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Inside Politics
Trump Signs Order To Change Child Vaccine Recommendations; Race To Find Survivors After Devastating Colombia Earthquake. Aired 12:30- 1p ET
Aired August 11, 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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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- child's body, and bad things happen. In fact, they've said how safe it seems to be. But I've heard when you put them together, they can be explosive.
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[12:30:12]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: That's not only not proven, it has been disproven in more than 40 studies concluding no link between autism and vaccines. Children do not receive soda bottles worth of vaccines. Any parent who has taken their child to get vaccinated knows that.
There is no evidence that combined vaccines like the MMR, measles, mumps, and rubella do anything other than make it easier for parents and children who don't particularly like getting shots. CNN's Daniel Dale did a full fact check of all President Trump's false and misleading claims. You can get that fact check using your QR code on your screen or go to CNN.com.
David, this is something that the President has actually been obsessed with. We talked a lot about the sort of MAHA movement and how that is part of why President Trump brought RFK into the fold and pushed him as HHS secretary. Obviously, as I said in my interview with him, the world's most famous vaccine skeptic. But I want you to listen to what the President said back when he wasn't president, he was a private citizen back in 2015 during a debate on this issue.
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TRUMP: People that worked for me just the other day. Two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic. I only say it's not -- I'm in favor of vaccines, do them over a longer period of time, same amount.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
TRUMP: But just in little sections.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: Now, researchers have conducted more than 40 studies involving over 5.6 million people and the conclusion again and again and again is there is no link between vaccines and autism. And if you want to look at some of those studies for yourself, you can look on the American Academy of Pediatrics website, healthychildren.org or the Autism Science Foundation also maintains a page, autism and vaccines, read the science.
DAVID WEIGEL, POLITICS REPORTER, SEMAFOR: Yes, I don't think, whatever their opinion of the President, many parents will be thrilled the idea of taking the kid for three vaccinations instead of one when it comes to MMR. On the overall issue, this has just been a long campaign by RFK Jr. and the President to brute force this back into the national conversation.
We -- 20 years ago, when Kennedy was in the private sector as an environmental attorney and talking about this, he had a big mainstream media audience. There was more research done. This became a more problematic and disproved position, but he's HHS secretary, Trump is President. The government has the ability to move the envelope on this and they're doing it.
The investigations of Fauci in the Senate are a piece of this too. They're filling in a missing part of the argument, which is five years ago, most people got vaccinated, many people got boosters. The health concerns were not, the health effects were not what were predicted. And so there's this constant effort to go back and look, turn emails upside down and spin them around until it looks like there's some medical conspiracy Americans were forced into. That is, he won the election, he gets to keep doing that for two years.
BASH: So real world consequences for parents and doctors. Katherine Matthias, who's a South Carolina pediatrician. South Carolina is one of the places where measles outbreaks are happening. "We've already seen the fallout of it. There's going to be more people hesitant to get their vaccines on time and there's going to be more outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases."
It is interesting, I checked in with my son's pediatrician locally and he said he's not hearing from parents yet, but it's not even relevant currently because you cannot get these individual vaccines.
TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yes. And, you know, I think that what is happening here is, as you say, the President has had this long held belief that he is attempting to mainstream and has a Health and Human Services secretary who's willing to help him do that. But as you say, there is a major measles outbreak in this country right now.
You know, measles was thought to have been completely eliminated in the United States, just a few small outbreaks. Now it is a significant issue in the United States.
BASH: And just on the politics of this, the Wall Street Journal reported a couple of weeks ago that Tony Fabrizio, the President's pollster, has been pushing the White House to pull back on this vaccine talk because it doesn't help Republicans with independence. The President obviously believes what he believes, so does RFK.
But if you look quickly at Pew Research data, it does show the way that Republicans and Democrats really since before COVID have flipped on the question of whether vaccine, the MMR vaccine in particular, the benefits outweighs the risks. And 92 percent of Democrats say yes, 78 percent of Republicans say no. And it was almost the inverse with both percentages higher in 2016.
[12:35:10]
JASMINE WRIGHT, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NOTUS: Yes. And in that same Pew Research poll, I think they overall found that about 63 percent, if that's the one from November 2025, 63 percent of Americans saw that childhood vaccines are successful in keeping serious illness away. And I think even more of that found that it was good also for the community in keeping serious illness down.
So I think this is one place in which the -- largely the American public is not on the same page with Donald Trump and RFK Jr. Now, perhaps that number changes as time goes on, but this is a place in which they aren't as happy as, say, you know, what RFK has been doing on food and trying to get chemicals out of food. And so this is going to be a political problem.
Of course, we know that the President touted MAHA and RFK Jr. I've talked to some folks who believe that MAHA is going to be really influential come November in a way that perhaps other Republicans who are more focused on affordability aren't going to come out in the same droves. And so you're going to continue to see this kind of pushing by the White House.
BASH: OK. I want to get to some breaking news. CNN is on the ground in Colombia where crews are racing to find survivors in the wake of a devastating earthquake that hit the western part of that country yesterday. At least 224 people have died and hundreds more have been injured. Right now, what you're looking at are crews attempting to rescue someone buried in the rubble.
We want to listen to what's happening on the ground. Again, this is coming to us live right now.
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BASH: Just to give you an update on what we're watching right now, the rescuers are asking the crowd to be silent so that they can figure out if the person they believe they are rescuing is responding. We'll keep watching.
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[12:41:10]
BASH: I just want to continue to update as much as we can with what we're watching. The rescuers are, you can see, with very rudimentary equipment, trying to see if they can rescue somebody who they believe is there. We heard them say Nina [ph]. We believe it's a girl, but we don't know for sure.
Our David Culver is on the ground, and we're hoping to connect with him shortly. But in the meantime, this is a remarkable effort that you see after this devastation that is going to take some time to recover from. And the most important thing is not just recovery, is rescue, which is underway as we are watching it live coming from western Colombia. We'll continue to watch it.
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DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You can see from our ground now, these fists are in the air. They're asking for silence.
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CULVER: They had once again another pause, but they've resumed trying to break apart. It's this one piece of concrete. I mean, this is actually one of the higher floors that you're looking at, because you can see what was their tile and everything. It just came down four stories, and that's what they're trying to break apart now. Because that now is the top layer that's essentially sealing everyone in, and now they ask for silence again.
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[12:45:22]
CULVER: I'll just point your attention to over here to the side, what has picked up again. You have again these folks who have jumped in, and you can see they're wearing everything from athleisure wear to shorts, tennis shoes. They're not prepared for this.
The gloves have been handed out by volunteers, and yet they're stepping in to help, determined to try to do something to contribute. You can see how many people are standing as onlookers, how uncomfortable they felt watching this and feeling like they couldn't do anything.
One man said he just felt powerless, and there was a clenching of emotions. He said there's a lot of confusion too, and you can see that, because there's a lot of ups and downs with this. Now they're asking people to move out to get some more space.
They do this almost in cycles, so they can then have more stillness and quiet closer to where they are. The reason we've moved back is so that we can talk and not be in the area that they're trying to focus on getting a response from within.
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CULVER: Might be tough to see, but there's a gentleman in a black hat, black T-shirt, yellow gloves sitting at the far left. He's kind of taking command of this, and it's not clear if he is actually a first responder or a community member, but he will often try to coordinate the crowd, if you will.
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CULVER: Now they're asking people to mobilize again to continue onward. So watch the crowd again jump in.
It looks like there's also a movement of the crane that they brought on site, and they've been fueling this crane by bringing tanks of fuel to this location so it doesn't have to move and it can continue going at all hours. It's possible they'll try to move a larger piece of the concrete slabs.
Yes. Our first responders (INAUDIBLE).
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CULVER: And it is worth putting it in perspective, I mean, this is one of several pockets across the city that is experiencing search and rescues like this. It does feel like though a lot more of the attention right now has come to this location and it's perhaps because they have heard in the past hour or so responses from within that level.
I think these are firefighters here.
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[12:50:15]
CULVER: All right. This looks to have crates in the back carrying K- 9s, so we'll see if they'll be utilizing them there.
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CULVER: OK. Now they're continuing to expand this process of trying to clear the rubble. I mean, when we got here, none of this row of concrete and steel existed. They have expanded this out, and they've been -- and they're continuing to move people along.
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CULVER: And you can see how folks from all walks of life, all ages, jumping in to help out here.
They're really picking up the effort and energy here. I mean, it's something that's indicative of potentially getting close to a rescue.
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CULVER: OK, now they're asking for silence again.
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CULVER: OK, there's loud cheers going on. You might have a better view here, David.
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[12:55:07]
CULVER: They're trying to pull up all the (INAUDIBLE).
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BASH: OK, just if you are now tuning in, and you're looking at the screen, wondering what's happening, we have been watching live images of a massive rescue operation that is underway. Really remarkable with not just, it appears, trained professionals, but everyday locals trying to help as best they can.
We saw an ambulance, you see obviously in the front of your screen there, just recently come in. We saw dogs in crates come in, clearly to assist with this operation. At times, the people who have been chipping away at the clearly very thick slab of concrete have been asking for silence from the crowd to see if they can hear anything.
And we did just see a cot going by that came out of the ambulance. Or it was a rock, we're not exactly sure. We're watching it as you are. But David Culver, our terrific colleague, is on the scene there. We lost him momentarily. He is gathering information, and we're going to bring it to you as we get it.
But this is -- you can feel the tension in the crowd in this remote part of Colombia. Let's listen in.
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BASH: OK, we are going to continue to monitor this rescue operation. Inside Politics is going to sign off, but don't go anywhere because CNN News Central is taking over our coverage right now.
