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Inside Politics

House To Vote Next Week On Forcing Release Of Epstein Files; White House Says Epstein Emails "Prove Absolutely Nothing"; Trump Slams New Trove Of Epstein Email As A "Hoax" by Dem; Longest Govt. Shutdown Ends, Obamacare Premiums To Skyrocket; Judge To Rule On Prosecutor Charging Comey & James By Thanksgiving. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 13, 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]

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Under a 50-year mortgage, your monthly payments would be about $300 cheaper. So, that's helpful, although not dramatically lower. But here's the problem. Look at the change in interest.

Under a 50-year mortgage, your interest payments over the life of the loan would almost double to over $1 million. And that's if interest rates stayed the same. They could actually be even higher. So, Pamela, that's why this idea in particular has drawn a backlash among housing experts and even some conservatives, who say, it just doesn't make sense.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: All right. Matt Egan, thanks for breaking it down for us. We appreciate it.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: And Pamela, before we leave this hour, I want to give you a gift. This is called a penny.

BROWN: Rest in peace, penny.

BLITZER: There's not -- they're not making any more pennies. So, you have one of the final pennies out there.

BROWN: Wow, this is really acceptable.

BLITZER: Say thank you very much me?

BROWN: Thank you very much, Wolf.

BLITZER: And to all of our viewers, thanks very much for joining us. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, the Trump administration is scrambling to contain the fallout from thousands of Jeffrey Epstein emails, many naming the president. But will they be able to rein in Republicans who are pushing for full transparency.

Plus, the shutdown hangover. Tens of millions of Americans are now facing skyrocketing healthcare costs. We'll break down how their struggle may define the 2026 midterms. And disagreeing without being disagreeable. It's sadly rare in politics, but this hour, you'll see a top Democrat and Republican in the Senate. Do just that on the college campus where Charlie Kirk was assassinated.

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

We begin with the story engulfing Washington. The Jeffrey Epstein files. Today, Republicans are pretty divided over a vote set for next week that would force the Justice Department to release all the case materials. Yesterday, we saw thousands of pages of Epstein emails released by the House Oversight Committee, emails between Epstein and some of the most powerful men in the world of politics and big business.

President Trump is not one of those men, but Epstein does speak about him many, many times. The convicted sex offender was closely tracking Trump's political rise, at times, calling him crazy and suggesting he had dirt on his one time friend. Trump has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

The White House says it's all a hoax to distract from Trump's political successes, but it is something that Republicans will vote on, either for or against next week. And a growing number of Republicans are signaling that their vote will be a yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR (R-FL): I'm a Florida girl. I have two daughters. So, I am thinking. I'm thinking, I mean, you know, I'm sure that the president has nothing to fear. We do need to know. We do need to know everything about Epstein.

REP. DON BACON (R-NE): If this comes on the floor, I will vote for it. I want transparency. To me, it's, you know, the worst P.R. job I've seen anywhere. I mean, initially, you know, back in February or March, whatever it was, we have all the Epstein lists right here. We're going to release it, and then all sudden, there's nothing. It was sort of a self. They shot themselves in the foot on this.

REP. WARREN DAVIDSON (R-OH): I'm going to vote for it if it comes up. Pam Bondi was supposed to come to the House and answer these questions. And look, I'm not on the judiciary committee, but I did want Pam Bondi to come and do some explaining.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters, and David Chalian, I'm going to start with you. What is your read on where we are on the politics of this right now?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR & WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Well, I mean, I think broadly, it's pretty clear that the president doesn't want this in the ether, excuse me, but I think -- I think the politics in this has shifted over time. And I think that earlier in the spring and the summer, we saw a huge division inside the MAGA world over this. There was real anger, because there was a lack of a delivered promise, a promise from Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Pam Bondi, others that said this is going to come out. And there was real anger and frustration.

What happened was it exploded as a story this summer. The mainstream media and the Democrats glommed onto it, and all of a sudden, the division inside MAGA started to be a bit more muted, because they saw that their political opponents were trying to use it for advantage.

I still think as that as what you just played there, Dana, the Republicans on the Hill are still responding to constituents on at home who really want transparency here, even if it's not a get Trump thing, they want the transparency. And that piece is still where I think the sort of Republicans on the Hill and Republican voters broadly, are at odds with Trump.

BASH: And just to that point about transparency versus the politics of this or maybe it all goes together. The speaker tried to push this through, or somebody in the republican conference tried to push this through by U.C., meaning, there would not be a recorded vote on this. And a Democrat said, no, no, no, that's not going to happen.

[12:05:00]

So, there will be a recorded vote next week. And the speaker said, I'm going to get a little bit technical here, but I'm going to explain why I'm doing it. The speaker said last night to a reporter that it could be done under the suspension calendar. Why does that matter? Because he believes it's going to -- and everybody believes it's going to pass at this point.

But the suspension calendar would mean 290 to pass, because you need a super majority effectively, which tells you where he understands his conference is, which is it's not just going to be those four we've been talking about who signed the discharge petition. It's going to be a pretty sizable Republican vote yes to release these files.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Absolutely. And you've heard people like Republican Thomas Massie, of course, one of the people -- the only Republican to really put this forward. We now know that there's four Republicans who signed on to it, but he has said publicly that he is Republicans going into his office, telling him, hey, not going to sign that petition, which obviously passed yesterday, but we will get on board with that vote.

And that is definitely something, of course, the White House is thinking about. Look, I've had a lot of conversations with people, though, at the White House about how to handle this. Obviously, we saw one of their last ditch efforts yesterday by calling in Lauren Boebert to the -- not even just the White House, to the Situation Room, of all places where, you know, normally you over warplanes.

I've never heard them have a member there for something like this, to see if they could convince her to take her name off of that and not have this pass. Obviously, that wasn't successful. And so now they have to figure out where to go from here. There's a lot of frustration. The president himself is very frustrated at all of this.

But so, the broader sense I get from the administration again, because there's a lot of the people in the White House were the same ones, as to David's point that were calling for this. We're calling for this transparency--

BASH: Including the FBI director.

TREENE: They have -- they have a tough thing right now, because I think the emails for whatever they were yesterday, and I think we've all been very clear that I don't think there's any, you know, legal implications for Donald Trump, for the president, in those emails, but they are, of course, embarrassing.

But I think the most serious question it poses is, does -- has the president known more that he has been keeping quiet, and has he really been as transparent as they always promised. And having this all come out is, I think, the problem that they are trying to protect him from.

BASH: And Donald Trump is as he always has for decades and decades, using the Roy Cohn playbook to not apologize, double down deflect and say this is a them problem, not a me problem. In one of the many Truth Socials he has put up, there should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our country. This is before the shutdown ended.

And then, in other words, the Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures hoax. So, he is making -- starting to try to make this the same kind of topic that he did with Russia and other issues--

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST: In 2020.

BASH: In 2020.

HENDERSON: January 6, and all that stuff. But guess what? Is that working? Because he and lots of people in this administration, as we've said, have stoked this for years and years and years, and their version of it was that it was really Democrats who were involved in it. And once Donald Trump got into office, he was going to uncover all of this.

You know, I think part of the problem is, and you touched on this sort of average voters. There is a sort of conspiracy theory minded approach that average voters have about the elites. This idea that there is sort of a seedy underbelly of the elites. And Donald Trump, of course, came into office promising that he would uncover it.

And so now you have this situation where, if you're a Republican, how can you vote against transparency? How can you vote against these victims and survivors who came out in testimony and searing testimony and in books about what they experienced?

And so, listen, this is a problem for 2026. It's potentially a problem for 2028 whoever runs in the Republican primary. If you have Democrats and other Republicans saying, why didn't you stand with the victims? Why did you stand with sort of the elites and who are involved in this?

BASH: And one of the reasons this is so scrambled now that we have seen so many of these emails is because of the people Epstein was emailing with, including Steve Bannon, who is one of the, you know, biggest figures in the MAGA movement. This is June -- early June 2019, when then President Trump, in his first term, was meeting with now former Prince Andrew during a U.K. trip.

[12:10:00]

Epstein writes to Bannon, Prince Andrew and Trump today, too funny. Epstein again to Bannon recall, Prince Andrew's accuser came out of Mar-a-Lago. And then Bannon replies, can't believe no one is making you -- there's something in there, but the connective tissue. Now I also want to say that initially, Bannon's identity is redacted in these emails, but a source did confirm that that was him.

So, there's the content of that, which is, you know, raises a lot of eyebrows. But I am more intrigued with the fact that Steve Bannon in 2019 was emailing with Jeffrey Epstein.

CHALIAN: I mean, the people Jeffrey Epstein was apparently in touch with throughout the course of this, it's just

HENDERSON: Larry Summers is being--

CHALIAN: --never ending. You know, the Biden White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmle. I mean, it just is a never-ending association, which is fascinating in and of itself. I do think here that for President Trump, and as you said, like there is no -- there's no clear implication of wrongdoing here in these emails.

But it begs the question, and this is what I think is so politically problematic for him right now, is why are you opposed to the full transparency of this being released? Just why? Why are you opposed to that? It's a very simple question. Because, you know, when Speaker Johnson was on with Jake Tapper earlier this week, said, you know, Grijalva is going to get sworn in. They're going to be 218. This discharge petition is going forward.

And Johnson's response was, it's kind of moot now. House oversight has been investigating this. This is a moot point, except that Boebert is being brought to the Situation Room to get. So Donald Trump doesn't think it's moot. Then well, why? Why is that.

BASH: Yeah. Such a good point. OK. Everybody stand by because up next, rolling the dice on whether we live or die. That's the reality for tens of millions of Americans who are facing spikes in their healthcare costs. Right now, we're going to tell you how it is going to impact the midterms, and it is something that Democrats have been warning about, which is why they think, after all of the attacks that they got on backing down this week, they think that that is ultimately going to be a political win. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: 43 incredibly long days later, the government shutdown is over. But for the tens of millions of Americans whose healthcare costs are about to skyrocket, the struggle is just beginning. Here's what President Trump said about that last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: And I'm calling today for insurance companies not to be paid, but for the money, this massive amount of money to be paid directly to the people of our country so that they can buy their own healthcare, which will be far better and far less expensive than the disaster known as Obamacare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back. Nia, this is the president playing on democratic turf, which was a very painful and long strategy that the Democrats had. I mean, they didn't expect it to be as painful and long as it was, but this was the purpose of their strategy to get healthcare front and center in the political dialog.

HENDERSON: Yeah. And that's, you know, I wrote a column about this, and I basically said, you know, Democrats sort of won by losing, right or lost by winning, whatever it is. They won, you know, because they have this issue now, right? The shutdown is over, and now they pivot to healthcare, and now it's up to Republicans to come up with some sort of plan.

I don't understand what that plan is. You know, they've had essentially 15 years, and in those 15 years, they've said they can come up with some plan that is cheaper and better and gives more Americans access that, of course, doesn't really make sense. It seems to be an impossibility.

Mike Johnson has said that he has notebooks full of ideas to address the rising cost of healthcare. Apparently, there's another plan that could come out of the Senate when they vote on these ACA subsidies. That's another plan out of the Republicans. So, we'll see. But this is all democratic turf. This is where they want to be. And it dovetails nicely into the affordability argument, which we saw last Tuesday, worked really nicely for Democrats.

BASH: Chris and Donna Vetters were on with our colleagues this morning. Listen to what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS VETTERS, MADE DECISION TO DROP HEALTH INSURANCE: The fear is that we wouldn't be able to afford regular screenings, and at our age, that would be important. We might not be able to catch say, you know, a cancerous growth, and wouldn't even know about it until, well, it would be too late to actually knowing (Ph) about it, you know, get treatment for it, and then we couldn't afford the treatment anyways. So, it's literally rolling the dice on whether we live or die at this point.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And they're rolling the dice, David, by choosing to go without health insurance next year because of the costs.

CHALIAN: You say it dovetail -- dovetails nicely. It is central to the affordability conversation. I mean, this is a critical part for people in their lived experience of their expenses. And you know, some of it is food and how you're feeding yourselves and your family. Some of it is how you're protecting yourself from illness and the cost of health insurance. And this isn't going away. I mean, this is the thing.

[12:20:00]

The government funding deadline goes to January 30 now. You think Democrats after seeing the success that they had, both electorally and just around this shutdown environment that people were not blaming the Democrats for the shutdown as they were fighting for healthcare. When it gets closer to January 30, this is not going to be the front and center topic. Of course it is, if this isn't resolved.

And so, I do think the ball is in the Republican court right now. This is what it is to have control of the House, the Senate and the White House when there is a major concern for Americans, and we'll see how they're going to navigate this. But if these rates skyrocket, I mean, just you talk to Republicans, they are fearful for the backlash and for their jobs next year, being on the ballot.

BASH: Yeah. And they hear about it from their constituents, just like Democrats do. Alayna, I want to put a spotlight on some really incredible and important reporting that you have. And that is, you know, we have been talking about the fact that President Trump is saying, everything is fine. The economy is fine. There is no affordability crisis.

But what you're learning is, and I'll put on the screen. The White House is weighing stepped up domestic travel and speeches to improve Trump's standing on the economy. And in your reporting, you say the president -- this is a quote, the president gets it. He knows this is an issue that's according to a senior White House official, but he's frustrated he's not getting credit for what he's doing. I would say, Mr. President--

TREENE: That's not the point.

BASH: Take -- well also take a number. That's what happens with presidents. It's certainly what happened with Joe Biden and other presidents.

TREENE: Right. And that's also, I think, not the point of the frustration and anxiety that Americans have. I mean, look, there's two parts to this. One is, what the president is saying, and what I've been hearing in my conversations from these officials. I think that quote is an example of this. He sees it as a perception issue. He sees it as they are not the Republican Party, and his team is not communicating as well on all of the policies that he feels are helping Americans and the economy. But his team also recognizes that that's not what's happening here. What's happening is you can't -- another quote I had, and I remember, was, you know, you can't change people's lived experience. This is reality. You can't change how people are feeling.

And so, we need to address it, and that's why, behind closed doors, his advisors are telling him, do not brush this aside. Do not dismiss these concerns, these polls that Americans are saying how they're feeling, because that's just their lived reality. What you have to do is message better. That's why he's essentially going on a campaign tour around the country to talk about this issue. And yeah, I mean, look, they're putting policy time on his schedule. One other official said to really go through this--

BASH: There was policy time on the schedule before.

TREENE: Right. But it's all to say it's a problem they know they need to fix.

BASH: Yeah. Such great reporting. Encourage people to check it out on cnn.com. Don't go anywhere. Up next. Could President Trump's handpicked prosecutor be disqualified from the James Comey and Letitia James cases? We might have an answer. Stand by.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Today in court, lawyers for James Comey and Letitia James asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal cases against them because they say the prosecutor President Trump named to oversee the cases was improperly installed. Lindsey Halligan brought the indictment against Comey and James after her predecessor refused and was fired. President Trump's decision to appoint Halligan, his former personal lawyer is the crux of the argument to now dismiss her.

CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams is here. So, Elliot, James' attorney put it this way. Quote, she was pretending at the point in which Ms. Halligan walked into the grand jury, she was a private person. Explain that argument?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST & FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yeah. So, real quick. Erik Siebert, who had the role before, had spent 120 days by law in the position. He got taken out. Judges put a new person in, you know, it sort of installed him back in. And the administration's theory is that, well, Lindsey Halligan can serve for 120 days in the role, right? That she's properly in the role.

Now, the argument that James Comey and Letitia James' folks are putting forward is, no, that's not the case. She literally was not properly installed. The administration was playing fast and loose with the appointment rules. She was a private citizen and not the proper U.S. attorney. That's the argument.

BASH: And she -- her name is the only one on the indictment?

WILLIAMS: Yes. And that is the big, big problem for the administration here. Were there a bunch of attorneys on the indictment? You could make the argument that, look, the U.S. attorney wasn't properly installed, but there's six other people who signed this, this grand jury document, therefore it should still stand up.

The mere fact that only Lindsey Halligan's name on it, Comey folks and Letitia James' folks are pointing to as a means of saying, this is an improper document. It was signed by someone who was not properly the U.S. attorney at the time.

BASH: There's so many discussions on so many issues about presidential power.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BASH: Will this case play into that?

WILLIAMS: I think so. And in fact, one of the questions that came up today was, was United States versus Trump properly decided? This is what the judge asked. This was the case that invalidated in Florida, invalidated Jack Smith. The judge is clearly thinking about the fact that, look, there is already case law that says that when someone is improperly installed in a role, they got to be taken out of the role, or that, you know, the work that they touched as U.S. attorney or prosecutor might be taken out.

So, the judge is clearly winking at potentially removing Lindsey Halligan from the case. But this is such uncharted territory in terms of presidential power. I don't think anybody really knows how this is all going to come out.