Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Trump: "Don't Know Why" Chicago Isn't Saying "Please Give Up Help"; Trump: "We'd Love To Go Into Chicago And Straighten It Out"; Florida Pushes To End All Childhood Vaccine Mandates; Some In GOP Grow Weary Of Kennedy Controversies; JFK Grandson Explores Run For Congress In NY. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 08, 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]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Today on Inside Politics, a west wing warning shot. President Trump is publicly taunting democratic cities, hinting he could send federal troops to their zip codes as soon as this week. We have new reporting on what it could mean for Chicago and Boston.

Plus, Florida's top doctor says, actual data did not factor into the decision to scrap the vaccine requirements in the Sunshine State for public schools, as even President Trump admits, it may be a step too far. And I'll speak with the author of a book about zoning laws that sparked a political cult following, is the abundance movement a blueprint for Democrats moving forward, or just a buzzword?

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

The Trump administration is moving to expand its crackdown on illegal immigration and crime into more cities, with Chicago at the top of the list. Yesterday, President Trump said a decision would come within a day or two. This morning, after a weekend that included a threat to seemingly declare war on America's third largest city. The president took aim at Democratic leaders there.

He said, quote, Governor Pritzker just stated that he doesn't want federal government help. Why? What is wrong with this guy, and the 5 percent in polls mayor. I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Minutes ago, he said this at an event, meant to honor religion in America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You try and reason with people like in Chicago, with the governor and the mayor. You try and reason with them, and it's like you're talking to a wall. It just doesn't -- I assume it's just a political ideology. They're not stupid people, it must be an ideology that's just buried in their head, and you can't do a damn thing about it. And we'd love to go into Chicago and straighten it out.

You know, Washington, D.C., you'll be happy to know, is a free and safe zone. It's so safe right now. I don't know why Chicago isn't calling us saying, please give us help. When you have over just a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot, and then you have a governor that stands up and says, how crime is just fine. It's really crazy, but we're bringing back law and order to our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And just moments ago, President Trump scored a win at the Supreme Court. The court backed the president's push to allow immigration enforcement officials to continue so-called roving patrols in Southern California. Now a lower court had said the patrols likely violated the Fourth Amendment, and critics call it racial profiling.

I'm joined now by a terrific group of reporters, CNN's Manu Raju, Ayesha Rascoe of NPR, Jeff Mason of Reuters and CNN's Priscilla Alvarez. Priscilla, I want to start with you, and you know, I just mentioned the Supreme Court decision. But just talk big picture about where we are right now. Is the Trump administration poised to send federal troops to Chicago, maybe even Boston, even at the objection of leaders there?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, the escalating rhetoric that you're hearing from the president and from senior Trump officials matches the way they're planning their aggressive immigration agenda behind the scenes. In fact, internally, it has been a discussion for -- to target Chicago and Boston for their sanctuary policies, which limit the cooperation between the police department and federal immigration enforcement.

When it comes to immigration enforcement, the executive has a lot more authority in the way that they can deploy federal resources. The National Guard is of its own, sort of in its own place, but the way they're thinking about Chicago especially is a lot -- a lot like they thought of Los Angeles.

In fact, my sources repeatedly tell me, it is the Los Angeles playbook, which is to say, you put a lot of federal resources on the ground, all focused on immigration enforcement, and there's sort of a build-up that happens, and that is when those immigration protests occurred and the National Guard came in.

Of course, there's been litigation. The court has had its say in how the administration used the guard. So, it's still unclear how exactly they would use it for Chicago, for example, though officials always say it's on the table, but ultimately it is for them to have a big president in these cities, and to make their point about immigration protests.

[12:05:00]

BASH: So, a big ICE presence, hope, frankly, that protesters take to the streets because they're upset about it, and then the National Guard comes in.

ALVAREZ: And then it gets bundled into everything. It gets bundled into crime. It gets bundled into immigration enforcement. And just put a finer point on it, the man in charge, the homeland security official in Los Angeles has been deployed to Chicago to carry out the same thing.

BASH: Oh, that's very interesting. Well, that tells you a lot. Manu, let's just look at some other posts from the president this morning on his social media platform. Washington, D.C. is a safe zone in just a matter of weeks. Thank you, President Trump. Who's next? And just quickly. This is what Tom Homan, the Border Czar, said to Jake yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: Absolutely, you can expect action in most sanctuary cities across the country. President Trump's prioritized sanctuary cities because sanctuary cities knowingly release illegal alien public safety threats to the streets every day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Trump wants this fight. Clearly, this is an issue that shows that he polls better than other issues right now. That is, as he's seen, other issues go down in the polls. But the challenge is going to be because a lot of -- the same polls do say that, why swat the American public don't want to see the National Guard come in to their states and their cities.

Is there a risk of the president overreaching? And is there a risk of the president not focusing on the issue on the minds of most voters, which is the economy, which is inflation, which is rising prices? The president's base, clearly, is with them when it comes to immigration, crime, these hardline tactics, but so many more of the independent voters will be critical. In the midterms, want that focus to be on the economy and on inflation.

BASH: OK, so you mentioned the polling. Let's just look at some of the polling here. This is from CBS/YouGov over the weekend. The question is Trump's goal in deploying the National Guard to reduce crime. Dems only say 5 percent, independents 28, 68 percent for Republicans political reasons.

I mean, you see both, most -- mostly for Republicans and Democrats. The response is sort of with their political team, but the independent number is what you're referring to. That's really interesting, 51 percent. And then, if we could just put it quickly back up on the screen, the question about both, Democrats 13%, independents 21, even Republicans say -- 22 percent of Republicans say yes.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Well, I mean, that's the thing here. I mean, when you say that D.C. is now a safe zone, everything is fixed. These are people's lives, right, like in -- and yes, crime is serious. People are dying. They're murders. You don't come in for a month and say, now it's all fixed, and then you want people to take it seriously, like that's not taking people's lives seriously. And I think what you see in this polling is that independents and people who are not thinking, looking at this to a purely political lens or partisan lens, are seeing through that. And I think -- and the issue that, you know, you're trying to play up all this attention for, you're going to fix crime, you're going to fix crime in 15 days and what have you.

But then, you know, you have these bad jobs' numbers. People are concerned about, you know, rising prices and all these things. You're not addressing those issues. And so, when you can't address that, you go, let's bring in the National Guard. Let's do all this other stuff.

BASH: And to your point, let's show what the headlines are in the last few days on the economy, the issue that he absolutely does not want to talk about. You saw CNN's headline, Trump's economy problem is threatening his agenda. The Associated Press, The New York Times, it goes on and on and on.

So, the question is, can both things be true at the same time? The economy is terrible. He wants to talk about crime, but he is the president. And even though many times, and how many presidents have you covered?

JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Three, four-ish.

BASH: OK. The presidents want to set the agenda, and world events sometimes take over, but they have a very big megaphone. You have one too. You covered President Trump, and you asked him about this at the White House yesterday. Let's listen to what he said about Chicago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Chicago is a very dangerous place, and we have a governor that doesn't care about crime. I guess we could solve Chicago very quickly, but we're going to make a decision as to where we go over the next day or two.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK, that was obviously Andrews, not the White House. What are you hearing about that decision over the next day or two?

MASON: Well, so then the question before that answer was, do you have plans for Chicago this week? And he was ambiguous. And I think that has been kind of interesting to watch the President go back and forth on whether he wanted or when he plans to go into Chicago. He said last week, we're definitely going in. Then he pulled back a little bit. The border czar, the immigration czar, Mr. Homan, said over the weekend that it's going to happen.

[12:10:00]

So, it's like they're kind of messing with people a little bit. But as you rightly said, clearly, the plans are in place, but I think he's trying to keep folks guessing a little bit. And I think the politics of that are also clearly playing a role. The fact that he brought up New Orleans last week and is talking about now going into Republican states, where he thinks that they will be welcomed, may show that there is some legal wrangling going behind the scenes.

BASH: Obviously. Yeah, they obviously see that it's a very different thing to go to Washington, D.C., where which is not a state --

MASON: Correct.

BASH: --and they have the ability, the legal authority to do so, and to a state where the governor is not inviting them.

ALVAREZ: It's a moving target. It has been moving target internally. It's worth noting that in the first days of the second Trump administration. Tom Homan was in Chicago doing a major immigration enforcement action. And on the military front, I'll just note, we have reported months ago that the point was to, at some point, bring the U.S. military when it came to immigration enforcement.

This has been top of mind for them for a long time. They've had discussions internally about how to move National Guard from one state to operate in another state. So, this has been part of their planning all along. It just comes down to how do you do it, and does it stand up legally?

BASH: Yeah. And then the question is whether -- go ahead.

MASON: Can I just add one more thing to piggyback off of what Ayesha said. There's also a question of what the facts are. I mean, the president repeatedly saying, D.C. is now a crime free zone. Is just not true. I pushed back on that gently last night when we were talking and said, Mr. President, there is still crime in D.C.

BASH: What he said?

MASON: He said, not much. So, you know, he's very proud of the figures that they are releasing about the impact that the National Guard has had. But it is not a panacea, and for people to take it seriously, you need to be able to take the facts seriously too.

BASH: I mean, if only, not much that would be very nice. Up next. Florida's top doctor defends his decision to end school vaccine requirements for public schools, which even President Trump says, may be going too far.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Florida officials are making a massive change to public health policy. My colleague Jake Tapper spoke to the state surgeon general about his push to remove vaccine requirements from public schools.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Did you do any data projection of how many new cases of these diseases there will be in Florida once you remove vaccine mandates?

DR. JOSEPH LADAPO, FLORIDA SURGEON GENERAL: Absolutely. So, absolutely not.

TAPPER: So, you have not prepared hospitals in the Florida counties most at risk with the best treatments for any outbreaks of measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, polio, and you have not looked into how many kids might now get these preventable diseases. That's what you're saying?

LADAPO: I know that's what you said. What I'm saying is that it's an issue of right and wrong in terms of whether parents should be able to control, have ultimate authority over what happens to their kids' bodies. In terms of outbreaks, we do have outbreaks in Florida, just like every state, and we manage those. So, there are no new special, you know, special procedures that need to be made.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back here. Jeff Mason, this is something that the president, oddly, is at odds with some of his base, not all, which we'll get into, which is why this is a really interesting political topic because there's obviously a split in the GOP. Before we start talking, I want you to listen. I want our viewers to listen to what President Trump said on Friday, responding to what the Florida surgeon general did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You have some vaccines that are so amazing. The polio vaccine. I happen to think is amazing. A lot of people think that covid is amazing. I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don't have to be vaccinated. Look, you have vaccines that work. They're just pure and simple work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MASON: So, there's some distance between President Trump and his health and human services secretary on this. But what's interesting, politically and from a policy perspective, is even though, there's a little bit of distance there. And what one White House official told me was less passion about the subject, he's not putting any guardrails around Kennedy. He's not stepping in and saying, actually, this is not what I want. This is not the legacy that I want on health.

I remember asking a White House official last week for a story I was working on. Does he really even want this? Like I had no doubt that he wants to kind of take a sledgehammer to the academia and to the law firms and the media is, does he really want that for health as well? And this person said, he's less passionate, but he trusts Kennedy. So, there you go. But it's clear from that particular quote, he doesn't feel the same way about all vaccines that Kennedy seems to. BASH: And that's why you see and you talk to so many members and Senate Republicans after the hearing last week that even those who asked some tough questions saying that they were concerned, like Dr. Senator Barrasso. I think it was you who caught him as he was going in the elevator, saying, I support the president.

[12:20:00]

RAJU: Yeah. And, but he also would not say if he has confidence in Kennedy. And he also offered some critical concerns. Barrasso did at that hearing over Kennedy, which is very rare for someone who has really defended the president all along the line. And you're seeing that unease really translate to the highest parts of the Senate Republican leadership, even John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader.

I asked him directly, he said, do you have confidence in Kennedy as human -- Health & Human Services secretary? He said, it is not up for me to say if I have confidence in him. It's up to the president to say if he has confidence in him. So, he would not answer the question, which says a lot.

You know, they're just in this very, very difficult position because they all voted to confirm it, other than Mitch McConnell, polio survivor who's credited polio vaccine for him -- for his -- in his life, opposed him because of that Kennedy's views on vaccines. Other Senate Republicans believed Kennedy would not go as far as he did, and they were wrong.

BASH: And even though there is a hot political hot potato here, which you obviously experienced with John Thune. We have to remember that within the so-called MAHA movement, the movement that did help Donald Trump get elected. There are true believers who do not like the vaccine, and they think that they put Donald Trump in the White House in order to get rid of vaccine requirements.

I just want to -- just to underscore that. Play a bit of a conversation that Marjorie Taylor Greene had with Steve Bannon in the spring.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): A very important part of this segment is the MAHA movement and RFK Jr. gets incredible -- he's responsible --

STEVE BANNON, HOST, WAR ROOM: Make America healthy --

GREENE: Yes.

BANNON: If you merge MAHA and MAGA --

GREENE: That's how we won.

BANNON: Exactly. So, it's like 1932, you govern forever.

GREENE: 100 percent. (END VIDEO CLIP)

RASCOE: Well, yeah. And, you know, we see this over and over again with Trump. He may not feel passionate about the vaccines' issues, but he's passionate about people that like him, right? And so, as long as, if MAHA is saying they like Trump, they're going to back Trump, then he's like, OK, well, let's just see how this goes. But this is a very tricky issue because polls show that most parents do support, you know, having mandates for vaccines for children to attend schools.

And so -- and if you do have serious outbreaks when people are going to Disney World or Busch Gardens or wherever, I think that this becomes a bigger issue, right? Because when you're talking about the health of your children or immunocompromised children, I think -- or you know, your little baby that's not old enough to get all the vaccines. That's an issue.

BASH: Yeah. Except that there -- we can't forget that there is an information ecosystem in which people have come to believe without proper data to back it up that vaccines are hurting -- are hurting their kids. I do want to talk about something politically adjacent, and that is Jack Schlossberg, saying that he is going -- he, of course, is the grandson of JFK, saying that he is forming an exploratory committee apparently to see about running for Congress. He said, hey guys, have formed an exploratory committee. But on this --

(Crosstalk)

BASH: I'm a still reporter and nothing else. But he's also somebody who, like his mother and even who is Caroline Kennedy, who and his -- many of his cousins who are RFK Jr.'s siblings, who have set totally distanced themselves from him. Now, I will say, I don't want to put this up because it has a word that we're not going to -- oh, we can put it up. We blurred it. So, take a look at this.

This is what Jack Schlossberg put on his social media feed with his grandfather. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what my nephew's blanking problem is. That's in keeping with his very cheeky social media fear.

RAJU: I mean, this is the first time in decades that there has not been a Kennedy in elected office, and the highest-ranking Kennedy right now is RFK Jr. You're seeing so much of the Kennedy family concerned about the unraveling of a legacy that very much was about putting, you know, government working effectively about healthcare of its citizens and the like.

And seeing RFK Jr., do this is alarming a lot of the people in the family. We'll see what he ultimately does. What he ultimately runs for? And if he actually is successful here but he's probably not the -- he's not the only candidate looking for a promotion of sorts.

BASH: Yeah. Well, that is for sure. And there are a lot of them.

RAJU: Yes. There are a lot of them.

[12:25:00]

BASH: Up next. Two high-ranking Trump administration officials nearly come to blows at a fancy MAGA dinner, telling the other -- one telling the other, take the matter outside. You're going to want to hear this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Now to another round of fight club, White House edition. A source confirms to CNN that a pair of administration economic officials were on the verge of a brawl last week at a MAGA dinner party. MAGA dinner party, I should say, right here in Washington, D.C. Who are these officials? We're talking about the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and a top housing regulator Bill Pulte. Bessent threatened to punch Pulte in the face.

[12:30:00]