Return to Transcripts main page
State of the Union
Interview With Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI); Interview With Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); Interview With Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Interview With OMB Director Russell Vought. Aired 9-10a ET
Aired June 01, 2025 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:00:50]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CNN HOST (voice-over): Friendly fire. President Trump proposes deep new spending cuts.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to act fast.
BASH: But as his agenda splits his party, will Republicans turn his plan into reality? The architect behind the Trump agenda, White House Budget Director Russ Vought, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries both join me exclusively.
And pushing the limits. More turmoil from Trump...
TRUMP: We're going to bring it from 25 percent to 50 percent.
BASH: ... as he takes on the courts and the world.
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): The level of corruption is stunning.
BASH: Senator Chris Murphy joins me on how Democrats will fight back.
Plus: getting out of DOGE. Elon Musk says goodbye to government.
ELON MUSK, OWNER, X: This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning.
BASH: But is Trump saying farewell or good riddance? My panel of political experts will break it down.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: Hello. I'm Dana Bash in Washington, where the state of our union is watching President Trump's policy goals collide with reality.
As he swept into office for a second time, the president immediately began to overhaul the federal government, from tariffs, to DOGE cuts, to a showy deportation policy. This week, some of his move-fast, break-things strategy started to wobble with a dramatic court ruling on his tariff policy, which puts it a bit in limbo.
And Elon Musk is leaving government, falling short of his own goals for reshaping the federal government and saying he's disappointed in the president's own spending and tax cut bill that is splitting the Republicans in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Democrats, facing steep problems of their own with voters, are trying for a show of strength against Trump's bill, even though they don't have the votes to stop it.
Here with me now is the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries.
Thank you so much for being here this morning, sir.
I want to start with that bill. You have vowed to keep the pressure on and stop it from becoming law. Obviously, you're in the minority. Same goes with Democrats in the Senate. How will you do that?
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Trump's one big, ugly bill narrowly escaped the House of Representatives, and we're going to continue to press our case across the country, partner with Senate Democrats, in making clear to the American people the type of damage that this bill would do if it ever became law.
This bill actually hurts everyday Americans in order to reward billionaires. It would strip away health care from approximately 14 million Americans. Premiums, co-pays and deductibles for tens of millions more will go up. Actually, if it ever were to be implemented into law, hospitals will close, nursing homes will shut down, and people will literally die.
At the same time, this bill represents the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history. It takes food out of the mouths of children, seniors and veterans. And all of this is being done in order to enact massive tax breaks for their billionaire donors like Elon Musk.
And then they want to stick the American people with the bill, increase the debt by more than $5 trillion.
BASH: Yes.
JEFFRIES: So I expect that you will see strong Democratic opposition in the Senate, just like there was strong Democratic opposition in the House, and the bill just narrowly escaped the House of Representatives.
BASH: Yes.
You made these arguments before it passed the House. Democrats are going to make that argument in the Senate, but, again, you don't have the votes. So what makes you think that what you're saying will prevail and change the outcome?
JEFFRIES: The bill is deeply unpopular. If you go back to where we were in 2017, where Republicans, after
several failed attempts, finally got their effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act out of the House of Representatives, but it limped out of the House and then failed in the Senate.
And I think the one big, ugly bill is setting up for a similar fate, but we can't let our foot off the gas pedal.
BASH: I want to ask you about something that happened in your home state of New York in the past couple of days.
[09:05:02]
Congressman Jerry Nadler said that DHS agents entered his congressional office on Wednesday without a warrant and handcuffed a member of his staff. This, of course, comes after the Trump Justice Department charged Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver with obstructing ICE agents after an altercation at a facility in Newark, New Jersey.
Now, I know you previously warned that the administration charging members of Congress was a -- quote -- "red line." What are you doing now that the red line you talked about has apparently been crossed?
JEFFRIES: Well, let me make clear that the House is a separate and co-equal branch of government, the Congress. We don't work for Donald Trump. We don't work for the administration. We don't work for Elon Musk. We work for the American people.
And we have a responsibility to serve as a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch. That's the constitutional blueprint that was given to us by the framers of the United States democracy that we have inherited over the last few centuries. And so we're going to continue to undertake our congressional responsibility, notwithstanding efforts by the Trump administration to try to intimidate Democrats.
It's unfortunate that our Republican colleagues continue to be nothing more than rubber stamps for Trump's reckless and extreme agenda. And the American people, I think, will ultimately reject that next year, when we will take back control of the House of Representatives.
In the meantime, in terms of how we will respond to what Trump and the administration has endeavored to do, we will make that decision in a time, place, and manner of our choosing. But the response will be continuous and it will meet the moment that is required.
BASH: What exactly does that mean? Have you not decided how to respond?
JEFFRIES: We have publicly responded in a variety of different ways. We haven't let our foot off the gas pedal.
In terms of additional things that may take place with respect to our congressional oversight, authority and capacity, we will respond in a time, place, and manner of our choosing if this continues to happen. BASH: You believe, as Jerry Nadler said, that the administration is
trying to intimidate Democrats?
JEFFRIES: I think the administration is clearly trying to intimidate Democrats, in the same way that they're trying to intimidate the country.
This whole shock and awe strategy to flood the zone with outrageous behavior that they have tried to unleash on the American people during the first few months of the Trump administration is all designed to create the appearance of inevitability.
But Donald Trump has learned an important lesson. The American people aren't interested in bending the knee to a wannabe king. It's the reason why Donald Trump actually is the most unpopular president at this point of a presidency in American history.
The American people have rejected this approach. And we as congressional Democrats will continue to reject this approach.
BASH: Mr. Leader, you brought up polls, so let me tell you about a new one that just came out here at CNN this morning. It shows that only 19 percent of Americans say that your party can get things done; 36 say the same about Republicans.
And just 16 percent say your party has strong leaders. It's pretty rough, and you are one of those leaders. How do you turn that around?
JEFFRIES: Yes, we don't have the presidency right now, so that's always going to be challenging a few months after a presidential election.
But we have to continue to make the case, one, that Democrats, of course, are the party that is determined to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, for hardworking American taxpayers, that we believe that we need to lower the high cost of living, which for decades has been going up, while the size of the middle class has been going down.
So, understandably, there's real frustration amongst the American people. They should be frustrated. Housing costs are too high. Child care costs...
BASH: But they're frustrated with you as well, with Democrats as well.
JEFFRIES: Of course. They're frustrated with the system.
But what is interesting, Dana, and I think you're aware of this, every single public poll that has come out since the Trump presidency has had congressional Democrats winning the generic ballot against congressional Republicans. And, in fact, we know this is not simply speculative.
In every single high-profile special election, Iowa in January, New York in February, Pennsylvania in March, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race in April, and, most recently, in Omaha, the mayor's race in May, Democrats have won.
So, the American people are actually being very clear and decisive in saying who they trust more to govern.
BASH: We're going to have to leave it there.
Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the House Democrats, appreciate you being here this morning.
[09:10:05]
JEFFRIES: Thank you.
BASH: And he spent years mapping out the steps that President Trump is now taking in office, mostly behind the scenes. But, up next, White House Budget Director Russ Vought will join me here exclusively on what's next in the president's power play.
And then Senator Chris Murphy will join me to respond.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BASH: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.
My next guest is maybe the most powerful man in Washington that you may not have heard of. He is seen as the architect of President Trump's scorched-earth campaign to slash spending, upend the federal government.
And here with me now is President Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought.
Thank you so much for being here.
[09:15:00]
I do want to start with what you submitted late Friday night. It's some of the administration's spending proposals for the coming fiscal year. It would cut nondefense spending by more than 22 percent, slash anti-poverty programs, education grants, food and rental assistance, even billions in funding for cancer research.
Let's just start with that last one. Explain why the administration wants to cut so much from cancer research.
RUSSELL VOUGHT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: Well, it's more about the NIH.
And the NIH has been a bureaucracy that we believe has been weaponized against the American people. We saw that in COVID, the extent to which it doesn't even know or is willing to grapple with the extent to which it funded the Wuhan Institute through the EcoHealth Alliance, and the fact that they pay far more than even Bill Gates does for indirect costs at all the bureaucracy.
So this is something that is vitally important to be able to get a handle on. And we're still going to give $28 billion to the NIH.
BASH: Well, the American Cancer Society Action Network says, for the past 50 years, every significant medical breakthrough, especially in the treatment of cancer, has been linked to successful, robust federal investment.
Is that philosophically something that you agree with?
VOUGHT: We believe that we need a strong NIH. We think it's important to have cancer research. We still do that under the president's budget that he put up two or three weeks ago, not last night. Last night, Friday night, was the technical details.
But as it pertains to the NIH, we actually want it to go to cancer research. We want it to go to the research that people think that they have been funding through their tax dollars. We don't want it to go to what we saw in the pandemic, when they were giving money to the EcoHealth Alliance.
And we don't want it to go to waste, fraud, and abuse by allowing universities to charge far more than they would ever get from Bill Gates' foundation for things like office buildings, parking lots. It's what called an indirect cost rate.
Right now, we're saying it needs to be 15 percent. Bill Gates says it's 10 percent. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 or 40 percent right now. It's far in excess of what the private sector would expect.
BASH: I want to move on. But they -- people who do this cancer research argue that the federal government funding those building blocks, even the office buildings, allows them to spend money on the actual lifesaving research.
VOUGHT: We understand that the recipients of federal dollars always want more than what the federal government may be willing to do, but we think it's important to look at the private sector and also get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse.
BASH: So it is a philosophical switch that the private sector should be more responsible than the government?
VOUGHT: It's a philosophical perspective, unfortunately, based on the way this town has been run, to actually model the amount of reimbursement based on how the private sector does, how something like the Bill Gates Foundation would do, and to pare it down so that we're not paying for largess at schools and universities that have these very -- these well-off endowments.
BASH: Just one last question about the funding for research. The administration is also eliminating $258 million in a research program to find a vaccine for HIV, just zeroing it out.
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: Does that -- do you not think it's important to find a vaccine for HIV?
VOUGHT: No, we think it's important for vaccine work to continue to go on. There is a lot of consolidations and reforms within the proposal for the NIH. That will always continue.
The issue is the extent to which we are paying for indirect costs and, quite frankly, the degree to which we need to pare down and make sure the NIH is not doing things that the American people would not support.
BASH: Let's talk about the budget. That was the budget to come, but I want to talk about what has been going on with DOGE and what Elon Musk has already done.
He says it was $175 billion in cuts, and these are cuts to funding and programs that Congress already passed, already signed into law, the law of the land, before you took office. You say that you're going to submit about $9 billion in cuts this week for Congress to approve to make those cuts you have already done official, largely in foreign aid and public broadcasting.
But you're hearing from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle that they want you to submit approval for all of the cuts that you have done through DOGE. Will you?
VOUGHT: We might. We want to see how this first bill does. We want to make sure it's actually passed. It's the first of many rescissions bills.
Some -- we may not actually have to get Congress to pass the rescissions bills.
BASH: Why?
VOUGHT: Some, we have executive tools. We have impoundment that 200 years of presidents had the ability and the recognition that they had the ability to spend less than the ceiling.
If you have $100 million that Congress says we want you to go and use for particular use and you can do it less, for 200 years, that was totally appropriate. And since the 1970s, that has changed and has led to massive waste, fraud and abuse.
Secondly, the very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions later in the year to be able to bank some of these savings without the bill actually being passed. It's a provision that has been rarely used, but it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools. We want Congress to pass it where it's necessary. We also have executive tools.
[09:20:18]
And that is something we're going to be working with Congress. But it's very important to pass this bill and to see whether there is a will in both the House and the Senate to secure the votes for it.
BASH: Let me just unpack a couple of things that you said.
First, you said that there is 200 years of precedent of presidents taking what Congress passed. And, of course, people who are watching this know that the Constitution says that it is Congress that has the power of the purse, which is why we're even having this discussion.
VOUGHT: The ceiling. They have the power...
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: Well, that's what I want to ask you about. So there's some dispute about the 200 years.
But, most importantly, a law passed in 1974 because of this dispute that you mentioned, the Impoundment Act, and so because of that law, which has now been in place for more than 50 years, it is the requirement of the executive branch, except for in situations where you're having discussions with Congress, to implement what is signed into law.
I know you don't believe that that is constitutional. So are you just doing this in order to get the Supreme Court to rule that unconstitutional?
VOUGHT: We're certainly not taking impoundment off the table. We're not in love with the law. It's a law that came after 200 years of precedent and history at the lowest moment of the executive branch.
But even the very Impoundment Control Act, notice it's not called the Impoundment Elimination Act. Even Congress at the time realized that impoundments were perfectly legal and appropriate. They were saying the Impoundment Control Act. Even the Impoundment Control Act allows for procedures that both require their assent on a rescissions bill -- that's the one that we're sending up this -- early this week -- and also allow for pocket rescissions for those that come later in the fiscal year.
BASH: They say you're breaking -- Congress says that you're just breaking the law, full stop.
VOUGHT: Well, they're wrong. We're not breaking the law.
Every part of the federal government, each branch, has to look at the Constitution themselves and uphold it, and there's tension between the branches.
BASH: Yes.
VOUGHT: And I don't doubt that Congress is going to make accusations. Some of them come by their own watchdogs, but those watchdogs have been historically wrong. And that's not going to stop us from moving forward to bank the DOGE cuts.
BASH: I want to sort of bring this up, make your picture a little bit, because this is part of a very clear strategy that you have had for years and years and years in order to really cut the federal government and do it in any way you can, and also to pull as much power into the executive branch as possible. You're very open about that.
One of the things that you said in 2023 was specific to federal workers. I want to play that for our viewers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOUGHT: We want the bureaucrats to be dramatically affected. We want -- when they woke up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work...
(LAUGHTER)
VOUGHT: ... because they are so -- they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Is that your goal as OMB director?
(LAUGHTER)
VOUGHT: Look, I love how you jerry-pick the quote on trauma.
What I was referring to there was the bureaucracy. We do believe there's weaponized bureaucracy. We do believe that there are people who have been part of administrations that are fundamentally woke and weaponized against the American people.
When you have the EPA put a 77-year-old Navy veteran named Joe Robertson in jail for doing wild -- ponds to fight wildfires on his lawn, that's not just the FBI, it's the EPA. And we do want to defund and put that -- those bureaucracies out of business.
But I have great people at OMB. There are great people at the FAA. There are great people at the NIH who are doing hard work and important public service activities. And I think it's important to provide the full context of what people like me have said in the past.
But this -- we're not going to be pushed -- receive pushback from the notion that we're going to dramatically change the deep, woke and weaponized administrative state.
BASH: Yes. No, I mean, again, you have been very, very open about that being your goal. And that's what we have seen with these DOGE cuts. You're trying to not just sort of save money, but also change the scope and the way that these agencies are run and be less independent. I mean, you have been very clear about that.
I want to talk about what's going to happen in the Senate this week...
VOUGHT: Sure.
BASH: ... which is the president's spending and tax cut bill. Multiple Republican senators say that they can't support the bill as
written for lots of reasons. One of the reasons is because they think it really adds to the deficit.
Another person who said that was Elon Musk. Listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, OWNER, X: You know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[09:25:14]
VOUGHT: I love Elon. This bill doesn't increase the deficit or hurt the debt.
In fact, it lowers it by $1.4 trillion. What some of the watchdogs have done is, they have used CBO's artificial baseline, which doesn't allow and assume that current tax law will be extended because of sunsets that are in the law. They don't do that with suspending.
It is totally something that would be foreign to any commonsense person who comes and looks at how we budget in this country. And so when you assume the extension of the president's tax relief from 2017, this budget or this bill, and it's really a reconciliation bill -- it's not really a budget bill.
It is using a budget process. This is a $1.4 trillion over 10 years deficit reduction. It's $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings. Obviously, we have a little bit of spending in there as well for border and defense. But that is the biggest mandatory savings package that we have seen since the 1970s. It's very historic.
BASH: So you have your work cut out for you to explain that to not just Elon Musk...
VOUGHT: We do. We do.
BASH: ... but to people who actually have a vote in the Senate in your own party.
The other reason why we're seeing some pushback is because of the Medicaid cuts that were passed by the House and that are going to go into the Senate. There was a town hall, which I'm sure you saw. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst was asked, it was pretty raucous, about the Medicaid cuts. And she responded by saying -- people were saying that people are going to die, and she said: "We're all going to die."
But the question that she was getting were -- from constituents were concerns about Medicaid, food stamps and other government support programs leading to people being dying of premature deaths.
What do you say to those concerns? VOUGHT: I think they're totally ridiculous. This is astroturf.
This bill will preserve and protect the programs, the social safety net, but it will make it much more commonsense. Look, one out of every five or $6 in Medicaid is improper. We have illegal immigrants on the program. We don't have -- we have able-bodied working adults that don't have a work requirement that they would have in TANF or even SNAP.
And those are -- that's something that's very important to institute. That's what this bill does. No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.
BASH: That's not what Josh Hawley, who is not exactly a liberal Democrat, said. He said: "It's wrong to cut health care for the working poor, and that's what we're talking about here with Medicaid."
VOUGHT: Well, we continue to work with people in the Senate as to working them through with the specifics of the bill, what it does and what it doesn't do. We will continue to do that.
And I think, at the end of the day, the Senate will have a resounding vote in favor of a substantially similar bill.
BASH: Before I let you go, one of the things that you have become known for is that you were one of the architects of Project 2025.
And one of the things that was noteworthy during the campaign was that President Trump really distanced himself. He said he doesn't know anything about it, it's not something that he had any knowledge of.
But, obviously, you did and you're now there. And I just want to show our viewers just some of what was on your checklist. A lot of them have been checked off from Project 2025. There are others that are kind of in the pipeline, including ending funding for PBS, NPR, and many other things.
Is it fair to say that what you are doing now is in part enacting this very document that you and your colleagues worked very hard on, Project 2025?
VOUGHT: No, of course not.
The only people that are delusional about whether the president is the architect, the visionary, the originator of his own agenda that he was very public about throughout the campaign, in which you are seeing him in rapid fashion go through and accomplish, are his adversaries. And I think it's one of the reasons why you had to have the last segment with the leader of the Democrats, who are in such a disarray, because instead of talking about the real issues of the forgotten men and women, they're coming up with these fake news stories.
BASH: I'm not suggesting that he's not in charge. I'm just saying that now it's pretty clear that what he wants to do and what you planned are dovetailing. VOUGHT: I think the president was very clear with his agenda, and he
is going forward with that agenda. And he has been at the helm and the originator of all of these ideas.
BASH: OK, last question. Other recommendations from Project 2025, eliminating the Fed, privatizing Fannie and Freddie, banning medication abortion. Are those still on the agenda?
VOUGHT: You -- what's on the agenda is what the president has put on the agenda, most of which he ran on. And you will continue to see the things that he's interested in doing. And those people like me will be executing that vision.
[09:30:01]
BASH: Russ Vought, the OMB director, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your time.
VOUGHT: Thank you.
BASH: Thank you.
And, up next, we are going to look at the United States Senate and talk to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy about what is going to happen there next week.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BASH: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.
Democrats are promising a fight over President Trump's agenda. What will that actually look like?
Here with me now is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Thank you for being here, sir.
You just heard my conversation with the White House budget director, Russ Vought, about the president's tax and spending bill in front of the Senate, which is something you're going to be dealing with this coming week. What is your response?
MURPHY: Well, this Republican budget bill is an absolute disaster for the country, in particular for middle-class and poor people, because it kicks 15 million people, working Americans mainly, off of their health care.
[09:35:04]
And for what? In order to finance a tax cut, the majority of which is going to corporations and billionaires. A trillion dollars of that tax cut goes to the richest 1 percent. It also adds enormously to the deficit.
And I heard him try to claim that that's not true. It's just unreal the amount of gaslighting this administration is doing. I mean, it is a fact. The difference between passing this bill and not passing this bill is the addition of $3 trillion to the national debt. And that's not me saying that.
That's the credit rating agencies that impact our entire economy. Moody's just downgraded the United States' credit. They didn't do that under Joe Biden. They did that under Donald Trump because they look at this bill. They look at the attack on the middle class and the diminution and spending power that will come with it for the middle class and the deficits.
And they say that, if implemented, this bill is going to make the American economy much weaker. So, this bill is what it is. It is just an attempt to enrich Donald Trump's billionaire class, all his Mar-a- Lago friends, his corporate friends, at the expense of ordinary Americans. And they should just tell the truth about it.
BASH: You mentioned Moody's. Because you mentioned that, I did want to ask you.
My understanding is that the downgrade of the credit rating is about long-term debt. Democrats and Republicans have contributed to that.
MURPHY: Well, but they're making that determination now because they are looking at Donald Trump's plan to add this massive new amounts onto the debt.
And let's also be clear that, during the Biden administration, his big legislative achievements, outside of the context of COVID relief, actually declined the deficit, whether it was the Inflation Reduction Act or the infrastructure bill, which had significant new revenue in it as well.
Overall, those bills reduced, not added to the debt. So Moody's made this determination now, rather than during the Biden administration, because they see this coming bill as one of the biggest additions to debt and one of the biggest attacks on the sort of middle-class consumer power in this country in recent memories.
BASH: Senator, the -- your colleague from Iowa Joni Ernst told voters at a town hall -- quote -- "We are all going to die."
That was in response to concerns from constituents about some of what you're talking about, about these cuts to Medicaid. Then she kind of doubled down. She had a bit of a sarcastic apology. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JONI ERNST (R-IA): I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth. So I apologize.
And I'm really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the Tooth Fairy as well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: What's your response?
MURPHY: Yes, I mean, Joni's a colleague, somebody I have worked with, but it does tell you a lot about this bill.
I think everybody in that audience knows that they're going to die. They would just rather die in old age at 85 or 90, instead of dying at 40. And the reality is that, when you lose your health care, you are much more at risk of early death. And when rural hospitals close because of this bill, when drug treatment clinics close in Iowa and rural America because of this bill, more people will die at a younger age.
So the reality is, this bill is about life and death. And for what? I mean, I guess that's the problem here for many of us, is that they're cutting Medicaid, throwing 15 million people off their health care in order to fund a tax cut for the super wealthy and for corporations. That is just fundamentally immoral. It's immoral. It's unethical.
I don't understand why they're doing it, except that Donald Trump only really knows billionaires. He only knows corporate CEOs. And so his instructions to Republicans are, reward them, help them, and no one else.
I wish Joni and others saw the immorality of what they're doing.
BASH: I do want to ask, on a different topic, about the president and the fact that he hosted a private dinner for top investors of his cryptocurrency last month. I know you have been very outspoken about the president's use of his meme coin, calling it corruption on steroids and more.
But I want to talk about the consequence of gov -- Congress really not legislating regulations about this crypto and so many other issues. Is there some -- I'm not saying that Congress is culpable for what the president is doing, but, on issues like this, does there need to be regulation?
[09:40:05]
MURPHY: Absolutely.
And we have a chance right now in the United States Senate to stop the president's corruption. Not coincidentally, we are debating in the Senate a bill to regulate cryptocurrency, in fact, one of the very cryptocurrencies that Donald Trump is issuing as part of his corruption scheme.
The problem is, the existing version of that bill exempts the president from the ethics requirements. It says that it's unethical for me to issue or market a stable coin, but it's OK for the president to do it.
That's not something any Democrat should vote for. We have a chance to demand -- to amend that bill before final passage to make sure that the president is treated just like every other member of Congress, just like every other member of his administration. So, yes, if Congress passes a bill in the next few weeks that exempts
the president of the United States from the ethics requirements around the issuance of cryptocurrency, then, yes, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for this -- at least this specific kind of corruption.
So, we have a chance to get this right in the United States Senate this coming week. And I hope the Democrats and Republicans can stand up and say, it's just not right for the president to essentially be asking for people, including foreigners, to put money in his pocket in order to get them access to the White House. That is not OK for a member of Congress, for a mayor. It's not OK for a president.
BASH: OK, we will be watching that.
Thank you so much, Senator. Appreciate you coming on.
MURPHY: Thank you.
BASH: And up next: Elon Musk leaves government and ended up with a black eye, literally. But will he be back?
My panel joins me next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:46:17]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Elon gave an incredible service, nobody like him. And he had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he's an incredible patriot.
MUSK: So, I look forward to continuing to be a friend and adviser to the president, continuing to support the DOGE team. And we are relentlessly pursuing a trillion dollars in waste and fraud reductions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: That was President Trump and Elon Musk in the Oval Office on Friday for Musk's White House send-off.
But is he really gone for good?
My panel is here.
Scott Jennings, what do you think?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I don't think he's gone at all. I think he has this great interest.
Well, I interviewed him recently for my book that I'm writing, "A Revolution of Common Sense." Preorder. Great Christmas skip.
(LAUGHTER)
JENNINGS: And he -- it will be -- I might be a mediocre author, but I will be amazing at marketing.
But he told me -- I said, why are you here? And he said, I'm trying to figure out a way to keep America from going bankrupt. And that was his answer to me. He has this passion for the belief that we need to spend less, get our fiscal house in order, and he's looking for people in Washington who want to do it.
And so I think he might be leaving with a little disappointment in some politicians that he met in Washington, but I don't think the zeal is gone because he knows cutting spending and restoring fiscal sanity in the United States is important. So I expect him to continue to be around and I expect him to continue to look for politicians who want to help him.
There may not be as many as he wants, but maybe some will come along.
BASH: Congresswoman?
REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): I don't think he's gone.
I find it interesting that he's changing his opinions on things as frequently as President Trump is. I think I welcome his now renewed interest in the electrical vehicle tax credit and wanting to get an autonomous vehicle regulation out there. So I think we're going to see him expressing interest in all of his businesses here.
And we will see what he does in trying to cut government. I think he had a very negative experience in Washington. And the people out there need to know their work in pushing back helped.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think people realize how dysfunctional Washington is. It's brought to the centerfold again just how much money our federal government spends and wastes without very little accountability.
And, for Musk, I mean, the guy really has sacrificed a lot. I mean, Tesla's revenue is down 71 percent. It's going to take him some time to build that back up. He didn't necessarily have to do this. The guy is incredibly successful. I think he realized that government should run a little more efficiently, like one would run a company or a family would run their household.
You got to think about the bills. You're not spending more than what you're bringing in. At least you're trying not to. And so I think the argument is, if every single person in this country has to imagine, Dana, how much money they're spending, where are they going to divvy up that money to make sure that they're covering all of their bills, why shouldn't the federal government operate the same way?
I don't think this is a Democrat or Republican issue. I think this is a bipartisan issue.
BASH: Let's talk about the Democrats, your party, and specifically how they're trying to figure out not just where to go, but who to lead, not 2026 but 2028.
There was an event in South Carolina, which is a very important political state, yesterday, and there were appearances by two high- profile governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was on the ticket with Kamala Harris, and Wes Moore of Maryland. Listen to what Wes Moore said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. WES MOORE (D-MD): If he can do so much bad in such a small amount of time, why can't we do such good? Let's not just talk about an alternative. Let's not study an alternative. Let's deliver the alternative.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Wes Moore is having the most fun of any Democrat in American life right now. He's out there campaigning with people. He's solving bridge crises. He's spending time at sporting events.
[09:50:04]
But here's the thing that he did in South Carolina. I talked to Rick Wade today, who hosted Wes Moore at his home in South Carolina, and they had a bunch of business leaders together to talk about his agenda of work, wages, and wealth.
Nobody is talking to the African-American community about, how do you build wealth, how do you grow this pie, not just deal with the unemployment issues, which are also very important, but how are we going to take a leap forward?
And so you think about what the Black Economic Alliance is doing, or Andre Perry, who says, while the wealth of black America is growing, the wealth gap is actually getting bigger, $240,000 more wealth in the median white family than the median black family.
Those are the kind of issues that African-American men want to hear about. And you think about Donald Trump, who got 20, 22 percent of African-American men in the last election, that's what those men want to know about. How is it they're going to advance and take care of their families?
BASH: Yes. And so there's the...
SIMMONS: And Wes Moore is talking about it.
BASH: An important demographic. There's so many important demographics, Congresswoman, that Democrats didn't maybe lose totally, but lost a lot of the share to Donald Trump of your -- what used to be your traditional constituencies.
Who do you see out there who's making the best argument?
DINGELL: I'm not picking anybody right now. BASH: OK, so what is the argument?
DINGELL: But Democrats have to stop being against Donald Trump and start being for something. We have got a lay out our agenda for what we're going to do. We need our Project 2028.
I love Wes Moore, and he is doing a good job. But just to remind everybody here, I told you, Hillary Clinton was going to lose in 2016. We had lost the union halls eight years ago. We need to understand what working men and women want to talk about, which is economics, job security, how much food costs, what the cost of living is every single day.
And Donald Trump, he's very good at understanding people's fears and his anxieties, but I haven't seen him do anything that's lowering costs right now. And when I'm home, I'm hearing it.
JENNINGS: I will defend the Democrats. They are for things, illegal aliens. You're for boys in girls sports. I mean, you are for things.
And that's why you have such struggles right now in your party, because you're not for anything that's on the right side of any of the 80/20 issues that are driving this cultural divide in America. I think Wes Moore is actually a pretty talented communicator.
The other person who spoke in South Carolina, Tim Walz, is this special mixture of extreme buffoonery and a mean spirit, which is a toxic brew. He is not the future of the Democratic Party. Moore is interesting. Moore is interesting, probably more interesting than some of the radicals you have out there, Crockett, AOC.
I mean, these are the true leaders of your party right now, but you would probably be better off replacing them with Moore.
DINGELL: No, that's not true. And I'm not going to even let you...
(CROSSTALK)
SIMMONS: That's not true. And here's the thing.
JENNINGS: It's not?
SIMMONS: What we're not -- what Democrats are for is for an exceptional America, an exceptional place.
And I think one of the things that's very concerning to me about what's happening with Donald Trump right now is, he's trying to make America very regular. He's trying to make America a place that operates like everybody else in the world, right? It's pay-to-play. It's not standing up for courts.
We used to send people all over the world to help them figure out how to get their judiciary in place. Instead, you have got Stephen Miller going after the tyranny of the justice. We used to go out to the world and tell people how to make the country work and keep politicians from being bought and sold for. And the president of the United States is having dinners where basically foreign interests are just paying money.
(CROSSTALK)
SINGLETON: I think a part of the conundrum for Democrats is disintegration, this dislocation you have seen specifically among men is something that Democrats haven't really figured out, Congresswoman, how to communicate, how to fix those numbers.
I mean, Hispanic men, Donald Trump saw an increase of 20-plus percent. Black men in states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, he saw double increases, and we're seeing signs that those numbers are likely going to persist.
So, if I'm a Democrat, again, it's not enough to just be against Trump. It's not enough to also articulate what you're for, but it's articulate what you're for that is palatable to a lot of Americans out there, specifically men of color who Democrats are currently bleeding.
BASH: OK.
DINGELL: Look, I'm just going to tell you very quickly, we do get it. We're out there. We got a lot of young people out there working with them.
And I'm not going to disagree. We lost all of them, but I think we have had a wakeup call. And we're working now to make sure we get it. And Donald Trump hasn't delivered to them.
BASH: Thank you all. Appreciate it.
And today marks a very special day for CNN -- the reason when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:57:00]
BASH: Forty-five years ago today, a brand-new cable network came on air for the very first time. It was called CNN.
I have been here at CNN for 32 of the 45 years that this has existed. And I go back to what Ted Turner said -- you see him there -- on CNN's very first day. He said his vision was to create a positive force in the world where cynics abound. Here's to the next 45 years and many more.
Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us.
Fareed Zakaria picks it up next.