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Polls on Trump and the Epstein Saga; Marc Caputo is Interviewed about the Epstein Emails; Chris Gallant is Interviewed about Aviation; Dr. Philip Huang is Interviewed about Whooping Cough; Judge Orders Release of Hundreds Arrested in Illinois. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired November 13, 2025 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:31:07]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, the pressure is mounting on President Trump and the Justice Department to release all of the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, after a House committee made public. 20,000 more pages of documents. The House is now set to vote on the matter next week.

And among those demanding full transparency, Epstein's survivors. Here is one of those survivors who talked to Erin Burnett.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ STEIN, JEFFREY Epstein SURVIVOR: We need the government to release everything that's in these files. Of course, with the appropriate redactions to protect the privacy of the survivors. But we really need this information to be out there so these crimes can be investigated.

I think it's really upsetting to us that this is so politicized when it's not a political issue. This was a crime, and it's a crime of sex trafficking. And we really just want to see justice for the crime that happened to us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Survivor Liz Stein there just asking for justice.

CNN's Harry Enten is here with us.

Now, look, when you talk to -- you hear from the victims, it is very clear what they want. They've made that clear again and again. What does the American public think about how Donald Trump has been handling the Epstein files, compared to all the other issues that he brought up during the campaign?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN CHIEF DATA ANALYST: Yes, you know, Donald Trump is underwater on basically every single issue he ran on in 2024. But the Epstein files, the Epstein case, are especially dreadful for him.

What are we talking about here? Let's take a look at Trump's net approval rating on the issue. Look, they're all in red. They're all in the negative territory. But on immigration, you know, he's five points underwater, foreign policy, eight points, trade and tariffs, he's 17 points, the economy, 18 points. But look at the Epstein case. He is 39 points below water on the Epstein case. His net approval is 39 points in the negative. My goodness gracious. What Donald Trump has been selling on the Epstein files, the Epstein case, the American people, simply put, have not been buying at all, Sara Sidner.

SIDNER: All right. So, is there any sign that things have gotten better since there have been some things that have been released?

ENTEN: Yes, OK, there have been --

SIDNER: Although released by Democrats.

ENTEN: There have been some things that have been released. Donald Trump has been trying to make some sort of case saying that, you know, the folks don't necessarily care about it. But take a look here, approve of the Trump admin on the Epstein case. In early July, right, when you had the DOJ droppings, right, it was 17 percent. Look at where we were by late September, the latest poll I could find it, 20 percent. You know, we often talk about Donald Trump having this floor, right, of about 40 percent. On this particular issue, he is less than half the level of the supposed floor. He is -- there's just nobody. There is just nobody in the electorate who is buying this. They do not like the way that the Trump administration has been handling this case one iota.

SIDNER: Republicans have generally said they like what Donald Trump is doing, generally speaking. How do they feel about the Epstein case?

ENTEN: OK, so you see, you know, approve of Trump on the Epstein case. This is overall, right. And you see, 17 percent. You say 20 percent. That is way below the 40 percent floor that Donald Trump supposedly has. How does that possibly happen? It's because of Republicans. Because look at this number.

OK, Republicans who approve of Trump's job as president, 87 percent. That is basically in line with the long-term average, 85, 90, 95 percent. But look at the Trump admin's job on the Epstein case, just 45 percent of Republicans, less than half of Republicans are even buying what the administration is telling.

Look, it's -- we're not necessarily sure whether or not this case has moved the ball on Trump's overall approval rating yet. But I can tell you that the more that this case is in the news, the worse it is for Donald Trump, because, simply put, it is his worst issue by far.

SIDNER: We could be seeing a vote on this next week. This case is not going away anytime soon.

ENTEN: It is -- it is not going away anytime soon. And that is bad news politically for Donald John Trump.

SIDNER: All right, thank you so much, Harry Enten.

And now joining us is John Berman hopefully.

[08:35:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

ENTEN: Oh, (INAUDIBLE). There he is. He's over there.

BERMAN: I am so pleased to be with you today, Sara Sidner.

SIDNER: So good to have you here, John.

BERMAN: Thank you very much.

With us now also is senior politics reporter for "Axios," Marc Caputo.

Marc, I've been reading you -- well, I've been reading you for years. But overnight your story on what's been happening in the White House really over the last 24 hours plus. Not every story is a process story. But, boy, the process here is fascinating because of how the White House is handling this. Why are they doing what they're doing?

MARC CAPUTO, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, "AXIOS": We can only speculate. And the speculation that circulates in Trump's orbit, whether it's some people around the White House, longtime advisers, confidants, is that Trump's name, in some way, form or fashion is in the Epstein files. And that really bothers him, because he knows that if you have Trump and Epstein in a file, it's going to be a headline and it's going to dominate news coverage, social media discussion, be all over television.

Just consider what's happened here. There wasn't a smoking gun in this tranche of emails that was released, yet it just totally dominated everything. So, imagine if there is an investigative file, a criminal investigative file, or files where Trump's name is mentioned in some form or fashion, again, I don't know what that form or fashion is, it would be what we're seeing now just on steroids.

BERMAN: And what exactly have they been doing? There's the stuff that CNN has reported on. We know about a Situation Room meeting with Lauren Boebert. But what else is happening behind the scenes?

CAPUTO: Well, from what we understand, they've made a number of calls, including the president had played phone tag at one point with Nancy Mace, the South Carolina representative, and he doesn't want this, I'm sorry to use the phrase, discharge petition. Most people don't know what it is. But he doesn't want this measure backed by Republicans to go to the floor. But it increasingly looks like that's going to fail, and there is going to be a full vote on it.

Ultimately, Trump had decided in July that despite his campaign trail promise, despite the comments of his advisers, now J.D. Vance, or better said, now Vice President J.D.. Vance, Pam Bondi, now the attorney general, Kash Patel, now the FBI director, on the campaign trail they were saying, oh, the Epstein files are going to be released. July rolls around in 2025, Trump says, nope. And once that decision was made, it just sort of created this snowball effect. And Trump is living with it, or I guess maybe a better phrase is karma. This is political karma, the law of action or reaction. You promise you're going to do something, then you reverse yourself and then it already becomes this massive political issue that just becomes very difficult to escape.

BERMAN: And what's the mood inside the White House over this? And how do -- and you've done reporting on this, how do insiders feel about what would happen if they approached the president on different ways of managing this?

CAPUTO: Well, the people I've spoken to who talk to the president say, look, we don't talk about this with him because he's just going to get angry and lose his temper. And as a result, that's how you're seeing or that's why you're seeing him acting this way.

The White House is bothered by this release of emails from the Democrats because it was released in a strategic way, a political way, to coincide with the ending of the shutdown. Also, the sort of most, I don't know, eyebrow-raising email, the one from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell, that the Democrats released, they purposely redacted the name of the victim. And from what we understand, that victim, Virginia Giuffre, was a person who was not a victim of Donald Trump. And in addition to that, had testified, had written, had spoken, had publicly said that Donald Trump didn't sexually assault her. She didn't know of Donald Trump sexually assaulting anyone. And that she had good relations with Donald Trump, friendly and, you know, a legal, warm relations with him. And the fact that the Democrats had redacted that really, really bothers the White House because the Democrats essentially sort of got one over on them, and they spent an entire day on defense. And this is a White House that likes to drive the narrative, not have the narrative driven against them.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAPUTO: But, obviously, they were in a situation where they were just on that defensive crouch on a back foot.

BERMAN: You know, it is interesting with the discharge petition, which does seem like it will go -- and I use the words too, but this vote on the House floor, where the full House will vote on calling for the full release from the Justice Department of the so-called Epstein files. But that doesn't mean they'll be released, because then the Senate has to vote on it, and the president would have to sign it into law there.

So, the president can stop this. The question is, why is he fighting so hard? Is it clear to you why he's fighting so hard there for, and why he's used so much capital and had Speaker Mike Johnson use so much capital to keep this vote from happening?

CAPUTO: Well, this is how Donald Trump is. If he doesn't want something, he fights tooth and nail to make it not happen. And if he wants something, he does that as well to make it happen. Here he doesn't want it to happen, and he's just going to fight tooth and nail. And it doesn't matter how many sort of rakes he's going to step on in the process in doing it, he fights. Sometimes the way he fights hurts him.

[08:40:08]

You saw, for instance, and I referenced in the piece in "Axios" today, in 2017, in the Russia investigation, if Donald Trump had sort of let FBI Director James Comey go and just, you know, do some typical law enforcement work, it probably would have just blown over. But instead, Donald Trump fired James Comey, and that triggered the Russia investigation.

Then there was Covid and the way he handled Covid. He got a lot of criticism for it. And so he called that a hoax. And people didn't understand, well, what's he actually calling a hoax? The other day, on Sunday, Donald Trump was asked about the affordability crisis on Fox News in a friendly interview, and he called the affordability crisis a con job.

So, Donald Trump sort of reacts very negatively to criticisms and issues that reflect badly on him, or that his critics say reflect badly on him. And he doesn't always react in a way that helps him. Sometimes he doubles down or he gets so heavy handed that it winds up making the story bigger and making the story more negative for him. And I think that's what you're seeing here. Had he gone along with his campaign trail promise and released the Epstein files, or come up with a process to release them slowly in some sort of deliberative process, we probably wouldn't be talking about this right now. But that's not the situation that Donald Trump finds himself in, because this is sort of a debacle of his own making.

BERMAN: As I said, every story is not a process story, but this one does include some of that, to be sure.

Marc Caputo, from "Axios," always a pleasure to read your work and have you on. Thank you.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, travelers are hoping to get some relief ahead of Thanksgiving now that the shutdown is finally over. This morning, nearly 1,000 flights, though, are canceled, many of them due to the FAA's mandated cuts to keep the airspace safe, they say. Major airlines say they are working to return to normal operations. This as air traffic controllers and other government workers wait to see their paychecks finally.

Earlier this week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said controllers would get 70 percent of their back pay within 24 to 48 hours after the end of the shutdown.

Joining us now is former air traffic controller Chris Gallant, who is also running to represent New York in Congress.

Chris, let me ask you this. When you are looking at this as a -- as a former controller, how long do you think it might take for things to get back to normal? We are already seeing bigger flight delays at this hour than we were yesterday. CHRIS GALLANT, FORMER AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Good morning, Sara.

Thanks for having me on.

Yes, it's going to take a long time. The problem is, is that the cascading effect that has occurred during the government shutdown is going to just kind of build on top of itself.

The other thing that Sean Duffy was talking about was the amount of air traffic controllers that are retiring. You -- where, you know, he was saying, there's only about four or five air traffic controllers a day. Now you're having 15 to 20 per day that are retiring. That's a significant change. The staffing crisis that affected air traffic, I mean, since I was in -- I got in in 2014 into the FAA, and the staffing crisis then was significant.

The staffing crisis has never gotten better. And the government shutdown, every time it shuts down, it really affects staffing because you're pausing training, you're pausing people to go through the training, through the FAA, and that reduces the ability to plus up those controllers.

And the burnout is really high as well. The burnout of air traffic controllers is very significant. And it's going to be a struggle. So, in order to fix those things, we just need to continue to focus on making sure that we get continuous funding for the FAA.

SIDNER: Let me ask you about something, because you talk about burnout. You talk about the frustrations that they experience, not only in their regular jobs on a daily basis, but now because of the shutdown.

President Trump threatened to dock air traffic controllers who took time off during the shutdown, saying in part, "for those that did nothing but complain and took time off, even though everyone knew they would be paid in full shortly into the future, I am not happy with you."

What is your reaction to that? Not only as a union leader, but as a former air traffic controller.

GALLANT: I mean, it's completely unfair to do that to controllers. Again, they are so burnt out already. And then you add the stress of not getting a paycheck where you have to worry about, how are you putting food on the table, how are you about to take care of your children, how are you going to just even put gas in your car to get to work? If you're not receiving money, it's just impossible. Some of these -- some of these controllers live paycheck to paycheck. So, the stress of the job -- I mean, to explain how stressful the job is. I mean, you can walk upstairs in the tower cab that you work for that hour and you can cut the tension upstairs with a knife, especially on bad weather days, during the summer, peak traffic. It's just really all around stressful.

And then on those breaks, when they go downstairs to try and decompress, and you are not able to do that because your conversations have now shifted to those questions, how am I going to pay for my child care, then it really causes burnout essentially overall.

[08:45:06]

And it's just unfair to turn around and blame air traffic controllers and kind of just utilize them as a -- as a hitting point. It's just -- it's just not fair.

SIDNER: I want to ask you this partly because you're running for Congress. Do you think it was the right thing to do from the FAA to start demanding that flights be canceled, first at 6 percent, they were going to go all the way up to 10 percent, but they've held it at 6 percent, or is there already something in place that triggers something in different airports if there simply aren't enough air traffic controllers to deal with the number of flights coming and going?

GALLANT: Look, I actually know both sides of the mic. I fly Black Hawk helicopters in the Army National Guard still through the New York airspace, which is a very dense airspace. I worked the JFK tower. So, I understand quite a bit kind of how the tower, you know, how that traffic flow kind of functions. And the biggest thing is that while they do have systems in place in order to reduce traffic flow, this is a reaction to making sure that those things are covered and safety is always a -- is a paramount thing.

NATCA, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and the FAA, their main priority is always safety. So, if they need to reduce or mandate that these airlines actually reduce the traffic that they have, I think it's actually pretty -- a good thing. Yes, it's going to be really bad for the airlines because now they're actually losing the number of flights that they have, and they are actually making -- taking a loss on some of these things as well. But safety always has to be a number one priority in my opinion.

SIDNER: All right, Chris Gallant, thank you so much for joining us here this morning. We do appreciate it.

Still ahead, a judge orders the release of hundreds of people arrested during the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Illinois. Why, coming up.

Plus, a teen takes a shovel to a police car. You know this didn't end well.

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[08:52:11]

SIDNER: New this morning, cases of whooping cough have skyrocketed in Texas compared to last year. The Texas health department notes the state has reported more than 3,500 cases this year. That is four times the number of cases compared to the same time last year. Officials say this is the second straight year that Texas has experienced year over year increases in whooping cough cases.

Joining me now is Dr. Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services.

Thank you for being with us this morning.

First and foremost, what is causing the surge in whooping cough?

DR. PHILIP HUANG, MD, MPH, DIRECTOR, DALLAS COUNTY HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Well, you know, we definitely have been seeing declines in some of our vaccination rates. In Dallas County, from the prior year, we were about 94 percent coverage for kindergartners for the Pertussis vaccine. And then the latest 2025 numbers brought us down under 90 percent, about 89 percent. And that's a significant drop.

And, you know, we -- I think during Covid there was a lot of distancing, people protecting themselves, less transmission, but definitely since Covid we've seen these similar increases.

SIDNER: Wow. How dangerous and contagious is whooping cough?

HUANG: So, whooping cough is very contagious and it's dangerous, especially for infants and young children. And so it's -- you know, the vaccine is very effective at preventing it, but, you know, people need to stay up to date on that vaccine schedule because there is some waning immunity with the vaccine. And so you need to stay up to date on the pertussis vaccine.

SIDNER: You mentioned the vaccine and that there has been a reluctance to vaccinate children as they're going to -- into -- whether it be into school or whether it be, you know, into -- to some sort of care. What is your message to families who have decided not to immunize their kids?

HUANG: Well, again, as we've talked about, you know, whooping cough is a very serious illness. I think about one-third of kids under one year of age who get whooping cough have to be hospitalized. And we have a very safe and effective vaccine, but it needs to be kept on schedule and administered on schedule for that protection.

The other group also is pregnant women, between 27 weeks and 36 weeks, should get the vaccine to provide those protective antibodies for the newborn during those first two months, also before the baby can get the vaccine.

SIDNER: We're seeing some of the symptoms. Can you just kind of go over what parents, in particular, need to watch out for, teachers as well, need to watch out for?

HUANG: Sure. You know, it usually starts out with like cold symptoms.

[08:55:01]

And then one to two weeks later you get these fits of coughing. And, you know, as someone's trying to catch their breath, and that's where you get that characteristic whooping sound.

Now, in infants, it doesn't necessarily have that coughing, but can be, you know, sort of vomiting, sort of turning blue, stops breathing, those sort of symptoms. But, you know, these are -- can be, again, very serious in infants and young children. And to get that vaccine to provide that protection.

Another group, just to mention, to protect is for adults that might be in contact with newborns. You know, so, like, grandparents, you know, get the vaccine to provide that sort of cocooning effect so that newborns and infants are protected also.

SIDNER: Dr. Philip Huang, important information, particularly for parents this morning. Thank you so much. I do appreciate it.

John.

BERMAN: New this morning, a federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to release hundreds of people arrested by federal agents in Illinois. Immigration and civil rights attorneys say more than 3,000 people were arrested in the Chicago area between June and October as part of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Let's get right to CNN's Whitney Wild.

What's the latest on this, Whitney?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: John, this is a significant development. It deals a major blow to the administration's efforts to find and take into custody as many undocumented people as possible. What a federal judge in Chicago has decided is that 13 people need to be released from custody by tomorrow. Another more than 600 need to be released by a week from Friday, as they are -- as their cases are under review. They're supposed to be released in what's called an alternative to detention. So that's basically being released on bond.

This is a big development, but I think it's important to note that this is limited to Chicago, because this is a reaction to actually a consent decree that was issued in 2022. This case goes as far back as 2018. In 2022 there was a consent decree that basically said they weren't supposed to -- that DHS and DOJ wasn't supposed to keep these undocumented people in custody if they didn't have a warrant and they didn't pose a risk. And so, the plaintiff's attorneys had alleged that these actions from DHS over the last several months were a clear violation of this consent decree. A judge agreed.

Here's more from the lead attorney, Mark Flemming.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK FLEMMING, ATTORNEY, NATIONAL IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CENTER: They are held all over the country. And that's where we -- the logistics of when we -- at the end, my colleague was asking, like, how is this bond? How are they going to be notified? The logistics of where these people are is going to be a piece we really need to work through with the government, because we want the -- this to be realized.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) across the country?

FLEMMING: At this point, they are -- they are being held across the country, correct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILD: And as you heard, John, now the real work begins to try to find these people, make sure they understand what their rights are, make sure that they are actually released from custody. So, there is a long road ahead.

I asked the ACLU and the other lead attorneys, what is the implication all across the country, because this is a reaction to a consent decree and not, say, a more sweeping order like a Supreme Court case? And they said there are similar cases all across the country. Their expectation is that judges will act similarly to the federal judge here in Chicago.

John.

BERMAN: So, the battle continues inside the courtroom, on the streets as well.

Whitney Wild, thank you so much.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, on our radar this morning, bear attacks are becoming so prevalent in Japan there is now a warning from the U.S. State Department warning Americans in the northern part of Japan to watch out for bears. Just yesterday, an airport in Japan was forced to suspend operations after a bear was spotted on the runway there. Since April, at least 13 people have been killed by bears in Japan, and more than 100 people injured.

Now, a Florida teenager facing felony charges after police say she threatened police officers with a shovel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you kidding me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put the shovel down. Put the shovel down. Put the shovel down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put it down. Get on the ground.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Wow. In the video, see the 15-year-old repeatedly hitting the officer's vehicles with that shovel. Police say they were called to the girl's home because of a disturbance.

All right, a bizarre incident in Pennsylvania leaving a 53-year-old man with a gunshot wound. And the suspect is his own dog. Police say the man told them he was cleaning his shotgun when the dog jumped on the bed where the gun was, causing that gun to go off. The man was struck in the lower back. The incident under investigation. And Audi is unveiling the concept version of its Formula One race car in Munich. It's the first time the German automaker will take part in the race. While they did not reveal technical details, it sure does look pretty cool.

[09:00:00]

Audi's actual Formula One race car will be unveiled in January. A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.