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State of the Union

Interview With Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK); Interview With Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL); Interview With Sen. James Lankford (R- OK). Aired 9-10a ET

Aired November 24, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:35]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST (voice-over): Central casting. Donald Trump rounds out his Cabinet with a team of made-for-TV messengers and disrupters.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Is he central casting?

BASH: But after one controversial nominee drops out, can the rest survive the Senate spotlight?

The newest member of Republican leadership, Senator James Lankford, and key Trump ally Senator Markwayne Mullin will join me.

Plus: under fire. New details on the allegations against defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth.

PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: That's completely clear.

BASH: As his past statements on women in combat spark fierce pushback from critics, should he lead the nation's military? Army combat veteran retired Lieutenant Colonel Senator Tammy Duckworth will be here.

And new way forward? As Democrats come to terms with life in the minority, the party faces a new moment of truth.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): We will move forward.

BASH: Are they ready to reach across the aisle or are they gearing up for a fight? My panel of experts will break it all down ahead.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Hello. I'm Dana Bash in Washington, where the state of our union is locked in.

President-elect Donald Trump officially completed his list of Cabinet secretary nominations in a flurry of announcements over the last 48 hours. Trump unveiled a number of new unconventional picks. Here's a look at the full list right now.

It includes a pro-union former Republican congresswoman for the Labor Department, a Project 2025 co-author to lead the Budget Office. One of the most important jobs, Treasury secretary, will go to billionaire investor Scott Bessent.

But the made-for-TV cast of characters still needs to get past the Republican Senate, which has already doomed one nomination. Trump's picks for health and human services secretary and director of national intelligence are under intense scrutiny, and his nominee for defense secretary is on defense, denying a sexual assault allegation.

The fate of all these nominees rests in the hands of the new Republican Senate majority, which just elected its leaders for the next Congress.

Here with me now is the newest member of the Republican leadership, James Lankford of Oklahoma.

Thank you so much for being here, Senator. Congratulations.

As a new member of the leadership, you are going to -- whether or not you're in leadership or not, you're, as a senator, going to be looking at all of Donald Trump's nominees. Are you planning to vote for all of them, or do any give you pause?

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): No, we're planning to go through the process on this. By the way, good morning and happy Thanksgiving coming up.

But it will be a long process that will go through that, that has already begun, where individuals that are -- have been nominated will come forward. We will sit down with them in our offices. We will get a chance to be able to talk. There will be open hearings that will start after January the 3rd next year, when the new Congress is sworn in.

So everybody's going to get a fair shake. Everybody's going to have the opportunity to be able to go through this process, and we will let the process work out.

BASH: Let's dig into some of the picks. His pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, she has a long history of questioning American intelligence. She repeatedly promoted Russian propaganda.

She blamed the Ukraine war on the Biden administration and NATO, rather than Putin. She wants the government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden. Nikki Haley called her a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.

You're a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Will you support her to oversee America's intelligence community?

LANKFORD: Yes, like I said before, we're going to go through hearings. We're going to get everything out. We're going to get facts and information and get the entire story. She is somebody who has been very outspoken. She's obviously a past

member of the military. She's a veteran herself. She's had the opportunity to be able to travel quite a bit around the world as a member of Congress to be able to interact with folks. And she's not been afraid to be able to speak out and to say, hey, I disagree on some areas.

But that's a very different role than saying, what is your philosophy and what is President Trump's philosophy of how we're going to handle national intelligence? We have very important people that serve in our intelligence community. Literally, every day, our nation is at risk. And people around the world that most folks will never meet and will never get a chance to know are serving our nation.

[09:05:01]

When you see a member of the military, many people will pay for their lunch or get a chance to say thank you to them. The members of our intelligence community, most folks don't ever know, don't get a chance to say thank you.

But it's really important that we have leadership there that's able to support them and able to get them on focus.

BASH: Does anything about her concern you?

LANKFORD: Well, we will have lots of questions. She met with Bashar Assad. We will want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was as a member of Congress. We will want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she's made and get them into full context.

So, sure, there's comments that are floating out there, but we want to be able to know the rest of the story.

BASH: OK, let's turn to the Department of Justice.

Pam Bondi is Donald Trump's new nominee for attorney general. She's a longtime ally who defended him in his first impeachment trial, helped promote the 2020 election fraud claims that he was pushing. Trump also named his personal lawyer Todd Blanche as deputy attorney general and is reportedly considering firing FBI Director Chris Wray and using the DOJ to probe the 2020 election.

As you well know, the Justice Department is supposed to be free from political interference and pressure from the White House. Will that no longer be the case during the second Trump term?

LANKFORD: I don't think we know that one way or the other. I think President Trump does want people that are loyal to him. He wants to make sure that the people that are around him in the Cabinet are at least directionally the right direction.

This has been a question, quite frankly, since the Kennedy administration, when President Kennedy put his brother in as attorney general. So that kind of statement of this has always been neutral or that this is supposed to be that way, it should be. It's America's lawyer. It's not the president's lawyer.

But it's also someone that the president wants to know is heading the same direction that they are, because it's very important. When you talk about the attorney general, they're the key component on the prosecution of federal crimes around the country. Every single U.S. attorney around the country works for them and with them.

So it is very important that we get this role right and that they're actually focused on diminishing crime in America and make sure we're getting good prosecutions.

BASH: Senator, I want you to listen to what Pam Bondi said on FOX News last year about this department that she is nominated to lead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAM BONDI (R), FORMER FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated, because the deep state, last term for President Trump, they were hiding in the shadows. But now they have a spotlight on them.

And they can all be investigated. And the house needs to be cleaned out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Are you on board with her going after career prosecutors and investigators as retribution for Donald Trump?

LANKFORD: Well, I don't know if it's retribution. I think it's trying to be able to get us back to neutral and to balance on that, Dana.

Quite frankly, the -- we have U.S. attorneys that were appointed by President Biden that had his perspective and his focus. Obviously, many of those will switch out to folks, as every single president does as they change out U.S. attorneys.

But we also have individuals within the FBI, and that was very well- known after President Trump came on in 2016 that there were members of the FBI that hated him that were in senior leadership that were working to be able to undercut him, Peter Strzok, multiple others that were actively working to try to undercut the president.

I think it's entirely appropriate for Pam Bondi to step in and to say, or whoever that is as attorney general, to be able to step in and say, we're not going to allow someone to try to undercut the president of the United States in this Department of Justice. You have got to actually be balanced and about justice, not about attacking the president.

BASH: Yes, which makes sense. The question is whether or not they're going to go after -- who he perceives to be his political opponents.

LANKFORD: Well, if they're political opponents, they should be advocates for America, not opponents of the president. So if someone is in the Department of Justice right now that is

actively trying to undercut the president, they should be gone.

BASH: Yes, what I meant was using the Department of Justice to go after his opponents outside DOJ in that particular question.

LANKFORD: Well, we will see on that. I would tell you the past is prologue in some ways on this.

When President Trump came in, it was very clear that Hillary Clinton had used Russia and all of the connections that were there that came out to try to influence the election at that time in 2016. President Trump didn't go after Hillary Clinton after he came into office in 2017. He said, hey, we're not going to do that.

Obviously, he had a great meeting with President Biden, where they sat down together in the Oval Office, talked about the transition, and seemed to work to be able to move on. So I don't see any evidence of that kind of retribution.

But if this is a person that is against that agenda, that is clearly not just Trump's agenda, is America's agenda, then they should step aside and say, hey, let America be America.

BASH: Senator, I want to ask about immigration, which is, of course, a top priority for Donald Trump, a top priority for you. You negotiated a major bipartisan immigration deal. Kamala Harris supported it.

[09:10:05]

As you, of course, painfully remember, Donald Trump single-handedly tanked it. What do you expect to happen now that he's returning? Do you think there's any chance your bill can be resurrected, something along those lines, maybe something different?

LANKFORD: Right.

So I would disagree that Donald Trump single-handedly rejected it or tanked it. Obviously, members of the Senate had to be able to speak out on that. But I would tell you, the bill itself had two major sections of it. One is, it cut off funding in many of the programs that President Biden wanted until he started actually enforcing the border.

The second portion of it fixed what's called the asylum loophole that is a gap in our law that's being exploited right now. Obviously, the first part of that bill is no longer needed. No one thinks that President Trump is not going to enforce the border. He's going to enforce the border.

So that portion of the bill is not needed anymore. We still are going to need a law to be able to fix the asylum loophole, and be glad to be able to work with the White House to be able to get that done. President Trump spoke out about that when he was president, before saying we need to be able to resolve those issues. We will in the days ahead, and be glad to be able to work with the

White House to be able to get that done.

BASH: Before I let you go, I do want to ask about something that's going on now in the Texas School Board, which voted this week to incentivize public schools to use an optional curriculum that incorporates Bible lessons.

It began earlier this year in your home state of Oklahoma, which required schools to have Bible and classes and include the Ten Commandments and lessons. You are a pastor. You are a public official. Both of these issues are very near and dear to your heart.

Do you think it's appropriate to incorporate religion into public education like that?

LANKFORD: Well, let me tell you a couple of things that we are doing in Oklahoma.

In Oklahoma, we are allowing students to be able to do off-campus religious education. If they want to have actual religious education, they can do that off-campus. It's an elective, like choir or band or any other number of electives that are out there, art. They can get a chance to be able to do also off-campus religious education.

So any conversation about the Bible shouldn't be a religious tone. I'm -- people know that. My Christian faith has impacted my life dramatically, and I am the primary teacher to my children of my faith. That shouldn't be a public schoolteacher to do that.

But, saying that, the Bible is also a part of Western civilization and part of our founding. Many of our founders were very passionate about Scripture and about the Bible and studied it. So, as a historical document, as a cultural document, it absolutely should be taught in schools. As a religious document, that's up to parents and to faith leaders off-campus.

BASH: Fascinating. That's a really interesting way to explain it, as always, on those issues and all of them.

Senator James Lankford, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

LANKFORD: Thank you. Good to see you again.

BASH: And up next: She flew Black Hawk helicopters in Iraq. So what does she think of Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon? Senator Tammy Duckworth is next.

Plus: With one nominee already out of the mix, are any other Trump nominees in jeopardy? One of Donald Trump's key allies in the Senate, Markwayne Mullin, is here ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:43] BASH: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

President-elect Trump's pick for secretary of defense is facing new scrutiny this week after new details emerged about a sexual assault allegation, which he denies, and controversial comments about women in combat.

Here with me now is a woman who served in combat, a former Black Hawk helicopter pilot in Iraq, a Purple Heart recipient, Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth.

It's nice to see you in person.

SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Yes.

BASH: Thank you so much for being here.

I want to start by asking about Pete Hegseth for defense secretary. He's a retired major in the Army National Guard, a Bronze Star recipient. He served in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has degrees from Princeton and Harvard. You say he's deeply unfit and wholly unqualified, despite those credentials.

Why?

DUCKWORTH: He never commanded a unit. He never commanded a company, let alone battalions, brigades, or whole armies. He was a platoon leader. He served at a very low level in the military.

And we're talking about an organization that has three million service men and women and civilians and a budget of over $900 billion. He does not have the experience to run an organization of that size. So, just based on those requirements alone, he is unqualified for the position.

BASH: You are, as I mentioned, a combat veteran. Twenty years ago last week, you lost both of your legs when your Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq.

I want you to listen to what Pete Hegseth has said about women in combat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEGSETH: I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What's your response?

DUCKWORTH: Well, he's wrong because the women have made us more effective.

In fact, our military could not go to war without its 223,000 women who serve in uniform. We would have an ineffective military that was not capable of deployment if we were to pull out all the women and say, you cannot be in combat.

For those women who are in roles such as the infantry or Navy SEALs, those women have met the same standards as the men in order to be assigned to those positions. So, again, this shows that Mr. Hegseth is not qualified for the position, because he doesn't understand, apparently, even after having served, that women are actually vitally important to an effective military.

[09:20:02]

And with the recruiting challenges we're having right now, if we were to pull all those women out and say you can't go into combat, we would face a severe personnel crisis in the military.

BASH: I want to turn to another pick, and that is attorney general.

Pam Bondi is president-elect Trump's second pick for attorney general. She was a prosecutor. She spent eight years leading the Justice Department for one of the largest states in the country, the state of Florida. Is she qualified to be attorney general?

DUCKWORTH: I think she might be, but I'd like to do my job, which is advise and consent in the Senate, and have a conversation with her before I have that vote.

And I think that's all we senators are saying, is, let us do our job. Send these people to us. We will ask the questions. She will have a hearing, and then we will vote, and we will take a look and see whether or not my conversations with her show that she's qualified or not.

BASH: You say advise and consent and to spend time understanding the nominees, which is understandable. That's your job. There's some you know, Senator Marco Rubio, for example. You served with him. Doug Collins was in the House.

Are those two that you feel comfortable saying now that you will vote for?

DUCKWORTH: Well, I haven't talked to them recently. I'd like to know if, for example, Congressman Collins is going to back a movement to privatize the VA. I am jealously guarding the well-being of the Department of Veterans Affairs. That's my primary care. I go to my own -- VA for my own health care.

And I need to make sure that VA will be there to keep America's promise to our veterans for the long term. And privatizing VA, which is something that Donald Trump tried to do with his shadow VA Cabinet that he had in his first term, is not something that we can return to. So that would be my question for Doug Collins, is, what kind of VA secretary are you going to be, one that looks out for the veterans, or one that looks out for Trump's business interests?

BASH: What about Marco Rubio for secretary of state?

DUCKWORTH: I look forward to talking to him. Marco Rubio, you have strange bedfellows and you have strange

alliances and stuff. When I was trying to get my daughter -- permission to get my daughter onto the floor for the first time before I gave birth to my daughter, Marco Rubio came up to me and said: "Tammy, I will back you every step of the way, because I wish I could have brought my kids onto the floor as well."

And so we have a friendship. We have served together. I look forward to talking to him to see what he's going to do and what his policies will be.

BASH: OK, let's turn to the Democratic Congresswoman -- former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who the president-elect tapped to serve as director of national intelligence.

She's a critic of U.S. intelligence operations. She has promoted Russian propaganda. Your fellow Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz called her -- quote -- "likely a Russian asset."

You and Tulsi Gabbard are both veterans. You served with her in the House. What do you think of her?

DUCKWORTH: Well, I think she's compromised.

I think by going to Syria and basically backing this brutal dictator there -- I mean, Russian-controlled media called her a Russian asset. So I do think that we have a real deep concern whether or not she's a compromised person.

And, frankly, the U.S. Intelligence Committee -- I'm sorry -- the U.S. intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America's foes. And so my worry is that she couldn't pass a background check.

BASH: So you are a Democrat. You are in the minority now in the United States Senate. If she can find the votes among Republicans, likely, to get confirmed, it sounds like that would worry you to have her in that job.

DUCKWORTH: Very much so. She has no intelligence background whatsoever.

When she was in Iraq, she was a medical records clerk E4, below the rank of sergeant. Her second deployment was actually to Kuwait, Kuwaiti naval base, where she only spent three months training the Kuwaiti military. So -- and I don't know of any intelligence work that she has done.

So she is, in terms of the intelligence community, very unqualified. Plus, she is potentially compromised and could be and has -- there are questions about whether or not she is now a Russian asset.

BASH: Do you believe that she could be a Russian asset?

DUCKWORTH: I think that she is someone who is wholly backing and supportive of Putin. And I worry that she will not have America's best interests at heart.

BASH: I want to just quickly, as you have said about several of the nominees that they're not qualified.

But I just want to kind of give the perspective of Donald Trump and the people who put him in, which is, he wants to put people in who are disrupters into these agencies to really change things up. So just to play devil's advocate, when it's advise and consent, is there something to be said for the American people voted for him, for this kind of government and let him have those people who are going to disrupt?

DUCKWORTH: No, that's our system of government. We have checks and balances. We want people who can run those organizations. They can be disrupters, but they can still run those organizations.

[09:25:03]

The VA is a good example. The VA has been having a terrible issue with their electronic medical records program. Hopefully, Doug Collins gets in there and is a disrupter and does something with that. So there are ways to be disrupters without actually putting people who have never run an organization larger than a platoon to be secretary of defense.

BASH: I do want to ask one question about something that's happening in the building of the Capitol now on the other side, where you used to serve, in the House.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said this week -- quote -- "All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House office buildings, such as restrooms, changing rooms and locker rooms, are reserved for individuals of that biological sex."

This is, of course, because the first transgender member of Congress, Sarah McBride, was just elected. Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace is leading the charge to prevent her from using the women's bathrooms. What's your reaction to this? And, broadly, how should Democrats be approaching this issue of trans rights?

DUCKWORTH: Yes, I think that we need to make sure that people are people.

And, frankly, I think that we have so much other to worry about. And we have budget deficits. We have crises all around the world. We have a humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza. We have Ukraine. Russia is making headway there in its illegitimate fight and invasion of Ukraine. We have issues here in this country. And yet she's worried about one member of Congress using the bathroom.

Number one, I think her position is disgusting and wrong. But I also think that we have a lot more to worry about than where somebody goes to pee.

BASH: Well, we will leave it there. Thank you so much for coming in. Appreciate it. Good to see you and have a happy Thanksgiving.

DUCKWORTH: Yes, thank you. Thank you.

BASH: You just heard Senator Duckworth on Donald Trump's pick for the Pentagon.

Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin will give us his take when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:31:22]

BASH: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

Advise and consent? Republicans in the U.S. Senate have already put an end to the nomination of Matt Gaetz, but there are other Trump picks that could sail through confirmation, could have some issues.

Here with me now is a key Trump ally, Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.

Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time.

We have a lot to get to, but I know you listened to what Senator Duckworth said in describing Donald Trump's pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. She called her compromised, someone who is wholly backing and supportive of Putin.

What do you make of that?

SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): I think it's dangerous.

Tammy -- I have got a lot of respect for Tammy, and I have known her for years. We served together in the House. But for her to say ridiculous and outright dangerous words like that is wrong. You have got to keep in mind that Tulsi Gabbard is still a lieutenant colonel in the United States army.

She commands a Reserve unit here in Oklahoma and Missouri. If she was compromised, if she wasn't able to pass a background check, if she wasn't able to do her job, she still wouldn't be in the Army. And so Tammy is absolutely dead wrong on this, and she should retract those words. That's the most dangerous thing she could say, is that a United States lieutenant colonel in the United States Army is compromised and is an asset of Russia.

It's actually sad to hear her say that. When I say that -- I heard her say that, I thought, I wonder if this political because she's upset that Tulsi Gabbard left the Democrat Party because they went woke, because I know they actually got along when they were in the House, and she knows Tulsi Gabbard. She knows her heart.

She has a heart to serve. And so I think that's probably more politically motivated than it actually has any truth to it at all.

BASH: Can I just ask you to follow up on that? Obviously, you're close with Tulsi Gabbard, and I totally understand your reaction. MULLIN: I am.

BASH: Does any part of you want to see what either the FBI or the intelligence community, if they have a file on her, what it says?

MULLIN: Well, if they do have a file on her, we will obviously see it. The thing is, is, they don't have a file on her.

What she did as a member of Congress was not out of line for her to do that. She had the right to travel. It was open. It was well-documented why, what she was traveling for, and that was a full stop. She was a member of Congress when she did that.

Now, people can make more out of it if they want to, but it wasn't hidden. It was in the spotlight. And, keep in mind, she's ran for president since then. She also came back and served in Congress since then. So -- and she's went through classified briefings since then. So there's no document, there's no background there for her to see, for anyone to see.

BASH: OK.

MULLIN: She is a true patriot of the United States, and there's no reason why the Democrats are going after her, other than the fact they're upset that she left their woke party.

BASH: Let's turn to Donald Trump's nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.

As you well know, he's been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017. He says it was a consensual encounter. And you argued that a police report that came out this week showed there were just two people flirting with each other.

But I want to just make sure our viewers know what that report said, that the woman said that, when she tried to leave Hegseth's hotel room, he blocked the door, ended up on top of her and performed a sexual act. She also said that she...

MULLIN: Dana...

BASH: ... -- quote -- "remembered saying no to a lot."

[09:35:00]

Yes, go ahead.

MULLIN: Dana, if we're going to get into that...

BASH: Yes.

MULLIN: ... let's talk about the whole police report.

Now, I know you have read it, and I have definitely read it. First of all, the police report if you look at it, it's very clear that what Pete was saying, what his attorney was saying was accurate. There was no case here. He was falsely accused.

If you go back and you read the report, there was two eyewitnesses said that she was being the aggressor. Pete wasn't even flirting with her. He was flirting with a different girl, and that the other girl was trying to flirt with Pete, the Jane Doe here that is unmentioned.

They also said that she was holding his arm...

BASH: Yes.

MULLIN: ... as they were leaving and that Pete was intoxicated and that Jane Doe was not. They obviously said, multiple people said that she was aggressively, to the point of aggressively, used the word aggressively flirting towards him when they were in the courtyard.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Senator, I was going to...

(CROSSTALK)

MULLIN: When the hotel staff came -- well, I'm just saying that you told one part of this, Dana, that isn't accurate.

BASH: I wasn't done. I wasn't done. I wasn't done.

MULLIN: OK.

BASH: You're giving his side with. And it was definitely -- the police report is definitely what she said and what he said. You're absolutely right. I hadn't gotten there, but I appreciate you giving that other side for me.

So I guess that just kind of answers the question, which is, from your perspective, you believe his part of the story, and not hers?

MULLIN: I absolutely do. He wasn't charged. He wasn't even kind of charged in this. There was no crime committed.

The police dropped everything. What is unfortunate, in today's world, you can be accused of anything, and then especially if it's something like this, you're automatically assumed to be guilty. If you read the police report from cover to cover, which I have and I know every reporter has too, it is clear there was nothing there.

There -- was clear that there was no crime committed. And so that doesn't prevent Pete from moving forward in this. The American people gave President Trump a mandate, a mandate because they want to change the way government has been working. Government has been working for a party, not for the people.

And President Trump is putting people there that's going to make changes. And, unfortunately, the establishment is trying to hold that back and trying to find every little piece of detail they can to say that this person is disqualified. Pete is qualified to be the SecDef.

BASH: What makes him qualified? What makes him qualified?

MULLIN: He is a civilian, which is -- this is a civilian role.

BASH: What makes him qualified?

MULLIN: Because he's a civilian. Dana, he's a civilian. And, first of all, SecDef is a civilian position.

BASH: Well, I'm a civilian. I'm not qualified.

MULLIN: Exactly. No, no, but let me get to it. He's a civilian, which that first is the only qualification that the SecDef has to have.

Now, if you want to go more than that, he also served honorably in the service for 20 years and is a decorative combat veteran. He retired as a major. He's had a successful career since then. He can articulate what needs to be done and he knows the system.

Now, outside of that, what other qualifications does it say that a SecDef has to have?

BASH: Well, you're right. I mean, there are a lot of jobs in government that don't say that you need any qualifications. I mean, to be a senator, your qualification is to live in the state and to be a certain age. So I...

MULLIN: Thirty years old. That's right.

BASH: It's not about what the actual letter of the law is, so to speak. It's who is appropriate.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: And I hear you.

MULLIN: Right.

BASH: I hear you that Donald Trump did say he wanted to put people in to be disrupters. I totally hear you on that.

MULLIN: That's right.

BASH: But the question is whether or not some other -- we can just take other issues. Like, he said that -- he suggested that women shouldn't be in combat. You just heard somebody who got her legs blown off saying that's -- that they should be, that women are very valuable in combat.

MULLIN: And, Dana, I have three girls. I don't want them to be limited either.

Pete has his opinions. You have your opinion. I have my opinion. But who ultimately makes that decision is President Trump. And President Trump respects every person serving in the military, regardless of male or female. There's no limitations. We know exactly how he's going to be the commander in chief, because

guess what? We saw him when he was a 45th commander in chief of the United States. We know what he's going to deliver when he's the 47th.

You have also to remember, this isn't a new administration coming in. And so when people are criticizing his picks, the president has done this job before. He knows exactly what he needs. He knows who he wants to put in those positions. That's why he's been able to move fast, because he knows he has four years to reach the -- to reach the mandate that the American people said.

They want the government going in a different direction.

BASH: Yes.

MULLIN: And these nominations he's putting forth are actually going to deliver that for him.

BASH: So, just to button it, you're a yes on Hegseth, obviously?

MULLIN: Yes. I had a great conversation with him. I sat down. We sat down with the police report.

Listen, as a father of three girls, I will admit when I first heard that I thought that's not good. As I started reading the report, I thought, wait a second, there's more to this story. When I sat down and had a conversation with Pete, I enjoyed the conversation. He answered every one of my questions.

[09:40:09]

And I look forward to helping him get confirmed as the next secretary of defense.

BASH: Senator Markwayne Mullin, thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving with your family.

MULLIN: It is absolutely my favorite holiday. So, have a happy Thanksgiving too, Dana.

BASH: Mine too. OK. You too.

Next January, Mitch McConnell will be untethered from leadership. Will the now rank-and-file Republican turn into a thorn in president-elect Trump's side?

We will break that down with my panel next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:45:04]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): The president's entitled to choose his Cabinet. And I presume I will support them. SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): Each of the nominees are going to come

under the same scrutiny. This is why you have background checks. This is why you have hearings.

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): This is our job. This is the role of advice and consent.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): At the end of the day, you got to have the votes and you better have the resume. That's how this process works.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

My panel joins me now.

Scott Jennings, I want to ask you something that we have been talking about. And that is the Mitch McConnell of it all, since he's somebody who you're very close with, and the fact that he's not going to be in leadership. He's going to be as much -- as he would ever be a rank- and-file Republican, he won't have the burdens of leading the conference.

How will that determine how he's going to vote on some of these nominees?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, much different position now than he was in before.

And, look, he's kind of a liberated person. And he's one of this group of senators that I think is un-threatenable. They're not susceptible to the normal political machinations of some of the rest of the people in the conference.

Of particular note to me is that he's going to be the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. And so he has said he's going to spend most of his time for the next two years worrying about national defense, rebuilding America's arsenal.

BASH: You think he could vote no on some of these nominees?

JENNINGS: Sure.

I think several of these senators could, but that's the purpose of hearings. And I think all these people do deserve a process and they're going to get a process. But that doesn't -- just because they were nominated by a Republican doesn't mean they're immune from getting asked very hard questions.

And I assume Mitch McConnell is going to be one of the ones asking them.

SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I agree with Scott.

I mean, show the American people that you're ready to lead many of these agencies. And I also think making sure that strong deputies assist people such as Pete, RFK, if he's ultimately confirmed, is certainly going to make a big difference. Those are the people who are actually running these agencies from day to day in terms of the managerial, operational process, not the actual secretaries, having served a secretary.

And I think that's very important for the American people to understand.

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I'm looking at this and I'm seeing all these nominees who are being put up who does not appear to be that they were especially vetted before they were put out in public.

So for those of us who do care about having a government that's secure, having a government that is immune or at least has some bulwark against foreign influence and foreign involvement, these nominees have a lot of things in their backgrounds that we're all just figuring out.

So we have got to have hearings. The Trump administration is talking about not having FBI checks. I mean, for those of us who have been through national security, FBI checks, it's not a fun process. You bring up the 19-year-old arrest that you have in college and you got to explain it.

BASH: Is there something you want to tell us?

(LAUGHTER)

SIMMONS: I have talked about it. Believe me, I have talked about it a lot.

BASH: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

SIMMONS: But when those kinds of things happen in the course of your background check, it's helpful, because then the American public and the government can make a determination about whether or not you should be trusted with national secrets.

And it appears to me that this administration is putting forth names that we just don't know where they came from.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But I think there's also another fundamental issue, if we kind of take a step back.

I mean, we're going to go through another month of, this one has a sexual assault allegation. This one doesn't like broccoli. This one doesn't -- there are going to be all these things. But we need these deeper understandings of who these individuals are.

"The Atlantic" had a piece this week about Hegseth. And one of the things they talked about that I find very disturbing is, he talked about purging the military of lefties, right, of -- and the danger that people who are on the left, and he -- in addition to saying George Floyd wasn't murdered and other things in his books that are a little disturbing.

Well, he's going to be asked to run a Department of Defense that will have progressive people in it, that will have gay people and trans people and women in it. How will he lead that organization? How will any of these individuals lead?

Obviously, the number one thing we know, it's not their qualifications. It's their loyalty to the president. And we also know, just given the way the president has stacked the White House team, starting with Stephen Miller, who was an architect of Project 2025, that's really going to be the key is, will these individuals follow what the White House tells them in implementing the plans of Project 2025?

BASH: But he's not the only one. Russ Vought late on Friday was named OMB director, in charge of the budget. He was one of the lead architects of Project 2025.

Did they just -- they were just not telling the truth when they said that Project 2025 had nothing to do with...

JENNINGS: Well, look, Russ led this office in the first term, number one.

Number two, there are a lot of things in the Project 2025 that are just simply non-controversial. I mean, one of the things he's most passionate about is just reducing the size of government, a pretty standard Republican position going back decades.

I think Trump is not getting enough credit here for building an ideologically diverse Cabinet. When you got everybody from Russ Vought, who's very conservative, all the way over to the pick for labor secretary is a supporter of the PRO Act, and somehow Randi Weingarten is happy about it.

I mean, what he has done is -- which makes me squeamish, to be candid. And so what he has done, though, is put together an ideologically diverse group of people to sit in a room and help run the government. And that's kind of how he won. His coalition was kind of ideologically diverse that elected him.

[09:50:09]

SIMMONS: Yes, here's a problem with it, though, Dana, is that you have got -- the president ran on immigration, he ran on the economy, and he did not run on Project 2025. In fact, he said he wasn't going to do it.

So for him to do it now is actually against -- even if he said -- I don't believe he has a mandate, but if he believes he has a mandate, he did not have a mandate in order to do this. It means, instead of taking care of the things that he was elected for, he is selling out the American people for these MAGA extremists from the Project 2025 group, and that's something Americans need to be worried about. SINGLETON: When you win elections, you have a mandate whether you

like it or not. The election is over.

(CROSSTALK)

SIMMONS: Except if you run to say, I'm not going to do something, and then you do it.

SINGLETON: And then, finally, The Heritage Foundation, AEI, the Hoover Institute have always supplied and recommended names for Republican administrations. This is nothing new.

It would not be nothing new beyond Donald Trump. It's just a lot of Democratic hoopla.

FINNEY: Can I just say, finally, look. I am for -- I want the full Trump. I want it all out there. I want the country to see what Trump is all about. I want them to experience it.

JENNINGS: They did. He just won.

FINNEY: No, no, they're about to. They didn't yet. They're about to. Let's see it. Let's live it.

Let's -- maybe it should break some china and see how people like that.

JENNINGS: He served a whole term. He was in for four years.

BASH: All right, guys, happy Thanksgiving.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Kind of like the Thanksgiving table.

(LAUGHTER)

BASH: Appreciate it.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:55:59]

BASH: Before we go, I want to wish a very special person a very happy milestone birthday.

My dad, Stu Schwartz, is one of the all-time greatest. He's the person who showed me the way in TV news. He started in local news in Chicago in the '60s, before moving to ABC News, where he did, well, just about everything. He's the biggest cheerleader for my mom, my brother, David, and me and for his grandchildren, Jonah, Teo (ph) and Stella.

And notice, dad, no passive voice in this script.

Happy birthday. We love you.

And thank you so much for joining "INSIDE" -- excuse me -- joining STATE OF THE UNION today.

Fareed Zakaria will be next.

(LAUGHTER)