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The Situation Room

Supreme Court Allows ICE to Continue Roving Patrols in California; Epstein Survivor Speaks Out; Appeal of the Manosphere?; Interview With Fmr. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY). Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired September 08, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:01]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD REEVES, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR BOYS AND MEN: Then we have got to come up with better answers.

So, Andrew Tate and his followers are our -- that's our fault. It's not the boys and young men desperately searching for an answer. Let's not be too quick to blame them. Let's actually ask ourselves why such a huge vacuum is being created that someone like Andrew Tate is able to fill.

So when Andrew Tate came back to -- Megyn Kelly publicly denounced the move. Josh Hawley publicly denounced his return.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Right.

REEVES: The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, ordered his attorney general to investigate Andrew Tate to see if there was anything that they could charge him with on U.S. soil.

BROWN: Right.

REEVES: OK, MAGA celebrates? Well, only if you assume that none of those people possibly...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Right.

REEVES: And so just, again...

BROWN: You mean, by lumping them in, then you're isolating them.

(CROSSTALK)

REEVES: By lumping them in, the same as the manosphere thing.

Like, the problem with our general culture is that we all do it both ways. We lump -- we just our lumps are too big. We just say, this is what MAGA looks like or this is what woke looks like, right And you take the most extreme woke people and say, everyone on the left thinks that, no, they don't.

Or you take the most extreme people on the right who want to deny women the vote and say, well, that's what people on the right are like. No. No, they're not. We have to get better generally, but perhaps especially around these issues of gender, of knowing the difference between the fringe and the mainstream.

BROWN: Why should we all care as a society about how men and boys are doing?

REEVES: One of the great insights of the women's movement has been that, when women aren't reaching their full potential in all aspects of life, that's bad for society. It's bad for the economy. It's bad for families. It's bad if women aren't flourishing, bad for men if women aren't flourishing.

Same is true the other way around. If men aren't flourishing, if we're not allowing our boys and our men to reach their full potential, to flourish, to contribute to society in all the ways that they can, that's bad, of course, for them, but it's bad for everybody. It's bad for women who end up having to do maybe more of the work. It's bad for society if we pay the cultural costs of social dislocation.

It's bad if we're just leaving talent on the table that we should otherwise be using. And so the central insight of the women's movement at its best has been, we will all do better if women are able to flourish.

And I would just add now, in case we need to remind ourselves, we will also all do better if not only young women, but also young men are able to flourish, because in the end, a world of floundering men is not going to do well to flourishing women or vice versa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And we will have our final part of the series tomorrow, looking at why men, especially those in Gen Z, are flocking to religion.

Richard Reeves explains the trend in the 11:00 a.m. hour on THE SITUATION ROOM tomorrow.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: This SITUATION ROOM special report that you have been doing is excellent and we're all learning a lot.

BROWN: Thank you, Wolf. Thank you.

BLITZER: Thank you so much, Pamela.

I want to get back right now to our interview with the former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. We had lost the connection. We have reestablished the connection.

Thanks for being patient, Governor. Thanks for staying with us.

You said earlier that you believe Republicans want Mamdani, Zohran Mamdani, to win this race. Mamdani disagrees. He's called you Donald Trump's puppet, his word, puppet. Listen to what Trump said about the New York mayoral race. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you have more than one candidate running against him, it can't be won. If you have one candidate, if he's the right candidate -- I would say that Cuomo might have a chance of winning if it was a one-on-one. If it's not one-on- one, it's going to be a hard race.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The president, as you heard, he appears to be, at least passively supporting you, Governor. Do you want his support?

ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATE: Yes, no, Wolf. What the president is saying is what the polls say. The polls say, one-on-one, I beat Mamdani handily.

So President Trump is just repeating what the polls say. The -- I haven't sought the president's support and I wouldn't accept the president's support.

And, as you know, Wolf, I think the -- I'm probably the person who was fought with President Trump the most. I don't think there was a governor in the nation who had more hostile encounters with President Trump than I did. You covered many of them. I was governor. He was president. We went through COVID together.

And we -- they were battle royals. And he sent the National Guard into 20 cities at that time, never into New York, because I stopped him. I think Mamdani would be his dream as mayor, because then it wouldn't just be President Trump. It would be Mayor Trump. He would just bigfoot Mamdani, which he's doing in cities all across the country, by the way.

[11:35:08]

He's already said that Mamdani is a threat to public safety. He's already said that Mamdani is not competent to be mayor. So he would have total license to just come into New York.

BLITZER: Yes.

CUOMO: And he is president of the United States. He's been very aggressive, very assertive, and he would just step right over Mamdani. Mamdani is a stooge for Trump, because he wants to take over New York. He's from New York. He took over Penn Station.

He's talking about taking over 9/11. He would love to be president and mayor at the same time. It would be his dream come true.

BLITZER: Governor, do you worry at all that the president's repeated attacks against Mamdani could actually elevate him, energize Democrats, and hurt your electoral chances? CUOMO: No. I think Democrats are going to be energized. They want to

come out. But Democrats want someone to defend them against President Trump. That's what Democrats want.

They want someone who can stand up and fight toe-to-toe with President Trump. And I am that person, Wolf, because I have done that. I have done that repeatedly during the hardest time in this state's history, which is during COVID. And I have backed President Trump off New York many times.

And that's what the Democrats want. They want someone who's going to protect them against Trump. I know what the federal government can do. I was a federal Cabinet secretary. I was the HUD secretary. I worked in the White House. I understand the power of the federal government.

I was governor. I was attorney general. I can go toe-to-toe with President Trump. Mamdani, again, is dangerously inexperienced. He never managed more than five people. He's a two-term assemblyman. He only passed three bills. He had the worst attendance record in the legislature.

Trump would go right through him like a knife through butter.

BLITZER: The former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, thanks so much for joining us. We will continue this conversation down the road, to be sure. Appreciate it very much.

And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:41:47]

BROWN: Happening now: The estate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is preparing to hand over documents to the House Oversight Committee. Lawmakers on the committee had subpoenaed the estate for these materials as part of their demand that the Epstein files are released to the public.

Last week, survivors of that abuse gathered on Capitol Hill to demand the release of all unclassified records and chastised President Trump for dismissing their efforts as a hoax.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HALEY ROBSON, JEFFREY EPSTEIN SURVIVOR: Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican, not that that matters, because this is not political. However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Haley Robson joins us now.

Hi, Haley. Thank you so much for speaking with us and for sharing your story.

So you invited the president to meet with you. Have you heard anything from the White House?

ROBSON: Crickets. I have heard crickets.

BROWN: What is your message to President Trump? And what does it feel like when he calls the fight over the Epstein files a hoax?

ROBSON: I just want to clarify, we're not here to be problematic or to create hostility or to create more divide in our country. It's actually quite the opposite.

A lot of us are -- have been speaking out for a very long time, and we just didn't feel like we were being heard until we went to the Capitol. And that's what it took for us to be seen and for us to be heard. And I think that my message was very clear and concise.

And, again, Donald Trump, we are not here to point fingers. We are not here to be hostile. We in fact would like to team up with Congress and team up with this administration to not only come to a resolution for the Epstein files, but also we have lives to live. And it doesn't help us when for years we have been ignored, disregarded.

And the fact that we came to the Capitol uninvited, and we're not getting paid for this. There's no compensation. We want justice. And for us to travel all the way and to just be once again disregarded and called a hoax, it's defamatory, but, beyond that, it's extremely offensive to our trauma and to the attorneys, to the therapists that we have spent years with battling this.

And, listen, this fight has been going on for a very long time, 20 years, at least for me. And I have used my platform in any way, shape and form to bring any awareness. And, at the end of the day, we just -- we want to have answers, and we're willing to work with this administration. We're willing to work with any -- any congressmembers and any representatives from our state and other states to come to some type of resolution. And that's all we're looking for.

BROWN: So let's talk a little bit more about that, because there's this bipartisan effort in the House to force a floor vote on the release of more records from the Justice Department. Two Republican votes are still needed.

This is, of course, being spearheaded by Thomas Massie, Ro Khanna. What is your message to Republicans right now?

[11:45:07]

ROBSON: As somebody who voted for this administration, and for somebody who wrote the coattail of the whole campaign being based on, hey, listen, we are going to resolve this by formally releasing all of the documentation that's been withheld, and we want answers too, my party didn't show up for me.

My party was a very big disappointment for me. God bless Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene that did come out in support of this, in support of all of us and actually took the time to not only hear us, but to back us up.

And I think that they are equally disappointed in their own party. So I think what is -- what you're seeing now and what I'm seeing now is there are a lot of Republicans that are up in arms about this, because, again, this goes back to his campaign, and pretty much everybody in his administration said that this would be something -- would be a priority and that they would release the files.

So I am extremely disappointed, for sure.

BROWN: Some House Republicans, they're pointing to what the House Oversight Committee is doing as the reason for not backing this effort to bring a floor vote.

As you know, the committee released 33,000 Epstein-related documents last week and says it's planning to release more, including from Epstein's estate. Why is that not enough for you?

ROBSON: Well, are those the 33,000 documents that have already been prereleased years ago, or are these actually new documents that are being released, A? That would be my first question.

I think regarding the information that's being released is, it doesn't matter what documents you release. It doesn't. We want justice. So whatever people are tied to those documents, we want to actually see movement and action that proves the support of not only the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, but the entire nation and the entire world supporting us and putting pedophiles where they belong.

And, honestly, we haven't seen that yet. And that's why that's not enough.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: I see. OK.

In terms of what was released, we had the Oversight chairman, James Comer, on our show, and he did admit that this is 3 percent more than what has been released publicly, but this is just the beginning. We're going to be releasing more documents as DOJ continues to hand them over.

Clearly, though, that is not enough for you as a survivor. And I want to ask you about Epstein's convicted associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was moved to a minimum-security prison just a week after she was interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Do you fear she is winning special treatment from this administration?

ROBSON: I mean, clearly. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to see that there's favoritism. I mean, the whole disgrace part of this is that instead of holding and inviting us in front of Congress inside the Capitol to hear our testimonies, you decided to send a former attorney of the administration to sit with a known liar and perjurer and child trafficker and gave her a platform to speak on. And the sad part of this is, you didn't even know the case strong

enough. You didn't even have all the facts to push back. So, yes, she is 1000 percent receiving some type of priority and some type of special treatment that the survivors have never seen ever.

BROWN: Haley Robson, thank you so much for your time and for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

ROBSON: Thank you so much.

BROWN: And if you need help, there are resources. For those watching, you can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799- SAFE or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:53:23]

BLITZER: There's breaking news coming into THE SITUATION ROOM right now.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of President Trump's effort to allow ICE officials to continue what's called roving patrols in Southern California.

Let's go live right now to CNN's Joan Biskupic.

Joan, this overturns a previous ruling by lower courts that said the patrols violated the Fourth Amendment.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: That's right, Wolf. This is just in.

And the lower courts had said that the Trump administration's agents here didn't have the authority to do it because they lacked what's known as reasonable suspicion to be picking up these people. As you know, the Immigration and Customs agents had been -- ICE had been masked, picking up men who were speaking Spanish and kind of hanging around at either car washes, agriculture sites, places where they thought that illegal alien -- illegal migrants might be congregating.

And the Supreme Court over only three dissenters, the three liberal dissenters, said that the Trump administration could continue this. Let me just read a portion of two opinions that came with this order that I think shows you where the court is coming from.

The majority did not explain its reasoning for allowing these to continue, for rejecting what the lower courts had seen as a Fourth Amendment violation. But Justice Kavanaugh, writing only for himself, noted the problem with immigration, illegal immigration in America.

And he talked about how the government estimates that at least 15 million people are in the U.S. illegally. Many millions have entered or overstayed their visas, and they stay for years. So that was kind of where the majority is coming from.

[11:55:04]

But here's what Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Jackson and Kagan on the liberal side, said: "We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than -- stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent."

And I think this really shows you the tension in these cases, Wolf. This is yet another one from the conservative supermajority siding with the Trump administration on matters of immigration and deportation, essentially giving the Trump administration license to do this, while the three liberal dissenters say, wait. In America, we should have more protections for people than the majority is affording them, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Joan Biskupic reporting for us.

Joan, thank you very, very much.

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

BROWN: "INSIDE POLITICS" with our friend and colleague Dana Bash is next after a short break.