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Inside Politics

Ramaswamy Swears Off Instagram And X In 2026; George Conway Jumps Into Crowded Dem House Primary Race In NY; Potential 2028 Contender Weighs In On Maduro Capture; One-On-One With Sen. Ruben Gallego; California GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa Dies At 65; GOP Sen. Cassidy Blasts HHS Childhood Vaccine Changes. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 06, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:30:00]

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), OHIO GOV. CANDIDATE: I have lived that American dream. I know so many in Gen Z are skeptical of it. I know so many of you feel like you have to see it to believe it. But I will ask you in closing, as Charlie Kirk taught me, sometimes you have to believe it to see it. That is what faith in our country is all about.

Thank you all guys. God bless you and your families, and may God bless our United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Now he writes, "Based on social media comments beforehand, I expected to be booed. If you scrolled through them after, you'd believe that that's what happened. In reality, I received a standing ovation."

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Yes, I think what he's really kind of skirting around is the fact that a lot of what he posts on social media, the replies are full of racism and full of criticism, not just of his Indian heritage, but his faith. And so, you know, some of it is just the nastiness of social media.

I think he no longer wants to subject himself to the abuse of trolls and people who just don't like him because of the color of his skin --

BASH: Right.

MITCHELL: -- and the faith he practices. Now I wish he would say that more plainly, because that's a reality for being a person of color in, quite frankly, in politics, but more specifically in conservative politics. I will say, though, one thing he said is he's logging off on his phone.

BASH: Yes.

MITCHELL: Is he logging off on the app, on the website?

BASH: Well, what he said is that he is not going to consume it, but his campaign is still going to post videos on his behalf. So it's about his own human consumption. We'll see how it goes, and then we'll see if we're going to follow.

Up next, hey Upper East Siders, the guest list for your star-studded primary race is overflowing. You know you want the details. XOXO, a very political gossip girl. If you know, you know. Stay with us.

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[12:36:23]

BASH: Manhattan's marquee congressional primary race just got even more crowded. Today, Republican-turned-Democrat George Conway lost his -- launched his campaign, rather, with this video.

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GEORGE CONWAY (D), NY CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: We have a corrupt president, a mendacious president, a criminal president whose masked agents are disappearing people from our streets, who's breaking international law, and he's running our federal government like a mob protection racket.

He doesn't like me. I don't like what he's done to our great country. And now I'm running for Congress to take the fight directly back to him on your behalf.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back, including Jamie. Jamie, you spoke with George Conway. Let's watch a little bit of that.

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CONWAY: I don't intend to be doing this when I'm 66 or 67 or 68. You know, I'm kind of like a special team's player. I want to do this for one reason, and that is to help get this, our governmental system back on track with something back to normal, at least back toward normal.

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JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So he's 62. He has told me repeatedly that he only would do this for a term or two. He thinks what sets him apart, his legal skills, and that if the Democrats take the House, he can play a role in going after Trump.

He -- let's see how he's received. This is, if not the bluest district in the country, right up there. He has a very large field that he's going to be up against in the primary, including Jack Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy's son, JFK's grandson. He has done some polling, and so he thinks he has a shot. But he also has said that either this is the stupidest thing he's ever done or the best thing that he'll see.

One last thing. He has spent a lot of his own money going after Trump. When you add it up, he spent almost $1 million, which he gave to the Biden-Harris campaign, more than $1.5 million billboards, TV ads. So --

BASH: Which -- a lot of which he made in Republican Congress.

GANGEL: Absolutely. But, you know, he put his money where his mouth is.

BASH: Yes.

GANGEL: Now, he says he's going to put himself on the line.

BASH: And let's put back up, Jeff, the picture of other candidates because -- and, by the way, this is not an exhaustive list of people, this is a big primary. And as Jamie said, it's not only, you know, sort of very blue, it goes across town from the east side to the upper east side to the upper west side. It is where, you know, the heart of the New York arts.

It's the heart of theater. It's the heart of restaurants. I mean, it is -- if you think about traditional New York City, these are the people who want to represent it. And again, because it's so blue, the primary is going to be the fight.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: For sure. And it's also filled with a lot of elites.

BASH: Elites.

ZELENY: George Conway is one. And he lived there. He talked about in your great story with his former wife, Kellyanne Conway, near the U.N. and -- so it's not like he's just carpetbagging for, you know, into nowhere. I mean, the New York has shown time and time again that it doesn't necessarily mind carpetbaggers per se.

I think one of his biggest, I would say, attributes is he's a fighter, no doubt. And New Yorkers like fighters. He's going to go after Trump.

[12:40:02]

The question is, during a Democratic primary, I assume the field will shrink a bit more. The effemine (ph) celebrity of Jack Schlossberg obviously is an attribute for him, but he has some drawbacks as well. We'll just have to see --

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: -- how it plays out. But this is going to be a very divided field, probably decided by not that many a vote. So, you know, and Trump will likely go after him. That will elevate him even more. So it could be a mutual beneficial engagement here.

BASH: Yes. And, I don't -- does he live in that district now? He does now?

GANGEL: He has moved.

BASH: OK, because he is -- GANGEL: He has an apartment. He's registered to vote. And his ever-

present --

BASH: OK.

GANGEL: -- Corgi Clyde --

BASH: OK.

GANGEL: -- has a New York dog license.

BASH: All right. So -- but, so when you hear other candidates there, I don't know if this matters anymore, Jack Schlossberg, in his opening video, talked about the fact that this is the place he was born and raised. Another candidate, Alex Bores, put the following online. "I welcome George to the race, to the city, and to the Democratic Party. Tell him to give me a call when he gets to town. There are so many great restaurants to share if he's willing to venture a few blocks away from the TV studios he's more familiar with."

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. I think it's really interesting and funny to watch a lot of these intraparty primaries, because if you're talking about policy, a lot of them are very close on policy. So it can get very personal, very pointed, just like that quote that we saw right there.

But, again, you know, we haven't talked about this as much as we talk about kind of the implications of the previous elections to this midterm year, when we're focused a lot about affordability issues, the successful candidates in 2025 didn't really focus on Trump all too much, except as it relates to the economy. But you forget that when it comes to Democratic primaries, it'll be so much about Trump. And this New York primary is not just one of them.

There are other House primaries --

BASH: Yes.

KIM: -- you know, or House races in Massachusetts and elsewhere throughout the country where candidates are really highlighting their ability to take the fight to Trump as their main attribute.

BASH: We're going to have to take a break. Thank you guys so much.

Up next, Might Makes Right, that's Stephen Miller's take on using U.S. power to keep countries like Venezuela in line. I'm going to talk about that with Democratic senator and potential 2028 candidate Ruben Gallego.

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[12:46:37]

BASH: My colleague Jake Tapper talked with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller yesterday on President Trump's claims that he's running Venezuela. Here's how Miller described the administration's policy.

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STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: You live in a world in which you can you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world --

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: But are you saying that --

MILLER: -- since the beginning of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Joining me now is Arizona Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego, who is an Iraq combat veteran. Senator Gallego, first, let's just start with your reaction to the way that you heard Stephen Miller describe the Trump policy now.

SEN. RUBEN GALLEGO (D), ARIZONA: Well, number one, it shows that either him and or the president are incredibly weak. You know, strong men don't speak that way. Number two, it's also extremely stupid and naive to think that way, because what you're essentially saying is China, as big as profits it is getting, can also do the same thing.

And, by the way, in order for us to be able to counterbalance, fight back and be able to beat China in the future, we're going to need friends. And so that type of attitude does not help national security. That type of attitude does not help advance our U.S. position around the world. It actually makes us more insecure.

So he gets to be a tough guy. But at the end of the day, it's the American public that ends up being hurt because we don't have the European Union working with us anymore. We don't have NATO working with us. We don't even have Canada working with us anymore. And then it's just us against China.

If we end up finding ourselves in that situation, because we're no longer a trusted friend, but a feared enemy to all, we're going to end up losing that future conflict with China or just future competition with China because of these idiots that are just trying to stoke their own ego instead of looking out for U.S. national security interests.

BASH: You're talking about China. The focus since Saturday of the Trump administration has been on defining the policy in the Western Hemisphere and the sort of strength, the strongman that you heard from Miller and that you just described and interpreted your way was, I think, about the Western Hemisphere.

GALLEGO: This is -- there's no such thing as just one action being solely contained to the Western Hemisphere when we have a world competition that we have to win versus China. When we go against China, whether it's just making sure that we sell more chips than they do, we sell more vehicles or we have the same standards, we're going to have to be able to align ourselves with Canada, the European Union, you know, whoever in Latin America is willing to join us to make sure that we could stop the dominance that is potentially happening from China.

So this idea that whatever we do in the Western Hemisphere will only contain Western Hemisphere will have potential full fallout for the national security of this country. And I don't know if they understand that. I don't know if they're just too stupid to understand that. But that is exactly what's going to happen if they continue down this road.

BASH: Let's focus on Venezuela specifically. Stephen Miller outlined a plan to basically control the Venezuelan regime through the naval blockade and a stranglehold on their economy. Is that a plan that could work in any way?

[12:50:03]

GALLEGO: Well, the first thing is you should come and talk to Congress about it, because I thought this is a police action. And this is what tells you from day one they've been lying. They continue to lie and they think they can just violate the Constitution of the United States. Marco Rubio came into the Senate and talked with 100 senators and lied straight to our faces and said that this is not a regime change. Clearly, it is now a regime change.

Number two, now they're saying like, no, this isn't a war. We don't need to talk to the Senate. But now they're saying we're going to occupy, we're going to control, we're going to blockade. Those are military actions. They need to get permission from Congress.

And we need to make sure also we say no. This is not the way we want to operate. There are better ways for us to deal with this. We can bring security to the Western Hemisphere. We can bring relief to these Venezuelan-Americans and Venezuelans that have been preyed upon by the dictatorship. But certainly we're not going to go about it in this unconstitutional way.

BASH: I hear what you're saying, but in the sort of in the real world that you're living in and that we're all living in, in the United States Congress, that's not happening. And when I say that, I mean a robust pushback or an assertion of the Article 1 power that Congress has. So given that, I know that you have some ideas about withholding funding --

GALLEGO: Sure.

BASH: -- and so forth, but do you really think that there's any chance that that could pass? And even if it could, what makes you think that the president will not get around it?

GALLEGO: Well, Dana, we have to try anyway. Number two, let's be clear. We do have tremendous pushback, but what we have is just pure cowards within the Republican Party. Largely all of them, save for maybe a couple of senators and some members of Congress, are absolutely not joining us in defending our Article 1 power. And more importantly, defending the interests of this country. The reason why you have Article 1 power is because you don't want to let idiots like President Donald Trump make foreign policy decisions without there being a check and balance against that. And so, you know, we're going to force votes to make sure that maybe we can put that together. Maybe we can change the narrative. Maybe we make it more difficult for this president.

But for us to just throw up our hands, he's going to do whatever he wants, would be a total abdication of our constitutional duties. And again, it allows the Republicans to to hide in the shadows and continue to be cowards and specifically just leave the Constitution behind.

BASH: I know you have been arguing since Saturday that President Trump can't solve what is his biggest challenge, which is a cost of living crisis in America. And he's grasping for wins and, from your perspective, putting American troops at risk. Obviously, the affordability crisis is real. It predates him. It's one of the reasons President Biden won and he's back in office.

What do you think that you and your party need to do to articulate a reason why you will do that better? What are those arguments?

GALLEGO: Well, talking to everyday, you know, Arizonans and also a lot of former MAGA and Trump supporters, reminding them that, you know, our foreign adventures, while you can't buy a home, you know, you can't rent an apartment, you know, you have the highest amount of car defaults, car loan defaults, amount of credit card defaults. Kids are graduating from college and can't even get jobs anymore. While the president keeps focusing on these foreign adventures is the key to that.

And the president is not going to be able to deal with the problems at home. He's just going to go look for little simple little victories wherever he can. That is going to put our, you know, military personnel in danger. But at the end of the day, it's not going to solve the problem of his ratings and the ratings of the Republican Party.

You know, people are going to be mad. Right now, they're hurting. They're still hurting. They were promised that this man was going to focus on the American homeland, going to focus on America first. And now he's worried first about Trump first, oil executive second.

And by the time it gets down to the everyday American just trying to make rent, you're number eight or nine on his list. Come election time, they're going to come out and get the revenge for that.

BASH: Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it.

GALLEGO: Thank you for your time.

BASH: And up next, sad breaking news on Capitol Hill, a popular Republican congressman has died. Stay with us.

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[12:58:43]

BASH: Topping our political radar, Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa from Northern California has died. Now, if you don't know his name, it's because he wasn't a political flamethrower. But the 35-year-old, excuse me, the 65-year-old served in Congress for 13 years and his death triggered an outpouring of bipartisan condolences.

Now, in pure political terms, it makes Speaker Johnson's job even harder. His tiny majority is even smaller, 218 to 213 with four vacancies. That means Johnson can lose only two Republicans on any vote. And one of those Republicans is Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who regularly votes against his party.

Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who cast the critical vote to confirm Robert Kennedy Jr., is ripping Kennedy's latest changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. The senator posted on Twitter, quote, "The vaccine schedule is not a mandate. It's a recommendation giving parents the power. Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker."

Now, the CDC is reducing the number of recommended vaccines from 17 to 11. Senator Cassidy, a physician, said back in February that Kennedy promised to consult him and would protest vaccine access.

The Justice Department says it has released less than 1 percent of the Epstein file. So far, more than 12,000 documents have been made public. But the DOJ says there are more than 2 million documents still being reviewed. Congress passed a law requiring the department to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein by December 19th of last year.

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.