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Jeffries Now 7+ Hours Into Speech To Delay Trump Mega Bill Vote; House Awaits Final Vote On Trump's Sweeping Agenda Bill; Less Than A Handful Of GOP Reps Left From Harris Districts; V.P. Vance Says Jeffries' Speech Is Solidifying GOP Support. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 03, 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: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington. And we're following two major stories. President Trump holds a crucial phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It comes just two days after the U.S. announced a pause in certain weapon shipments to Ukraine.

And on Capitol Hill, the mike is still hot. More than seven hours in House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is still speaking, vowing to take his time and delaying a vote on President Trump's massive domestic policy bill. Whenever he stops, House Speaker Mike Johnson says, Trump's legacy defining legislation will pass.

I do want to start there on Capitol Hill, Lauren Fox is there. Lauren, you have been working your sources. What is your sense? The most important question is, what the votes are going to be for Donald Trump's agenda bill?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Right now, Speaker Johnson is really bullish about the fact that he has the support that he needs. He told us earlier he might have one or two defections. He said he still having some conversations with hold out members, but he is feeling really good about where things stand.

The only obstacle right now, in his view, is the fact that the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, has been holding the floor for seven hours or so. At this point, it's not clear exactly when Jeffries is going to give up this so-called magic minute. It is essentially just an opportunity for the Democratic leader to speak as long as he desires.

The modern record for this is about eight and a half hours from Kevin McCarthy a couple of years ago. So, we are waiting to see maybe that record gets broken, maybe it doesn't. It's hard to say right now, but Jeffries is still speaking, and here is his message to voters across the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): His reckless Republican budget is an immoral document, and everybody should vote no against it because of how it attacks, children and seniors and everyday Americans and people with disabilities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Now, Speaker Johnson, who says he has not slept throughout the evening as he was wrangling votes to get across this procedural rule vote throughout the night, trying to flip some of those holdouts. He says that this is at some point going to end, and then it will be time to pass Trump's agenda. Here's the speaker.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): We're excited to get this done. If Hakeem will stop talking, we'll get the job done for the American people. It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the truth. So, he's really spending a long tail in there. But we're excited that people will see the effect of this bill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: I do want to note that the one holdout on that rule vote in the middle of the night was representative Brian Fitzpatrick. He is a moderate from the swing state of Pennsylvania. Obviously, all eyes are going to be on whether or not he also votes no on the floor once Trump's agenda comes up for a final vote. But Dana, that could be right around the corner. It could be a couple more hours. Speaker Johnson says at some point it's going to happen. It just is a matter of what.

BASH: Yeah, Lauren. Well, so it's 12:03 eastern. If you look at what happened the last time around the sort of modern record, as you said, Kevin McCarthy, presumably Hakeem Jeffries wants to beat that, so that would mean maybe another hour and a half of him talking, but we'll see if that -- if that record is broken by Hakeem Jeffries.

Thank you so much. Appreciate all of your very hard work. The whole team up there really around the clock.

I'm joined here at the table by a terrific group of reporters, CNN's Kristen Holmes, CNN's Isaac Dovere, Tamara Keith of NPR, and Jasmine Wright of NOTUS. We're going to talk a little bit later about what the Democrats are doing, what Jeffries is doing. But let's keep our eye on the ball as we start here, which is this legislation, which is poised to pass and head to the president's desk, which is a very, very big deal.

[12:05:00]

Kristen, I want to start with you on the way that the president is framing it. This is what he posted around midnight last night. Largest tax cuts in history and a booming economy versus biggest tax increase in history and a failed economy. What are the Republicans waiting for? What are you trying to prove? All caps now. MAGA is not happy, and it's costing you votes for Republicans. This should be an easy yes vote. Ridiculous.

I think that really encapsulates, the pressure campaign that the president personally is putting on the holdouts, and it seems like it is working.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Working. I mean -- so, you have to look at the day as in phases, because the first phase of the day was when we started seeing the lawmakers coming over to the White House. And that was President Trump in his more honey attracts flies than vinegar phase, where he was complimenting everyone. He said he saw them on television. He said that they were very good at defending him.

And then he would kind of work through the various angles of what was in the bill and what their issues were, trying to come up with solutions for some of these members who said that they could never get there. They started talking about executive orders that would help with implementation.

Then you get to the later part of the night, in which you still saw these Republican holdouts, and that's when the maximum pressure campaign came up. And it's not just this what you're seeing, obviously, on Truth Social. It's also the calls that these lawmakers are getting not just from President Trump, but from President Trump's political team who are insuring them and reminding them of the enormous amount of weight that Trump holds within the Republican Party.

And while, it might not matter for everyone, for a lot of those holdouts who are very conservative and come from very conservative districts in which Trump won by a large margin. Those are the actually the people who it does matter for if President Trump comes in and primaries them. So, there is two parts of this pressure campaign. There is the more trying to work with you part, and then there is the, you are going to get primaried if you don't get this done part.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: It is a testament to both the amazing hold that Donald Trump continues to have over congressional Republicans. But I think also, when you go and you think six months ago, the president and congressional leaders were talking about the huge mandate that they had coming off the elections. These have been middle of the night votes and deliberations down to the wire over and over again in the House and the Senate, now, back in the House.

it is not -- it is not a caucus that is moving like they have this giant mandate, and that's because, in part, they have very slim actual margins. Whatever you want to say about the election results. And that being said for Trump, this is about, clearly, about getting a win on this, on this huge bill, transformative bill.

There has been less attention to a lot of the things that are in it, including, it seems like from the president himself. There was a notice article yesterday that had some members of Congress saying that the president said in their meeting that there are a couple things not to touch, including Medicaid. And one of the members said, well, we're touching Medicaid in this bill and they're touching it quite a lot.

BASH: Yeah. I just want to play something that was originally put together by our friends on CNC this morning. I think John Berman used it, and it really does kind of speak to what you were just talking about. A lot of Republicans who don't like this for lots of reasons, maybe the most typical reason is because of the Medicaid cuts. They're still going to end up voting yes because of the pressure you talked about.

Listen to some of the criticism those probable yes votes have been voicing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RALPH NORMAN (R-SC): What the Senate did is unconscionable. I'll vote against it here, and I vote against it on the floor, until we get it right.

REP. ANDY HARRIS (R-MD): I'll tell you the last-minute changes in the Senate, like literally the very last amendment probably added another 100 billion dollars to that deficit, by adding in some of the green new scam subsidies. The bottom line is, this is not ready for prime time.

REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): We believe it falls short. We believe that it will create too much spending, and that is too much in the way of deficits over the next four or five years, in particular, with back loaded savings and more deficits up front.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Except they're all probably going to vote yes.

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yes. We have seen this pattern play itself out throughout the year, which is particularly sort of the fiscal conservative Republicans, the Freedom Caucus team coming out saying, wow, this is terrible. This isn't going to work. No way. I'll support it. And then folding, just folding in the end.

And essentially, with this bill, there were a lot of complaints with the Senate version, and members were told, this is the bill. There is no other bill. There is no going back. The president wanted it by July 4. The president is getting it by July 4. And maybe they got some side deals, but we don't know what they are, and they certainly aren't in writing at this point.

[12:10:00]

But they fold. It just happens. And we've talked about this already, but these members were all on the ballot with Donald J. Trump and his agenda. And his agenda is somewhat less dogmatic about the deficit than many of the Freedom Caucus.

BASH: So, most of House -- their House republicans are from ruby red districts. Thanks to gerrymandering that has gone on across the country, both parties do it. But there are still a very few, not even a handful of lawmakers, who are in districts, Republican lawmakers who are in districts, or in one case a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024.

So, we've been talking about the conservatives, but let's talk about the moderates. And we saw Susan Collins in the Senate. She voted no. So, we're looking now ahead to the House vote as it comes up. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania. Lauren reported that he voted against the rule, the procedural vote, which could be a tell-tale sign. Then there's Mike Lawler in New York. And then Don Bacon, who I think will vote yes, even though he says he's retiring.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yeah, Don Bacon, he said that he's going to get to a yes. Mike Lawler, despite the fact that they reduce some of the SALT incentives that he won in that first round. He now says he's a yes. And so, I think you really have to give a lot of credit to Donald Trump, whether or not you like the way that he moves.

I was thinking about the fact that when we look back to the last administration, it was Senator Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema who were really kind of the reason why then President Biden didn't get all of the more liberal policies that he wanted because they did not want to move that far. And you did not hear President Biden threatening to primary them. You did not hear President Biden pushing his political allies to put up ads against them in the way that you're seeing Donald Trump do it.

And so, I think that, you know, it'll be interesting to see how --

BASH: Hardball.

WRIGHT: Yeah, it's hardball. It's hardball. It's twisting the arms when he needs to. And I think that that NOTUS article yesterday when he said, you can't touch Medicaid, and then a House member said back to him, but we are touching Medicaid. Is significant because he's playing hardball. But these lawmakers are still going to have to go back to their district and explain why so many people are now being kicked off their healthcare.

BASH: OK. I just -- before we go to break, I want to play something that we thought was fun and interesting, and the world where you want things to break through online. This came from the White House. I don't know if you all remember. There was that ad called bump it about a hairpiece that you put in back in 2008. Just watch this.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: I mean, Kristen, it's like SNL-adjacent.

HOLMES: Oh. I mean, what they're doing on social media, they have an entire team that is doing these kind of ads and cutting stuff. I mean, it's like, they're trying to reach a whole different demographic with their social media that is like and trying to make it funny and interesting. So, I mean, that's -- I actually think it reaches somebody, right?

BASH: Reach us.

HOLMES: But I do -- I do want to make one point, which is, it's not just Donald Trump and this pressure campaign. It's also a very different environment that he has around him than he did his first term. And they came into this, and they spent four years preparing for this.

And when those House lawmakers walked into the White House yesterday, they weren't greeted by just this one episode of Trump saying, don't touch this. They were greeted with paper after paper after paper, explaining away what they were going to do with Medicaid. Why it wouldn't impact certain states? When it was going to go into effect?

Because I'll tell you, I talked to some of these lawmakers who are a yes, who were a no, and they don't feel like they got their arm twisted into this. They feel like they came to this decision. Now, not everybody, but some of them believe after talking to the White House, talking to the team, that they also came to this conclusion that it's the best bill. And that's the credit when you look at what we saw in the first term versus this term.

BASH: All right, everybody standby. You are looking still at a live feed of Hakeem Jeffries continuing to talk using the so-called magic minute for many, many minutes, more than seven hours so far to stall the final Republican vote on the House floor. So, the question is, beyond this, how are Democrats going to try to capitalize on what they think is good politics for what they definitely believe is bad policy in this bill.

[12:15:00]

Plus, a live look at the White House, where we are waiting for word on what President Trump discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. You're watching Inside Politics. Don't go anywhere.

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[12:20:00]

BASH: Seven hours and counting. You see there on the right side of your screen, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries still holding the floor, delivering a marathon speech in opposition to President Trump's massive agenda bill. Republicans are poised to pass that bill despite his efforts there. But will Jeffries' magic minute give Democrats some renewed energy as they plot their course forward? That is certainly what they're hoping.

My panel is back. Isaac, you have covered Hakeem Jeffries for many years. Take us inside the strategy that we're seeing play out right now.

DOVERE: I think it's less important for him to beat the Kevin McCarthy record here at 1:30 or whatever point he'll pass that than what he actually has already achieved, which is that this vote was supposed to happen between 6 and 8 am when few people would have been awake or paying attention to it. It will now happen at some point in the middle of the day when more people are paying attention to it.

And that -- within that is an effort to really specifically call out Republican members of Congress in districts that are -- that the Democrats are going to go after quite hard next year. It started yesterday. The Democrats, before the voting began, did an event on the steps of the Capitol. And he's picked up on this -- in his speech, saying about Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania or Young Kim in California.

These members that -- again, they want to go after and saying, these are the number of their constituents that are going to lose their health coverage, lose their nutritional assistance. All these sorts of things. And that, again, happening in the middle of the day, rather than before most people had breakfast or were out of bed, is what the objective is here.

BASH: OK. So, you mentioned some of the -- what they consider the moderate Republicans that they're going after. I want to play kind of a mash up of some of what we are hearing from Jeffries over the past seven hours. But listen carefully to one example of exactly what Isaac was talking about his fellow New Yorker, Nick LaLota, who is a Republican from -- who knows if it's a swing district, but they certainly hope so in the Democratic Party. Listen?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFFRIES: I'm going to take my time and ensure that the American people fully understand how damaging this bill will be to their quality of life. And as a result of the lack of healthcare that will result directly from this one big, ugly bill. People in America will die, unnecessary deaths. Mr. Speaker in New York's first congressional district represented by our colleague, Congressman Nick LaLota

Approximately 50,000 New Yorkers will lose their healthcare. It's a crime scene going after the health and the safety and the well-being of the American people, and Mr. Speaker, we want no part of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, I totally take your point about him wanting this to be a vote in the light of day and not early in the morning, and about these stories to be playing out. But we all know how people consume information. It's about clips. So, now they are building a set of clips with all of these examples, which I am sure we will see in various places to try to make these Republicans lives a little bit more difficult.

KEITH: Right. I think what happens after the bill passes is the president and his allies have to sell the bill, and Democrats have to continue what they have been doing. They have actually done a relatively good job, despite their many challenges right now, but Democrats have actually done a relatively good job of driving the message, which is a fairly easy message to drive. That this is a tax cut for the rich that will take benefits away from the poor, and they are selling that. It is showing up in polling.

The president and his team have to figure out how to say, no, that's not it. This is a working-class tax cut. And the thing about our information environment is it's going to take repetition. It's going to take repetition for the Democrats. It's going to take repetition from President Trump and Republicans. President Trump does have the advantage of being sort of a broken record. He's very good at repetition. And was talking to Republican consultant today, who said, yeah, you're going to hear him talking about this a lot.

BASH: And let's return to the moment that we're in right now. You do see Jeffries still speaking. Let's look at the modern history of this so-called magic minute that he is engaged in right now. Nancy Pelosi, she spoke for eight hours and seven minutes. And then Kevin McCarthy, he topped that eight hours and 32 minutes.

[12:25:00]

So, the question is whether or not, Hakeem Jeffries is going to break McCarthy's record. I know that's not the point, but it's certainly icing on the cake. And I was told by a Democratic member who's in and around Jeffries during this whole speech that that is certainly his goal.

WRIGHT: I mean, and he's close. So, why not just do any other hour? I mean, I'm not up there speaking, so I don't know how difficult it is, but why not? I think that Democrats actually took a really big lesson from when Cory Booker did his hours and hours long speech just a few moments ago. They clipped it all over the internet. It went viral on TikTok.

Something that Democrats don't necessarily do all the time, but it is helpful for getting their message out. It was something that actually broke through. And so, now they're actually trying to recreate this moment. And I think you're right that Democrats have actually been incredibly disciplined in this moment, not just voting zero across the board.

There is a situation -- I mean, there's a scenario, I mean, you could have seen. If it was maybe just extended tax cuts or something about the border that they could have gotten some Democratic votes. But on this they've been actually disciplined to got no votes across the board.

But also in their messaging, Democrats have been kind of like crawling around in the dark for the last six months, really unable to articulate what their message is. But with this -- where they're kicking you off of healthcare, they have found a moment, it's breaking through.

Now the question is, do enough Americans know exactly what is in this bill and when it will affect them? And I don't think that that is true.

BASH: Real quick. This is not going unnoticed at the White House. The vice president just put on social media this morning. I was under -- this is about a Republican Congressman that texted him. I was undecided on the bill, but then I watched Hakeem Jeffries' performance, and now I'm a firm yes. Not sure that that's actually -- HOLMES: I mean, yeah, who knows that that's actually -- that seems like one of those things that you're like, oh, did anyone actually say that to you type of thing?

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: Exactly.

KEITH: Yeah. How does you don't know before.

HOLMES: I think that there is one thing that -- and I just -- I'm honestly just doubling down on your point. Like, Democrats have not been able to figure out what their messaging is for so long. And this is the first time that we have seen them actually breaking through on something and they will stick with it.

BASH: We do want to sneak in a quick break because coming up. President Trump -- I know Kristen is reporting, because that's what happens. It just happens all live on television that President Trump did just end his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. We are going to have details. She's already on her phone folks. After a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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