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Josh Hawley Says I'm Fine With Wealthy Paying Higher Taxes, but It is Wrong to Cut Health Care for the Working Poor; KFF Poll Shows 62 Percent Support Adding Work Requirements for Medicaid; New Book "Original Sin" Details Biden's Declining Health Before 2024 Election. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired May 14, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:32:42]
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT AND CO-ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': Welcome back to "Inside Politics." You just heard from Senator Josh Hawley reacting to the House GOP's plans to push forward on the Trump agenda, raising concerns about cuts to Medicaid. Also, saying he supports higher taxes on wealthy taxpayers and suggesting, saying very bluntly that the bill of the House GOP is pushing that Speaker Mike Johnson wants to pass out of his House, frankly, will not become law. My panel is back. What do you make of Hawley's statements here?
HANS NICHOLS, CO-AUTHOR, AXIOS HILL LEADERS: He's a no right now.
RAJU: He's a no.
NICHOLS: They've got some work to do.
RAJU: And what does it say about like the state of the GOP or how he views the GOP, the direction the GOP should go?
NICHOLS: Well, this is why the -- this one big beautiful bill is going to get more complicated the closer we get to a potential finish line. Because there are going to be more people like Hawley, like Ron John that's just in the Senate that are going to come in and have their sort of specific concerns about it. Now, he wants more spending for Medicaid. He was very clear though, it was like Medicaid benefits, right? And it's always that benefit modifier which is --
RAJU: What's a benefit?
NICHOLS: What's a benefit? But he's also very concerned about less spending.
RAJU: Yeah.
NICHOLS: And what it would do to rural hospitals, right? So that seems like he's pretty clear that he wants the overall top-line number of cuts to be much lower. I think it's 615 in the bill right now.
But then, you've got Ron John on the right, who's a no for different reasons.
RAJU: Yes.
NICHOLS: And he --
RAJU: He wants deeper cuts. So folks on the right want deeper cuts.
NICHOLS: He wants it way deeper. And so, and these are just the two Republican Senators. Again, this is -- again, I got to be your assignment editor. This is your task tomorrow, is to talk to all the GOP Senators that have real problems with the current bill. And I suspect the number is going to grow.
Now, they can be walked back onto that bill. I mean, we spent the first half of the show talking about President Trump. What's going to happen when President Trump's going to get back, maybe happening right now. He's going to start making calls to Senators and lawmakers and be the chief whip that he is, and try to get this through. But they've got a long way to go.
RAJU: I mean, it's interesting because the Medicaid, he's speaking to one wing of the Republican Party that is concerned about these impacts to Medicaid. And clearly, the leadership is hearing this as well. Just look at some of the polls out there. There are Medicaid work requirements for some beneficiaries between a certain age, certain number of hours they must work under this Republican bill.
62 percent of Americans do support the idea of work requirements. But when you dig a little deeper on the view of Medicaid at large, Republican voters themselves have an overwhelmingly positive view of Medicaid, 64 percent.
[12:35:00]
And then, you can look at independents , of course, who determine elections, 81 percent of independents support Medicaid, which explains to you why there are some real concerns among certain Republicans. You can't go too far on Medicaid.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. These are their voters. And you've heard from Steve Bannon, he's been talking about this for weeks and months, this idea that MAGA is on Medicaid, and Josh Hawley obviously talked about that. I think there's something like a million folks in Missouri on Medicaid. They're in a Medicaid expansion state. And so, this is touching a real third rail (ph) for the party.
It also is getting that sort of an identity crisis with the party, right? Are they sort of the party of the rich and sort of Chamber of Commerce Republicans, or are they more of this working-class party? And Donald Trump wants to make them more of a working-class party. That's why he has talked about raising taxes on the rich. Something that Hawley also talked about. There could be some concerns in the cohort, the GOP cohort about that.
So yeah, I mean, this is a real interesting place that Republicans find themselves in. And listen, Democrats want them to be there. They want the Republicans to cut Medicaid or to say they're going to cut Medicaid because it's a good talking point for them.
(CROSSTALK)
RAJU: And the other thing I asked him, I said, are you concerned about the blowback you can get politically? He said, if this becomes law, he said, this is not going to become law because Trump won't sign it. But Trump is saying Republicans need to fall in line behind this bill.
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And I think this goes to your point as to what Trump is going to do behind the scenes. Right? We obviously have him out here saying that he is not going to cut Medicaid. But what he's actually going do to push this through. This bill is incredibly important to the White House. Like, this is -- when I talk to any --
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RAJU: This is the whole thing.
HOLMES: -- of the allies, this is the whole thing. I mean, they are trying to reshape the budget. This is what they believe is going to help prepare his legacy to move forward. I mean, this is incredibly important to him.
RAJU: Yeah.
HOLMES: So, what lengths is he going to go to, to push these people?
RAJU: Yeah.
HOLMES: In the right direction.
RAJU: It's a great -- it's a great thing, we'll have to watch. We'll learn in the next week or so. Coming up, just a bad night. Democrats' public reaction to Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance. Well, that's not aging so well. You'll hear how they're responding today to new details of the former president's decline through the 2024 campaign.
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[12:41:42]
RAJU: CNN's Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios forthcoming book, " Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." Well, that is driving new questions about Biden's mental acuity in the final years of his presidency and if his team hid it from the public. Details like how the then president appeared to not recognize actor George Clooney at a high- profile fundraiser, and now, Democrats are having to answer for it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: You said in June of last year, in my meetings with President Biden, I found him to be in command and impressive and wielding influence to make progress on key priorities. But in that same month, Biden apparently did not even recognize George Clooney at a fundraiser. Were you being straight with the American public?
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D) MINORITY LEADER: Well, look, we're just looking forward.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would the party have been better off if he had just not run for re-election?
PETE BUTTIGIEG, (D) FORMER TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Maybe, and you know, right now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think most people would agree that that's the case.
GOV. JB PRITZKER, (D-IL): Look, all this stuff about his health or, you know, commentary that people are making in books, frankly, that's very backward looking.
RAJU: Was he capable to run again?
REP. JIM CLYBURN, (D-SC): I have no idea. OK? I don't have a medical degree.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: I don't have a medical degree. That was what Jim Clyburn said. How bad is this going to be for Democrats? Well, are they -- well, could they pay politically for the way they handled Joe Biden?
HENDERSON: You know, I think it's mostly bad for Joe Biden, right? And you saw him, he's sort of doing a preemptive tour around this. I think he was on "The View" a couple of days ago last week, I think. And, you know, it gets at his legacy. And I think the original sin that the book is talking about, which I haven't read, I can't wait to read it, is the decision to run, right? His -- in 2020, his posture seemed to be that he was going to be a one-term president and he was going to pass the baton to a younger person, possibly Kamala Harris, possibly there would be some sort of primary.
And then, as soon as he got into the office, that seemed to -- that calculation seemed to change. And here we are, we find ourselves now with a President Trump, somebody he thought he could beat. He didn't think Kamala Harris could beat her. So, I think his legacy is going to continue to take a hit around this as more revelations come out.
RAJU: And the knives are just out. I mean, David Plouffe, the Senior Adviser to the Kamala Harris Campaign. Of course, he worked for the Obama campaign as well. He said, "We got so screwed by Biden as a party, he totally effed us."
NICHOLS: Yeah. Strong quote, good quote. I reported a lot of these stories, not all of them, but like Alex and I were partners at Axios, so I have probably more insight of this book than others here. Here's what I'd say on the knives out, is that of the core -- what they refer to the book as the politburo, the sort of core five Biden advisers. None of them have turned on Biden yet, and I don't know if that happens in their memoirs. I don't know if that happens in the next book.
But that to me would be a very -- I mean, they obviously have the goods (ph) in the book, but that'll be very interesting if and when any of those -- I'm talking about Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Jeff Zients, if any of them, Ron Klain, if any of them, Klain has come the closest.
But if any of them really turn on the president they served and say, as a matter of fact, it was clear to us at this certain time that he didn't have the cognitive ability to do that. And they haven't done that yet. So to me, that's when the knives really come out.
RAJU: But yeah, it's going to be a massive fight.
NICHOLS: It doesn't really matter if Joe Biden, sorry, skips it.
[12:45:00]
Chuck Schumer can have lied (ph) to one of your questions, at the next the Democratic presidential debate in the primary.
RAJU: Yeah.
NICHOLS: This will be one of the first or second of questions like, was Joe Biden competent and you said this then, what do he say now?
RAJU: And that's really the question. How do these --
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HENDERSON: It seems unlikely (inaudible).
NICHOLS: You don't think -- you don't think this -- you don't think Pete Buttigieg -- you don't think Pete Buttigieg will have to be called into account that he defended and then --
HENDERSON: I think throw Biden under the bus and it'll be no problem. I mean, the thing about it is, this idea that there's a cover-up. Americans were pretty clear that they didn't want Joe Biden to be president. They --
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NICHOLS: But people like Pete Buttigieg were vouching for his mental ability. And if he runs for office again, it is an absolutely fair question.
(CROSSTALK)
HOLMES: We talk about Democrats as a whole. I don't know that it's necessarily the people who are always going to vote Democrat, the far left.
NICHOLS: Sure.
HOLMES: The people who are not going to vote for Donald Trump under any circumstances or Republicans. But I do wonder if this hurts the kind of squishy group in the middle who looks at the party and they're looking for answers, and they look at their politicians and they say, they lied and covered this up. And then that's how we got this president.
RAJU: Yeah.
HOLMES: Or even to another extent, the idea that like Donald Trump was saying this and you kept saying he was lying and it wasn't true. And now, all of a sudden --
NICHOLS: Yeah.
HOLMES: -- we're learning that it was true.
RAJU: I mean, can you believe what your politicians are saying? That's going to be the big question. And we talk about the 2028 question, how these candidates -- you know, they're going to have to deal with the question no matter what, whether it's in the first debate, whether when they're in South Carolina or in Iowa or wherever else, while their primary campaign is taking shape. What did you know? What did you say? How come you said this? And what are you going to do now about the fact that, you know, with all these questions percolating about Joe Biden.
This is like Jon Favreau, he's of course a liberal podcaster who worked in -- with Obama. He said in "Pod Save America", he said this on Friday.
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JON FAVREAU, HOST OF POD SAVE AMERICA: The answer is, he shouldn't have run for a second term. And when he did run for a second term, he should have stepped down much earlier, after the debate. And his close advisers shouldn't have told him to run again and they shouldn't have told him he was going to win. And like every -- I think that every Democratic politician, particularly those who want to lead the party and want to run in 2028, have to just rip the [expletive] bandaid off.
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RAJU: He's just saying, rip the bandaid off.
HENDERSON: Yeah.
RAJU: Just say it now. Get it done with -- get it done in the off year.
HENDERSON: I don't think individual voters in 2028 are going to be making their decision about who to vote for in a primary based on what they did, you know, four years prior. I mean, that's really not how voters (inaudible).
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RAJU: But they need to get the right answer. HENDERSON: This sounds like a good answer.
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RAJU: These candidates (inaudible) figure out how to respond.
HENDERSON: He shouldn't have run. He was too old. Most voters thought that, that seems like a fairly easy answer.
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RAJU: The right answer what Chuck Schumer said to me yesterday, look, we're just looking forward.
HENDERSON: Probably not. I mean, I think it's (inaudible).
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NICHOLS: Well, look, the irony is that, as that Chuck Schumer behind the scenes was probably the Democrat that was most intense and probably effective in getting Biden to make the decision he ultimately did. Even before the debate, Chuck Schumer, we reported, was talking about, well, you know, maybe if we have an early debate, he has a bad night, we can swap someone out. Like Chuck Schumer was never firmly in Joe Biden's camp.
RAJU: Despite what he was saying publicly.
NICHOLS: Yes, absolutely. He's like, I'm with Joe.
RAJU: Yeah.
NICHOLS: But like, you know, it was -- it was pretty -- I mean, you know, and this is in a Carl Holst piece where he broke it all down, when he went out there, like it's very clear that Chuck Schumer had deep concerns. Here's my broader point on what the -- and I don't say this respectfully, but 2028, Democrats are going to want someone who's a fighter, they're going to want someone who's competent and they're going to want to have someone that's going to be able to go up against whoever the Republicans put forward and be able to answer all these questions.
And I just don't think there's going to be collective amnesia in the party over what happened in 2024. I think, they're so burned and you talk to them privately, they're so scarred by the Trump presidency, they're not going to want to make the same mistake and they're going to kick the tires very closely.
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HENDERSON: I didn't suggest that -- I didn't suggest there's going to be collective amnesia. I said --
NICHOLS: Well, you seem to say it didn't matter.
HENDERSON: No, no, no. I'm saying to voters in 2028, you will not find a single voter who is going to decide who they're going to vote for in a primary based on what they did about Biden. It makes no sense.
NICHOLS: I'll take -- I'll take your primary point, but if you've been to an Iowa Caucus, have you talked to the level -- the level of intensity --
HENDERSON: But does Iowa --
NICHOLS: The level of intensity the Democratic voters are going to have, they're very upset.
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HENDERSON: But does Iowa determine, I mean, there are other states. There are -- there are southern states. Like, it's just -- this isn't inside the beltway conversation. In many ways, people are going to be trying to figure out who is going to be the best president, and it's not going to be what they did in 2024 vis-a-vis Joe Biden. It just doesn't make any sense.
RAJU: Well, I guarantee you this debate, it's not done right now. They're going to go to the Green Room and they're going to take (inaudible).
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NICHOLS: Yeah, we're going to do (inaudible).
(LAUGH)
RAJU: I don't think it'll be settled, but it's definitely a good one to have. All right, thanks. (Inaudible) great discussion. And CNN's Jake Tapper will have actually new reporting from his new book, Original Sin, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern today, right here on CNN. Don't miss it.
Up next, politicians don't just visit Iowa, we'll tell you which Democrat is sparking 2028 speculation in the Hawkeye State.
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[12:54:07]
RAJU: Topping our political radar, sources tell CNN that Trump administration is preparing to deploy hundreds more federal agents nationwide to arrest undocumented immigrants. It could happen as soon as this week. The plan includes the use of Border Patrol Agents across the country and support from State National Guard units. This move comes as the Justice Department intensifies its crackdown on immigration-related crime.
Plus, Iowa intrigue, former Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, how the town hall in the state where presidential campaigns used to be born, adding to the growing speculation that he could launch a 2028 run.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BUTTIGIEG: I'm not running for anything, and part of what's exciting, compelling about an opportunity like this is to be campaigning for values and for ideas rather than a specific electoral campaign. So that's what I'm about. But of course, it means a lot to hear that people who supported me, then continue to believe in what I have to say.
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[12:55:00]
RAJU: Of course, Democrats may again switch up the primary calendar, making Iowa less crucial in presidential politics. But the Hawkeye state is also significant to the former South Bend Mayor since he won the Democratic caucuses in 2020, before eventually dropping out to endorse Joe Biden.
And speaking of mayors, Omaha has a new one. Democrats pulled off in upset in Nebraska's largest city with John Ewing Jr. defeating the three-term Republican incumbent. Ewing will be the first black mayor in Omaha history. In the home stretch of the race, the campaign focused on polarizing national issues like the Trump administration and transgender rights.
Thanks for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" starts after a quick break. See you next time.
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