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State of the Union

Interview With Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD); Interview With Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA); Interview With Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired September 28, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Power play. With Washington deadlocked, President Trump ups the ante...

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If it has to shut down, it'll have to shut down.

TAPPER: ... as he threatens devastating consequences ahead of White House talks tomorrow. Will Trump want to make a deal or make a scene? House Speaker Mike Johnson joins me live next.

And holding the line. Democrats dig in.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): All of us need to stand up and, by the way, call out those who cave into this lawless president.

TAPPER: Have they made their case to the American people, or will they fold under Trump's pressure? He's urging his colleagues to grow a spine. Senator Chris Van Hollen joins me ahead.

Plus: payback. Trump targets a longtime foe and says there are more to come.

TRUMP: Frankly, I hope there are others.

JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: There are costs to standing up to Donald Trump.

TAPPER: But will the cases stand up in court? Comey's former deputy FBI director who tangled with Trump himself, CNN analyst Andrew McCabe, joins me for his first interview. And our panel breaks it all down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Hello. I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, where the state of our union is wondering who's next. President Trump has always maintained a list of perceived enemies.

And, this, weekend he's making clear he can command the full force of the federal government to pursue those on that list. After publicly directing his Justice Department to go after his former FBI Director James Comey, he is now promising more prosecutions of political foes to come.

Supposedly, I guess you can keep up by checking his social media feed. Overnight, though, the president did seem to relent on a potential crisis rapidly approaching, the government shutdown that appears increasingly likely. Trump will now bring the four top congressional leaders to the White House in a last-ditch attempt to avert a costly shutdown, which would begin Tuesday night.

But as top Democrats prepare for tomorrow's meeting, it's not clear if they're going to be sitting down with a president who's looking to negotiate and make a deal or one who's looking for another political target.

I'm hoping my next guest can help clear things up.

Joining us now, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana.

Mr. Speaker, good to see you.

Let's start with the shutdown talks. A few days ago, President Trump rejected even meeting with Democratic leaders, reportedly at the urging of you and the Senate majority leader, John Thune. What changed?

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Well, I had a long talk with the president yesterday, Jake, and he feels the same way that I do about this. He's always open to discussion, but he wants to operate in good faith.

So he decided to bring us all in. He wants to talk with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and just try to convince them to follow common sense and do what's right by the American people. Jake, it's important to point out the only thing we are trying to do is buy a little time.

The appropriators in both parties have been working very diligently over the last many weeks to work through the appropriations process. As you know, the law requires us to pass 12 separate appropriations bills and to be good stewards of American taxpayers' dollars.

But that hasn't happened. It usually doesn't happen in Washington. Everything gets pushed to the end of the year, right before Christmas, and there's a giant omnibus spending bill. Since I became speaker, I have been trying to force back the muscle memory to force Congress to do its work.

And we're doing it. Jake, I'm delighted to tell you, in a bipartisan fashion, the appropriators have worked through 12 separate appropriations bills in the House committee. Three are passed off the floor in the House. Three passed off the Senate floor. Those bills don't match up exactly, so there's a conference committee between two chambers working, as they're supposed to, for the first time since 2019.

But here's the problem. We have run out of clock, because the end of the -- September 30 is the end of the fiscal year. So what we did was a simple, clean continuing resolution. It's 24 pages in length. All it does is keep the government open...

TAPPER: Right.

JOHNSON: ... so appropriators can continue to do this work together, bipartisan.

Chuck Schumer came back with a long laundry list of partisan demands that don't fit into this process, and he's going to try to shut the government down. The president wants to talk with him about that and say, please, don't do that.

TAPPER: So, at this meeting tomorrow, is President Trump looking to make a deal, or is it going to be like when Michael Corleone met Senator Geary, my offer is this, nothing?

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: Well, look, we will have to see, but I can tell you where his head and his heart are. He wants to do right by the people.

He does not want the Democrats to hold up troops' pay, the people who serve in the military. They don't get paid during a shutdown. He doesn't want WIC funding, Women, Infants and Children nutrition program being held up. He doesn't want telehealth and mental health and FEMA services to be stopped. That's what Chuck Schumer is holding hostage.

[09:05:03]

Why? So that he can add $1.5 trillion in new spending at a time when we're simply just trying to keep the government going for seven weeks, so we can have those debates.

TAPPER: I want...

JOHNSON: It's wrong. He also wants to, by the way -- what Chuck Schumer is demanding in exchange for all those good things I just listed, he wants to reinstate free health care for illegal aliens paid by American taxpayers.

We are not doing that. We can't do that. That's just one of the crazy things he's requesting.

TAPPER: Well, I think he would take issue with that.

Here is what House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN Friday night about what he says Democrats are asking for, which is the continuity, the continuing of the Obamacare subsidies being extended to American citizens only to prevent more than a million of those Americans joining the ranks of the uninsured. I'd like to hear your response. This is what Jeffries said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): And all we're saying is, let's find a path forward to actually fix the health care system that Republicans have broken for the good of everyone.

They dropped this reckless partisan bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people, and it went down in flames. And so their bill is dead on arrival.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Is that demand for the -- continuing the Obamacare subsidies, is that even on the table tomorrow?

JOHNSON: Look, that statement by my friend Hakeem is absolutely absurd. That there is nothing partisan about this continuing resolution, nothing. We didn't add a single partisan priority or policy rider at all. We're operating completely in good faith to give more time.

The only thing that would gut health care, using his own phraseology there, is if we took Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer's demand here, because they want to cut $50 billion from rural hospitals. That's the new fund that we added in the Big Beautiful Bill, the working families tax cuts that we passed just a couple months ago.

They want to gut that. They also want to hold up all this funding that I listed. I mean, the WIC program is something that we all champion for women, infants and children, nutrition. That would be held up.

So, it's exactly the opposite of what Hakeem is talking about. The Obamacare subsidies is a policy debate that has to be determined by the end of the year, December 31 -- December 30, not, not right now, while we're simply trying to keep the government open so we can have all these debates.

TAPPER: So, just As a point of fact, it's against the law for noncitizens to get those subsidies.

And if they expire, Americans' premiums could jump as much as 75 percent, some experts say, and consumers could start viewing those higher premiums as soon as October. Are you not worried at all that those people might blame Republicans for those health care costs, for the insurance costs going up?

JOHNSON: No, they're not being truthful about that, Jake.

The program doesn't expire until the end of December, so we have time to have all those discussions and debates. But, yes, it is illegal for illegal aliens to receive health care paid for by hardworking American taxpayers.

But they're making the demand to change that. They want to add that back in. That's one of Chuck Schumer's primary demands to keep the government open, and we're not going to do that. The American people didn't vote for us to do that. We're trying to clean up the system.

So what they're demanding, they know is outrageous. They know it's far beyond the pale. And, look, I challenge anybody listening to us, Jake, go pull this up. You will see there is nothing partisan in what we have passed and presented to the Senate.

Chuck Schumer is doing this for one reason. He is trying to get cover from the far left base of his party because they have been hammering him for not fighting Trump. So he's going to try to show that he's fighting Trump, but he has absolutely no logical basis for doing so here.

TAPPER: So, just to be clear, there's not going to be any negotiation at this meeting? This is just going to be you and Thune and Trump telling Jeffries and Schumer, we're not giving you anything?

JOHNSON: Look, I'm not going to get in front of the president and tell you what he will do, but I have talked with him a couple of times even yesterday.

And I'm telling you where his head is. He wants to bring in the leaders to come in and act like leaders and do the right thing for the American people. It's fine to have partisan debates and squabbles, but you don't hold the people hostage for their services to allow yourself political cover. And that's what Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are doing right now.

TAPPER: Let's turn to the other big subject in the news here having to do with the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Just looking at the principle at stake here, if you can remove Comey and Trump out of the equation, as a constitutional attorney and the speaker of the House of Representatives, do you believe it's acceptable for any president to publicly or privately instruct their attorney general to prosecute a political opponent and go as far as firing a U.S. attorney if they don't bring charges because they don't think the case is strong enough?

JOHNSON: I'm glad you brought up the principle. That is exactly what's at issue here.

James Comey lied to Congress, OK? He took an oath. He said things to Congress that were simply not true. It's called perjury. A grand jury that is not -- a nonpartisan, nonbiased grand jury that that was assembled looked at the charges, and they agreed, they voted to bring an indictment of James Comey, not President Trump, not the DOJ, but a grand jury.

[09:10:20]

That's how our system works. It's a very important principle for us to apply that everybody has to subscribe to the law, even a former FBI director. And he has lots to answer for. There are many things that he could have been indicted for, but the statute of limitations ran out on so many of those matters. Not here. Perjury is important. You can't -- especially if you're a high

official, appointed or elected official, you cannot raise your hand, take an oath and lie to Congress. And that's an important principle, a principle, Jake, for us to advance.

TAPPER: I mean, I hear what you're saying, but you didn't answer the part about President Trump putting it all out there for everyone to see on TRUTH Social.

After pushing out the U.S. attorney, this conservative, Erik Siebert, he wrote to Pam Bondi, the attorney general: "Nothing's being done about Comey, Schiff, and Letitia James, even though they're all guilty as hell."

The president demanded "Justice must be served now." He mentioned Lindsey Halligan, who is now the acting U.S. attorney. And Bondi clearly got the message. She appointed Halligan U.S. attorney, despite the fact she has no prosecutorial experience. A few days later, Halligan indicted Comey.

I mean, this looks like it was directed by the president. As you know, indictments are not convictions. Indictments have to do with a grand jury saying whether or not a case can be brought. It's not a finding of guilt. The defense isn't even allowed to present a case there.

Don't you have any qualms about the -- any president telling an attorney general, go after these three political opponents?

JOHNSON: I will take issue with that. I don't think that's what he did.

But what I have cause with Jake is the total and utter weaponization of the Department of Justice. And Comey was a primary person responsible for that. They quite literally for four years under the Biden administration turned the entire apparatus of our judicial system against one person. His name is Donald Trump.

There's never been a political figure in the history of the world who was so maligned and attacked, certainly not using the legal system of his country to go after him in the way that they did, every way possible. You and I would need three hours of a program to go through all the ways that they did that.

They weaponized the DOJ. And so that's what Comey ultimately was the leader of and responsible for. He was one of the primary persons who did that. And I think, if he lied to Congress about what he knew and when he knew it, then that is a matter that transcends politics. I think it -- he has to be tried for that. And I expect that the jury in that case will determine that that's exactly what he did.

TAPPER: Well, this case is specifically about whether or not Comey lied about leaking information that would -- what seems to have taken place during 2016-2017, having nothing to do with Joe Biden.

But let me ask you a question, because you talked about the weaponization of the Justice Department during Biden. Can you -- because this is something conservatives bring up a lot. And I understand there was a special counsel investigating Trump and there were cases in New York and all that.

But can you explain how the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden during the Biden presidency, which resulted in a criminal conviction, and the special counsel investigating into President Biden himself during the Biden presidency, which resulted in this incredibly damaging Hur report, how did those investigations fit into the theory that the Biden era was one of Democrats weaponizing the Justice Department?

Because they were also going after the Democratic presidents and his Democratic son.

JOHNSON: They were not going after the president and his family. They did the bare minimum that they had to do to maintain the label on the door Department of Justice.

OK, look, everyone knows this. This is not even a matter of dispute.

TAPPER: Hunter was going to go to jail.

JOHNSON: They went after President Trump even when he was not president.

Well, they went after President Trump criminally, civilly. They tried to just ruin him, destroy him because they didn't want to run for president again. I mean, there are volumes written about this, Jake. And you and I both know that that's true. And there will be a lot of accountability, I hope, in the future to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again.

Comey has been on a tirade against Trump since way back then, since 2016-2017. Remember, he famously walked on the beach and put 8647, implying that President Trump should be should be exterminated, effectively, OK? It was a big controversy several months back, right?

He has shown his bias. And they have used the Department of Justice against him. Remember all the former intel officials who signed the letter saying that the phony Russian dossier was real. I mean, everybody knows this. We don't have to relitigate it this morning.

The point is, the Department of Justice currently is doing what the Department of Justice should do. And they have to hold people accountable. We have to ensure that the rule of law applies to everyone. hand that's exactly what's happening here.

[09:15:06]

TAPPER: Does the rule of law have to apply to people who stormed the Capitol on January 6?

JOHNSON: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. There's new information over the last couple of days about that as well. Apparently, there were 274 FBI agents in the crowd on January 6.

TAPPER: No, no, no. That's Kash Patel...

JOHNSON: I think the total number of persons involved...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: No, Kash Patel just brought some enhancement -- enhanced understanding to that. They were sent there to do crowd control because of everything that was going on.

They weren't -- it wasn't a false flag operation, as President Trump suggested.

JOHNSON: Well, Jake, wait a minute. Hold on, Jake. How do you know that? There's a lot of questions...

TAPPER: I'm just going by what Kash Patel said.

JOHNSON: ... brand-new questions about -- well, and I'm telling you that there's videos, and it's always been disputed, what involvement some of those persons engaged in, what involvement they had?

Did they spur on the crowd? Did they open the gates to allow them in? I don't know. These are questions. But they should be answered. And, yes, there's a lot of investigation and discovery to go forward. We have a select subcommittee, bipartisan, a committee that is reviewing the investigation of the original J6 Committee, I mean, a committee investigating the previous committee.

Why? Because there was so much bias in the system. And that committee was rigged, I think, and I think they -- my theory is, I have always believed that they got rid of evidence and they hid some of this. So all of it's going to come out.

The American people deserve full transparency.

TAPPER: Full transparency, 100 percent.

JOHNSON: And that's what Congress is working on, and that's what the administration is working on. Yes. Yes. And we will find out.

TAPPER: I'm always in favor of full transparency, including for the Epstein files, which that will probably come on the floor of the House soon.

JOHNSON: Me too.

TAPPER: And we will have lots of discussions about that.

Speaker Johnson, always good to have you here. Thank you so much, sir.

JOHNSON: Thanks, Jake. Appreciate it.

TAPPER: You have probably heard his name a lot this week.

Jim Comey's number two at the FBI joins me her for his very first interview since all this happened. What does he know about the charges against his former boss? Former Deputy FBI Director CNN analyst Andrew McCabe is next.

And then he's urging Democrats in his own party to take more risks. Seems like they're listening.

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[09:21:14]

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

My next guest has been all over the news this week, or his name has been, anyway. He was James Comey's deputy at the FBI for a time. Let's see if he can shed some light on the case the government is bringing against his former boss, based on an indictment that had very little actual information in it at all.

Joining us now, the former FBI deputy director, Andrew McCabe, who is also a CNN senior law enforcement analyst.

But, today, I do want to talk about your role at the FBI. Andy, have you -- first of all, let's just start. Have you been contacted or interviewed by the FBI at all regarding this investigation into James Comey?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes, not at all, Jake. I have not been contacted. I haven't been interviewed. They have not asked to interview me.

And, of course, if my interactions with Jim Comey nine years ago, in October 2016, was going to be the basis of this entire prosecution, it's unbelievable to think that prosecutors wouldn't at least want to sit down and hear what I had to say about it, could potentially be a fact witness, or just to understand what my perspective is. And that has never happened.

TAPPER: Yes, I have seen others out there speculating that you're the Person 3 named in the indictment as someone Comey allegedly authorized to leak information on his behalf.

But a source familiar with the indictment told me that Person 3 in the indictment is actually Comey's longtime friend Columbia Law School Professor Dan Richman, who was also a special government employee at the FBI at the time. Is that your understanding as well, or do you not know?

MCCABE: Yes, well, I mean, none of us know with great specificity because, as you said, the indictment really has no facts in it whatsoever.

But as far as I'm concerned, I absolutely do not believe it's referring to me in any way. There's a couple of reasons for that. First, I never asked Jim Comey to authorize any disclosure to the media, because I didn't have to. At that time in the FBI, there's only two people who had the authority to make that decision independently. One was Jim Comey and the other was me. And it was something I did as a part of my job pretty routinely. So,

around that exchange in October, just -- that request never happened, which would make his answer to Chuck Grassley's question in 2017, if that's what this that they have clearly indicted him about, doesn't really have anything to do with me.

As far as Mr. Richman concerned, there were a number of leak cases opened by the FBI in 2017. And at least one of those included several articles in which information about our investigations had appeared, and potentially unauthorized, so not in an officially authorized fashion.

Mr. Richman was interviewed and investigated as a part of those leak cases. I would expect that Jim Comey and probably I was also included in the initial list of potential suspects, as is very routine in leak cases. Every person who has access or had access to the information that is thought to have been leaked is included in that group of suspects initially.

But those cases were all closed in 2020. So after three years of investigating, after interviewing Mr. Richman, after no doubt looking at computer and telephone records from everyone who had access to that information, these cases were closed without any requests for indictments.

TAPPER: Yes.

MCCABE: So the idea that they would use those cases now, all these years later, is -- it's bizarre.

TAPPER: Well, the source familiar with the indictment told me that it actually is in reference to what was called the Arctic Haze leak investigation, which deals with those four stories that you're referring to in "The New York Times," "The Washington Post" and "The Wall Street Journal."

Richman was interviewed. Richman denied that Comey authorized him to leak.

[09:25:01]

But let me ask you just more broadly, the indictment says that Comey lied in 2017 and then again in 2020 when he was asked about the 2017 testimony, when he denied having ever -- quote -- "authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source of news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation" -- unquote.

Given your experience with Comey, was he honest when he said he had never authorized a leak?

MCCABE: All I can say to that, Jake, is I'm not aware of Jim Comey ever authorizing some other person to leak information. That's not something I experienced personally. It's not something I saw in the -- all the time I spent working around Jim Comey.

So I can't sit here and characterize his testimony, which I think is far from clear enough to be the basis of a false statement or perjury prosecution. But, nevertheless, all I can say is what my own experience revealed, and that is, I didn't ever see Jim Comey authorizing other people to leak information.

TAPPER: You're an attorney. You spent more than 20 years at the FBI. What do you make of this indictment overall, especially in the context of President Trump exerting public pressure on the attorney general, on the U.S. attorney's office in the Eastern District of Virginia, in the sense that Erik Siebert got fired and replaced by Lindsey Halligan?

What do you make of this all, and also his promise that he's going to go after -- or he hopes that there will be other political opponents who face prosecution?

MCCABE: I mean, there's only one thing to make of it, Jake. It is absolutely what the president himself characterized it as. It's vengeance. This is the revenge tour.

It's the tour he promised when he ran for office in 2024. It's what most of us who have fallen in his crosshairs before expected, and it's what we're seeing now. And I absolutely expect we will see more people fall into the same sort of vindictive prosecutorial defense posture.

And let me just say, Jake, I will take you back to 2017, the beginning of the Trump administration, when President Trump started having his first interactions with Jim Comey, which really troubled us, to the extent that Jim wrote those now infamous memos about it.

Those first few interactions, we would talk about them after the fact. And we were almost naive in thinking, is this president actually trying to influence our investigative decision-making? We didn't want to believe it. So we started almost contorting ourselves to make up other excuses for what we saw was happening.

Well, we thought, well, he doesn't -- he's never worked around prosecutors or the department before. He's not familiar with the norms of how we do this independently. That was until he came out and absolutely explicitly asked us to drop the case against Mike Flynn. It was one of these, like, watershed moments.

Well, now fast-forward to where we are today. Those requests aren't happening quietly between the president and the director of the FBI in the Oval Office. They're happening on social media. We can all see exactly what he's saying, what he intends to do. His intention is vengeance.

TAPPER: Are you worried...

MCCABE: And that is what he's going after. I don't think there's anything that will stop him.

TAPPER: Are you worried that you're going to become a target?

MCCABE: Of course. Who wouldn't be, right? Anyone who worked in the FBI around those cases at that time has got to seriously consider that you might once again -- and I have been here before. It's been going on with me for years. I was investigated baselessly in a criminal investigation for two years that ultimately collapsed under its own weight.

I have been audited. I have been investigated by multiple special counsels, the I.G., Senate Intelligence Committee, House Intelligence Committee. So that -- I expect that will continue.

I'm absolutely confident in the work that we did. We weren't perfect, but we didn't do -- we never committed a crime or did something intentionally wrong, intentionally misrepresented everything -- anything, never. So I'm not worried. I'm just kind of exhausted.

TAPPER: Andy McCabe, thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

MCCABE: Thanks.

TAPPER: President Trump has not yet met with Democratic leaders. He hasn't met with them in many months. So what kind of reception might they expect tomorrow when they go to meet with him to discuss averting a government shutdown?

I'm going to talk to a Democratic senator next who wants his party to grow a spine -- coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:33:45]

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

My next guest has had some strong words for his fellow Democrats, those words, spineless and poll-washed and pundit-rinsed and too cautious and too rudderless.

How do you really feel about this, Senator Van Hollen?

He joins us now. He's urging his party to take a stand this week against the president. Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen joins us now.

Thank you so much, Senator.

So President Trump's going to meet with congressional leaders at the White House tomorrow. You just heard Speaker Mike Johnson effectively saying, there's really nothing that we're going to offer them. If that is the case and the government funding bill is just this clean C.R. that they're talking about, are you going to vote no?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Jake, it's good to see the president finally get off the golf course and decide to talk and avoid the government shutdown he's been taking us to. And he's been much more focused, as we all know, on keeping the Epstein files locked up than keeping the government open.

Look, the president wants a blank check. This is a lawless president. He's been illegally withholding funds. He promised on day one he was going to bring down prices. They have gone up. What we're saying is that we should turn off this ticking time bomb which Republicans left in place that's going to create a huge spike in health care premiums for about 20 million Americans.

[09:35:06]

Until now, the president has said, nope, he'd rather shut down the government than prevent those health care costs from spiking. I'm glad we're finally talking. We will see what happens.

TAPPER: This time last year, when there was a government shutdown looming, you said that a shutdown would -- quote -- "needlessly disrupt essential government services and leave tens of thousands of federal employees working in Maryland without pay" -- unquote.

The year before that, you said keeping the government open was -- quote -- "one of our most basic responsibilities as lawmakers" -- unquote.

Is none of that operative anymore?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Jake, it is. It would be very disruptive, which is why I'm opposed to having a government shutdown, and Donald Trump is the one that has been driving us in that direction, along with Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have totally forfeited their constitutional responsibilities to Donald Trump.

I mean, they have advocated those responsibilities, subcontracted that to Donald Trump. If you talk to Senate Republicans, they understand that giving the president a blank check to illegally withhold funds, which he's been doing from day one, much of it with the help of Elon Musk, that that's the wrong way to go. But they refuse to stand up to him.

And we're not going to write a blank check. And we want to prevent these huge spikes in health care costs. That's what we're after. Again, he promised lower prices across the board. His across-the-board tariffs are jacking up prices on everybody. We're focused on trying to address this issue. The president apparently doesn't give a damn and is prepared to shut down the government, rather than deal with this health care spike.

TAPPER: But this bill that you would be called to vote on, on Tuesday to avoid the government shutdown, this is a clean continuing resolution. It maintains federal spending at current levels. Republicans did not tack on any poison pills or controversial policies.

They say that the subsidies you're talking about, the Obamacare subsidies, they say that they're COVID era subsidies supposed to expire. They say they're willing to work with Democrats to figure out a possible fix, but that it shouldn't be tied to this stopgap bill.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Jake, what they have proposed is a complete blank check to the president. So, as we speak, the president is illegally withholding funds for very

important priorities for the American people. I mean, we have seen this in the area of NIH. We see a lot fewer grants, for example, going out to help develop treatments and cures to diseases. We have seen what happens when they withhold FEMA money.

FEMA was not able to respond appropriately to the terrible floods in Texas. So, in addition to dealing with this health care issue and preventing these spikes, we also want to make sure that the president can't just spend money on things that he wants and illegally withhold funds from areas he doesn't, which is why it's important that people know, Jake, that we present -- we have presented an alternative, right?

We presented an alternative that would keep the federal government going. We shouldn't close down the government. Our alternative provides guardrails to prevent the president from engaging in those lawless activities. And, yes, it does deal with preventing these huge hikes in health care costs that will be -- will hit the American people if we don't deal with it.

TAPPER: You have criticized your fellow Democrats, especially Democratic leaders, as -- quote -- "overly cautious, finger to the wind, don't really stand for anything."

And then you hit New York Democrats for not endorsing the Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani. After you did that, a spokesperson for Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, dismissed you as -- quote -- "Chris Van Who?"

What's your response to that? And do you have faith in Democratic leaders when they go to meet with the president tomorrow?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Jake, I think Democrats are united right now on this question, on this question of preventing these huge spikes in health care costs for Americans.

I mean, four million Americans will lose access to health care entirely. That will send them to emergency rooms without any coverage. That will lead to spikes in everybody's health care rates; 20 million people will lose access to affordable prices in the health care exchanges.

So I do have confidence that the two leaders on the Democratic side are going to hold the line on these issues, as well as this not giving the president a blank check.

Look, my view is, there are lots of issues Democrats should be focused on, but, on this one, we are united.

TAPPER: No response to "Chris Van Who"?

VAN HOLLEN: Look, I have worked with Hakeem for a long time. I -- he actually was the person who made the nominating speech for me to be the ranking member of the House Budget Committee. We can have our differences on some things. [09:40:01]

But, on the big picture right now, in terms of dealing with this lawless president and preventing huge spikes in health care costs for the American people, we are together.

TAPPER: All right, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, good to see you, sir. Thanks for joining us.

VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you.

TAPPER: President Trump is rapidly expanding his list of political targets for prosecution. How successful might he be at putting opponents behind bars?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I am your retribution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents.

[09:45:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I agree with you.

PAM BONDI (R), FORMER FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL: This department has been weaponized for years and years and years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But let me, if I might...

BONDI: And it has to stop.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's up to the sitting president to ensure that our criminal system does not unravel into retaliatory or political prosecutions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Welcome back to STATE OF THE UNION.

The era of government weaponization is over, or is it?

My panel is here to discuss.

Bakari...

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: Is the government -- "Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents," President Trump said when he was inaugurated. Is he keeping his word?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think most Americans would agree, I mean, that weaponization is now the central focus of the Department of Justice. It's not keeping us safe. It's not keeping Americans safe. It's not going after or prosecuting drug traffickers or all these other things.

It's literally an arm of Donald Trump prosecuting his enemies. Not only that, but we can see what happened in Virginia in the Comey case, because he had someone who did not find probable cause. He literally got rid of his own U.S. attorney and put somebody who, I mean, is just simply inept and unqualified to actually have that job.

We have talked about DEI hires forever, but she is so inept and so unqualified to be the U.S. attorney, that now you're going to have a case that's probably going to fall apart against Comey. But the question is, who's next? And that's what he's using the Department of Justice for.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, she was ept qualified enough to get a grand jury to look at the evidence and return two charges against him. Are you saying that this process, which is used all over the country every single day to bring crimes all over the code, is somehow broken?

SELLERS: Oh...

JENNINGS: These are ordinary citizens in a liberal jurisdiction who looked at evidence from a prosecutor and said, yes, it looks like there's something here. Is that not what happened?

SELLERS: Yes, but I mean, you can indict a ham sandwich. I mean, I can have a grand jury go in there and say that Bakari Sellers is the next Denzel Washington.

I mean, this is -- that is just the way the process works.

JENNINGS: I don't think you could find a grand jury that would do that.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: How is this landing with voters, do you think?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So this is the sort of thing where, right now, there are issues like cost of living, things that are affecting people's pocketbooks that are so much higher up on the list.

It is true that, for Democrats, issues like threats to democracy, worries about is our system hanging together properly are the top issue for them. But, right now for political independents, something like this is probably potentially troubling.

But Republicans can say, hey, look, as soon as Donald Trump was indicted in New York on what they felt were pretty ticky-tack charges back then, this cycle, this is just another chapter in a story tale as old as time.

TAPPER: So let's just bring up this graphic here of Trump retaliation.

Here are just some of Trump's political opponents. Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is under investigation, Senator Adam Schiff under investigation, former special counsel Jack Smith under investigation, former National Security Adviser John Bolton under investigation, and we do expect there will be charges filed.

Retired General Mark Milley under investigation, former CIA Director John Brennan under investigation, former CISA Director Chris Krebs under investigation, former DHS official Miles Taylor under investigation.

KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I mean, this is what Donald Trump said he was going to do during the campaign. He said: "I am your retribution." He was very clear this is what he was going to do.

And I think it's actually Republican willingness to normalize, cover for, apologize for this behavior.

I was listening to you interview Speaker Johnson, and it's just striking to watch congressional Republicans essentially say that the president of the United States going on social media and directing a U.S. attorney to indict a political opponent after previous efforts to do so fell short through an I.G. report that found no wrongdoing, through prosecutors in the district who said that there was not sufficient evidence to bring the case.

So watching somebody like Speaker Johnson normalize that, it just -- it sends us down an incredibly dangerous path. And I do think -- the other thing I would say just quickly to Kristen's point or to piggyback on what Kristen was saying, I do think there's actually also an opportunity cost here with voters for Trump.

He -- people voted for him in huge part to bring costs down. The more they watch him focus on personal retribution, yes, it motivates his base. Yes, it motivates the Democratic base. But for these voters in the middle who are looking for their cost of living to come down, for their lives to be better, they say, why are you not focused on what matters to me?

JENNINGS: I'm stunned to hear you say we're now worried about normalizing this kind of thing.

We had an attorney...

BEDINGFIELD: Which you are about to do right now. Let's hear it.

JENNINGS: No, I'm about to tell you what happened in the state of New York, when the Democratic attorney general ran an entire political campaign promising, promising not to uphold justice, but to prosecute one person, Donald Trump. And I didn't hear a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth among

Democrats about normalizing the weaponization of justice. That chart you put up there, my question is, do they deserve it? If they didn't do anything wrong, I'm not certain anything bad's going to happen to them.

Bolton, that started under Joe Biden. James -- I mean, these people that you put on the screen, they may have something that needs to be looked at. But don't you have trust in the processes, grand juries? This is how the system works.

[09:50:04]

And I don't have any -- and Jim Comey, he's going to go to trial.

SELLERS: But I think it's the abuse of...

JENNINGS: He's going to get a day in court in front of the jury of his peers.

SELLERS: It's the abuse of the jury of the system. And what we're talking about is the abuse of the system and making people...

JENNINGS: What abuse? What abuse beyond the idea of prosecuting people? When Democrats were going after Trump, were you worried about abuse?

SELLERS: Because I firmly believe that Donald Trump broke the law and he was indicted.

JENNINGS: Do you think the 34 charges that are cited all the time were good charges?

(CROSSTALK)

SELLERS: But let me just say this. I mean, you just sat here and talked about the process. You gave me a lecture about the grand jury system.

Well, Donald Trump actually went to trial and got convicted.

BEDINGFIELD: Correct

SELLERS: That is the process he went through.

And let me just explain to you the difference in the abuse and the difference in Departments of Justice. I mean, we can go all the way back to Republicans having a fit when JFK tried to nominate RFK, his brother, to be attorney general.

But I can actually go back to Joe Biden. Joe Biden indicted his own son. Did he deserve to be indicted? Yes. But he indicted his own son.

(CROSSTALK)

JENNINGS: You're saying -- wait. You're saying that White House was directing indictments? You're saying they were directing indictments? That's a revelation.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Let's have one speaker, one person speak at a time.

What were you just saying?

SOLTIS ANDERSON: Yes, he did pardon him. And I think it does then -- that really sets forth this notion that there is this two-tiered system of justice in this country, where the wealthy, the powerful, the connected have tended to be able to get away with doing things that they shouldn't have done.

Now, that's not to say that, in this case, what Jim Comey did was definitely bad. This all needs to be sussed out in the courts. But there's been a lot of folks in Donald Trump's orbit who have been pursued, have gone to prison, and you may say, well, look, they did something wrong. They deserved it.

That's all that Republicans are saying now, which is why this is feeling like a bit of a wash, at least in some of the data.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: And some of the polling.

BEDINGFIELD: But you also cannot find another example of a president, not Bill Clinton, not Barack Obama, not Ronald Reagan, not George W. Bush, publicly directing his Department of Justice to pursue an indictment.

And those protections, that precedent, that exists to protect all of us, to protect American citizens from their government pursuing them. And that -- breaking that normalization, that is dangerous, and that is unprecedented.

TAPPER: All right, thanks, one and all, for being here.

Is Jimmy Kimmel's return to late night a free speech victory, or is this fight about free speech just getting started? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:55:55]

TAPPER: When Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from ABC under pressure of the Trump administration, it sparked a national outcry over free speech and censorship.

Tonight, I'm going to take a deeper look at how the Kimmel suspension unfolded and what all of this says about the future of the First Amendment and free speech in the United States. Be sure to tune in. An all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER," it airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

Thank you for spending your Sunday morning with us. "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" starts next.