Kennedy’s Capital Crossfire & DOJ’s Gun Ban Consideration | 9.5.25

In a fiery Senate hearing over the recent shake-ups at the CDC, RFK goes on defense as Democrats go scorched earth.

I'm happy to have a detailed discussion with you.

You're interrupting me.

And, sir, you're a charlatan.

That's what you are.

I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

It's Friday, September 5th.

This is Morning Wire.

Obviously, we have mental health problems in this country that this administration and Secretary Kennedy will continue to speak out about and the work that we're doing to solve it.

The DOJ is reportedly weighing controversial new gun restrictions following last week's deadly school shooting.

And as CBS News faces a major shake-up, the White House slams the network for another case of deceptive edits.

And the one thing that we will continue to do is to make sure that he doesn't walk free in the United States of America.

But I heard you say that we're going to let the Justice Department do that.

Does this mean that?

Does that mean the push to deport him to Uganda is off?

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.

Stay tuned.

We have the news you need to know.

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HHS Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

fielded hostile questions about vaccines and new federal policies during a fiery hearing Thursday on the Hill.

Here with the details is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestas Giacomo.

Hey, Amanda.

So lots of fireworks yesterday.

Our team was watching and it got pretty tense at times.

First, what types of questions did we hear?

Well, to really no surprise at all, this hearing was heavily focused on vaccines.

The CDC shakeup was a big topic of discussion, as well as COVID shot changes, ASIP, that's the panel RFK replaced that sets the vaccine schedule, and Operation Warp Speed.

And like you said, John, lots of fireworks during this hearing.

Democrats called Secretary Kennedy a charlatan.

They said he was ignorant and should resign.

And he's perpetuating hoaxes, among other attacks.

Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, for example, suggested Kennedy was sacrificing the lives of children for his agenda.

Wyden also accused Kennedy of politicizing ACIP, that vaccine panel, by replacing all of its members.

Kennedy stood by that decision and he saw that ACIP was plagued with conflicts of interest and that he actually depoliticized the panel.

Chairman Wyden was talking about me politicizing ACIP during COVID.

Probably the most famous scientist on ACIP was Martin Kuldor from Harvard, the great, now world-renowned epidemiologist and vaccinologist.

And he criticized the COVID booster mandates.

They ejected him from COVID because he wasn't in the orthodoxy.

Now, here's an exchange between Wyden and Kennedy that's garnered a lot of attention.

Wyden here is shaming Kennedy over mostly vaccine policy.

I hope that you will tell the American people how many preventable child deaths are an acceptable sacrifice for enacting an agenda that I think is fundamentally cruel and defies common sense.

Senator, you've sat in that chair for how long?

20, 25 years, while the chronic disease in our children went up to 76%

and you said nothing.

You never asked the question why it's happening.

Why is this happening?

Today, for the first time in 20 years, we've learned that infant mortality has increased in our country.

It's not because I came in here.

It's because of what happened during the Biden administration that we're going to end.

There was also a combative exchange with Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren.

She said Kennedy should resign during the hearing.

She went after the secretary over recent changes to COVID shot recommendations.

We covered that earlier this week.

You just changed the classification of the COVID vaccine.

Most Americans will be able to get it from their pharmacy first.

The question is, everyone who wants it, that was your promise.

I know I can't.

I never promised that I was going to recommend products with which there is no indication.

When you said.

And I know you've taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator.

Did you hold up a big sign saying that you were lying?

when you said that?

Because you are the one who said you would not take them away.

You want me to indicate a product for which there is no clinical cadence?

Senator.

Is that what you were lying?

Now, on the recent CDC shake-up, specifically the firing of CDC Director Susan Menarez, Kennedy stood by that decision as well.

He said one of the reasons why he fired Menarez was because she responded no when he asked her twice if she was trustworthy.

He also suggested that she lied about him to the press.

Menarez claims RFK told her to approve vaccine recommendations before reviewing supporting data.

Now, you mentioned that Trump's Operation Warp speed was discussed in that hearing.

That brought us COVID vaccines and therapeutics at an unprecedented speed.

So were Democrats actually defending Trump?

Yeah, they were, which was very interesting.

But it seemed like they were using Operation Warp Speed to try to drive a wedge between Trump and Kennedy.

In response to that, Kennedy said that Trump should absolutely get a Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership with Operation Warp Speed, but he said his views on the COVID vaccine are more nuanced.

The COVID vaccine was critical.

President Trump's leadership got it to us when our society was locked down.

It allowed allowed us to open up.

Right now, we're dealing with completely different circumstances.

The calculus is different.

Well, it's not often that hearings like this are must-watch TV, but this was truly compelling at times and addresses so many crucial health issues.

Amanda, thanks so much for reporting.

You're welcome.

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On the heels of last week's deadly school shooting, the DOJ is looking at ways to bar the mentally ill who are suffering from gender dysphoria from obtaining firearms.

Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the Trump administration's possible move to ban firearms from trans-identifying people.

So Tim, what do we know about this proposal?

Yeah, Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olihan actually broke this story.

Here's her explaining.

It's really important to emphasize here that this is not full-blown policy.

This is not a proposal.

These are internal deliberations by the Department of Justice as to whether they should be banning transgenders from using guns.

And of course, this is in response to this epidemic of transgender violence that we've seen all throughout the United States over the past decade.

This is not the first shooting where a trans-identifying individual has targeted Christians and Catholics.

It's not the second shooting where this has happened.

We've already seen arguments over this shooting, whether guns are to blame or it's mental illness.

Now the Justice Department is looking at this as a mental illness issue, but there's more to it.

In recent years, we've seen a pattern of violence and attacks from people who identify as transgender.

There was the Covenant School shooting here in Nashville two years ago.

A trans-identifying shooter killed six people, including three students.

In 2019, a trans-identifying teen took part in a school shooting in Colorado, and that left one dead and eight wounded.

And a self-described trans gamer girl pleaded guilty earlier this year of trying to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

So a very politically charged issue.

What's the Democrat response to this idea?

Well, Democrats have treated the annunciation shooting as a gun issue.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walls said Tuesday he intends to call a special session of the state legislature to talk about new gun laws.

Here's Walls talking about that in a press conference outside of an elementary school on Tuesday.

The sad reality of it is, is that what happened last week is preventable because so many nations around the world do it.

And we cannot resign ourselves to believe that our little ones can't be safe in what should be and always is the most safe environments they can possibly be in.

Walls said that Scotland and Australia's gun laws should be models to the United States, but it's not clear how Walls plans to get strict gun control measures through the state legislature.

In the state House of Representatives, Republicans have a one-seat majority, so any bill would have to have some GOP support.

Now, Vice President J.D.

Vance visited Annunciation Catholic School this week.

What was his message to those families?

Yeah, he said that this was one of the most powerful experiences of his life.

Vance and his wife laid flowers in honor of those who were killed and met with the parents of murdered children, as well as some of the wounded.

Here he was talking about it afterward.

There is nothing that you can say that can take away the grief that these parents are dealing with.

There is no word that can possibly describe the feeling or the emotion or the heartbreak.

One of the ways that I'm going to try to honor these parents and the children that they lost is by being a better dad and hugging my kids tight tonight and making sure that they know that their dad loves them because there are two families who are not going to get that opportunity ever again.

And if you do have kids, if you're lucky enough to have a son or a daughter, make sure that they know that they love you.

Make sure that you you hug your kids tight because there are families in Minneapolis and won't be able to do that ever again.

So clearly a pretty emotional day for the vice president.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, our hearts go out to those families.

Tim, thanks for reporting.

Thanks for having me.

As the White House blasts CBS News for what it says are deceptive and politically motivated edits of high-profile interviews, major shake-ups are reportedly coming for the network.

Joining us now to discuss is Curtis Hauck, managing editor of Newsbusters.

Thanks so much for coming on.

So first, CBS has been caught once again making questionable edits.

This time it's Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam who's calling them out for it.

This cut seems pretty deliberate, but is there any reason to suggest it was made for some other reason aside from achieving a certain narrative?

If this were any network other than CBS News, they might have some merit to this.

But the fact that this keeps happening to CBS, this has happened by our count at least five times in the last four years,

all going in one direction.

You do have to raise concerns.

If you look at what was removed from the interview with Secretary Noam, it was pertinent to the issue at hand.

It was the alleged criminal record of Kilmar Abreo-Garcia, and thus why the administration has been fighting so hard to have him deported from the country.

And the one thing that we will continue to do is to make sure that he doesn't walk free in the United States of America.

This individual was a known human smuggler, MS-13 gang member, an individual who was a wife beater, and someone who was so perverted that he solicited nude photos from minors.

And even his fellow human traffickers told him to knock it off.

So when you have the president, vice president Kamala Harris, Speaker Mike Johnson, and Governor Ron DeSantis all subjected to similar edits, and it's all happened on one network, you do have to ask the question, what is going on at CBS?

And are their editors and their supervisors making the right decisions when trimming a story for time?

Now, you mentioned the other examples of controversial edits there.

Can you unpack some of those for us?

Yeah, well, working backwards here, we have Governor DeSantis on 60 Minutes with Sharon Alfonse, one of their correspondents a few years ago, talking about the COVID vaccine and the rollout of the COVID vaccines in Florida and the the use of public supermarkets.

She kind of slice and diced an ambush that she had of the governor at a public event.

Mike Johnson, it occurred on Face the Nation as well.

President Trump, it occurred with Leslie Stahl in the waning days of the 2020 election regarding the Hunter Biden laptop.

And Kamala Harris, obviously perhaps the most well-known example of removing and slicing and dicing her answer talking about the Israel-Hamas war.

So, you take all of those things together, and it is a network that if you are the bosses at Skydance and you're looking to make wholesale changes at the network, it looks like they do have a lot of work on their hands.

Yeah, speaking of that, we have a major shake-up happening reportedly in CBS related to Barry Weiss, a deal being worked out.

Can you tell us what we know so far?

Yeah, this is coming out of Pucks Dylan Byers, a former CNN media reporter.

He reported Wednesday night that the deal is essentially on the one-yard line.

Barry Weiss would have a senior role at CBS News and her site, The Free Press, would be acquired by CBS News.

So the journalists that work there would ostensibly then become a part of the network.

Like we saw at CNN when Chris Licht was brought in and he ordered the network more or less depoliticize the news to cover more than a few stories a day, to not focus on Donald Trump and that journalists couldn't act like pundits with commentaries.

Barry Weiss, I think, would bring a variety of opinions and story ideas to the network.

The question is, will those still inside CBS be willing to accept that?

There are people, I will say, at CBS that I think are worth keeping and worth building around.

And while the media industry writ large is looking at this with trepidation, I think this is welcome news for the American people.

Well, as you mentioned, CNN was supposed to be tacking towards the center, but having a very hard time doing that so far.

We'll see what direction CBS goes.

Curtis, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for waking up with us.

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We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.