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Inside Politics

New Photo From Epstein Estate Show Trump, Bill Clinton & Others; Trump Predicts GOP & Dem Partnership On Health Care Plan; Indiana's GOP Senators Reject Trump's Pressure To Redistrict. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 12, 2025 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:01:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington. And we start with new pictures in a saga. The White House just can't quit. The photos released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee show the very powerful people in the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. Now, we're going to show you the pictures.

They include Donald Trump before he was president, as well as Steve Bannon, Woody Allen, former President Bill Clinton. Now, none of the released images depict any sexual misconduct, nor are they believed to depict underage girls. It's not clear where or when these photos were taken.

I'm going to get straight to our reporters on this. CNN's Annie Grayer is on Capitol Hill. Kristen Holmes is at the White House. Annie, you did a lot of reporting about what the Democrats are releasing here. Give us what we're seeing and the context around it.

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Dana, these are 19 photos of more than 95,000 images and documents that the Oversight Committee is still going through, and they really give you a behind-the-scenes look at how Epstein was connected with some of the most powerful men in the world.

Now, there are three photos of President Donald Trump in here. One is with the President, who was then a private citizen, posing with six individual women. Their faces are redacted. There's another image of Trump posing with one woman, whose face is redacted, and a third image of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein speaking to a third woman, whose face is not redacted.

Then there's also a photo of what appears to be a caricature of Trump's face on a novelty box of condoms with a price tag on it and the caption saying, I'm huge. But Trump is not the only individual in these photos.

There are a lot of powerful men featured here, including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Woody Allen, Steve Bannon, Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrews. The list goes on. None of these photos show any evidence of sexual misconduct or suggest that any of these photos are of underage girls.

But as part of the Oversight Committee's broader investigation into the Epstein files or from Epstein's Gmail account, and it's unclear who took these photos necessarily or the timing of them, take a listen to the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, what he has to say about the release of the photos today.

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REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA), RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: Anything that we release is significant. I think clearly, I think people should be able to make judgments on their own as to what they see in these photos. For us, this is about transparency. Right now, our plan is to demand that the President release the files and we'll see what he does on the 19th. But I think, again, these pictures, some of these photos are -- are really disturbing.

And I know we've put some out today. There are many others. And some of the other photos that we did not put out today are -- are -- are incredibly disturbing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRAYER: Now, Republicans on the committee are accusing Democrats of cherry-picking here, choosing only 19 out of those 95,000. All of this comes as we are waiting for the Department of Justice to release all of the Epstein files that it has in its possession that it was mandated to do so by law. They have until December 19th to release all of that information.

BASH: Annie, thank you so much for that reporting. And Kristen, what's the White House saying about this?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Dana, there is very little that the White House wants to talk about less than Jeffrey Epstein, and that comes from President Trump himself, who, of course, has at times called this a hoax, saying that it's just Democrats out there trying to get him.

So right now, we haven't heard a statement. But I will note that President Trump is expected to be in front of the press pool at 3:00 p.m. for a bill signing, and it is likely it's going to come up then. And what we've heard from the White House in the past, of course, has been that President Trump cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s, that he had no relationship with him for the last several years.

And, of course, they say that over and over again, the kind of statement that is that these -- these new documents or these new photos prove that President Trump did nothing wrong, which, of course, as we have reported, he is not accused of any legal wrongdoing.

[12:05:02]

Now, the other interesting thing in these photos when it comes to the connection to the White House is the photos that we see with President Trump's once chief strategist, Steve Bannon. There seem to be a few photos with Epstein and Bannon, which isn't that surprising. When we saw "The New York Times" article that showed pictures inside of Epstein's house, there was a picture of Bannon then. We knew about the history of their relationship.

Since then, Bannon has condemned Epstein. But they were, according to Bannon, working on a documentary that he says they will release at some point that had roughly 15 hours of footage. Again, though, when it comes to the White House themselves, they have tried to distance themselves from the story.

At one point, I was even told that they were trying not to comment and not to even get in front of stories about Epstein because they didn't want to insert it back into the narrative.

BASH: Kristen, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. And I'm joined here by a terrific group of reporters. I should say at the outset, I don't necessarily sound like me. I am trying to recover from laryngitis. I'm almost there. Aaron Blake, can you just also kind of put this in the broader context, again, of the political situation that this puts not just Donald Trump in but Republicans? And as you do, I'm just going to put up a couple of polls.

President Trump's approval rating among Republicans on how, specifically on how he's handled the Epstein files, 53 percent, 85 percent overall. And then this is really key. People -- the question is whether or not people think that the government is hiding information about Epstein associates, 70 percent say yes, including 62 percent of Republicans.

AARON BLAKE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, look, this is not -- you know, I think when this issue first arose and the White House and the Department of Justice kind of walked away from their full disclosure approach to this, the question was, was this going to be a really big issue with Donald Trump's base because that base had really been pushing this story. You know, the conservative influencers had been arguing that there's something really to be found here.

We saw members of Trump's administration really pushing this story before they were in the administration, people like FBI Director Kash Patel. It was never going to be a situation where this was going to, like, lead people to instantly desert him. But as you see in those poll numbers, a lot of Republicans kind of took a wait-and-see approach. They didn't necessarily judge Trump poorly for this, but they didn't like what he was doing.

A lot of people are very suspicious about what could be in these files. And so this creates a situation where we don't know what's in those files. We're going to find out in a little bit over a week. But the administration, through its conduct, has done a very good job of creating suspicion and creating reasons for people who already had these views to kind of, you know, trend towards suspicion.

JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: And Kristen is right. We have also written about this and haven't heard a response from the White House officially yet. Something that they are expected to say, though, either from Donald Trump or when we talk to other officials later on in the day, is that Democrats are using this information to target Trump, to create connections where there aren't, and basically to, you know, kind of defame him, something that I think if you look at the polling, not every American is actually buying.

I think that the White House is going to have to answer for the connections of Steve Bannon, something that they absolutely do not want to do. They're going to have to potentially brace themselves for additional -- additional discoveries or more pictures coming out. But again, this is just an issue that's not going away for the White House, and that's a problem for them.

[12:08:34]

BASH: All right, everybody stand by. President Trump lost his House majority in his first term because of the issue of health care. Is he worried history is about to repeat itself? That's next.

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BASH: The issue of health care ushered Democrats back to the House majority in 2018. Seven years later, it could crumble President Trump's fragile trifecta once again. Right now, millions of Americans are less than three weeks away from seeing their insurance premiums potentially double. And after Senate Republicans rejected one plan to extend Obamacare subsidies, as well as their own plan that would have funneled money into health care savings accounts, health savings accounts, rather, the President seems to be recognizing he has pretty much one play left, work with Democrats.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What a nice group of Democrats. We do have a lot of Democrats and we welcome you. Honestly, we do. And I think we're going to start working together on health care. I really predict that.

I really believe we can work on health care together and come up with something that's going to be much better, much less expensive for the people, less expensive for our nation, but really, most importantly, better and less expensive for the people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back. Sara?

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: So it's interesting. I cover the advertising sector and in 2018, I did an analysis of the messaging around the midterms. And what we found was that Democrats honed in very narrowly on health care, which is what led them to take back the majority of the House that year. At the same time, Republicans down- ballot gubernatorial, Senate races, House races were very mixed on their messaging between a little bit of health care, but also the economy and immigration.

And so what I think you're going to find is if Democrats can hone in on this message next year, that's a winning formula for them. Remember, the House has a very narrow majority. This is a big problem.

[12:15:03]

BASH: Yes.

HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Trump's always been a little schizophrenic on health care, and by a little, I mean consistently schizophrenic. He'll say one thing one day, and the next -- the next day over. His polling team and his politics on this, though, they've always been pretty unified that this is a problem for Donald Trump and that he's going to get blamed for this.

So the Democrats' theory of the case has always been if you're going to have any sort of health care bill that gets through the Republican House, you need President Trump to be involved. And that's what's starting to happen here, potentially, right? I mean, he's -- he's making a prediction on something that he controls, and his language and his rhetoric was interesting there to me.

BASH: So the question is the here and the now because of that three- week deadline. I mean, the clock is ticking, and it has been for some time. Listen to a series of Republicans talking about that in the House.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think it will be used like a sledgehammer on us a year from now. The reality will be bad.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What is the political impact if this does not pass?

REP. NICK LALOTA (R-NY): I'm more interested in the economic impact of constituents like mine. That's our responsibility here. I've always thought that good government is good politics.

RAJU: What's the economic impact?

LALOTA: Yes. It's -- it's hundreds of dollars a month for many Americans throughout the country. We've been told that about 7 percent of Americans rely on this aspect of Obamacare. We have to do right by those people.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Speaker Johnson has been very reluctant to give you this vote, to give any vote on extending the -- the Obamacare subsidies. How do you feel about that?

REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): It's very frustrating, and many of us are keeping the pressure up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: I mean, the White House is hearing this every day. They're talking to lawmakers constantly, not just the politics team, but also the President. Folks are going in and out of the Oval Office. And so they recognize that this is a reality. I think a couple things are striking. One is that at the briefing yesterday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, was unable to say which of the five Senate Republican proposals does the White House favor, instead saying that they will come out later on and talk about which policies they like.

Of course, we only have three weeks, so when is later on going to be? And then you hear Donald Trump saying, OK, let's work with Democrats. But what does that look like? Because fundamentally, Democrats want to extend these ACA subsidies. They feel like they have to, because they only have three weeks. And that is not what the Republican consensus wants.

I shouted at Donald Trump a week ago whether or not he's willing to make a deal at the expense of the Republican Party, who does not want to extend these ACA subsidies, and he didn't answer. And I think that's going to be a huge question going forward when it comes to health care.

NICHOLS: You just -- you just -- you need to shout louder. Maybe he didn't hear. Maybe he didn't hear. You asked him respectfully.

BASH: Good thing I'm not trying to shout at him. You -- you said that Democrats really want to extend these subsidies, which expire, which is true, and that really begs the question of what's going to happen in the really immediate term, because there is a discharge petition moving around the House of Representatives, which more than a handful, maybe about a dozen Republicans have signed. You put -- put in their faces on the screen.

Seven Democrats have signed on so far, and the key question is whether or not the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, is going to say, OK, yes, and that will obviously mean that the discharge petition will happen. He just said minutes ago on Capitol Hill he will decide early next week.

BLAKE: I mean, look, a few weeks to try and cut some kind of a healthcare deal is -- is kind of ridiculous. Like, the idea that they could do this in this amount of time, these are debates that take months. You know, Obamacare took many, many months to finally get a resolution to. So I think the likely outcome here was that we were always headed towards some kind of a deal on the Obamacare subsidies.

You know, are they going to combine it with some kind of reforms that will give Republicans, you know, make them feel a little bit better about this situation? But Democrats have all kinds of leverage here. They can hold out for a very significant deal in their favor, because Republicans really need to do something about this. They can't let those premiums expire.

BASH: But is there a risk for Democrats?

BLAKE: I mean I think the big question --

BASH: Meaning like, you know, if they have an offer on the table to really help people and --

BLAKE: Yes. BASH: -- they don't think it's politically great for them.

BLAKE: I mean, for them it's -- it's -- I think the biggest dilemma for them is, is this going to be something that they use for political gain or is this something they're going to, you know, get the policy win on? Because the policy win is looking like it's more and more on the table for them. But, you know, if they get that policy win the politics of it aren't as good for them.

BASH: That's what I mean.

FISCHER: I was just going to say, the longer in some ways that you could drag this on to the midterms, the more and more of a political win this is for them. But I will say, I saw with the whole shutdown situation, them trying to hold out didn't work as well in their favor as they thought. So that's something that they're going to have to consider.

[12:19:52]

BASH: All right, everybody, up next, Hoosier hold up. Could Indiana Republicans see consequences for defying the President of the United States and doing so in the heart of Trump country, or are they seeing something that is very telling about the President's power? Stay with us.

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BASH: Just hours after President Trump vowed to primary anyone who voted against his push for a mid-decade gerrymander in Indiana. Majority of Indiana's Senate Republicans in that state just did just that. In fact, 21 of 40 Indiana Republicans in the State Senate rejected the President's pressure campaign in that state. Just did just that. In fact, 21 of 40 Indiana Republicans in the State Senate rejected the President's pressure campaign. The staunch Trump ally there warned about consequences.

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[12:25:15]

SEN. MICHAEL YOUNG (D-IN): I believe what Washington, D.C. says, whether it's right or whether it's wrong. And Senator Mishler, this is going to be important to all of us. When they take away all the money that they can take away from this state and not give it to us, our citizens will be harmed. When they come into your districts, and I'm not lying, with 2 to $3 million, I know you'll try your best, you'll do what you can, but I believe in the end, most of you won't be here anymore.

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BASH: Wow. Smart reporters are back. Jasmine, what are you hearing from your sources in Trump world about how -- how seriously they're going to take the follow-through here? WRIGHT: I mean, Trump world is furious. Even though the President yesterday said I wasn't really involved in that, I didn't really have much to do with that. One, that's just not true. And then two, the folks are really trying to follow through on those threats, particularly with primary.

Now, Kevin Roberts of Heritage Foundation yesterday tweeted that if they didn't vote to support the map that Trump would pull funding from Indiana. I talked to a senior White House official about it yesterday and they basically said, I've never heard Trump say that. I don't know where that come from -- came from. So that threat, I'm not quite sure about.

But the threats to primary folks, those are very real. They're trying to put money behind it. I think that people have to recognize that Trump has a huge war chest -- war chest. Some reports say it's up to $600 million. And so I think that they can really try to effectuate on these threats.

Now, obviously a lot of these folks said the reason why they weren't voting to change the maps is because their constituents didn't want them to. So they're going to have to run up to this idea that constituents want them to be free of this type of pressure that folks like Trump and Trump people in his orbit are putting on them. But those threats are real, at least on the primary side.

BASH: Aaron, you wrote a great piece that's on CNN.com right now. Why Indiana is such a major unforced error for Trump. Yes, the question that we started about retribution and that threat from the state senate is one thing. But if you kind of wind back the clock a little bit, this is something that Trump wanted, publicly pushed for, and he lost.

BLAKE: Yes, the context here is super important because I think what we've seen in recent weeks is that we've seen maybe the first, the biggest cracks, at least since the post-January 6th period of the base, you know, questioning whether they want to follow Trump, questioning whether they're going to go along with the things that he wants. First we saw that with the Epstein files.

The base really forced his hand on that in a lot of ways. And then after the elections, the 2025 elections, we saw some unrest. We saw Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, coming out against Trump on a number of issues.

So these were really kind of the big examples of the base questioning Trump. And so he picked this fight with the Indiana redistricting. He tried to push these members to do what he wanted and in the end, a majority of them did the opposite of what he wanted, even as the risks of that became abundantly clear.

Not just the risk to their political careers, but the risk to their personal safety. I mean, a quarter of these state senators had threats during this process. So that's a pretty stunning statement from them, and I think it really undercuts something that's very important to Trump, which is the idea that he kind of governs and -- and rules this party through fear of what he'll do if they run afoul of him.

BASH: Speaking of threats, listen to what Marjorie Taylor Greene said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MAJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I feel very sorry for President Trump. I -- I genuinely do. It -- it has to be a hard place for someone that is constantly so hateful and puts so much vitriol, name- calling, and really tells lies about people in order to try to get his way or -- or win some kind of fight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Hans, what are you seeing and hearing on the Hill? There was a sort of procedural vote that I won't bore our viewers with that was a bit of a pushback last night, but it's still unclear whether this is just some tiny little cracks or real fissures.

NICHOLS: Yes. I think the specific point, and then a broader one specifically, there's been a complete transformation of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and it's going to be interesting to watch. She's going to be leaving the House. I believe January 6th is her last day, but she's still going to be invited into green rooms, and she'll still be part of the national conversation. That will be interesting to watch.

The broader point is that sort of rebels, however you want to refer to them, within the Republican Party are being a little bit more aggressive and not just as going against Donald Trump, but also Speaker Mike Johnson. We've seen that with the flood of discharge petitions, which used to be a pretty rare thing. I mean, we're obviously talking about Hakeem Jeffries and what he's going to do with that discharge petition.

[12:29:51]

But discharge -- discharge petitions are not supposed to be that common, in part because you're ceding control of the floor. And that's what this whole debate is about, is who's going to control the floor after 2026. The interesting thing about going after, you know, primary, these state centers, they can primary as --