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Trump Lashes Out At Judges Who Initially Paused Tariffs; Trump Calls Federalist Society leader A "Sleazebag"; RFK's MAHA Commission Report Riddled With Fake Citations; Washington Post: MAHA Report May Have Garbled Science By Using AI; NOTUS On MAHA Report: "7 Of The Cited Sources Don't Appear To Exist". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 30, 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, checks and imbalances. President Trump is launching an all-out attack on the judiciary branch for ruling against his policies. On the same day, the Supreme Court hands his administration a win. We have brand new reaction from a top Trump advisor.

Plus, control alt, oops. The White House is blaming quote, formatting issues after the Make America Healthy Again team released a report on children's wealth being backed up by some studies that turns out that they don't exist. How does that square with the quote, gold standard science RFK Jr. vowed to uphold.

And why can't the American people vote on having a military parade that will cost more than $40 million. That is one of many questions that you, our audience asked, and we are going to try to answer this hour.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We start with new developments from the Supreme Court, which just this morning, ruled that the Trump administration can end deportation protections for about half a million immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It comes as the president continues to rail against judges who have reined in his administration.

Top White House adviser Stephen Miller spoke to CNN Pamela Brown about that in the last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Whenever a judge rules against this administration, you say they're going rogue. Do you think a judge should just rubber stamp what your White House does? If not, what checks and balances do you think should be in place for this White House?

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: The -- is not the job of a district court judge to perform an individual green light or red light on every single policy that the president takes as the head of the executive branch. Just think about the premise baked into your question. Respectfully, Pam, you're saying that when the American people elect a president of the United States of America --

BROWN: I'm not saying that.

MILLER: The -- well, it's the implication. Who is the sole head of the executive branch?

BROWN: No. It's not. I just said, what checks and balances --

MILLER: Well, let me finish. Let me finish. I will answer the question happily. But look, when you have these kinds of lazy assumptions built into questions, it makes it hard to have a constructed dialogue.

BROWN: What is a lazy assumption. I said, you all had a win --

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: You said, is it my expectation? It's not just you, it's the whole media. In other words, when you say a sentence like --

BROWN: I know, you want --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: -- it is a completely without question.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: No, no. And I will gladly answer it.

BROWN: Go ahead.

MILLER: When you say, do we think district court judges should rubber stamp each action? There is a premise that is built into that that is absurd. The president is the sole head of the executive branch. Is the only officer in the entire government that's elected by the entire American people, democracy cannot function. In fact, democracy does not exist at all. If each action the president takes, foreign policy, diplomatic, military, national security has to be individually approved by 700 district court judges.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: For the record, there is nothing lazy about Pamela Brown in any way, particularly when it comes to her intellect. Let's discuss what we just heard and more with our terrific group of reporters here, CNN's David Chalian, Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, Laura Barron-Lopez of PBS NewsHour, and Nia-Malika Henderson of CNN and Bloomberg.

That was something David Chalian. But let's kind of take it back a few steps and talk about why the Trump administration and Stephen Miller there are so upset with what they have seen, with the way that the judicial branch of government has acted and reacted to their policies. The Supreme Court decision, which very much went in their way just a couple of hours ago, notwithstanding?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, exactly. Well, first, let's back up and just say, this has been a conservative project for decades of us covering Washington of infusing more power in the executive. That is, which is really what Stephen Miller is talking about here. He almost wants it to be, you know, a total and complete power, right, as he described it there. But that's been a long-time project.

What is frustrating the Trump administration right now so much is that the reality of the way the system is set up is that really the only speed bump, just sort of the entire Trump project right now, across -- across issue sets, so on immigration, on tariffs, on the DEI anti-woke stuff with universities. You name the portion of the Trump project. They have hit some speed bumps in one place and one place only, and that is the courts.

[12:05:00]

Now that is not necessarily an ultimate halting or reigning in of this Trump project that will ultimately come from one court, the Supreme Court, and that is clearly where so much of this Trump agenda is going to end up. As you noted, they got a win from that court today, but we'll see if some of these other major issues hit that court.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG: Yeah, listen. And this was the plan, really. I mean, it isn't unexpected that they're having some of these losses. They expected that a lot of this stuff would go to the Supreme Court, which is why they're so happy that they have a Supreme Court that is conservative with a six to three margin.

So, you know, we really are seeing the culmination, as you alluded to, of decades and decades of ideology about the power of the executive branch, as well as just this kind of grassroots emphasis on the judiciary, grassroots emphasis on all of these issues that are coming to bear now, around DEI, around woke, around immigration.

And so, you have a president who his followers think has this mandate, and so they are going to ram it through the courts. You see some speed bumps, but they are hopeful that the Supreme Court ends up ruling their way into many of these issues.

BASH: One of the major setbacks, which was now changed by an appellate court this week, was the pushback on much of the president's tariff policy, and that was done by an international trade court, which is part of the federal judiciary, and it goes up through the Supreme Court. And I want you to listen to what both J.D. Vance, the Vice President, and the president's spokeswoman said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think the judge is wrong, and I think we're going to win this case on appeal. So even if you somehow, you know, have this legal technicality hold up in court, I think there are a lot of ways in which the president of the United States can protect American workers and protect American workers from these very, very unfair, unfair trade practices.

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Three judges of the U.S. Court of International Trade disagreed and brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump. These judges are threatening to undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Laura?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR AND CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is the judicial process playing out, right? There is the international trade court that says, we think that this is potentially wrong and illegal, and then on appeal, the administration can appeal as many in many forms as they want, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And in some cases, they are going to win those appeals. In some cases, they're going to win with the Supreme Court. In some cases, they're not going to the way the Supreme Court said that in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and others, that there needs to be some due process, even under the Alien Enemies Act.

The thing is, is that when -- what you hear from the vice president as well as Stephen Miller as well as Karoline Leavitt, is that they are repeatedly trying to discredit almost every single judge across the board that rules against them. Whether they're Republican appointed judges by Reagan or Bush, even Trump appointed judges have ruled against the Trump administration as well and they're attempting to discredit them in the eyes of the public.

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICS REPORTER, NOTUS: I mean, I think the reality is, to answer Pam's initial question is that this administration wishes the judges wouldn't intervene at all. You heard Karoline Leavitt said yesterday in the press briefing that, basically, even though the international trade court may disagree with it, they do not have the bandwidth to put a nationwide injunction.

I think that legal scholars would disagree with that, but that is how this administration feels. I think when you look at the totality of it, yes, this was planned, yes, Stephen Miller over the last four years, among with Russ Vought and other people behind this Supreme Court plan understood that these injunctions would happen time to time. I think is becoming very clear that the amount of injunctions is really frustrating, not just them, but also President Trump, specifically on this issue of tariffs.

If you look at that tweet from last night, or that Truth Social from last night. But this is just going to continue, because the simple fact is, is that people will continue to sue this administration with every executive order, with every mandate that President Trump does, which is exactly what happened during the Biden administration and what happened during Trump one. This is just the process that we're in in America now. And this is, as you said, the judicial process playing out. BASH: I was thinking as I was listening to Stephen Miller with Pamela earlier, whether he would have the same reaction to the judge -- the federal district court judge stopping the President Biden student loan relief, my guess

CHALIAN: Were you really wondering?

BASH: You know my -- and you know that is absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: -- for too long.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: There's no doubt about that. I don't know you -- if you have that tweet -- do you have that Truth Social?

[12:10:00]

BASH: Go ahead. We can talk about, yeah.

CHALIAN: I mean, that was an astonishing thing. We've seen already in this, you know, first five months. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, throw a sort of brush back pitch, remember to the president about careful about attacking judges for their jurisprudence, their decision like that.

He sort of has laid the groundwork here that he thought Trump, at times, or his administration, could be crossing a line that is of concern. And yet, what you saw Trump do last night, not go after a judge necessarily, though he does that with frequency. Went after Leonard Leo.

BASH: Yeah.

CHALIAN: The conservative stalwart of --

BASH: Now I'm going to stop you --

CHALIAN: Oh, thanks. I was trying to lead you there.

BASH: I do -- thank you.

CHALIAN: OK. Yeah. No problem.

BASH: Again, you're like inside my brain. OK. Here is the Trump post on Leonard Leo. Will explain who Leonard Leo is in one second. He said, they were under the thumb of a real sleaze bag named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America and obviously has his own separate ambitions. He openly brags how he controls judges and even justices of the United States Supreme Court.

David as I let you continue. Leonard Leo is somebody who was involved with and runs the Federalist Society, which has been the outside organization that has helped presidents -- republican presidents for a very long time, including and especially Donald Trump, find the right the right conservative judges in order to get them on the bench, including and especially Donald Trump's Supreme Court picks. And now he's totally turning on Leonard Leo. And why does this matter? David, explain.

CHALIAN: Well, I think of it as like, Leonard Leo for decades has been sort of running an outside White House Counsel's Office of vetting conservative judges across the country for any Republican president to therefore nominate and in Mitch McConnell's tenure of service, having him pursue this project of getting more conservatives on the bench.

So, what is astonishing, though, is that you have to go back to 2016. You all remember. Donald Trump had some problems with the conservative base of the -- I know that sounds nuts to people that are tuning in late to this story, but like he had some real questions from the conservative base of the party.

What did he do to answer those questions? One was he put Mike Pence on his ticket as his running mate. One was, I am going to pick my Supreme Court justices from this pre vetted list that Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society put forward. That's how --

BASH: Literally why he's president.

CHALIAN: Yeah. I mean, that is literally how he unified the party around him --

BASH: Yeah. One of the ways.

CHALIAN: To be at one of the ways in which he became president.

BASH: Yeah, yeah. OK, just real quick. Leonard Leo, I did get a statement saying, I'm very grateful for President Trump transforming the federal courts, and it was a privilege being involved. There's more work to be done, for sure, but the federal judiciary is better than it's ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump's most important legacy.

We're going to have to take a quick break. Up next. Robert Kennedy Jr. says, it's the gold standard science investigations into the Make America Healthy Again Commission's first report shows some holes in that. We're going to dig into pretty big errors after a break.

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BASH: The White House hailed the first report from the Make America Healthy Again Commission as a game changing document, addressing chronic health problems in children. But as notice first reported, the report contains some mistakes.

Here's how NOTUS put it, quote, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his Make America Healthy Again Commission report harnesses gold standard science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are in are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions. Seven of the cited sources don't appear to exist at all.

My panel is back with me, including reporter from NOTUS Jasmine Wright, who asked the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about this yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: A NOTUS investigation found that the Hallmark MAHA Commission report that was released last week cites studies that appear to not exist. We know that because in part, we reached out to some of the listed authors who said that they didn't write the studies cited. So, I want to ask, does the White House have confidence that the information coming from HHS can be trusted?

LEAVITT: Yes. We have complete confidence in Secretary Kennedy and his team at HHS. I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed, and the report will be updated. But it does not negate the substance of the report, which, as you know, is one of the most transformative health reports that has ever been released by the federal government and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: I mean, I feel like I have so many things to say about this, but formatting issues is not one of them, right? Like seven sources were completely nonexistent. My colleagues who I want to credit, NOTUS fellows like 22-year-olds Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto, which took five days going through 522 citations, checking them all, and seven of them just, frankly, didn't exist. I don't think that that's a formatting issue.

Others, of course, were a little bit more technical. Maybe some of the links were broken, or maybe some of the conclusions that they came to by using some of these valid, you know, authors or articles didn't match exactly what the article said, but it's not formatting issues.

[12:20:00]

I also asked her, quite frankly, you know, did you guys use AI? Because that was the conversation happening because sometimes when you use AI and you kind of put it all into the machine, I feel like I'm dating myself, by saying it like that. it basically hallucinates links. It hallucinates citations. She obviously didn't have an answer for that.

And so, I think this idea that it's just a formatting issue versus the way that they put it together is a bit different. And I think that the last thing I'll say is that, you know, the HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, frankly, faces an uphill battle when it comes to his credibility with his own team, with the MAHA movement, particularly because of some of the things that he said on vaccines and other more controversial issues. And even though it may seem small that just seven citations didn't exist, or others had broken links. When it comes to the medical field, every detail matters, and it's very hard to build credibility and to have the American people trust what you are putting out. If you know your I's aren't dotted and your T's aren't crossed.

BASH: Well, that's what I'm hearing from some people in the MAHA movement today, which is a lot of frustration that what they wanted to be out there, which is the sort of substance of what they have been pushing for a long time, which is that chemicals make you sick, and plastics are bad, and the food and dye industry are, you know, have really negative effects on the health of wellbeing of our children, that that is getting buried beneath these errors, which, as you said, your colleagues found when they went through. He said, five days they spent going there --

WRIGHT: Five days going through 522 citations.

BASH: So, the Washington Post also had a report on it this week. Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in its initial version of the report sent to the Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all. And then some of the references are oaicite, which you're referring to that that's what happens with AI.

WRIGHT: Yeah. That's what happens when you use AI and that's kind of the citation that it gives back to show that this was gathered by AI. Now, of course, the HHS has not said that they use AI. We've asked them. I asked Karoline that briefing. We also, you know, they had 24 hours plus to respond to this report and they didn't.

BARRON-LOPEZ: No, I mean, it's not just sloppy work, which is what the errors are, but it's also the fact, the fact that a number of studies didn't exist. So, what exactly are they basing what they put in the report on. If the studies that they're citing didn't exist and they haven't provided those answers, it sounds like.

You know, this is in addition to the fact that just this week, the HHS Secretary, RK Jr. came out and said, oh, pregnant women don't need to be taking COVID vaccines anymore. That directly contradicts what a week prior, the FDA and his other agencies had recommended, which was actually, pregnancy is a high risk, is considered high risk, and therefore we recommend that COVID boosters are given to pregnant women. So, across the board, you're seeing contradictions and a bit of basically, like RFK Jr. saying very different things than the rest of the HHS apparatus is saying.

BASH: Yeah. And look, I mean, like you were saying, they are understandably under a very, very strong microscope because of the several things that RFK Jr. in particular have said way before he was confirmed, but also the promises that he made when he was confirmed to people like Senator Bill Cassidy, who was a medical doctor who was not sure about him, and then decided to vote yes.

You know, the flip side of it is the question of whether -- which is what the people in the MAHA movement are arguing is whether or not this is -- this is the industry -- I'm just telling you what they're arguing. This is the industry trying to torpedo what they have been trying to get out there for a very long time.

HENDERSON: Well, listen, I mean, I think the onus was on them to put out a report that could withstand scrutiny of the 22-year-olds who went through and found that some of these citations were false. And I think if you're Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who sometimes, quite frankly, sounds like a conspiracy theorist. When he's talking about autism and vaccines, when he's talking about measles and vaccines, he has an even higher bar.

To your point, to clear when it comes to this and decides the other thing is, DOGE has wiped out a lot of these scientists, a lot of these experts. And so, there should be concern about what kind of information they're putting out and whether it's basically just something that they put into the AI machine.

BASH: Just real quick. Can you put this into context? I mean, I know you don't spend most of your day going through government studies, but historically speaking, they're pretty buttoned up.

[12:25:00]

CHALIAN: Especially in the medical capacity. I mean to your point that credibility is so critical. So yes, government reports are usually buttoned up, but especially in the health space. And I just think there's this larger question about what you're saying about this sort of extra bar, this higher bar for RFK Jr. because of some other beliefs, it makes me wonder if, at some point, like the very real and powerful and potent MAHA movement that does exist. If they're going to question whether he is their best front guy for a movement or not, and I think that's a question that will sort of surround him.

BASH: But we have to take it a break. The interesting thing about that question is that the MAHA movement is kind of split between the staunch anti-vaxxers and those who are much more focused on food and medicine, and they have different views on the answer to that question. A lot more to talk about that.

But coming up, former President Joe Biden makes his first public remarks since being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. We're going to take you live to Delaware after the break.

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