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Republicans Target Medicaid; Republican Activist Pushes for U.S. Monarchy. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired June 02, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: And now Yarvin has the ear of some of Washington's most powerful people.

CNN's Hadas Gold has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Hadas. Meet you. Thanks so much for doing this.

(voice-over): Meet the man inspiring the next generation of MAGA, Curtis Yarvin, who thinks America should no longer be a democracy. Even before Trump's reelection, he envisioned a fantasy world where Trump was president again, and with chilling accuracy described how he would take aim at public and private institutions without any interference from Congress or the courts.

CURTIS YARVIN, FAR RIGHT BLOGGER: Obviously, I'm not the secret mastermind of the Trump/Vance administration.

GOLD (on camera): You're not? I thought there was a hot line.

(voice-over): The software engineer and blogger has been called the father of dark enlightenment political theory. That means he thinks democracy is overrated, and what the U.S. needs is a king.

YARVIN: A monarch, a single focus of authority, is absolutely necessary to run any integrated system efficiently. You could probably put any of the Fortune 500 CEOs in and say, OK, you're in charge of the executive branch, fix this. They would probably do fine. They wouldn't be Hitler or Stalin.

GOLD: And he's got some powerful people listening.

TUCKER CARLSON, FORMER FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I think you're pretty far out in a way that is worth thinking about.

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's this guy Curtis Yarvin, who's written about some of these things.

GOLD: Years before Elon Musk and DOGE, Yarvin coined the phrase RAGE, retire all government employees. Next, he sees a world where the power is not with the people. (on camera): Should there be, though, elections in your world of a

sovereign CEO?

YARVIN: There needs to be a way of basically holding the sovereign CEO accountable.

GOLD: But not every single person should have a vote?

YARVIN: Well, I mean, I have four beautiful children. None of them have a vote.

GOLD (voice-over): Experts in democracy, like Harvard Professor Danielle Allen, who publicly debated Yarvin, say his ideas are dangerous.

DANIELLE ALLEN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: It is not the case that autocracies over the course of history have delivered good for human beings. They have consistently violated freedom.

GOLD: Not surprisingly, Yarvin is no stranger to controversy. He's been accused of using racist tropes and whitewashing history.

YARVIN: Certain races are better at certain things than others.

GOLD (on camera): Do you not necessarily believe then that certain races would be better at governing a country than others?

YARVIN: Oh, I mean, again, governing a country is just a skill. And it's like the British in India would basically say, oh, this race is a governing race, this race is not a governing race based on culture, based on tradition, based on biology.

GOLD: So, you're saying, yes, certain races would be better at running governments than others?

YARVIN: Would be better at doing anything. But those are only averages.

GOLD (voice-over): As for Trump, Yarvin says the administration is still not going far enough in harnessing executive power.

(on camera): You laid out how you thought things could be done in a way that were fast, that may be a little bit dirty. And some of the things, they do seem to be doing there in the White House. Are you not pleased with how they're doing it?

YARVIN: No, because I think that if you basically take anything complicated and you try to do 10 percent of it, you're not -- or 5 percent or maybe 1 percent, you're probably not going to result in anything good.

GOLD (voice-over): Instead, Yarvin is looking to younger generations.

YARVIN: I think most of my influence on sort of the Trump administration is less through the leadership and more through like kids in the administration who read my kind of stuff, because my audience is very young. And...

GOLD (on camera): Are you in touch with staffers at the White House on a regular basis?

YARVIN: I don't really know what a regular basis is, but...

GOLD: Are you e-mailing, on the phone with them?

YARVIN: Do I have -- do I have -- are there people in the administration who are on Signal groups with me? Yes, there are. I'm just out there in the marketplace of ideas. And I think the marketplace of ideas has definitely expanded in the last 10 years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: CNN media correspondent Hadas Gold is with us now for more on her reporting.

Hi, Hadas. Great to see you.

So, Yarvin has been writing about this for more than a decade. Why are scholars in democracy so concerned about people like Yarvin gaining popularity right now in this moment?

GOLD: Yes, Yarvin has been writing for a long time. He's been around the sort of the Silicon Valley, right-wing, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen for a very long time.

But it's really been in the last five years that he's taken off. And it's young people, especially, as he noted. I spoke to some students at Harvard who really cited COVID and COVID era policies that cause him to be disillusioned with how things are currently run.

And that's why scholars are rather alarmed. Daniel Allen, that Harvard professor who debated him, said, one of the reasons she even wanted to address him, that she even would debate him is because of his rising popularity. And they're worried for several reasons.

For one, they say autocracies consistently violate freedoms. There's also economical issues when you talk about putting some sort of CEO- like dictator in charge. They say that they lead to declining economies, to capital flight. I spoke to one professor at UCLA, Daniel Treisman, who said that democracy increases GDP per capita by 20 percent.

[11:35:03]

And one thing that they said that Curtis Yarvin often talks about, he says you could put any of these CEOs in power and they wouldn't be a Hitler and Stalin. He tried to argue to me that just the way that our society currently is would not lend itself to create a Hitler or a Stalin and the atrocities that they caused.

But these scholars, they say, listen, a lot of these autocrats, a lot of these dictators, when they come in, they might be well-intentioned, but as they try to hold on to power, that's when they become more and more repressive, and that is part of the issue.

Other than, of course, if you like to be able to vote for your representatives in Congress, if you like to vote for your leaders, what he's arguing for is essentially saying we shouldn't necessarily have those types of elections, guys.

BLITZER: Hadas Gold, excellent reporting. Thank you very, very much for that report.

Right now, I want to bring in our senior legal analyst, Elie Honig.

Elie, I want to highlight at least part of what we just heard from Hadas.

Yarvin was asked how to make sure a leader doesn't become the next Hitler or Stalin. His response -- and I'm quoting him now -- You need to concentrate that power in a single individual and then just hope somehow that this is the right individual or close to the right individual."

Elie, what do you think about that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, this is a far extreme view, obviously, Wolf, and it's not fully fleshed out.

When the answer is, well, let's just hope for the best, that's not particularly convincing. Now, that said, it's important that we pay attention to this individual's views, because as Hadas' reporting shows, there are high-ranking people in the administration, up to the vice president, who have in the past cited his principles and apparently are using them as some sort of guiding force.

Hadas elicited from this person that he apparently is in contact with some government officials. We can see some echoes of what he's advocating in the actions of the Trump administration. They are pushing the outer boundaries within the courts, within the context of our legal system of their executive power, and, at times, even going beyond that, in the efforts to try to control universities and law firms and media organizations.

So this is a core fundamental battle that will play out in the courts and in our political theater.

BROWN: All right, and, on that note, on this topic of the courts and consolidating power in the executive branch, I want to ask you about my conversation with White House Deputy Chief of Staff for policy Stephen Miller on Friday.

Listen to this exchange from that interview, and then I will have you weigh in on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: Under the immigration and nationality act -- this is a very important point -- Congress stripped the district courts of jurisdiction in matters of immigration.

So each and every time a district court -- in other words, they created Article II immigration courts in the executive branch and stripped Article III courts of jurisdiction.

So, every time a district court is setting national immigration policy, that district court judge is violating the law.

BROWN: That's not true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: It's not true, right?

HONIG: This is a falsity that Stephen Miller has apparently been trying to make real by sheer volume and repetition.

He has been going around to various media outlets and claiming that, under the Constitution, our courts have no power to review the executive branch's actions on immigration, writ large. That is false. No court has ever held that in the history of this country. We know it's false because courts have and continue to in fact rule on immigration questions.

And what he does here, Pam, is a bit of sleight of hand. As you pointed out later in the interview, there are certain narrow circumstances where Congress has actually said, OK, this narrow issue of immigration law is not to be reviewed by the courts. Trump won a Supreme Court ruling on one of those narrow issues just last week.

But that does not mean, as Stephen Miller claims it does, that the courts have zero power when it comes to immigration. In fact, the courts do have the power to and need to exercise that power to review most of the executive's actions on immigration.

BROWN: Yes.

Because it sounds like what he's -- he was trying to argue there is that Congress created this law that took away all authority from the judiciary under Article III to provide a check on the executive branch under Article II when it comes to immigration and that any check would come from within the immigration judges under the executive branch. which seems to fly in the face of the way that our system of government and the Constitution is set up.

HONIG: Yes, it flies in the face of Constitution, laws and practice.

If it was the case that Stephen Miller was correct that the courts had no authority over immigration, we would know that because the courts would not be ruling on immigration.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Right, the Supreme Court.

HONIG: Yes, Supreme Court. And no justice of any ideology has ever held that. You can look at the liberal justices. You can look at justices -- the late Justice Antonin Scalia. You can look at Thomas. You can look at Alito. None of them have ever said what Stephen Miller is saying.

BLITZER: Elie Honig, as always, thank you very, very much.

HONIG: Thank you.

BLITZER: And it jumped out at me, Pamela, you went to law school. He never went to law school, Stephen Miller.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: And that was clear in the course of that interview.

BROWN: Yes, I got a master's in studies of law. Thank you for pointing that out, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes. OK.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: But Elie Honig is a lawyer.

BLITZER: He's a real -- he went to law school too.

BROWN: He was a prosecutor in the federal government.

[11:40:01]

BLITZER: He knows his...

BROWN: So, that's why we wanted make sure he was on to weigh in on this.

BLITZER: He knows his stuff.

BROWN: And it was very validating. I will say that.

BLITZER: All right, just ahead, there's growing concern over the future of Medicaid. As Republicans defend potential cuts, some experts are now warning of devastating consequences.

Stay with us. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, some Republicans have a blunt message for millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid: Work or do -- volunteer or anything like that fitting under the requirements of this new House GOP spending bill as it makes its way through Congress.

The current package would impose the first ever work requirements on Medicaid expansion enrollees between the ages of 19 and 64. The requirement would amount to 80 hours per month of working, volunteering, going to school or job training, and there would be some exceptions.

[11:45:08]

We're joined now by Adrianna McIntyre. She is a professor of health politics and policy at Harvard.

So, Republicans have continually said that these are not cuts to Medicaid, that basically they're just adding some work requirements and that those who are most vulnerable will not be impacted. Is that true?

ADRIANNA MCINTYRE, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Great to be with you.

I can't say that I agree that this won't impact vulnerable Medicaid beneficiaries or that these aren't cuts. In general, there are three ways you can reduce spending in Medicaid. You can cover fewer people, you can cover fewer benefits, or you can pay providers less when you do cover benefits.

Each of those sounds like cuts to me, and I think that we're going to see versions of all three. The challenge with work requirements is that working alone isn't enough. You have to remember to report your work to the government.

So we actually know most people in Medicaid are working at least part- time. Two-thirds of people are working at least part-time. And the overwhelming majority of the remainder qualify for those exemptions you mentioned. They care for older relatives or children. They're in school. They're volunteering.

But, again, the government does not magically know that you're caring for your disabled mom. You're going to have to go in and file paperwork, at least twice a year under this bill, possibly more often, because states have some flexibility.

And, as a result, eligible people are going to slip through the cracks. People who are doing everything right, but they're missing that one last form, they're going to slip through the cracks. And this isn't like when you forget to pay your Internet bill. And your Internet goes out, so you send your -- you go to Xfinity and you pay your bill, and your Internet comes back immediately.

That's not how Medicaid works. We're going to have people showing up at doctor's offices, at pharmacies, and learning only when they're trying to get their medications that they no longer have coverage.

BROWN: Yes, and talk to us a little bit more about that, because someone might hear this and say, well, I mean, you just have to report it. That's no big deal. That shouldn't be that difficult.

Walk us through sort of the realities, though, of the paperwork and the red tape that this could create.

MCINTYRE: Yes, so it's going to vary a little bit by state. In general, states are not great at knowing about what people are

doing with their time. I'm not sure that we want a surveillance state that knows exactly how I'm spending each hour of my day. In some cases, the state will know, OK, we have records of this person being on payroll, but say you're an Uber driver, an independent contractor.

The state doesn't know how many hours you're working. So you're going to have to file some sort of paperwork. We don't know exactly what that looks like yet. And, again, I expect that the requirements in Texas and Massachusetts are going to look very different.

We don't know what sort of -- if they're going to require pay stubs or if just attesting to the fact that you're working is going to be enough. We do know that we have seen this play out before. We have seen this play out in Arkansas in the first Trump administration and more recently in Georgia.

And, in Arkansas, we saw a bunch of people who seemed to be perfectly compliant with work requirements losing coverage, largely because they didn't know that they needed to be filing this paperwork, that they needed to be logging on to a Web site, telling the government that they're working.

In Georgia, we saw that just a tiny, tiny fraction of the people who they thought would take up coverage did so. And they think that the work requirement, the paperwork hurdles were part of the reason.

There was this incredible story in ProPublica few weeks back about the man who had been the spokesperson for the Georgia pathways program, Georgia's work requirements, who was a middle-aged small business owner, had coverage through Medicaid was a cheerleader for this program, but then ended up losing coverage twice, because he had missed some of the paperwork requirements.

BROWN: So, to follow up on that, do you think that there is some sort of middle ground here, where Republicans can get some form of Medicaid work requirements with support from Democrats?

MCINTYRE: Given the evidence that we have on work requirements and the way that they seem to largely be a solution in search of a problem, again, because most people in Medicaid are working or are engaged in those other activities, I have a hard time seeing a world where Democrats vote for something that includes work requirements.

I think in general -- and we saw this during the Biden administration. -- Democrats are in favor of reducing administrative burdens in programs like Medicaid and SNAP, not increasing them. And, functionally, that's what these are. They're not work requirements. They're paperwork requirements.

BROWN: All right, Professor Adrianna McIntyre, thank you so much.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:54:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TED TURNER, FOUNDER OF CNN: For the American people, whose thirst for understanding and a better life has made this venture possible, for the cable industry, whose pioneering spirit caused this great step forward in communications, and for those employees of Turner Broadcasting whose total commitment to their company has brought us together today, I dedicate the news channel for America, the Cable News Network.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stand by. Ready three. Take three my cue. Three, start to slow zoom in a little bit. Roll tape. Take three.

Ready 13 full. Ready camera three, one center up.

DAVID WALKER, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm David Walker.

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Now here's the news.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we're happy that you're here with us to watch the news channel as the news goes on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:55:05]

BROWN: Where was Wolf?

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: All right, 45 years ago, our founder, Ted Turner, launched CNN, bringing the world's first 24-hour news network to life and revolutionizing the way people around the world get their news.

So, today, we celebrate CNN's commitment to truth, integrity and fearless reporting, which all started with that first broadcast 45 years ago.

BLITZER: And, Pamela, I had a chance to speak to Ted Turner, the great Ted Turner, at his Montana ranch back in 2013, and I asked him why he started CNN and what makes this network so, so special.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TURNER: That I want to present both sides of controversial stories and let the viewers make up their mind, rather than having Walter Cronkite make it up for you. He was always recommending what people ought to think. CNN didn't do that. We let people think for themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: I have had the privilege to be a part of this wonderful network for 35 of these past 45 years, and none of it would be possible without the dedication of my truly wonderful colleagues and friends or our incredible viewers, for that matter, whether here in the United States or indeed all around the world.

So, to all of you, I say thank you. And Ted always said to me: "Remember, Wolf, the news is the star."

BROWN: I love that.

BLITZER: Yes.

BROWN: And that is so your motto, the way that you do it. And I'm so glad Ted Turner brought you over to CNN 35 years ago.

BLITZER: He also said the news comes first.

BROWN: That's right.

BLITZER: So we believe in the news.

And, to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning. You can keep up with us on social media @WolfBlitzer, @PamelaBrownCNN. We will see you back here tomorrow, every weekday morning 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

BROWN: "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" is next after a short break.