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State of the Union
Interview With Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK); Interview With Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ); Interview With OMB Director Russell Vought; Interview With Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA). Aired 9-10a ET
Aired July 27, 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)
[09:00:47]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Miles away. President Trump heads overseas amid unrelenting pressure over the Epstein files and an extraordinary new push by the Justice Department.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not focused on conspiracy theories.
SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): We want transparency.
TAPPER: As the president tries to point in other directions, can he avoid controversy? Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin is next.
And deepening crisis. In Europe, Trump faces urgent international questions, from trade policy, war, and a starvation disaster in Gaza, as cease-fire talks collapse and the president tells Israel:
TRUMP: You're going to have to finish the job.
TAPPER: Should the U.S. be doing more to help Gaza? Democratic Senator Mark Kelly joins me.
Plus: bad blood. Trump spars with a familiar target and fights some in his own party over government cuts. What's next on the chopping block? The architect behind those plans, White House Budget Director Russ Vought, is here live.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is wondering how the president could get out of this sand trap.
President Trump woke up this morning in Scotland and immediately went to hit the lengths, teeing off at his Turnberry golf course. He's also meeting with top European officials over his tariff policy and facing some international pressure on the desperate situation in Gaza, as, overnight, Israel said, it would open new aid corridors to ease the starvation there amid growing international outrage.
Domestically, even though the president is thousands of miles away, he's still facing questions about the crisis that he and his administration set in motion that has outraged many of his supporters here at home, demands by his base to see the full files of disgraced pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, as he and his attorney general had previously pledged to do.
Overnight, Trump threw out another wild threat that seemed perhaps designed to distract, saying that former Vice President Kamala Harris, Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce should all be prosecuted over 2024 campaign events.
But, as Republican lawmakers head home for summer break, bracing themselves for demands from their constituents to see the files and for much, much more, it is not clear what Trump's strategy will accomplish when it comes to quieting those concerns.
Joining us now is a close ally of President Trump, Senator Markwayne Mullin from the great state of Oklahoma.
Senator, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.
Something you said on the Senate floor a couple days ago...
MULLIN: Thanks for having me on, Jake.
TAPPER: Something you said on the Senate floor a couple days ago gained a lot of attention. You were arguing against a push by Democrats who are calling to release the Epstein files in full.
Let's play what you said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MULLIN: I'm sure this would be handled just like any other thing that they have tried to go after, like the baseless impeachments or the unbelievable amount of charges they have tried to file against the president. I'm sure this would be handled the exact same way.
What we're simply wanting to do here is give them cover.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Can you explain what you meant when you talked about giving cover there?
MULLIN: Well, Jake, what you're doing is, you're taking a 30-second clip from a -- about a six-minute debate.
And, by the way, we also put forth a resolution to allow the judges to release the information from these grand juries. So, this is political theater. If you listen to the whole debate, you would -- you would clearly understand what we had been talking about was Pam Bondi and the president and Congress wants transparency. We want them to release the files. However, we can't make them release
it because of separation of power. The judges, the judicial branch, have the files and they have the documents. Every document that Pam Bondi has, every document that the Kash Patel has, they have been heard by a grand jury.
We saw the judge in Florida say, no, she's not releasing it. We're waiting on the judges in New York to say, are you going to release it or do you not? We all want transparency. And what's funny about this is the Democrats want it too.
But when I put forth my resolution calling on them to do the same thing, which is what I was meaning by that term, is that we're trying to agree with Pam Bondi and with President Trump that we want transparency. We want the files released.
[09:05:03]
But when I put my resolution forth, guess what? The Democrats also denied -- or denied the request. So it's interesting to me, though, Jake, that, for the last four years underneath President Biden, not one Democrat asked for the files to be released. Now they're all about transparency.
But yet President Trump is the most transparent president we have had. I mean, look, you wrote the book literally on the biggest cover-up from the Biden administration, the cover-up that the previous administration covered completely for President Biden the whole time he was in office.
So transparency is what we're all about. But the Democrats are trying to distract from their awful record and from the questions they need to ask, like who was signing the executive order since it was an autopen?
TAPPER: Right.
MULLIN: Who was actually choosing -- or choosing to continue to run the Russiagate, when we know it was a huge hoax? Who was making the decisions at the White House?
TAPPER: So...
MULLIN: And they can't answer that. So they're deciding to run a distraction by this Epstein file, when it's a big hoax and the American people know it, because they never said a word about it when Biden was in office.
TAPPER: But let's just take a step back here. The reason that we're here where we are is because, for years, President Trump and the MAGA base and Trump's allies have been calling for the release of the Epstein files.
And then, after taking office, take a listen to what Attorney General Pam Bondi has been saying over the course of the past few months. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAM BONDI (R), U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: What you're going to see hopefully tomorrow is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names. Everything's going to come out to the public. The public has a right to know. Americans have a right to know. There are tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Now the administration is saying they can't release this information.
MULLIN: Well...
TAPPER: Now, I understand you're talking about a resolution you offered calling for the grand jury to release transcripts from the grand jury investigation into Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, and a judge said no.
But there's troves of information that the administration could release tomorrow if they wanted to, and they have been promising to, and they haven't.
MULLIN: Well, Jake, that's not true. You know better than that too, because you know every piece of file that they have, every video, every document, every flight log has all been heard by a grand jury. They have all been seen by a grand jury.
And we want the judges to release it. Pam Bondi has called on the judges to release it. Trump has called on them to release it. And the Congress has called on them to release it. But we can't because there's a true co-equal branches of government, so we can't force the judicial branch to do anything.
All we can do is ask them to do it. We assumed that the judges would release it. Pam Bondi released it.
TAPPER: But I'm not talking about the stuff -- I'm not talking about the grand jury stuff.
I'm talking about...
MULLIN: No, there isn't -- Jake, there isn't one piece of document that Kash Patel at the FBI or Pam Bondi in her office has that a grand jury hasn't seen.
So, everything that they have would have to be released by the judges.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: She was talking about releasing this information. She was talking about releasing this information. She could release it tomorrow. She doesn't.
MULLIN: She was, but she can't -- no. She can't release it until the judge has released it, because if it's been heard by a grand jury -- and, Jake, you know this -- if it's been heard by a grand jury, regardless if Pam Bondi has it or the FBI has it, the judge that overseeing the case that the grand jury listened to and saw the documentation and the evidence has to be released by the judge.
And you know that.
TAPPER: I don't think that that's correct. I think that the FBI and the Southern District of New York and the Southern District of Florida...
MULLIN: How is it not correct?
TAPPER: Because -- just because something has been shown before a grand jury, that doesn't mean it is only going to be -- it can only be released to the public by a judge.
If the FBI has it, they can release it.
MULLIN: Then why did the judge refuse to release the records in Florida? Because once it's been heard in the case, it is a sealed case. It is sealed by the grand jury. You have been through this. That's why we're even debating this.
(CROSSTALK)
MULLIN: Because if it is considered evidence in a case, then it is sealed.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: The information that has been released...
(CROSSTALK)
MULLIN: Bring a separate judge on and ask them the same question.
TAPPER: Grand jury hearings and transcripts, the judge has control over, absolutely. That doesn't mean that everything that went into the grand jury is therefore locked from the public. That's -- it does not work that way.
And that's why Attorney General Bondi was saying...
MULLIN: If the case is sealed...
TAPPER: Well, then tell me why for months she was saying that she's going to release the information tomorrow.
MULLIN: We made the assumption that the judges were going to release the order and allow the evidence that they had that it could be heard. If it's -- but it's all been sealed. And so if it's been a sealed case, we can't release it until the judges allow us to release it.
And you would think common sense would play. That's why they asked for transparency. We want transparency. We want the judges to have transparency in this too. But remember there was a plea deal that was struck in 2009, way before I was in office, way before Trump was even considering it to be in office, way before Pam Bondi was office, way before Kash Patel was director.
[09:10:11]
2009, there was a sweetheart plea deal that was made underneath the Obama administration with Epstein...
TAPPER: No, that's not right. That's not...
MULLIN: And that sweetheart has not been exposed.
It's not?
TAPPER: No, it was 2000...
MULLIN: Well, when was the case heard?
TAPPER: It was 2008. It was -- the U.S. attorney at the time was a guy named Alex Acosta. He was a Bush appointee. He went on to become President Trump's secretary of labor. It all took place in 2008.
MULLIN: Who was in office at the time?
TAPPER: 2008, George W. Bush was in...
MULLIN: Who was in office at the time?
TAPPER: George W. Bush
MULLIN: No, 2009 is when the case came out, and it was -- and Obama was in office at the time.
TAPPER: It's not true. It's not true.
But let me ask you a question. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met this week, with Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking. After the meeting, Maxwell's attorney indicated to reporters that he hopes President Trump will give her a pardon.
What do you think of that idea? Will it be a mistake for President Trump to pardon Maxwell? And do you think that she's credible?
MULLIN: I don't know enough about Maxwell or the -- or the conversation to even weigh in on that.
But I will go back to what you're saying about it wasn't true. The case was sealed in 2009. That's absolutely true. It was heard in 2008. It was sealed in 2009.
TAPPER: The point is that the sweetheart deal, which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration, U.S. attorney Alex Acosta. That's why Alex Acosta resigned in the first Bush administration, because "The Miami Herald" had written this story in 2018 about how Epstein got away with so much.
And then, in 2019, the U.S. attorney under President Trump, Geoff Berman in the Southern District of New York, then brought charges against him. So, I mean, there is stuff to say that you could point to that say, like, President Trump did this or President Trump did that.
MULLIN: And, remember, in 2019, that President Trump and his administration called for it to be unsealed at that time too. It went silent, and not a word was said during the Biden administration, not a word. Nothing was said during the Biden administration.
TAPPER: OK. People can look it up. The sweetheart deal was 2008 during the George W. Bush administration.
But I always appreciate you're coming on the show, Senator Mullin. Thanks for joining us.
MULLIN: Yes. Thank you for having me on.
TAPPER: Coming up: Is the White House looking for a way to sideline Democrats in Congress even further? The man leading the charge, Budget Director Russ Vought, joins me here next to talk about the economy and much more.
Coming up: President Trump is about to face more pressure over the starvation crisis in Gaza. Is he doing enough? Senator Mark Kelly is ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:17:10]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It looks like it's about $3.1 billion. It went up a little bit or a lot. So the 2.7 is now 3.1. And...
JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: I'm not aware of that, Mr. President.
TRUMP: Yes, it just came out.
POWELL: Yes, I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed. You just added in a third building, is what that is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Fed Chairman Jerome Powell correcting President Trump there about an ongoing renovation project at the Federal Reserve.
My next guest was on that visit with the president. He is one of the most powerful people in President Trump's orbit. Joining us now is the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought.
Thank you so much for being here, Mr. Vought. Really appreciate it. So, federal -- Fed officials met this week to set interest rates.
Trump, the president, has said that he believes Powell will -- quote -- "do the right thing" and lower interest rates soon. If Powell does not lower interest rates, will President Trump be tempted to fire him? And can he?
RUSSELL VOUGHT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: Well, I think the president has been very clear about that. He says he has no intention of firing the Fed chairman. He is putting his viewpoints out there with regard to what interest rates should be, which is dramatically lower than where they are.
And, of course, we were up there visiting the renovations and kind of getting a firsthand look ourselves for the extent to which it's been mismanaged. It's a host of issues with regard to the Fed. They have gone negative in terms of the profit loss over the last several years. We don't get those remittances into the federal treasury.
We believe, on a host of fronts, Chairman Powell has been too late, and the president is doing what the president should do, which is get out there and articulate the views on behalf of the American people.
TAPPER: Do you not have any concerns with all this back-and-forth? And I realize it's not unprecedented for a president to speak about what they want in terms of the interest rates, although this is probably taking it to a new level.
But do you not have any concerns with all this back-and-forth about firing Powell about the concept or the perception of undermining the independence of the Fed, which therefore could then undermine confidence that global investors have in the United States? As you know, the idea of an independent federal bank is an important part of that.
VOUGHT: No, in fact, I think the patience that the president has demonstrated towards Chairman Powell is in fact a defense of that independence.
You have had Secretary Bessent out there talking about the independence of the Fed, but we also have to articulate the views of the American people and the president with regard to needing lower interest rates and not having a largess monstrosity on the National Mall.
So there's a lot of things that need to occur. Again, the Fed isn't independent with regard to its regulatory affairs. It's supposed to go through the cost-benefit analysis that all so-called independent agencies go through. They are not doing that. And so these are the kinds of things we have to do to make sure these issues are understood and made aware to the country.
TAPPER: Republicans in Congress approved President Trump's request to cancel $9 billion in already appropriated foreign aid and $1 billion for public broadcasting. It's called a rescissions package.
[09:20:06] Is the Trump administration going to attempt another rescissions package? And what would you target if so?
VOUGHT: We're very open to it. The president will make a decision on that in the weeks ahead.
But we have a lot of cuts that we have found, Department of Government Efficiency. We have sent many of those reductions up to the Hill in terms of our fiscal year '26 budget. We're taking a look as to extent to which there are unspent fiscal year '25 funds. We're also going through a review. And, sometimes, we may not rescind it.
This last week, we released billions of dollars in education funding. It took us longer because many of those programs we have fundamental concerns with because they go to left-wing advocacy groups. And it took us a long time to make sure that they were consistent with presidential E.O.s. We were able to release those in time for the school year, even though they're multiyear funds.
And so each funding program is different. We will be looking at that. But we are very open. We had a very good vote in the House, in the Senate. But, again, there's a debate right now on Congress as the extent to which these things upset the appropriations process. We do not believe they do. We think that the rescissions bills in fact make the appropriations process work and allow taxpayers to receive some dividend for the fact that we're $37 trillion in debt.
But it's a push and pull that we're going through over the next several weeks.
TAPPER: I want to ask you about that in a second. But, before I do, there are reports that you're considering using something called a pocket rescission, which is essentially allow the White House to run out the clock to sidestep Congress weighing in on additional spending cuts.
Democrats say that's illegal, you can't do it. Is this a tool you're going to use?
VOUGHT: It's very possible that we might use pocket rescissions. It's one of our executive tools. It's been used before. The General Accounting Office, which we're not big fans of, has said it was legal in the 1970s.
And now so Congress has come along and said, hey, we have concerns with it. It is a fully legal approach to be able to use the Impoundment Control Act, another law we're not too big fans of, to use that to be able to send up a rescissions bill later in the year and be able to have it just evaporate at the end of the fiscal year.
TAPPER: You said possible, but it sounded like you were about to say likely.
VOUGHT: No, we're definitely looking at it. We're looking at all options. I have said on every one of these shows no -- nothing is taken off the table for us to be able to deal with the deficits that we have.
TAPPER: I want to play with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this past week. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): My hope, this senator's hope is that we do not see another rescissions package from the administration, that they do allow us to do the important and the necessary work and the work that we're doing to identify those areas where we can find those reductions in spending, do it smartly, do it fully informed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So, in addition to Murkowski skeptical of this, you need Democratic votes to keep the government open in a vote coming up in September.
Are you worried at all about blowing up the appropriations process? We have already heard Democrats say, we can't -- their perspective is, we enter into a back-and-forth, we get an appropriations bill, and then the Trump administration comes in and undermines the concessions that we got, and it just blows up the whole thing.
VOUGHT: No, we're not worried about that at all. Obviously, the introduction of rescissions is new muscle memory, but it's something that rescissions were done very commonly '70s, '80s, the first part of the '90s. So this is not something the appropriations process has never handled before.
Look, the appropriators want a scenario where we propose cuts and they use that in their bills to then pay down for higher levels of spending. We're $37 trillion in debt. We actually have to have a dollar of cut go to a dollar of deficit reduction. That's really what this is about, and we ultimately think it makes the appropriations process work better, because you can then have bipartisan votes on top-line levels.
And if an agency comes along and says, look, we're finding waste and garbage that the taxpayers wouldn't want to spend, then we can send those up for rescissions.
TAPPER: Even with the deficit, addressing the deficit in this new bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the deficit is still -- the debt is projected to climb $25 trillion over the next 10 years.
And there's some criticism from conservatives at the Manhattan Institute, for example, saying that DOGE is just what they call spending cut theater, going after -- quote -- "culture war totems." Their argument is basically, if you really wanted to cut spending, if you really wanted to get the deficit and the debt under control, you should be going after bigger areas, such as the defense budget.
What's your response to that criticism? VOUGHT: I think it's unfair criticism. I think you have got to take a
multifaceted approach. The One Big Beautiful Bill reduces deficits. It had $1.5 trillion in mandatory reforms. Those are the structural programs.
TAPPER: But the GAO and the CBO says it's going to actually increase the deficit.
(CROSSTALK)
VOUGHT: No, the CBO was using artificial baselines that treat spending as eternal and tax relief that was in law since 2017 to be temporary.
[09:25:07]
And so, if you adjust for that -- and the bill does have additional tax relief, of which we paid for with spending reductions. This bill reduces deficits and will help us with the national debt. Overall, the moves that we are making as an economic team under President Trump's leadership will lead to about a third of what's necessary to balance the budget, given the numbers that you just articulated.
That's just in our six months, when you talk about the tariff revenues that are coming in, $3 trillion. CBO believes the same numbers that we have. And, again, those are in advance of a number of the trade agreements that we're talking about over the next several weeks.
So we're making big moves, and I think the country is going to come alongside of us and see the progress that we're making.
TAPPER: Quickly, if you could, I want to ask you about some medical research funding that the White House is withholding right now from the National Institutes of Health; 14 Republican senators say you're risking -- quote -- "undermining critical research" and -- quote -- "could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments."
Will you allow that funding to go through at the NIH?
VOUGHT: We're going through the same programmatic review of the NIH that we did on education funding. So NIH is a program that, if they were a company that went through the last pandemic, their stock prices would be in shambles.
I mean, they fundamentally mismanaged and in some respects caused the pandemic by their own research, for gain of function research. Now, put that aside for a second. Now you have waste, fraud of abuse of funding, injecting dogs with cocaine and studying the impacts of it, giving money to Harvard to study lizards being blown off of branches by leaf blowers.
Every step of the way, you have fundamental DEI across the board. There's literally an entire...
TAPPER: I don't think that's what the Republican senators are talking about, though. VOUGHT: You literally have an entire institute that does nothing more than DEI research at NIH.
TAPPER: Do you think that's what the Republican senators want funding for?
VOUGHT: What I'm suggesting is that we have fully funded all important research through our budget proposal. We will continue to make sure that funding goes out, but we're going to do everything we can to make sure that NIH is not weaponized and wasteful against the American people.
TAPPER: All right, Russ Vought, that's all the time we have. Thank you so much. Appreciate your being here.
VOUGHT: Thanks, Jake.
TAPPER: Have Democrats found their most effective new attack on President Trump? It depends who you ask.
Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:31:24]
TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.
Lawmakers are getting out of town, which means they get to hear directly from their constituents, as Democrats hope to gain ground with swing district voters, while shoring up their own problems with their base.
Joining us now, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona.
So you, Senator, are out holding towns with voters -- town halls with voters, not only in Arizona. Interestingly, you held one in Warren, Michigan, Friday night. A new poll from "The Wall Street Journal" shows that your party, the Democrats, are at your lowest approval rating in 35 years; 63 percent of those polled, voters, say they held an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party.
So what are you hearing from voters and why do you think your party's struggling?
SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): Well first of all, Jake, thank you for having me on.
And we have to fix this. I don't put a ton of stock into polls, especially this far away from an election, but we certainly do have a problem. And it's a messaging problem. And it's important to get out there and talk to people about the issues that they care about.
So I was outside of Detroit there in Warren talking to folks who don't get to hear from their member of Congress, a guy named John James. He doesn't explain to them what happened in this big bill that the president and House and Senate Republicans passed. And it's really a bad deal for the American people.
So, myself and my wife, Gabby, sat there in front of a large group and took some questions from them and tried to explain to them, what's going to happen to Medicaid? What's going to happen to food assistance through SNAP? And there were folks here that -- I got the sense that these programs directly are going to affect them and their family members.
And they do deserve an explanation from somebody in the United States Congress. And if their representative isn't going to do it, I'm going to go there. And, hopefully, in time, the American people will understand that we are out there fighting for them.
TAPPER: So you talk about how the Democratic Party has a communications problem. Your party, the Democratic Party, posted on Twitter or X in the last few days a chart that showed the price of groceries skyrocketing.
The White House took that Democratic chart and accurately reposted it to show that most of the price jumps in that graph happened under the Biden administration. The Democrats then deleted the post. So I wonder if you think Democrats have figured out their problems both in terms of communications and also acknowledging that Biden era inflation, for example, is one of the reasons why your party is out of power.
KELLY: Yes, I think that's fair.
There was inflation during the Biden administration. I track this pretty closely. I know what ground beef and eggs and milk costs at the Safeway where Gabby and I shop in Tucson, Arizona. They went up during the Biden administration. They went up some more. You're going to see prices go up and down.
But I think what's important for the American people to know is that Donald Trump's tariff policy is very likely to increase costs. Going to take some time because of supply chains, stuff coming from -- in some cases from all over the planet. And his trade policy for my constituents in Arizona, there are a lot of products that come across the southern border, agricultural products that create thousands and thousands of jobs, not only in Arizona, but in the state of Texas.
And we are facing right now some significant job loss. So, when you think inflation is a problem for a family, somebody losing a job is even a bigger problem. And we're trying to figure out how we navigate that with this administration.
[09:35:10]
They -- I have spoken to the secretary of commerce about some of these tariffs, and we haven't gotten the response that we need.
TAPPER: Let me ask you about a big international issue, the starvation crisis in Gaza, a manmade crisis.
Overnight, the government of Israel said they will begin to open additional humanitarian corridors for the purpose of getting additional aid into Gaza. We have obviously been seeing these horrific images of Palestinian children starving and suffering from malnutrition.
I know you have been in close contact with Cindy McCain, the head of the U.N. World Food Program, who obviously is from Arizona. What is Cindy McCain telling you about the situation in Gaza? And are you satisfied with the latest news from Israel? And what do you think the United States should be doing?
KELLY: Yes, well, I talk to her text with Cindy, who is the head of the World Food Program, weekly. Even just this morning, I was sharing some information with her that we received from the Israeli Embassy in Washington about what they plan to do.
So I'm trying to help with the communication here. She's under a tremendous amount, her organization, a tremendous amount of stress, and just kind of dislocation of the resources that she had. The rescissions package that you mentioned with Russ Vought cut money for UNICEF. The DOGE cuts cut somewhere around 40 percent of Cindy McCain's budget at the World Food Program.
So, weekly, she's trying to figure out, where does she put resources to keep children alive? It is a horrible situation. And we should never see this kind of starvation across the planet for anybody. But to see it from -- see kids starving -- I have seen this personally in the DRC when I would travel there with Gabby about a decade ago.
It is a horrific thing to see, and we have to do better. Her challenge is, she often can't get the aid into Gaza. Now, the Israeli government says they're going to have this, like, temporary cease-fire to try to move more aid in. Aid needs to be continuous. It can't be just a one- time thing. They're going to drop some aid from airplanes.
But we need to have a continuous supply of food into Gaza, or these children are going to starve to death.
TAPPER: Reuters is reporting that 20 percent of employees at NASA, around 4,000 individuals, are set to depart the agency through the Trump administration's deferred resignation program.
You are, if people don't know, a retired astronaut. What goes through your mind when you hear that?
KELLY: Well, some of the best people that NASA has -- and NASA is tasked with doing some really hard things that benefit our country, our national security, our economy, that really grows our economy, great-paying jobs.
We built industries through the investment in science, including with NASA. And the president is undercutting his own programs. In 2017, he started a program to take American astronauts back to the moon, to put them there permanently, to grow an economy on the surface of the moon.
And now his own budget undercuts those efforts. I was with Sean Duffy, who's going to be the temporary NASA administrator, just last week, and we talked about, like, where should NASA be going, and how do you actually achieve the goals that this president set in his first administration? He's got an opportunity here.
He can fund these programs. They can be successful. He can claim and take a victory lap maybe at the end of his administration, or he could let NASA just kind of die, along with other science that only the United States has been able to do.
Some other nation isn't going to pick up the kind of scientific research that we do at places like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory or the NIH and universities. So I'm really disappointed to see these cuts. I have got a friend of mine, by the way, a guy I flew in space with, my -- one of my crew members from my last mission in 2011.
He's going to launch in space Thursday. So I'm hoping to be down there to see him make one final trip into space. And it's one of the things I think that really makes our country great.
TAPPER: I'm going to give you a yes-or-no question here, Senator, because we're completely out of time, OK? I know it's challenging for a senator.
KELLY: OK.
TAPPER: Is it fair to say you're -- you did a town hall in Michigan and you're coming to us from Pennsylvania, both of them key battleground states. Yes or no, are you considering running for president in 2028?
KELLY: That is a good question. I know you want a yes-or-no answer. I'm trying to do -- and I'm not going to give you a yes-or-no one.
TAPPER: Oh.
KELLY: Because I'm just trying to do this job, get the word out to the American people.
[09:40:03]
And I'm trying to improve the polling that you talked about and just listen to voters wherever they are about, what are the problems they're dealing with and how do we fix them?
TAPPER: OK, well, I will just observe that if, anybody asked me that, I'd say, no, I'm not running for president.
Anyway, Senator Kelly, good to see you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
President Trump taking his golf game overseas. My panel is going to give him some pointers on how to improve his swing. I'm just joking. We're going to talk about politics.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The best course anywhere in the world is Turnberry. The players all want to be at Turnberry. Everybody wants to be at Turnberry, so we will see how that works out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[09:45:07]
TAPPER: Nice little commercial for Turnberry there.
Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.
President Trump is in Scotland this week visiting two of his golf courses. Back here at home, of course, he faces a lot of questions, both about what's going on here and what's going on abroad.
My panel joins me now.
Let me start with you, Congresswoman.
As the president went to Scotland, there were a lot of anti-Trump protests there in the streets, not surprising. Of course, that's -- they're not big fans of his in Scotland.
But this trip comes as a president is facing a lot of new challenges, including the horrific starvation we're seeing in Gaza. How much pressure do you think there is on the Trump administration to take action from inside the United States?
REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): I think there's tremendous pressure, and I'm glad, finally, there is pressure. And I'm very glad that CNN and others are covering the starvation in Gaza, the suffering that is going on, and the truth about it, what's actually happening with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation so ineptly bringing food in, and, of course, the blockade of the aid coming in.
You see now what is going on is that my constituents are calling me about Gaza, are calling me about the other issues that the president is not dealing with as he's off in Scotland promoting his golf courses.
TAPPER: Another issue the president's not really dealing with is the Epstein files, which is a promise that he and his administration made both before he won and after. How much do you think this is a self- inflicted wound?
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, points on strategy for sending him to Scotland to focus on some meetings with the E.U. and other things, because sometimes when you have got a bad news story, the best thing you can do is just move away and focus on something else.
This did not need to be a weeks-long story that's now permeated pop culture and beyond just politics. Donald Trump, many people around him ran on getting to the bottom of what happened with Epstein, bringing people to justice. He needs to somehow get this back to the Department of Justice, say he's not talking about it, don't be talking about pardons for Ghislaine Maxwell and others, and be able to focus on his agenda. The fact that this has dragged out for so long is just pure
malpractice by those advising him and the president's inability to stay on message. He's got to get back to a proactive message, because this is something that we're a year-and-a-half out from the midterms. There's going to be 20 other news cycles that happen before then.
But people actually care a lot about this and it will matter to House members who are up.
TAPPER: And, Jamal, the latest of President Trump's attempt to change the subject, he went on TRUTH Social last night and said that Beyonce, Oprah and Vice President Kamala Harris should all be prosecuted for receiving or giving endorsement money during the last election.
I don't think that that's going to work, but, I mean, do you think he's just going to keep throwing out anything he can at the wall and seeing if anything sticks?
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I think people are more happy that Beyonce had a Destiny's Child reunion at her last concert show than whatever Donald Trump had to say about Beyonce.
The reality here is that the president's trying to change the subject and he's not having a very good job at it. What the Democrats know is that, because this scandal has erupted, they're not able to move anything else out of the House. There was an immigration bill they wanted to move out of the House they weren't able to get done because they had to get everybody out of town.
The reality is, this is keeping the Trump administration from moving forward. And that might be the thing that's the most important for the American people, is that bad things aren't happening because this guy can't get out of his own way.
TAPPER: And a lot of this is -- as Jamal just noted, a lot of this is Republicans who want these files released.
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, look, I think you released the files, but look, I think we look at the data, what does it tell us? The president still maintains 90 percent approval among Republicans.
Look at, from a Democratic perspective, 63 percent of young voters are not in favor of what Democrats are doing in terms of leadership. Around 26 percent to 30 percent overall, they're looking at the Democratic Party and saying this is a party that doesn't have a cohesive message and strategy to challenge Republicans, which is something you certainly wouldn't want coming from your constituency.
And so as it pertains to what the electoral odds are moving forward as we get ready for midterm, I think Republicans are looking at something that maintains competitiveness in terms of running against Democrats, in terms of forming a cohesive message that Republicans can run on.
And I predict, Jake, if you're looking at some of the data we have seen thus far economically, the economy is probably going to get stronger towards the end of Q4, going into Q1 of '26, which again is a strong message for Republicans to run on.
TAPPER: So, Congresswoman, it feels like every few weeks a new polling organization comes out with a poll saying Democrats are at the lowest level they have ever been. And the latest was "Wall Street Journal."
Democratic approval ratings hit a record low, 63 of voters having an unfavorable view of your party. What does your party need to do to climb out of that?
DEAN: I have to speak to two issues that just came up here.
TAPPER: Yes. Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: What I regret around the Epstein files is, nobody talks about the victims. We need truth, transparency and justice. Every time we talk about this, these now-adult women, they were children. Let's remember this.
TAPPER: Yes.
DEAN: Many of them were children who were trafficked, were raped, were assaulted.
TAPPER: That's the whole reason. There needs to be justice for these women.
[09:50:00]
DEAN: Justice for the women.
TAPPER: Yes.
DEAN: They are just revictimized every single time. Release the files. It isn't just Maxwell and Epstein who knows what happened here, when you traffic hundreds of girls and women.
On the polling, I haven't seen polling that shows the president at 90 percent of anything.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Well, with Republicans, among Republicans.
DEAN: Some small slice of Republicans. Even his base is getting very upset with him over Epstein and the conspiracies and the failure to be transparent.
What do I make of that Democratic -- the poll? Yes, we're in the doghouse yet again. What I see and what I hear from my constituents, whether I'm answering the phone in my office or I'm out at the supermarket, everybody is anxious, upset, worried. They're worried about Gaza. They're worried about war crimes in Ukraine. They are worried about tariffs. They can't plan because businesses
can't plan. They're also now worried about things they weren't worried about, Medicaid. Tens of thousands of my constituents are at risk of losing Medicaid support, whether it's for substance abuse or for their disabled child.
So they're worrying about things they didn't have to worry about before, and they see a president not solving the big issues that are, some of them, very manmade, like Gaza.
FARAH GRIFFIN: I think the challenge continues to be that Democrats just do not have a clear leader, so the message ends up being very scattershot.
And while I completely agree, release the Epstein files, I think most Democrats have come around to that position, you just have these earnings calls where you have major companies that are having significantly less economic success than they had predicted they would when Trump came into office.
TAPPER: Because of the unpredictability of the tariffs?
(CROSSTALK)
FARAH GRIFFIN: Of the tariffs.
But this is not the lead story among Democrats, the economic impacts of some of the more reckless aspects of the president's agenda. Instead, it's sort of, well, now we're on board with releasing the Epstein files, something they really didn't talk about for the four years that Joe Biden was in office.
And I'm just waiting for that moment to -- a year out from midterms, where they're going to unite around, this is our proactive message. This is what we're going to do different than Donald Trump. Here's our economic plan. And it seems again to just be scattershot, where it's an issue here, it's an issue there, but not one cohesive plan.
SIMMONS: That's incredibly important. I have been saying this for months on these shows. Democrats are doing a fantastic job at the anti-Trump messaging.
And the reason why we have the big, whatever, bad bill, the reason that that bill is where it is because Democrats are making those effective messages. What we do not know yet is what the Democrats want to do, what's their vision for making the country a better place and how is it going to work for working people.
And I would just say to you, Democrats are still beating Republicans by three points in generic head-to-head in the congressional races.
SINGLETON: And yet...
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER) SINGLETON: ... increase in their support numbers. The stock market has added 10-plus trillion dollars.
Look at the big five tech companies in this country. They're adding value to investors in real time. You can't just...
SIMMONS: OK.
DEAN: I serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee. We travel to different countries. And leaders are baffled by what's going on around tariffs.
TAPPER: Yes.
All right, thanks, one and all, for being here.
Coming up next, we're going to show you why the new campaign trend might be pumping iron.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FMR. REP. COLIN ALLRED (D-TX): Hey, everybody. I just finished my workout. I hope you got your workout in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:56:42]
TAPPER: The biggest new trend on the campaign trail is candidates getting big muscles.
Democratic candidates from Colin Allred in Texas to Army veteran Cait Conley in New York are flexing their strength on social media, literally, perhaps a counterpoint to the powerlessness that national Democrats feel here in D.C.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALLRED: Hey, everybody. I just finished my workout. I hope you got your workout in. So, I guess we got to talk about Jeffrey Epstein.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: I guess we will see if this new strategy gives their campaigns a lift.
Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us.
"FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts next.
