any evidence that Jenkins was, quote, "persecuted by the radical left monsters inside the Biden Justice Department".

And a real campaign ad with fake people. California Democratic Congressional Candidate Esther Kim Varet is now using AI generated actors to mock her Republican opponent, Congresswoman Young Kim.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a fake person made by AI prompts. I may look real and sound real, but there's nothing authentic about me. In that way, I'm a lot like Young Kim.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She pretends to be balanced, but she's almost as fake as I am. And I'm made of prompts.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: The ad making shortcut appears to be the creation of VEO 3, Google's latest AI video model, populating the Internet and your social media feed with a choice of videos real enough to make you look twice.

[12:45:12]

And brand new COVID vaccine guidelines from RFK Jr. The CDC will stop recommending the shot for healthy children. We're going to talk to a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee who studies vaccines in children, next.

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BASH: Big news on COVID vaccines. This morning, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy says the CDC will stop recommending that healthy children and pregnant women get routine COVID shots.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

[12:50:03]

ROBERT KENNEDY JR., HHS SECRETARY: Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That ends today. It's common sense and it's good science.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no evidence healthy kids need it today and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: The FDA announced just last week that the department would make changes to the COVID vaccine approvals that might limit future shots to seniors and those who are at higher risk of infection. Healthy adults and kids will likely lose access.

I want to bring in Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee. Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Offit.

First, your reaction to this new guidance on COVID-19 vaccine boosters.

DR. PAUL OFFIT, MEMBER, FDA VACCINE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: I think it's a bad recommendation. I mean, you certainly know that by six months of age, all children will be vulnerable to a virus is continuing to circulate. There have been retrospective studies looking at children, meaning people less than 18 years of age who have gotten a yearly vaccine to show that there is benefit. So it doesn't make sense.

I think it puts children unnecessarily in harm's way. And there are -- there have been about 1,000 deaths from COVID during this pandemic in children. About one-third of those deaths were in children who were perfectly healthy before that. So, I think it's a bad idea.

Also, I don't like it that they didn't consult advisory committees. They didn't consult the public. They just went behind closed doors and made this decision unilaterally from a man, RFK Jr. who said that he believes in transparency and he said that he won't take vaccines away from anybody who wants them and he's done neither of those things.

BASH: So the usual protocol is for you and other members of the agency that deals with the advisory committee rather, that deals with vaccines to be at least consulted and perhaps approve such a change?

OFFIT: Right. So normally, this would go up in front of the advisory committee for immunization practice, which currently recommends vaccines for children and recommends a yearly dose. If they're arguing that that shouldn't be done, then it's that committee that should do that.

Now, I would say this, that the committee was probably in June about to say that we should target high risk groups. Meaning, people who are pregnant, people who are immune compromised, people who have chronic medical conditions, people, you know, who are elderly, they were about to do that.

But they also would have said at the same time, if you want to get a vaccine and you're not in a high risk group, you know, do shared clinical decision making with your doctor, which would have meant insurance companies would have still covered it.

I think by doing it this way, they're going to make it these vaccines are not insured, not insured. And I think that will put people -- make it very difficult for people then to get the vaccines that they might reasonably want.

BASH: Well, that was going to be my question, which is just kind of news you can use out there for people who don't fall under one of those categories that you just referred to. What should they or can they do if they decide that they do want to get a booster?

OFFIT: I think many people get vaccines in the pharmacy. So the pharmacist isn't going to check to see whether or not you're in a high risk group. I think it may not be insured. So then people who can afford it will pay for it.

I think the other thing that's ironic here about that announcement is they said they weren't recommending the vaccine for healthy, pregnant women when, in fact, Marty Makary just published a paper a few days ago listing high risk groups for people less than 65 that should get the vaccine. And pregnancy was on that list. So he writes it in the paper and then days later, stands up and says exactly the opposite.

BASH: You're talking about the surgeon general?

OFFIT: No, not Marty Makary, sorry, the FDA commissioner.

BASH: The FDA commissioner, OK. And, you know, so this is about policy and about recommendations. I just want to shift a little bit on the same topic to the way that these scientific studies or what people should do with regard to public health is communicated to the public, which has really changed under Secretary Kennedy.

You wrote an editorial about the significant impact on public health since he took over and you wrote, "Silencing the CDC", that was what it was entitled. You highlighted a recent study on RSV that gives new lifesaving strategies that the agency, the CDC, didn't actively publicize.

So what is the wider impact that that is an example on information getting to the public? And, obviously, if people don't hear what they don't know, then you don't know what you don't know and that is part of the problem here.

OFFIT: So RSV or respiratory syncytial virus is the most common reason for babies to come into the hospital. Over the past year, we've had two strategies, maternal vaccination and a long-acting monoclonal antibody given to babies that has been shown now to decrease significantly the hospitalization rate in children less than two months of age.

[12:55:04]

That paper was published and normally what would happen is that the press would get a press kit that includes talking points, the paper would be embargoed, people like you would be able to interview the authors at the time of release, and the public would then know about it, including the medical public would know about it.

But basically they were told not to, in any sense, promote clearly this lifesaving measure. And it's just a sign of where we are right now. I think you have right now the head of Health and Human Services, who for 20 years, has been a vaccine and anti-vaccine activist, science denialist, and conspiracy theorist, and he's just carrying on.

He believes that vaccines are doing far more harm than good, and he is going to do everything he can to make vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared. That's who he is.

BASH: And there's a lot of pressure on him by a lot of people who support him to continue to try to limit vaccines.

Thank you so much, Dr. Offit. Appreciate you being here.

And thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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