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Inside Politics
Senate Grills Top DOJ Official and Ex-Trump Lawyer, Emil Bove Nominated for Appeals Court Judgeship; Trump Says U.S. And Iranian Officials Will Hold Talks Next Week; Big Win for Trump as NATO Nations Agree to Hike Defense Spending; Joe Rogan Challenges Sen. Sanders on 2028 Presidential Run. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired June 25, 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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[12:33:52]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': During President Trump's first term, the Federalist Society helped pick his judicial appointments based on a key conservative principle, Constitutional originalism. Democrats are arguing his latest nominee, Emil Bove, got the nomination for a really different reason, personal loyalty to Donald Trump.
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SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D-IL) RANKING MEMBER, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: President Trump's judicial picks during his first term were largely legal conservatives. This nominee is in a category all of his own. A former personal defense attorney of President Trump, Mr. Bove, has led the effort to weaponize the Department of Justice against the president's enemies, having earned his stripes as a loyalist to this president, he's been rewarded with this lifetime nomination.
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BASH: President Trump nominated Bove to serve as a judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Today, he told Senators considering his nomination, he's not the person Durbin says he is.
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EMIL BOVE, 3RD CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS NOMINEE: There is a wildly inaccurate caricature of me in the mainstream media.
[12:35:00]
I am not anybody's henchman. I'm not an enforcer. I'm a lawyer from a small town from a small town who never expected to be in an arena like this. I've spent most of my life in public service. I have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States more than once, and I have honored that oath.
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BASH: My smart reporters are back. Just a small town boy living in a lonely world, Phil?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Made it to the big time.
(LAUGH)
MATTINGLY: First of all, like it's bizarre to hear some Democrats be like, hey, back then the Fed Soc guys, they were at least like normal, within the bounds. Lawyers were like, (ph) man, Democrats not complimenting Fed Soc people, but not necessarily going after them.
(LAUGH)
BASH: For those following at home, Fed Sock is Federalist Society.
MATTINGLY: Federalist Society, yeah, sorry.
BASH: You're probably in the lingo like Phil is.
(LAUGH)
MATTINGLY: Yeah, of course. (Inaudible) So, what I think is, there is a clear through line/animating feature of this administration, which has been personnel, especially on the legal front and lawyers are very different from the first administration in the sense of, they are not there to tell the president, no, that's not how that works, or no, you can't do that. The frame or kind of the pathway that they wanted when you talk to senior people around the team going into the administration was people who would execute what he wants to do.
OK. You say I can't do that, figure out the way how to do that. And I think that is very much a through line of this administration and the lawyers that he has surrounded himself with and certainly the lawyers that he's going to put on the bench as well. This one obviously has a very personal connection because of the personal attorney element, which by the way is like half the Justice Department right now too.
(LAUGH)
BASH: Yeah. So, right. Well, that's a good point. So in addition to the fact that he was the president's personal attorney, he also was appointed in an interim basis to be the number two at the Justice Department as President Trump was inaugurated for his second term and he did things such as oversaw the January 6th cases and fired prosecutors who oversaw the cases, ordered prosecutors to drop Mayor Adams' corruption charges.
And this is interesting, it goes to your point, a whistleblower at the DOJ told lawyers there that Bove made a remark concerning the possibility that a court order would enjoin removals before they could be effectuated. Bove stated that DOJ would need to consider telling the courts f you and ignore any such court order. That last part is really the key. So the whistleblower is alleging that Bove was ready to disregard a court order.
AKAYLA GARDNER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Well, that's not entirely surprising. We've seen the administration talk about this openly. They do not always respect, especially decisions at the district level. They seem to respect still the Supreme Court and decisions out of that body, but that's not entirely surprising. And there's no reason to think that if he were to leave the Justice Department, that that would change at all. But I do think that he likely is going to be confirmed. You have a lot of Republicans saying very glowing comments about him. Obviously Republicans have the majority in both chambers of Congress, so I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. And it seems like Republicans on the Hill are sort of OK with the posture that the White House is taking with legal matters.
BASH: And forgive me, it's Bove, which we just learned thanks to this hearing. I just, Jamie, want to read what The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board said about this nomination. Perhaps most Mr. Bove is also capable of being a fair referee, but his reputation lately is as a smashmouth partisan who wields the law as a weapon. His recent handling of the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams doesn't inspire confidence.
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: And let's just repeat, that is The Wall Street Journal who's saying that. That said, I agree, I do not think Senate Republicans, this is will -- that this will be one of the rare times that they will go against President Trump on this nomination. I'd like to say one thing about who this whistleblower is because it's critical to, I think, the story of Bove and what he did. This was a prosecutor who we -- people won't know his name, but they may remember that he was the prosecutor who went into court and said, we made a mistake in sending Abrego Garcia back to Salvador.
BASH: Exactly.
GANGEL: And for that he lost his job. So yes, he lost his job for it, but he went into the court and said something that he believed to be honest. He is the one who has called out Bove on all of these issues.
BASH: Real quick.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF AND POLITICAL DIRECTOR: He apparently had some truth to tell because they found a way to get Abrego Garcia back to the United States.
BASH: Yes, right.
[12:40:00]
CHALIAN: So, it's not as if he was speaking counterfactually.
BASH: Correct. Thanks, everybody. Don't go anywhere because coming up, why President Trump says he's leaving the NATO Summit with a newfound respect for the Alliance.
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BASH: President Trump is heading back to Washington after meeting with NATO allies at The Hague. Before takeoff, he made a series of consequential announcements, including that U.S. and Iranian officials will resume talks next week.
[12:45:00]
I want to get back to CNN's Anderson Cooper in Tel Aviv. Anderson?
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR OF "ANDERSON COOPER 360": Yeah, Dana, it was interesting to hear Secretary Marco Rubio saying they want direct talks between the United States and Iran, unclear if that will take place. I want to bring in David Sanger, the White House and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times. David, I'm wondering, and I should point out, David's currently at Hague in the Netherlands where President Trump just wrapped up those meetings. David, I want to play what President Trump said about the situation here in Israel, in case, and regarding Iran signing a deal.
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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We are going to talk to them next week, with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don't know. To me, I don't think it's that necessary. I mean, they had a war, they fought, now they're going back to their world. I don't care if I have an agreement or not. We -- the only thing we'd be asking for is what we were asking for before about we want no nuclear, but we destroyed the nuclear.
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COOPER: David, what -- are you -- or what -- what do -- how do you interpret that? I mean, he is just -- it sounds like he's saying he doesn't really care if there was an agreement regardless of --
DAVID SANGER, WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Right.
COOPER: -- if there's more military hostilities, there still has to be some kind of verification procedure to figure out what happened in Iran.
SANGER: Absolutely. Anderson, I thought he was pretty casual about it and he didn't say exactly what he wanted in a deal. And the last one that was on the table was basically for Iran to join a consortium of Arab states. The United States produce a small amount of nuclear fuel or maybe a large amount offshore from Iran with other countries for nuclear power. Now, I'm not sure whether that's like the first thing the Iranians are thinking about right now.
I think the most important thing that he would need to accomplish is to make sure that Iran stays inside the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and allows inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to go to all of those sites. They knew them well and saw them before they were bombed, and they're the ones who can sort of resolve this debate about what condition they're in now. But most importantly, can then keep an eye on any effort by Iran to clear the rubble and rebuild, or not clear the rubble and rebuild elsewhere.
COOPER: Do you think, to Secretary Rubio's point, that direct talks between Iran and the United States or is realistic? I mean, that's just traditionally not what the Iranians have done.
SANGER: That's right. And they did not -- in the Biden administration, they wouldn't even meet directly on extending the old 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal. With Steve Witkoff, they did a strange mix of indirect talks that is through the Omanis or others. And a few direct encounters between Steve Witkoff, who was the president's Special Envoy, and Abbas Araghchi, who is the Iranian Foreign Minister.
Hard for me to imagine right now that the foreign minister has a lot of leeway to negotiate since he can't seem to communicate terribly well with the supreme leader and since we're not even a week out from the United States having attacked three major sites within the country. And politically, the image of him going off and talking to the Americans maybe seeming to be giving in, doesn't strike me as something that the Iranians are going to be interested in right now.
COOPER: And just very briefly, President Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said they did not talk about a ceasefire. What do you think happens next there?
SANGER: Well, one of the interesting splits that got covered over here at the Summit in The Hague is that almost all the European countries agreed to continue to give billions of dollars in aid, arms and so forth to Ukraine. And the United States, the biggest single member of NATO is not. Now, the one thing they did agree on is that all of those countries for fear of Russia are -- agreed to increase their spending on defense to 5 percent of GDP over 10 years. And I think President Trump rightly celebrated that.
I think his pressure for it made a big difference. There was some progress made during the Biden era, but Trump's insistence I think made a huge difference. But you could see right now that the big question hanging over the entire Summit was, will the United States be with us if the Russians go beyond Ukraine?
[12:50:00]
COOPER: David Sanger, appreciate your time. Thank you. Dana, back to you.
BASH: Thanks, Anderson and David. Up next, Senator Bernie Sanders sits down with Joe Rogan five years after being slammed by a lot of people in the Democratic Party for touting Rogan's endorsement back then. Stay with us.
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BASH: On our Political Radar. Senator Bernie Sanders returned to the Joe Rogan Studios and it shows just how much things have changed in politics in the last five years. In 2020, Sanders touted an endorsement from Rogan and it prompted major backlash from liberals who then called Rogan a racist and a homophobe.
[12:55:00] In this appearance, the two debated everything from climate change to campaign finance, and there was a perhaps a bit of an awkward exchange.
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JOE ROGAN, HOST OF "THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE" PODCAST: Are you going to run for president again?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I-VT): I am 83 years of age.
ROGAN: That's what I'm saying.
(LAUGH)
SANDERS: Yeah. I'm not sure the American people will be enthusiastic of somebody who is 108.
ROGAN: You're still very with it.
SANDERS: Thank you.
(LAUGH)
ROGAN: You are.
SANDERS: Hell, yeah.
ROGAN: I mean, you're a couple years older than Biden.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROGAN: Right? Think of that.
SANDERS: Yeah.
ROGAN: You could be off a lot worse.
SANDERS: Yes. Yes.
ROGAN: Yeah.
SANDERS: All right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: So anyway, President Trump did a three-hour interview with Rogan right before the 2024 election. Vice President Harris, guess now famously did not. Thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after the break.
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