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Trump Orders Investigation Into Ties Between Top Dems And Epstein; MAGA Media Figures Back Trump After Epstein Emails Release; Sources: Top Border Patrol Official Known For Aggressive Tactics Heads To Charlotte, N.C.; Ingrassia Moves To New Role At GSA After Nomination Collapse. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 14, 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]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Theres a lot out there, we don't know.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's a lot out there we don't know. But we're going to find out.

BROWN: I was saying, one speck and one galaxy, billions of galaxies.

FOREMAN: At a time.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR, THE SITUATION ROOM: Tom Foreman knows lots more than we did.

BROWN: Yes, he does. He tracked it all. Tom Foreman, thank you so much.

BLITZER: And thanks to our viewers for joining us this morning. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash, starts right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: President Trump wants to shift the Epstein spotlight. Now he's ordering an investigation into ties between the sex trafficker and top Democrats.

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

If President Trump wants people to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein, this won't do it. Moments ago, the president posted on Truth Social, quote, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorgan Chase and many other people and institutions.

Now, CNN is reaching out to the Department of Justice and JP Morgan, as well as the people Trump named about his comments.

My panel is here to discuss all of this. Jasmine, you cover the White House. I'm going to start with you. There's a distraction, and then there is this, not a distraction. JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yeah. And I think that when you look at the totality of what the White House has been arguing that these emails amount to a democratic political ploy to change the conversation from the shutdown that they show that Trump is innocent from these emails. Then you see his Truth Social. Then you see these kind of actions.

And it does make a lot of people question what's happening, including his own supporters. I know I was talking to a MAGA loyalist just the other day, and I was asking them, what do you think that Donald Trump is trying to do with his messaging? And they said, I've made the conscious choice not to even think about it.

OK. And so, I think that that's where you see the base is right now. They're kind of stuck in a rock in a hard place. Obviously, so much of MAGA has been about what is in these files and getting these files released.

And again, this is something that Donald Trump could still do, right? That is still an option for it for him. And instead, he chooses to now launch an investigation, instead of potentially doing something that would actually maybe change the conversation, which would be release a file.

BASH: Yeah. And Isaac, the reason I use the word distraction is that it is, you know, kind of politics 101. Whether it's distraction or wag the dog or whatever it is that a principle sometimes a president tends to do in order to say, don't look over there, look over here. In this particular case, he's not taking the spotlight off of him. He's just widening the spotlight to bring other people into it, at least trying.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: If the goal was to get people to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein. I don't know how this -- any of what Donald Trump has done all year long would fit into that. And any really of what the Republicans in Congress have done either, it was very clear that part of the reason why Mike Johnson wasn't swearing in the new congresswoman from Arizona was because she was the 218th signature on this petition to release the files.

Of course, even so, it would have to pass Senate. The president would have to be -- it's so far removed from any files being released with her being sworn in. And yet, even that was an issue. All through the year, they have stretched this out. They have caused more attention to it. And we see even in -- it's important to remember, the emails that came out this week were from Jeffrey Epstein's estate. That's how the House Democrats had them, release them.

The Republicans had complaints of selective release. They are not the files or the documents that the Justice Department has. There are other documents. We don't know what they say, but they seem to have something in them that makes people not want to release them.

BASH: So, on that note, we do expect there to finally be a vote early next week in the House of Representatives. And we mentioned here yesterday, and we have some great reporting from our teams at the White House on Capitol Hill following up on the idea that the expectation now by Mike Johnson and the White House is that, it's probably going to be an overwhelming vote in favor of releasing the headlines.

And this is from a White House official to CNN. Just today, it was made clear to President Trump, and he understands that this is an inevitable reality. And before you come in, I just want to listen to Senator Kennedy on with Kasie Hunt about that yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): I just don't think this issue is going to go away until that issue is addressed and answered to the American people satisfaction. And I may end up with a sombrero on my head for saying that, but that's the way I see it. I think he'll put it on the floor. I think this is -- this issue is got to be resolved one way or the other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:05:00]

BASH: That last part was clearly about what happens when it is done, and then it goes to the Senate.

KADIA GOBA, POLITICAL AND CONGRESS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yeah. To Isaac's point, Speaker Johnson tried really hard to delay all of this, and it's kind of astounding that he's pushing this vote earlier than necessary next week. And I think it's largely because Republicans, especially in the House, want to get rid of this. They want to put this to bed.

So, it's ironic that the president is making more of a stake of it. And I can tell you, for one, Republicans in the House do not want to have this conversation again. They want it to go away. But I can tell you who doesn't care. I don't think Democrats care about older politicians from their older party leaders, you know, being investigated. It's the reason why they were so aggressive about trying to put the information out in the first place. I don't think they even care. I don't think they mind.

DOVERE: But I do think, importantly, that Trump has called for Bill Clinton to be investigated here of the emails that we got this week and it's not all of the information. One of them was an email from Epstein saying that Bill Clinton had never been to the island. So, I mean, that doesn't mean there's not -- maybe more to investigate. But it's interesting that Trump, even with that out there, says actually, let's investigate Bill Clinton more. When there are other emails that seem to implicate Trump in different ways.

BASH: And I played this, these comments from Senator Kennedy on what he sees the reality. The way that MAGA is now sort of twisting itself in some knots, not everybody, but some people to try to move on from Epstein after so many people, including people who are currently in senior positions in the administration, just railed against this and railed against releasing the Epstein files for years and years.

Now, let's listen to what some of the people with big megaphones are saying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a complete and utter nothing burger from what I can tell.

BEN SHAPIRO, HOST, THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW: There are tens of thousands of documents here. You have provided zero evidence to the effect that Donald Trump did anything illegal here.

MEGYN KELLY, HOST, THE MEGYN KELLY SHOW: Jeffrey Epstein, in this person's view, was not a pedophile. This is this person's view, who was there for a lot of this. But that he was into the barely legal type, like he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I'm just giving you facts that he wasn't into like eight-year-olds, but he liked the very young teen types.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks for that. Well, I think that, sorry, I need to, like, collect my thoughts.

BASH: Yeah, go ahead.

ALVAREZ: It bears repeating. I think this is what you were alluding to, that the reason that we're here is because of all of the talk and the push for the release of the Epstein files during the campaign from MAGA world, because what we're hearing a lot from them there is whether or not it implicates Donald Trump.

But the other part of this was also, who of these wealthy men and these wealthy types is the government trying to cover up for. That was also sort of part of the undercurrent of this push to release the Epstein files and what the public does or doesn't know about what happened there.

So, it is -- they are tying themselves up in knots. It does sort of go beyond just the president and whether or not he's implicated, and also this sort of conspiracy of who the government is covering up for, and it's something that constituents clearly still care about that that we had Thomas Massie on our air this week, sort of also alluding to that.

So, Republicans are in a tough place here, and the president is making it very clear that what he sees them as, as he said in his Truth Social today, again, is that those who speak against, or rather who are continuing to pushing for it, are the weak Republicans. So, it does. It's a fissure in the party. There are those that are trying to change the messaging here, but I think the reason that constituents grabbed onto this was for something larger.

BASH: And real quick. I don't want to lose sight of the fact that Democrats are the ones really aggressively pushing this now, even though they didn't before, aggressively pushing it now. The House speaker wanted to just approve this by a voice vote this week, and that would mean that people would not be on the record and how they voted. And Democrats objected, because they want people on the record to use this as a political weapon.

WRIGHT: Right. Democrats know that this is something that resonates with the constituency. They know that this is something that the base likes when they push, and so they want to make it as painful as Republicans as possible to get them on the record. The White House also wants to make it as painful as Republicans as possible who go against Donald Trump.

[12:10:00]

We had reporting today. My colleague Reese Gorman about how the White House is basically saying that Nancy Mace, the only one of the three women who voted to -- who put their name on the discharge petition, could be in trouble when it comes to her race for governor in South Carolina because she went against the Donald Trump.

Maybe she will not have his support in that race. Obviously, Donald Trump continues to kind of disparage the Republicans, saying that they're falling for the Democratic trap. And just go back to the MAGA folks, we and the NOTUS newsletter, looked at all of the folks' social media who were in that binder meeting in February where they held up those Epstein binders with the Department of Justice.

Obviously, that's where a lot of White House officials believe that this kind of started going left and they weren't very vocal about it. And so, you have the Republican Party, really on different pages when it comes to this Epstein issue. Some of them are with Donald Trump, but very clearly, some of them are not.

Bahs All right. Everybody we did just get a statement from JPMorgan Chase about the president's post. And the statement says, the government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks. We regret any association we had with the man but did not help him commit his heinous acts. We ended our relation with him -- relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.

Now coming up, we have new reporting on where the man running President Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown is heading, next. Stay with us.

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: An influx of federal immigration agents will arrive in Charlotte, North Carolina, as soon as tomorrow. Sources tell CNN that the operation will involve Gregory Bovino, a top border patrol official who has been leading President Trump's surge into blue cities across the country. Bovino's team is known for its aggressive approach, especially in Chicago, where it conducted immigration sweeps and parking lots and smashed car windows. You can see Bovino himself here firing tear gas, which ultimately landed him in court. Officials in other cities have described his tactics as, quote, frighteningly authoritarian.

My panel is back now. Priscilla?

ALVAREZ: Well, Gregory Bovino has been the face of the administration's crackdown. He has also been a very controversial figure, but one that has the stamp of approval from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, who have consistently lifted him up, both internally, literally, as he now reports to the secretary, as well as touting the arrest that he has done and backing him up in those heavy handed tactics.

Now, Bovino has been around for a long time, but we've been monitoring his movements, because where he goes is, where the administration is going to focus next. So, he was in Los Angeles first, then he went to Chicago, as we all know, and you showed videos of him there. I'm now being told by my sources that he is moving on to Charlotte, North Carolina. And then after that, he plans to go to New Orleans, Louisiana.

He has ties to both of those cities. He has told me in the past that he decides where he goes based on intelligence that they receive, and that currently they are in West Virginia training before moving on to their next location, which, again, sources tell me is Charlotte. But--

BASH: Sorry, intelligence on illegal immigrants are intelligent on crime, meaning like, how are they--

(CROSSTALK)

ALVAREZ: Well, in the administration, I see it both ways often, right, that the undocumented immigrants are a threat to public safety, but yes, because this is an immigration related operation. It is based off undocumented immigrants. It also has a political layer here, right? Because the cities where they have gone are democratic-led cities, but Bovino is the person to watch. And the reason we talk about him so much is because where he goes and what he does is what the administration wants to see, both from him and from other federal agents in this space.

GOBA: Yeah. I think it's interesting to your point that he's targeting those specific states, but also it kind of gives fodder to like 2028, we've talked about this before. These are some of governors who are probably going to run for election in 2028, and I think it's just ironic that he's been positioning them, or kind of giving them sort of a platform to speak out.

I have -- I haven't seen -- I've seen so many Pritzker press conferences than I have in the past four years, and I just think it's ironic that he would do that. And I do wonder how this is going to play out with independents in those states, who, I mean those are the people who win the election.

ALVAREZ: Well, and I think you're touching on something there, which is that public polling has shown that generally, the American public does still believe in the mass deportation and deporting, essentially, undocumented immigrants. Where there starts to be some fissures, though, is how it's done, and Bovino has really pushed the envelope here in terms of that, in terms of the tactics used, and sometimes U.S. citizens get caught up on it. So, I do think the independence is a space to watch because they're the ones that may sour on the how it's being done.

DOVERE: But there's also just what happened here that what is it that prompted them to say everything is done in Chicago. It does seem like they took a picture in front of the bean in Millennium Park in the snowstorm on Monday. Was it that the weather got cold that they decided to leave? Is that what it is?

[12:20:00]

Is it -- and you've had reporting this week about what was going on with the crime race there that it doesn't quite match up with the sense of like mission accomplished. They haven't explained that, and they haven't explained why. Of all the places in that they could be heading to next, just Charlotte, North Carolina is where to go to. There are undocumented immigrants all over the country, and this is -- it feeds the sense that the administration is looking to cherry pick places where they can make a show of it.

BASH: And the pushback. This is -- you all kind of touched on this, especially when you talked about independence. I don't know if where I'm going here is -- what I'm about to show you that these people are independents, but they are a powerful force in America. And I'm talking about moms.

And our colleague, Shimon Prokupecz, did a great piece, which is you can see on all access on cnn.com about suburban moms in suburban Chicago getting together and forming their own network to warn about ICE raids. Watch a little piece of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANDA BROOKS, EVANSTON RESIDENT: My son, anytime one of his friends is not at school, he comes home and he says, I'm so afraid they took him away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When sirens go off, they check their text messages.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Amanda Brooks runs to protect kids on the playground.

People all over Chicago and Evanston hear a whistle, and they run to them with their phones ready to film and to witness. Why is this an issue for you guys right now?

SAVANNA ESSIG-FOX: We have white skin. You know, we were born here like we had, there's a level of privilege we have. We have comfortable lives here in Evanston, like there is a safety that we have, and that privilege we can use to do some good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: Yeah. And so, I think to your point, Isaac, when you're asking, what is it that is making them leave Chicago, that they feel that the job is done. I think that Chicago has actually created such a format where that they're not just pushing back legislatively or not legislatively, but judicially, right with the court system. But they've also created the system that maybe started in Los Angeles earlier in the year, but they've kind of refined in which they are pushing back people to people against these cases.

I mean, you've seen so many videos in which you have this mass amount of federal force met with this massive amount of human force, protester force, people trying to advocate on behalf of the folks. I was talking to somebody in Chicago who said that their entire social media feed was just filled with videos of ICE or CPB, trying to take somebody off of the street, and other folks coming and pushing them back.

And so, I think Chicago, not just because I'm from there--

BASH: I was going to say, yeah, yeah.

WRIGHT: OK. I'm not just biased, but I think Chicago has done a lot to try to create a standard of the way that these democratic run cities are pushing aback against the federal government. And you can tell because Pritzker is talking to other governors, their lawyers are talking to other lawyers across the country.

BASH: Yeah. We have to sneak in a break. As we do, I want to show our viewers your reporting, which people can read also on cnn.com. Thousands of parents, guardians of migrant kids arrested in Trump administration crackdown. Priscilla has been on the leading edge of all of this reporting, and this is just another example of that. Check it out.

He allegedly texted a friend quote, I do have a Nazi streak in me. It doomed his nomination for one administration job, but the Trump White House is now giving him another. Stay with us.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: If you don't remember the name, Paul Ingrassia, perhaps these headlines will help. The 30-year-old Trump diehard saw his nomination to lead the government's whistleblower office collapse just last month after a slew of racist text messages surfaced. It was too much for Senate Republicans who refused to confirm him. But over at the White House, Ingrassia kept his job as special liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. And today he has a new administration role, deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration. Isaac DOVERE: I mean, look, I've said it before. I'll say it again. If thinking Nazis are bad, makes me a biased reporter. I guess I'm a biased reporter. This doesn't seem that complicated, right? This guy said that he has a little bit of a Nazi streak in him. He's a lot of other comments were in those text messages that POLITICO had the reporting on.

It is just sort of astounding that this is job number three that he has been offered in the Trump administration. It speaks to a feeling, apparently, that people have in the Trump administration that this is not disqualifying, and I think unfortunately, that that is goes beyond Ingrassia. It goes -- we see it in what's happening at the Heritage Foundation, what's happening with Tucker Carlson, and talking to Nick Fuentes, and it's not just on the right or among Republicans.

Nazi stuff is bad when it's a tattoo that Graham Platner had on his chest and was joking about before he was running for Senate. Nazis are bad, and it is striking in so many ways that it has just become like a thing that people talk about. Maybe they say Nazis are OK, or Hitler kind of had a point on some things. That's nuts.

BASH: It is, certainly is. And Paul Ingrassia hears his resume just in the past year. White House liaison for the DOJ. White House liaison for DHS. Then he was nominated, as I mentioned, and the Senate Republican said, no.