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Inside Politics

CDC Panel Votes To End Universal Recommendation For Hep B Vaccine; Vaccine Adviser Blames Immigration For Hepatitis B Risk Babies; New Reporting On DC Pipe Bomb Suspect; FBI Dir. Suggests Delayed Pipe Bomb Arrest Maybe "Intentional"; DC Pipe Bomb Suspect Arrested, Faces 2 Charges; Bongino Backs Away From Dc Pipe Bomb Conspiracy Theories He Pushed. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 05, 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]

ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Mississippi, not even going to get that warm. Here's a look at the system again.

You'll notice as we go through the rest of the evening, the bulk of that snow from this system begins to slide back out. Once we go into Saturday we've still got a few areas of snow showers around the Great Lakes region. But now we're making way for the next system that's arriving from the west that's going to push into areas of the Midwest as we head into the day on Saturday and especially into Saturday evening, whereas we have some rain showers across portions of the Gulf Coast.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Allison, thank you very, very much. And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: "Inside Politics" with our friend and colleague, Dana Bash starts now. Have a great weekend.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: A major shift in public health. Why did a CDC panel vote to upend years of vaccine guidance backed up by science? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics."

And we start with news out of the CDC. A vaccine advisory panel handpicked by the HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. Voted to end the long standing recommendation to give all newborns the hepatitis B vaccine. The CDC said more than 6 million cases were prevented by routine vaccines over the past 30 years. But today the panel recommended delaying the dose until a child is two months old.

Now the recommendation heads to the CDC director for approval. Every single member on this panel was appointed by Kennedy, who pushed unfounded conspiracies about vaccines in general for decades.

I want to bring in CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner. Doctor, thank you so much for being here. I want you to help us understand why the CDC scrapping this hep B shot for really just two months from being -- a newborn to two months old, which is, I mean, for moms, I will say two months is still pretty much a newborn. Why does it matter?

DR. JONATHAN REINER; CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, it matters because newborns can get hepatitis B from their mom if the mother has hepatitis B at the time of delivery. So vaccinating kids literally the day after delivery can almost completely remove any chance that that child will get hepatitis.

To your first question, why is this being done now? It's being done now because the HHS secretary not only does not believe in vaccines, he believes this vaccine contributes to autism. And there is no data. There's never been a safety signal really for any vaccine, and particularly this one.

And in terms of side effects, pediatricians look at this vaccine as unusually side effect free. So by pushing this back at least two months and creating doubt in the minds of parents about the safety of this vaccine, this is going to lessen or reduce the number of kids that actually get vaccinated for hepatitis B.

You know, prior to 1991, there were almost 20,000 cases of hepatitis B in kids. In 2020, there were 20. So this has basically abolished hepatitis B for a generation of Americans. And this now is going to erode that kind of protection and result in deaths, needless deaths, vaccine preventable deaths.

BASH: It is a recommendation that's changing. But do you expect pediatricians to still recommend to new parents that a newborn get the shot after they're born and not wait two months?

REINER: Well, I do. The American Academy of Pediatrics in the last two months, you know, reinforced their recommendation for what is called universal vaccination for hepatitis B, which is basically to vaccinate every kid the day after birth, regardless of the mom's hepatitis B status. So pediatricians and their society will continue to recommend this.

And that's my recommendation to parents. Don't listen to the CDC and HHS anymore. Under this administration they've become an unreliable source of medical information for this country. Rely on your doctor, talk to your pediatrician, talk to your OB-GYN. That's where you should be getting your medical recommendations.

BASH: I mean, I'm sorry, that was a huge statement, particularly coming from you. And you are one of the many physicians who say follow the science. And I guess that's your point. But to hear you --

REINER: That's why I say --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: -- Dr. Reiner, and you've worked with the government for so long. I mean, you spoke so beautifully at Vice President Cheney's funeral. As somebody who has worked with government officials at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, saying, don't listen to the CDC. REINER: Right. Because in the past -- CDC has gotten things wrong in the past. You know, I don't -- no government agency, no scientific agency has been perfect.

[12:05:00]

But CDC in the past has used the best science available at the time through subject matter experts to make recommendations. Now vaccine policy is being set by just one man, by a lawyer who specialized in suing vaccine companies, by a vaccine denier, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He is dictating vaccine policy to CDC.

At the ACIP meeting, yesterday and today, no CDC subject matter expert has testified. Vaccine deniers have it. So he's made this basically an organ of -- to disseminate vaccine misinformation. It is completely unreliable.

BASH: Well, let me just ask you -- I want to ask you one specific question.

REINER: Yeah.

BASH: One member from Louisiana, Dr. Evelyn Griffin seemed to be blaming immigrants for hep b cases. Here's what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. EVELYN GRIFFIN, ACIP MEMBER: We have had years of illegal immigration, undocumented people coming from higher endemicity countries. I've been through the legal immigration process, and even that is very voluntary in terms of documenting your hepatitis B status. In terms of being tested for it, in terms of -- even if you want to document it, no one's asking if you are hepatitis B positive or negative.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Your reaction?

REINER: Wow. So first of all, what she's basically stating is that a whole group of people are disease carrying. Basically -- that's basically the definition of vermin. And, you know, as a Jew that brings back very uncomfortable resonances, you know, with 1930s in Germany, classifying the whole group of people who are in this country now as basically disease carrying. Unbecoming for a physician. Outrageous.

BASH: Dr. Reiner, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

REINER: Thank you, Dana.

BASH: And I'm joined by a terrific group of reporters here at the table. David Chalian?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I just can't get over that. You just heard this respected physician say don't listen to the CDC or HHS. He's not the only one saying that. I mean, lots of respected physicians are saying that very publicly. And so it does beg the question, like, what this was about?

Because do you think if this was completely agreed upon that we would have seen the delay in September or that we would have seen the delay yesterday or -- this clearly was not a consensus. And so what it is, is an ideological push as it relates to science. And those two things, it just seems to me, shouldn't be intermingled here, and it just will inject so much uncertainty, doubt, confusion into something that -- in area you just don't want that as a parent. You don't want uncertainty down or confusion.

BASH: Well, and speaking of confusion, on the CDC website right now, it could change. But currently on the CDC website, it says the best way to prevent hepatitis B is by getting vaccinated. Hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. I mean, I -- it doesn't seem as if that's going to change, because this isn't about the vaccine in general. This is about when you get the vaccine, and the push hasn't been necessarily -- yes, we know that RFK in the past has talked about vaccines and dabbled in conspiracy theories, but this is particularly about children and babies getting the vaccine. So it seems unlikely that they're going to get rid of the vaccine language on the CDC website.

But I think to David's point, what this really does is so a lot of confusion about anxious parents. I mean, me and I were just talking about how you feel when you have your first child or your second child and you're in there and they're kind of giving you a lot of information and they come at you with this, you know, this is what we recommend. And now that process is going to get complicated.

And you're going to have some doctors and some nurses who feel uncomfortable either saying how they feel or saying the CDC guidelines, and it really muddies the waters, at a time where this had been fixed. This was something that years of research were put in place to come up with a solution to help children, and to help mothers and families make that decision in that moment. And now that has been stripped away and created a very chaotic and confusing situation.

BASH: And, Amy, the politics of this are, MAHA.

AMY WALTER, PUBLISHER & EDITOR IN CHIEF, THE COOK POLITICIAN REPORT WITH AMY WALTER: Yeah.

BASH: And, Make America Healthy Again and the, coalition of people, which really are --

WALTER: It spans the ideology.

BASH: It's pretty broad. It's not just -- yeah. It's a lot of women, moms, but it's not just that, and it's not -- and they're former Democrats, former liberal or maybe even current liberals, who are part of this, and they did fuel a lot of support for Donald Trump's reelection campaign.

[12:10:00]

WALTER: Yeah. And I think when we think about the MAHA that is very good to point out that it does span -- it's not very strictly ideological.

CHALIAN: Not from a partisan .

WALTER: Not from a partisan.

CHALIAN: Ideological on this issue. Yeah.

WALTER: Though I think a lot of folks came into it. I've been, talking to folks who've been doing a lot of political work with some of these voters, people who are either -- considered themselves to be part of the MAHA movement or say that they're MAHA curious.

And when you look at them, all of them, what does bind them together, not surprisingly, is a skepticism of the health care system. And that's understandable. We're all somewhat skeptical of all whether it is you have your first child and you get all this information coming at you. What does the CDC think? What about these pharmaceutical companies? Who's making money off me? How does the system work? Do I have access? Understandable.

Some of it is about they came in through a, healthy eating and, exercise piece of it. But the one thing that was really interesting about some of the focus groups that these groups had -- that this group has done is that even as we say this is very confusing for a lot of people, there is still trust in actual doctors. There is still trust in the system itself.

So while they may be skeptical, what a lot of these folks will do is hear recommendations like this and then go talk to their doctor about it. Say, I've heard all this stuff about the CDC. What do you think about this?

Or here's something that someone says and then Google it or ChatGPT it. So they are not taking necessarily everything that RFK Jr. is saying and making that part of their lives. The skepticism is driving more of it than anything else.

BASH: And as ever, you and Nia, I'm just going to put up on the screen more broadly the impact that RFK Jr. has already had at HHS, including reducing the workforce by about 20,000 employees, canceling public meetings prior to this or in and around this about vaccine and health recommendations.

As we said, he replaced the members of the CDC vaccine advisory panel and he changed the CDC language on autism and vaccines, which anybody who has listened to RFK Jr. for five seconds knows that this is something that he would do.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL & POLICY COLUMNIST: Yeah, this is what he was going to do. You know, Bill Cassidy, you know, sort of got him to seemingly sort of make a promise that he, you know, wouldn't do these kinds of things without some sort of oversight. And of course, when that happened, people were like -- you know, Bill Cassidy, I have a bridge to sell you.

But listen, I think one of the things that is happening is there is friction in the system if you're a parent now and trying to get these vaccines in a way that there wasn't. There's, obviously, the skepticism as well, but it isn't as easy to just get these vaccines in the way that it was just a year ago. I mean, I've experienced that in trying to get some vaccines for my own child. So that's one of the things that's happening.

The other thing that's happening, you talk about sort of Google and ChatGPT, if you're on any of those TikTok, social media, there is this skepticism and this conspiracy theory. Some of that was put on steroids around the COVID vaccine as well, which I think is really what propelled Kennedy in a way that he hadn't been before to the spotlight into this position of power where he really is upending the health care system based on conspiracy theories.

BASH: All right, we're going to take a quick break.

Coming up, glitz, glamour and the global spotlight. We're going to show you some pictures that sports fans, at least the fan in chief, he's taking it all in. That's actually happening right now. It's happening at the FIFA World cup drawing here in Washington, DC. We're going to take you there live.

Plus, the man who allegedly planted pipe bombs at the DNC and RNC hours before the January 6th insurrection is talking to investigators and our colleagues. Evan Perez has new reporting on what he told them about the 2020 election. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

BASH: We're learning new details about the suspect who allegedly planted pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC headquarters the night before January 6, 2021, the insurrection that happened that day. Brian Cole was arrested yesterday after a five year investigation and is set to appear in court for the first time this afternoon.

CNN's Evan Perez has been talking to his sources, per usual, inside the DOJ and elsewhere. Evan, tell us what you're learning about a potential motive here.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Dana, this comment or this admission that came from the suspect allegedly happened yesterday during hours of interviews with the FBI. And the statement -- one of the statements that he made allegedly was that he believed the 2020 election was stolen. Now that is of course a claim that President Trump was making at that time back in the end of 2020, while he continues to make that claim.

But it also was the claim that brought all of those people to Washington back on January 6th of 2021, which is when those -- these two devices found behind the RNC and the DNC building, they were found.

And if you remember, part of what happened was it was discovered around the time -- the bombs were discovered around the time that the crowd, the mob was about to break into the U.S. Capitol. And that's part of what this investigation has been about.

[12:20:00]

So we don't know more about the additional statements that the Suspect Brian Cole Jr. has made to investigators. But certainly we expect we'll learn more about this when he appears in federal court. We are expected to see him for the first time later this afternoon perhaps in the next hour in federal court in Washington. And it really will gives us a better sense of additional charges that the Justice Department that prosecutors are looking to bring against him related to this alleged crime.

BASH: Evan, thank you so much for your terrific reporting. Appreciate it.

And back here with our panel, Nia, as I bring you in, I just want to show an image of the press conference that occurred yesterday, high level press conference where they announced these charges. And the sort of just a reminder of the people who we're talking about, Pam Bondi, the Attorney General; Jeanine Pirro, who is the U.S. Attorney in D.C.; Kash Patel, the FBI Director; Dan Bongino, the Deputy FBI Director, they all have a lot in common and that is pushing the stolen election conspiracies leading up to January 6, 2021.

HENDERSON: That's right. This was a core belief of MAGA supporters, a core belief of many of the folks who are in Trump's administration, including Trump, who continues to push this lie that somehow 2020 was a stolen election. He has been going through great lengths to sort of erase everything that happened on January 6th, to sort of downplay it. He's pardoned all of those people.

You know, and even Republicans kind of like to talk about it as if it was just sort of a rally as opposed to an attack and attempt to over overturn the 2020 election. So the question for them with this, this is a MAGA person. This is sort of one of their own. Does he get pardoned? Right? Do they sort of wipe away what he is to alleged have done, because they've certainly done that with everybody else.

BASH: Yeah. And I know you're not suggesting it, but just --

HENDERSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BASH: We don't know. We don't know yet. This is an important piece of information, but we don't know who he identifies with officially.

HENDERSON: Well, I mean, he certainly --

BASH: But the fact that he believed that it was stolen is certainly a suggestion. David? CHALIAN: Yeah. And you know, I think that we were talking in the break, remember Donald Trump put forth this theory that has no basis to it and has no facts attached to it that the 2020 election was stolen, obviously. And it went broader than just MAGA. I mean, a large swath of the Republican Party overall. I mean, millions and millions of Americans believed this to be true. And you saw the result on January 6th, what happened.

Now, when you look at the attack on the Capitol, and on democracy on January 6th, that was not just targeted to Democrats or Republicans. Both Democrats and Republicans were working inside that Capitol building, elected representatives. How many Democrats and Republicans have you talked to about their experience inside that building?

Go back to the House floor, look at Kevin McCarthy's -- look at how Republicans were reacting to January 6th at the time. So, yes, it doesn't surprise me then to see that somebody who might have believed in that or somehow been inspired by that also put a pipe bomb at the RNC and the DNC.

BASH: That's right.

CHALIAN: This was a complete repudiation of the, you know, perceived establishment or powers that be because they felt that something was rigged against them, because Donald Trump was telling them that that was the case.

BASH: Yeah, that's such an important point. Kristen, I want you to listen to what, what Kash Patel said. He went on Don Jr. S podcast.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP JR., SON OF DONALD TRUMP: Two pipe bombs targeting the headquarters of the Republican Party, targeting the headquarters of the Democrat Party. I can understand maybe the media ignoring targets on the Republicans because again, their silence is golden and they only report on that. But I mean, that to me is a far greater threat than any of the nonsense. You know, a grandma taking a selfie inside of January 6th, and yet it just disappeared. It's almost like that was the backup plan. If they didn't get what they wanted out of January6, which to me seems like a very clear setup operation.

KASH PATEL, DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: And look, you're absolutely right --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It wasn't Grandma taking a selfie inside the Capitol on January 6th, let's just be clear on that. But beyond that, Kristen, the -- just the notion of this being the outlet through which Kash Patel wants to get out after this day where he had that press conference talking about. And it really was terrific police work.

HOLMES: Yeah. And I will note that every single person on that stage ended up doing an interview either on an outlet like that or on Fox News in the last 10 hours after that. So they were clearly targeting an audience when they were talking about this.

It was interesting to hear Don Jr. Kind of once again dive into these kinds of conspiracy theories even after you saw, as you said, terrific police work that led to the arrest of this individual.

[12:25:00]

Because one of the things that we had heard from Dan Bongino who really led the charge of this inside of the FBI. If you talk to anyone it was him who was hammering this home. And that was because he had been so fixated on it on his podcast.

And one of the things he had said over and over again and this kind of seemed to be a little bit what Don Jr. was alluding to this end game, you know, situation, was that this was an inside job or it was by somebody who was so anti-Trump that they --

BASH: And let me -- real quick --

HOLMES: -- the FBI covered it up.

BASH: I'm going to say again what John Jr. said. "It's almost like that was a backup plan. If they didn't get what they wanted out of January 6, which to me seems like a very clear setup operation." The director of the FBI responds, "Look, you're absolutely right --"

HOLMES: Which is also bizarre that he said that given the fact that Dan Bongino himself, who again was the loudest voice on this saying it was an inside job, was asked last night by Sean Hannity on Fox News, well, what about the fact that you've said for years that this is an inside job?

And his response was, well, at that point, I was paid for my opinion. So I was paid to say what I thought. And I thought that at the time. But, you know, now I work for the FBI, so I'm paid for facts, facts. And these are facts. And this is the truth.

BASH: And he also said, "That's clear, one day I'll be back in that space. But that's not what I'm paid for."

HOLMES: Right. So we'll hear his opinions another time he going to get paid for that then. But I do think it's interesting that you have Kash Patel here seemingly agreeing with this conspiracy theory after you have all of this work that these individuals had on the stage, trying to say that this is what we did to get this outcome even, even Patel was celebrating. I mean, this is supposed to be something that puts them in good favor with the President as well.

BASH: OK. Just I got nothing. Actually, I do, but I'm just going to go to break.

Coming up, President Trump is hanging out with top soccer officials right now at the FIFA World cup drawing. We have all the details after a quick break.

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