Make America Healthy Again?
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It's Friday, November 15th, right now on CNN This Morning. Won the White House, recaptured the Senate, and now, as of today, recaptured the House. A night of celebration, the president-elect delivering his first speech since securing victory. And... There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective. Prescription for trouble, what RFK Jr.'s promise to make America healthy again could actually mean for you. And...

Curious timing, Congressman Matt Gaetz says he quit Congress to become Attorney General, not to sidestep damning allegations. And then... The way forward, Democrats doing some soul-searching after Republicans clinched their trifecta.

All right, it is just after 6 a.m. here on the East Coast, a beautiful sunrise over New York City on this Friday morning at the end of a, man, one of those weeks Donald Trump has returned. If you're in Washington, it all feels very familiar in the pace and scope of the changes that come at you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us. We did make it to Friday.

Make America healthy again? Donald Trump choosing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. I'm gonna let him go wild on health. I'm gonna let him go wild on the food. I'm gonna let him go wild on medicines. I'm gonna let him go wild, Trump said. So what might going wild look like? This is a job, let's remember, that oversees the CDC, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health,

and Medicare and Medicaid. There are more than 100 million Americans who get their health coverage from those two programs. So how does RFK Jr. see the world? There are entire departments like the nutrition departments at FDA that have to go, that are not doing their job. They're not protecting our kids.

They have to go. So what are some of Kennedy's views on various public health matters that he may oversee? Let's review. I do believe that autism does come from vaccines. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese. Wi-Fi radiation.

does all kinds of bad things, including causing cancer. Some of these mass shootings that we're seeing in this country may be related to these new classes of drugs, of SSRIs and benzos.

On the arguably highest profile issue that he's weighed in on, the safety of vaccines, it's of course an issue that has implications for the health of all of us and all of our children, he has tried to claim a less extreme view than the one that he actually holds. Here's what he told me in December of last year.

Over the summer in an interview, you said, quote, there's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective. Do you still believe that? I never said that. So stop me. We have the clip. Please play the clip. Can you name any vaccines that you think are good? I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they're causing. There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.

So you did say it. Do you still believe it? Well, here's what I would say. First of all, I'm not anti-vaccine. How is that statement not anti-vaccine? Well, I can say right now there's no medicine for cancer that's safe and effective. It doesn't mean I'm out against all medicines. I've been fighting 40 years to get mercury out of fish. Nobody calls me anti-fish.

Nobody calls me anti-fish. Joining us now to discuss all of this, Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Ellie Williams, CNN legal analyst, Democratic Congressman Greg Lansman of Ohio, and Matt Gorman, former senior advisor to Tim Scott's presidential campaign. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here.

Congressman, thanks for agreeing to stick around. You've told me to call you Greg. So I'm going to do it. It's very hard for me, okay, after many years of covering the Hill. It's like after you graduate from school and you see your teacher in the supermarket, like what do you call them, Mr. or Mrs. for the first time? But I just want the audience to know you told me I could. Part of it is that there's a big divide between elected officials and everyone else. And if we keep saying Congressman, President, Senator, like it's just Greg. You get to sit on the ball and grab this panel, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One of the bald guys. Bald is beautiful. Yeah, it is. So with that, Elliot, I would like to start with you, actually. Just as we, I mean, you heard what RFK Jr. had to say there about COVID, for example, the pandemic

The amount of power that is centered in this agency is actually quite remarkable and extensive. What is your sense of just the degree of impact that RFK could have in this role if he's confirmed? - Quite profound going, starting with the number of regulations that will cross the desk of the chair.

the Department of Health and Human Services. But it's important to note that a lot of the things that we're noting here really are policy differences, they're policy issues. Now, they're extreme. He is, in many respects, pushing conspiracy theories.

But to me, a lot of the bigger concern is a lot of the things in this individual's background that render him unfit to lead a big, any sort of large enterprise. There's many, many questions about, for instance, possible drug and substance abuse, some behavior issues, some personal misconduct, all of which would come up in the context of a confirmation hearing. We'll be talking about that a lot today.

We haven't even done the bear in Central Park or the whale on the beach. Yeah, I mean, some of that's... Wasn't there an animal? Wasn't there like a dog or something? The dog. Was it a goat or a dog that he was holding up and pretending to eat? Maybe we can finally investigate and settle this question. He can say it under oath. He can say it under oath. But that's sort of the broader point. All those things will come up in the context of a hearing, but is this an individual who's fit to manage far more than...

Do you agree with his views on vaccines and all, which are conspiracy theories? Yeah. And Greg, Congressman, sorry, I'm going to trip on it every single time. We were talking a little bit in the last hour about the Democratic governor, Jared Polis, on vaccines. And he said he's, quote, excited by the news that the president-elect will appoint Robert Kennedy Jr. to HHS. I hope he leans into personal choice on vaccines rather than bans, which I think are terrible, just like mandates.

then goes on to talk about being optimistic about taking on big pharma. How do you think this issue is going to cut? I mean, where do you fall down on it personally? So hearing that the second time, so Polis was saying, you know, we don't like bans. Bans are, so if he's going to lean into or do away with, you know, any ban on drugs,

I guess that's when, you know, I guess he's being optimistic. What I don't understand is if the American people were clear, and I think they were, that they wanted change and they wanted people to focus on the economy, they wanted people to focus on fixing the border and a whole host of other issues that really mattered to them.

is this all not just pulling attention away from the things that they care about, you know, in order to, you know, pay back those folks that helped Trump win. And I don't think people like that. - One of the things I was just thinking about as you were reading that quote is, and just setting aside Kennedy for one second, I think between obviously we have Kennedy, whether he gets confirmed or not,

But you also have JD Vance and Joe Rogan. And just what we've heard, the pharmaceutical industry is going to be--

In the metaphorical crosshairs of a Trump administration unlike probably any we've seen in a Republican administration in quite some time I think much like big business There's been an evolution on the right where it was very laissez-faire Like you kind of handle your own will leave you alone. I think that will change what to what degree we will see but that's just a through line I've noticed in this last couple months. Well, yeah Sorry, God. No, no, and look I think

- More so than Gates, I know we're gonna talk about the Gates stuff. The Kennedy thing fascinates me because this is really, I think, where the rubber meets the road for a lot of Senate Republicans, right? If Susan Collins, who is in cycle, she's up in 2026 in blue mane, very much a Joe Manchin-like position where if she were to retire,

see is very likely Democratic. You have Lisa Murkowski, though, not up. So the politics of this should be very, very interesting. That's why I also took note of Bill Cassidy, who hasn't been afraid to be a Trump critic. I think, believe, voted to impeach him after January 6th. Did not commit to confirming Kennedy, but didn't rule it out. Praised him in a statement yesterday as well. Very interesting to see where this goes.

Well, yeah, well, to your point, what I'm wondering is, you know, this is not a traditional Republican pick for Health and Human Services, right? This is a former Democrat who's got a lot of sort of left-coded views. And so what I want to know is when he is expressing views that challenge the

the pharmaceutical industry and other aspects of big business. Is that something Republican senators are going to want to go along with? And when he is expressing views about basically government regulation, that he wants more state control over what we eat and how the government governs our health and that kind of thing, is that something that Republican senators want to go along with?

So these are the policy questions that I think are going to be really interesting when and if he gets to a confirmation. Just quickly to your point, Molly, it's quick, it's easy to label big business and pharma as enemies and so on. These are donors and constituents of many of the Republican senators who have to cast votes on these issues. And when they are hearing from be it Pfizer or Eli Lilly or whatever else that, wait a second, you have to tamp this down because we are

we're providing a tremendous amount of support to you. That is how Washington works. That is how politics works and is funded, even if it doesn't sit right with people. Interestingly, it can be one of the last issues standing, too, that can cut across party lines based on, you know, if you have a medical device manufacturer in your state, but you happen to be a Democrat, you may not align exactly the way the D or the R after your name might expect. All right, straight ahead here on CNN This Morning, Donald Trump has...

the trifecta of government control this time around, even with the majority. Some of his cabinet will be a true test of loyalty, plus the richest man in the world's impact on Trump's transition, raising alarms on the world stage. Plus, new developments on the health ethics probe into Matt Gaetz, the curious cancellation of an event that had been scheduled for today. Matt Gaetz has chosen to resign from the House, but he can't choose to conceal

that information. Well, it's my understanding that is not supposed to go public. So if it's not supposed to under the rules, it shouldn't go public.

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in places that could expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors millions of data points every second. If your identity is stolen, their U.S.-based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.

I'm CNN tech reporter Claire Duffy. Claire Duffy was right. I cover artificial intelligence and other new technologies for a living. And even I sometimes get overwhelmed trying to keep up with it all. So I'm starting a new show where, together, we can explore how to experiment with these new tools without getting played by them. It's called Terms of Service. This technology is so crazy powerful. Follow CNN's Terms of Service wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you think Matt Gaetz can get through? Well, I don't know the answer to that just yet. I mean, obviously, as you point out, there certainly are some skeptics, but he deserves a process.

very measured, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune did leave open the possibility of Matt Gaetz becoming the next Attorney General of the United States. The House Ethics Committee was supposed to meet later today to vote on releasing its report on the now former congressman who faces allegations of sex trafficking, illicit drug use, and accepting improper gifts

That meeting has been canceled. Gates resigned from Congress on Wednesday, effectively ending the panel's investigation. It is not clear when or if the committee's findings will be made public. Democrats insist there's no choice. It would have to be released if they really want to try to get the Senate to vote to confirm him. Of course, they could move to try to do a recess appointment, which would escape the requirements of getting an actual Senate vote.

So, Greg Lansman, what can you tell us about this vote and what's going on behind the scenes? Obviously, with the Ethics Committee, one Republican would have to vote with Democrats to actually get this report out there. Why was this canceled?

Well, I don't know why it was canceled. I think he decided to step down because they were about to release this report. And at least for the time being, the report stays behind closed doors. But the Ethics Committee, as you all know, is a bunch of Democrats and a bunch of Republicans. They take their job very seriously. They investigated this. It's probably the worst job in Washington. It's a very tough job, but they take it seriously.

One way or another, the report's going to come out, and it's, as I understand it, it's a very damning report, and it suggests pretty disgusting behavior, not just criminal behavior, but disgusting behavior. And that's going to be, I think, tough for Senate Republicans to say, oh, this person should run the Justice Department.

Hold on one second. Do you know more about what disgusting means in this context? No, just what we've read and what he does on the House floor. I mean, this is a guy who would walk around on the House floor and show people pictures of, you know,

women. And, you know, he's a he doesn't hide the kind of person he is. So the idea that he wants to hide this report is a little bizarre because this is who he is. To Casey's point about you have to have at least one Republican crossover, you know, and viewers may not know it's the only committee in Congress that's actually split equally between Democrats and Republicans. So everything they do has to be bipartisan. But I guess my question for you is,

How much faith do you have in the current House Ethics Committee, right? It's a very polarized partisan Congress generally, but do you think that there is a bipartisan spirit? Yeah, I do. I mean, the Ethics Committee, they take their job seriously on both sides, Republicans and Democrats. This report will find its way to the public as it should. This is, you know, they did a lot of work, so just put it out there. Whatever it says, it says. But

But I think that the two big things on Gates are, one, do people really want somebody to go burn down the Justice Department? Most everybody believes in federal law enforcement and that we should be fighting crimes and not covering them up. And two, are these allegations and what ends up being in this report, is it disqualifying?

- Yeah, can I ask you Matt? 'Cause one of the thoughts I had was that when Gates was confirmed, if there's something that's gonna sink him, it's that he is deeply disliked by members of his own party in the Congress, by Republicans, right? And if he is gonna go down, it is Republicans who are gonna have to sink him. They're gonna have to kind of take on Trump and do that.

Is it helpful for Democrats to be out there saying, do this, do this, do this? Or does that, should they just sort of be a little bit more hands off and just let Republicans sink one of their own? Yeah, when the other team is kind of dealing with this right now, stand back. Jamie Raskin or Richard Blumenthal leading the charge on this is not helpful because everybody just puts their jerseys on, so to speak. And I think, so Republicans, they were in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. There was some saber rattling, right, saying that 30,

Republicans could vote against. I don't want to, Molly, that was your story. No, I'm just saying it's right there. Oh, it's right there. So there you go. No, I think the goal of that was to try and saber rattle a little bit. Certainly, I don't think if this ever came to a vote, you'd see 30 Republicans on the floor of the Senate vote against him. It was basically, please don't put us in that position. Now, look, as you said, Kevin McCarthy, who

who said every pick has been great except Matt Gaetz. Now, one of the other things is obviously this report is a big X factor in all of this. So there's been some reports about what is actually in the report. Now, in some respects, set aside the report, which is obviously hard to do,

Even if Gates wins, he's the AG. If he loses, there was always rumors about him going down to Florida, running for governor, running to San Jose's term limited. Anyway, obviously the report is, that could be the massive X factor in this. But in some respects, it could be win-win for Gates.

Congressman, let me put the same question to you as I put to Matt. I mean, do you think Democrats should just be a little more hands-off on Gates? No, I think people have to say what they think. It's important. The American people want to know what you think. Say what you think. You know, the allegations and what's in the report is a series of sex crimes. And what we understand to be true or could be true is that

He had sex with a child. This is a big deal. And if it's true, people should know it, and hopefully senators say that's a bridge too far. I certainly would. Gates, this is one of his challenges.

I had a run in with Gates in my first term, first year. For the same reason I think everybody else has issues with Gates. Most of us came to govern. We want to govern and he's just not a serious person in that regard. He wants attention, he wants to go party, he wants to get on TV.

And it's all about him, and the American people don't want that. And people who come to D.C. to actually govern, which is Democrats and Republicans, don't like Matt Gaetz. I do think, to your point, Casey, it's quite possible that he is objectively the most disliked member of the entire Congress and a unifying figure in a lot of ways.

of ways. I've spent quite a bit of time with Matt Gaetz and reporting on Matt Gaetz and he is a uniquely polarizing figure among both

among both parties. - I appreciate that point very much. Congressman Greg Lansman, thank you very much for joining us on the panel too. I appreciate it. All right, ahead here on CNN This Morning, an uphill climb for the Democratic Party. We're gonna talk to Congressman Seth Moulton about the party's challenges going forward. Plus, RFK Jr., public health and trust. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us just ahead.

All right, welcome back time now for weather. The Northeast United States facing elevated fire threats today. Winds and increase and drought conditions are continuing. Let's get to our meteorologist, our weatherman, Derek Van Dam. Derek, good morning. Good morning. Happy Friday, Casey. Yeah, that's the big story today. Certainly the dry conditions that are persisting across the Northeast. You've got the combination of dry relative humidity, gusty northwesterly winds, low temperatures, and of course that

equates to the potential for fire spread rather quickly as well. So we're monitoring the Jennings Creek fire, which is about 75% containment. We'd like to see more rain, more containment with that fire. But unfortunately, that's just not the case today. The storm system that's producing rain is just to your south and will continue to pull off the east coast. Look at how

the rain on this latest radar just basically evaporates before it reaches the border of New Jersey and New York. So not providing the relief in terms of what conditions the in fact, the winds will just pick up out of the northwest through the course of the next few days, and that will make for difficult

conditions for this area. Elevated fire risk going forward. Here's a look at your temperatures for today. Nations capital 5665 for Atlanta warmer as you head towards Florida and into Houston. I want to give a quick update on tropical storm Sarah. Remember earlier this week, a lot of our models had this storm system potentially impacting Florida. The good news is it's

It's staying away from the mainland as any kind of tropical entity. The bad news is that it's impacting Central America with significant amounts of rainfall as it skirts the coastline of Honduras. Get this casey. They've already had over 17 inches of rain along the coastline of Honduras. This is an area that's very susceptible to mudslides and landslides. So thinking of them at this time.

All right, for sure. Derek Van Dam for us this morning. Derek, have a wonderful weekend. Thanks very much. You too. All right, still coming up here after the break, Elon Musk at Mar-a-Lago. How much influence does the billionaire really have over the Trump transition? And RFK Jr. could get the top health job in the nation. What does that say about trust in our public health system? We're going to talk live with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

He's a great guy, RFK, and he's going to do pretty much what he wants as far as I'm concerned. He wants health for women, for men, for children. And I happen to agree with a lot of the things he says.

Today, I nominated him for, I guess, if you like health and if you like people that live a long time, it's the most important position, RFK Jr. We want you to come up with things and ideas and what you've been talking about for a long time. And I think you're going to do some unbelievable thing. Nobody's going to be able to do it like you. And boy, does he feel it in his heart.

Trump's political rival turned ally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., could become the nation's top public health official. He is also a known vaccine skeptic. I spoke with him last year when he was running for president as an independent candidate, and I asked him about his stance on mandates for vaccinating children. So do you think school children should not be required to be vaccinated in public schools? No, I would be against mandates at all. For any vaccines? For any vaccine.

All right, joining us now is CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, it's wonderful to see you. I'm so grateful to have you. I'd like to kind of

Big picture here with the possibility of RFK Jr. in this role with a stance like that, what are the real world implications of, for example, lifting mandates for vaccines for public school children? What does that mean if you are an American who just wants to send your kid to school and have them come home healthy?

- You know, the issue is that you can sort of project the number of people who would get sick, the number of hospitalizations and deaths based on what we've seen in the past. So for example, we pulled some data looking back 30 years, going back to 1994, children born between 1994 and 2023, and saying what impact did those vaccines that children had

what impact did it have on the real world? And we can show you some of the numbers there, but basically the headline was that around a million deaths were prevented as a result of those vaccines. 32 million hospitalizations and 500 million illnesses. So that's going backwards, Casey.

If you start to go forward and you see that there's already been dips, for example, in some of these vaccinations, including measles, you want around 95% measles vaccination, not only to protect your child, but for all the other children around them to protect your child, that herd immunity. We're starting to drop below herd immunity in several places. So it's tough to anticipate with public health because success means you don't see anything, right?

I mean, you're trying to prove a negative when it comes to public health. But that gives you an idea at least. I mean, these are some of the most impactful preventative tools that we've seen in the world, these vaccines. Sanjay,

One thing I've thought a lot about, and I'm really curious for your perspective, is the way that trust in our public health officials, but also trust in things like vaccines and the actual science, declined in the wake of COVID and the way that the pandemic has

has contributed to more people being more skeptical of the science that these agencies are relying on, of some of the tools that they provide. How big of a problem do you think is declining trust in our public health authorities? And what can we do about it? And what does RFK's appointment say about that?

Yeah, I think it's concerning. There's no question. You know, when you look at some of the Pew data, for example, that sort of evaluates this very question, right at the beginning of the pandemic, it was sort of the highest. 87% of Americans based on that data had either a lot or a fair amount of trust in their scientific leaders in science.

It dipped through the pandemic down to 73 percent. And it's come up a little bit, 76 percent. I think what is interesting is the people who don't have trust, that's become a much more sort of entrenched group, concerned about things like conflict, concerned about some of the policies that they saw during COVID. That's what's happened. I think what is also interesting is that scientists have also increasingly been perceived as arrogant.

That was one of the things that jumped out in some of these surveys, which was, you know, that's heartbreaking as a doctor myself to hear that. This idea that people are being too didactic, they're being too authoritarian, dogmatic, whatever it may be, that is problematic as well. So I think that, you know, he's feeding into that, I think, in many, many ways. And at the same time, I watched your interview that you did with him in December, I thought was one of the best interviews on vaccines. That is a point of contention.

The idea of making America healthy again overall, I think he's going to have a lot of support behind something like that. I don't know what it means exactly, but the idea that we spend in this country $4.5 trillion on health care and we have some of the worst...

outcomes in the developed world is something that a lot of people seize onto as well. So the problem is I don't know what it translates to. Even in your interview, there was a waffling of sort of the position. I think it changes from day to day. There's been a softening of his stance on vaccines, for example, over the past few weeks. We'll see, I guess, if he can get confirmed and then what he'll do with all that.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to get at, because when he was trying to kind of gain political power, he was trying to tell voters that he didn't actually believe the things that he clearly does believe when he is in a different forum and thinks that he's dealing with different audiences. So it raises a huge question, to your point, as to what he would actually do in this kind of a role. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, so grateful to have you. Thank you. Have a wonderful weekend.

Of course, a reminder for all of our viewers, Dr. Sanjay Gupta ventures across the globe to see how the new weight loss medications are transforming lives. Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports, is Ozempic right for you? It premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. right here on CNN.

All right, still ahead here on CNN this morning, Elon Musk played a key role in helping get Trump back to the White House. Now there are reports about the world's richest man taking on even more influence. Plus, as Democrats wrestle with the fallout from last week's election, Congressman Seth Moulton joins us with his take on how his party can reconnect with voters.

We've got to do a better job, of course, of working hard to lower food prices, lower gas prices, lower housing prices. And that's something that we're going to lean into

I'm CNN's John King. Join me for the podcast All Over the Map. The election, of course, is behind us now. And in some ways, it was a stunner of an outcome. So we're going to return today to the voices of the people we've gotten to know in the last year and a half. I think a lot of people that's hurting right now, especially women. People around me were in the closet about how they were going to vote. I have so much hope. Listen to All Over the Map wherever you get your podcasts.

I will be recorded as the first cabinet nominee in the history of the republic to be rejected in the first 90 days of a presidency and perhaps be harshly judged. That right there. The last and only time a new president's nominee was rejected by a Senate vote back in 1989 when George H.W. Bush's defense secretary nominee, John Tower, was undone by reports of his excessive drinking and, quote, womanizing.

How quaint. Now, as some Republicans question whether Donald Trump's cabinet picks will be able to pass a Senate confirmation process, there's talk among the president-elect's allies of using the little-known tool of recess appointments to circumvent any opposition. -They want to avoid a recess appointment scenario. And by the way, that's in the Constitution. The president has total authority to make recess appointments right there in the Constitution. -I don't think we should be circumventing the Senate's responsibilities.

But I think it's premature to be talking about recess appointments. All options are on the table, including recess appointments. Hopefully it doesn't get to that, but we'll find out fairly quickly whether the Democrats want to play ball or not.

- All right, joining our panel is Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. To start on that recess appointment point, the Wall Street Journal actually has an opinion piece this morning, their editorial, talking about this quote unquote scheme, and they say, "Because the founders had to travel to and from the national capital by horse,

They also granted the president the power to fill any vacancies that may happen during a recess of the Senate. Obviously, this is a very different world that we live in now. Do you expect that from what you hear on Capitol Hill, what you may know about, especially this ethics report investigation into Matt Gaetz, whether this is something that's going to be used and whether in particular Gaetz can get confirmed?

What I'm hearing is he probably won't get confirmed. But I don't know, because this really comes down to a question of how loyal Republicans are to Trump.

I mean, a lot of people don't like Matt Gaetz. And the idea that our top law enforcement official in the country would be someone who's under criminal investigation. I mean, in Matt Gaetz's defense, he's been under criminal investigation. He has a house ethics probe about human trafficking, literally, sex crimes and whatnot. He's at least not a convicted felon like Donald Trump.

That's the best you can say for him. And the reality for members of Congress is that we don't like someone who is considered among the worst getting elevated to a position like this. I think the Senate wants fundamentally to retain its power. It wants to show that it's going to be a check against the administration, even against Trump. But it comes down to loyalty for Republicans to Trump. And will they be loyal enough to him? We've seen in the past that they pretty much do whatever he asks.

So another controversial pick landing yesterday in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. And because he ran for president in no small part, a number of headlines, situations that he has found himself in came to light, including a variety of run-ins with animals over the years. Let's just hear...

kind of some of the things he had to say. And these are the headlines. RFK Jr. missed dumping a dead bear in Central Park, solving a decade-old mystery. RFK says doctors found a dead worm in his brain. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sawed the head off a whale and drove it home, daughter says. RFK Jr. denies eating a dog while sidestepping sexual assault allegations in Vanity Fair article. There's a lot in that particular headline. And then here he is on tape. Let's watch. And that woman in the van in front of me hit a bear and killed it.

A young bear. So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear. And ever since that guy wrote the article about me saying I ate a dog, it hasn't been the same. Daddy would never do something like that. It was a goat. From the National Marine Fisheries Institute saying that they were investigating me.

for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago. Have you killed any whales in your lifetime? Maybe a brain worm ate that part of my memory.

Do you think any of this is going to be disqualifying for him? I mean, compared to Matt Gaetz, he looks pretty good. That's the problem. I mean, there's such a crazy cast of characters that Trump has put up. You know, when ancient Roman Caligula apparently made his horse into a console, I mean, that looks pretty tame compared to this cast of characters. And so I think, you know, just a few days ago, people were saying, oh, that Pete Hegseth, he's never going to make

Secretary of Defense. He doesn't have any experience with the bureaucracy. He has a history of politicizing the military, which is very un-American. The military officers don't want him. The DOD doesn't want him. He's not going to make it. Now he looks like a shoo-in just because how many nominees can Senate Republicans actually agree to stop?

So let me talk to you a little bit about Democrats and sort of the depth of obviously the defeats that you had. You are all back together in Washington this week. I know that you also met last week. Do you get the sense that there is an understanding among your colleagues, among your leadership of the depth of the defeats and what to do about it or not?

Not really. I think there's a lot of Democrats going around, especially in the House, justifying how we did by saying, oh, we did a little bit better than Harris. But let's put this in perspective, okay? The Republican Party has been in a civil war for the last year. The Trump faction with the traditional Republicans culminating in the House where we couldn't even have a speaker. They couldn't elect a speaker for three weeks, all right? This party is led by a convicted felon.

So Democrats should have had the easiest election in our lifetimes. We should have cleaned up from president of the United States down to local school board. Democrats should have swept this. And yet we got defeated across the board. So seriously, we lost big.

And we've got to come to grips with that if we're going to be willing to change. We cannot keep the same strategy if we want to start winning elections again. You have, of course, been in, had significant blowback from some comments you made in the New York Times. You told them that Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend rather than being brutally honest.

about the challenges Americans face. I have two little girls. I don't want to see them getting run over on a playing field by a male or a formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that. Now, the Washington Post put it this way in an editorial board that they published this yesterday. Mr. Moulton's remarks sparked an immediate backlash within his own political camp. His campaign manager quit. The state legislature accused him of scapegoating transgender youth.

A city council member in Salem called for him to resign. The Bay State governor opined that Mr. Moulton was playing politics. Even Tufts University got in on the act when the chair of the political science department reportedly called Mr. Moulton's office and told him not to contact the university to recruit interns in the future. Now, their headline is, Needed, a respectful debate on trans women in sports. Is this backlash to your comments evidence of what you were trying to say? It completely proves my point.

I mean, I was using this as one of many examples where the Democratic Party has lost touch with the American people.

But the problem is that we're so insistent on policing our words and even refusing to engage in debates about contentious issues that we're just losing on them. I mean, it turns out in an exit poll that this one particular issue was the number one reason that swing voters chose Trump. And yet Kamala didn't have an answer. The vice president didn't even respond to these vicious attacks from the Republicans against trans people.

We're the party that wants to protect these folks. We're the party that's going to stand up for minorities all across America when they come under assault from the Republicans. And yet we can't even engage in a debate about the policies that we can win on, that we can actually win over the American people to support our position, not only to start winning elections again and get power back in Washington, which is really critical if we want to support and protect minorities, but even just to win this debate.

Let's open this up. Matt Gorman, I wanted to, the congressman's point about the trans issue being at the top of the list. Clearly, that message that the Trump team put so much money behind, Kamala's for they, them, Donald Trump is for you, seems to have broken through. It did. I mean, look, in an era where ads really don't break through as much anymore. This isn't the 80s or the 90s where that would break through in a real way. That one did, and I think it would play on Sundays more.

targeted towards men, especially men of color, right? African-American men, Latino men, during football games, especially. That was when I would see it all the time. And, you know, one of the things, it was, I think, broader than that pure policy. And again, it goes to what the congressman says. It was about culture, right? It was about priorities. It was not really just about trans. It was, as you said, what are the priorities here for Kamala versus Trump? This felt like a culture election. I said that to my team the morning after

I said, this is a cultural election. There are some issues where we really do just have better policies, like on the economy. Our policies will bring down inflation. Trump, with his tax cuts for billionaires and his massive tariffs, will raise inflation. And yet, American voters trust Republicans more on the economy. So we've got to understand why do American voters just fundamentally not trust us? I think it's because we're in the business of preaching as opposed to listening.

We're a party that's very arrogant. If you don't agree with us 100% with our dogmatic views on certain issues, then you're not only wrong, you're a bad person. That's the attitude that I think a lot of American voters are hearing from Democrats, or that's what they perceive. We've got to change that. Chuck Schumer, actually, according to Axios,

They reported this. Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer heard a consistent urgent alarm this week from Democrats who felt ambushed by GOP attacks on transgender people participating in women's sports. Axios has learned in two private post-mortem meetings convened by Schumer, Democrats said the party was caught flat-footed by the attacks, even as many campaigns aired ads pushing back.

I mean, it is, it does seem as though this is something that has legs. Well, and this is, like, Democrats knew that this ad was having an effect. It was showing up in their testing. They were seeing that these Trump ads, which, by the way, were not about trans athletes. They were about...

And so that's an even more, I would suspect, issue on which people overwhelmingly agree that this shouldn't be a high priority of the government or something. But I think that's a very important issue.

that taxpayer funds are spent on. And yet, you know, there was a feeling that it was too dangerous even to respond, even to take a position, even to try to rebut what Kamala Harris was on tape saying in this interview from 2019. And so I think it does prove the congressman's point. It does prove that, and voters see that. They see that this is a party that is so afraid of certain small groups of activists

that they aren't willing to speak to the majority of the American people. Right, and that's the point. It's a danger when you say it was too dangerous to respond. That's not coming from Republicans. The danger is coming from ourselves.

It's this fratricide. I mean, it's that we're going to shoot our own if we even bring this issue up for debate. Now, I have to say, I do think our leadership gets this down. You heard the acknowledgment from Schumer. I've had great conversations with Hakeem Jeffries, who's our leader in the House. He said, no, we have to engage in these conversations. You're right. We've got to figure it out. And I've had some great conversations with LGBTQ advocates,

who really recognize that this is a problem and we need to win on this issue, not ignore it, not dismiss it, not refuse to respond. We can win on this just like we did on gay marriage. I mean, we can move this forward. We can settle it in a reasonable way that American voters respect. And then the Republicans won't have an effective attack. And most importantly, we'll be able to protect these people because the Republicans won't be able to just fundamentally take away their rights.

You want to jump in? No, I mean, I think that's an interesting point. And the other part I would say is, I guess my question is, is that a matter of changing your position, changing your message on it? Because we have these issues on the right too, right? We've talked ad nauseum about how abortion has kind of hurt us electorally and things like that. And, you know, some of the folks are like, well, you know, is it a matter of six weeks versus 15 weeks or whatever? Or is it a matter of simply talking more about women and families? I guess I'm curious, kind of, if you were kind of making a suggestion, is it

A position change, messaging change, all the above? How do you kind of see that? I mean, look, on this particular issue, I'm not an expert. I don't know. All I was trying to do is say, let's have the debate and figure out if we need to change our policy. I think there are some places where our policies feel out of touch with the American public. But I think there are other places, like I mentioned the economy, where we do actually have good policies that would help the American people, that would help the working class.

but we just can't connect on a cultural level to say you should trust us. - And I think that's the power of that ad from the Super Bowl. Matt, you and I have talked about this. I think it's the Willie Horton of 2024, and Willie Horton, the ad in the, what was it, '88 election about Michael Dukakis is soft on crime and so on. - It's personal to us in Massachusetts. - But why it's so relevant to the point you're making, Congressman, is that it distracted from far higher priority issues

and labeled one party as being in the tank or in bed with an issue, forgive the metaphor, but

It labeled a party and was quite effective for a generation on a vulnerability that that party had. And I think it's sort of the same thing here. Even if it was rooted in something sinister, it still was immensely successful. All right. Well, we unfortunately have to leave it there. This has been a great conversation, Congressman. I really appreciate you participating with us. All right. Thanks to all of our panel for joining us. Thanks to you for being with us as well. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

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