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

Summary

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Morning Wire Podcast Summary

Episode: Kennedy’s Capital Crossfire & DOJ’s Gun Ban Consideration
Date: September 5, 2025
Hosts: John Bickley & Georgia Howe

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Overview

This episode explores three major news developments:

1. A high-impact Senate hearing in which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK) faced fierce scrutiny over vaccine policies and leadership at the CDC.
2. The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) reported consideration of controversial new gun restrictions focused on individuals with mental illness and gender dysphoria, spurred by a recent school shooting.
3. The White House’s criticism of CBS News for alleged deceptive editing and the potential shakeup at the network, with Barry Weiss reportedly negotiating a leadership role.

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Key Discussion Points

1. RFK Jr. Faces Intense Scrutiny in Senate Hearing

Timestamps: 02:44–07:14

• Vaccine Policies Under Fire:

  • The hearing centered on vaccines, criticism of recent CDC leadership changes, and RFK’s controversial modifications to the vaccine advisory panel, ACIP.

  • Democrats accused Kennedy of ousting ACIP scientists for political reasons and labeled him a “charlatan” (03:05).

    “Democrats called Secretary Kennedy a charlatan. They said he was ignorant and should resign and he's perpetuating hoaxes.”
    — Amanda Presto, 03:05

• Contention with Senator Ron Wyden:

  • Wyden charged Kennedy with politicizing the vaccine panel and sacrificing children’s health.

  • RFK defended his actions, asserting he was removing conflicts of interest and depoliticizing ACIP.

    “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. [...] It's not because I came in here. It's because of what happened during the Biden administration that we're going to end.”
    — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 04:28

• Elizabeth Warren’s Accusations:

  • Senator Warren pressed Kennedy on changing COVID-19 vaccine classifications and implied he broke promises about vaccine access.

  • RFK fired back, refusing to endorse products lacking clinical data, and accused Warren of pharmaceutical industry bias.

    “I never promised that I was going to recommend products with which there is no indication.”
    — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 05:31

    "When you said, and I know you've taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator..."
    — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 05:38

• CDC Leadership Shakeup:

  • Kennedy justified the dismissal of CDC Director Susan Menarez, stating she failed two direct questions about her trustworthiness and allegedly lied about him.
  • Menarez later claimed Kennedy pressured her to approve vaccines prematurely (05:59).

• Operation Warp Speed and Trump:

  • Democrats pointed to Operation Warp Speed to contrast Trump and Kennedy.

  • RFK commended Trump’s initiative but explained his own cautious stance on COVID vaccines now that circumstances have changed.

    “President Trump's leadership got it to us when our society was locked down. It allowed us to open up. Right now, we're dealing with completely different circumstances, so the calculus is different.”
    — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 06:53

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2. DOJ Eyes Gun Ban for Those with Gender Dysphoria after School Shooting

Timestamps: 08:17–11:41

• Department of Justice Internal Deliberations:

  • The DOJ is considering whether to bar people with gender dysphoria from purchasing firearms, citing recent instances of violence by trans-identifying individuals.

  • The episode stresses these are internal talks, not an official policy proposal yet (08:42).

    “This is not full blown policy. These are internal deliberations [...] as to whether they should be banning transgenders from using guns.”
    — Mary Margaret Olihan (quoted by Tim Pierce), 08:42

• Pattern of Violence Referenced:

  • Several prior violent episodes involving transgender individuals are cited, including Nashville’s Covenant School shooting and an attempted attack on Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

• Political Divide:

  • Democrats label the recent shooting a “gun issue,” calling for tighter gun laws modeled after countries like Scotland and Australia, though practical constraints exist due to a slim Republican House majority (10:21).

• Vice President J.D. Vance’s Response:

  • VP Vance toured Annunciation Catholic School, expressing deep empathy for grieving families.

    “There is nothing that you can say that can take away the grief that these parents are dealing with... If you have kids, if you're lucky enough, make sure you hug your kids tight because there are families in Minneapolis... [who] won't be able to do that again.”
    — J.D. Vance (quoted), 10:56

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3. CBS News Accused of Biased Editing Amid Network Shakeup

Timestamps: 11:43–15:55

• CBS News Editing Controversy:

  • CBS accused of consistently skewed and selective interview edits, especially targeting Republican or centrist figures.

  • Most recent incident involved Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and the alleged criminal record of Kilmar Abreu Garcia.

    “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.”
    — Curtis Houck, 12:16

  • A rapid-fire review highlights earlier controversial CBS edits involving Governor Ron DeSantis, House Speaker Mike Johnson, President Trump, and Vice President Kamala Harris (13:39).

• Imminent Leadership Shakeup at CBS:

  • Barry Weiss poised to take a senior role at CBS News; her outlet, The Free Press, reportedly about to be acquired.

  • This is compared to CNN’s recent (and rocky) attempts to “depoliticize” its coverage.

    “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?”
    — Curtis Houck, 14:54

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You're interrupting me. And sir, you're a charlatan.”
  — Senate Democrat to Kennedy, 00:47

• “For the first time in 20 years, we 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.”
  — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 04:28

• “Scotland and Australia's gun laws should be models to the United States.”
  — Governor Tim Walz (via Tim Pierce), 10:21

• “When you have ... President Trump, ... Kamala Harris ... all subjected to similar edits and it's all happened on one network, you do have to ask ... are there editors and their supervisors making the right decisions when trimming a story for time?”
  — Curtis Houck, 13:15

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Senate Hearing with RFK Jr.: 02:44–07:14
• DOJ Gun Ban Deliberations: 08:17–11:41
• CBS Edits & Network Shakeup: 11:43–15:55

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Tone & Style

Consistent with Morning Wire’s direct, urgent, and sometimes combative style, the episode presents developments with pointed back-and-forth between policymakers and sharp criticism of media practices. The show emphasizes skepticism toward mainstream narratives and focuses on exposing perceived political bias.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[John Bickley]

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[John Bickley]

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[Amanda Presto]

In a fiery Senate hearing over the recent shakeups at the cdc. RFK goes on defense as Democrats go scorched earth.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I'm happy to have a detailed discussion with you. You're so wrong on your facts.

[Host/Interviewer]

You're interrupting me. And sir, you're a charlatan. That's what you are.

[Amanda Presto]

I'm Daily Wire Executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, September 5th. This is Morning Wire.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Amanda Presto]

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

[Host/Interviewer]

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

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

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?

[Host/Interviewer]

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

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[Host/Interviewer]

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Fielded hostile questions about vaccines and new federal policies during a fiery hearing Thursday on the Hill.

[Amanda Presto]

Here with the details, it's Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presto. 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?

[John Bickley]

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 Ken 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 a sip that vaccine panel, by replacing all of its members. Kennedy stood by that decision and he saw that a SIP was plagued with conflicts of interests and that he actually depoliticized the panel.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Chairman Wyden was talking about me politicizing a SIP during COVID Probably the most famous scientist on ACIP was Martin Kulldorf from Harvard, the great world renowned epidemiologist and vaccinologist. And he criticized the COVID booster mandates. They ejected him from COVID because he wasn't in the orthodoxy.

[John Bickley]

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.

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[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

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 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.

[John Bickley]

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.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Most Americans will be able to get it from their pharmacy for a year.

[John Bickley]

Is everyone who wants it.

[Host/Interviewer]

That was your promise.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

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

[Curtis Houck]

When you said, and I know you've.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, Senator, did.

[John Bickley]

You hold up a big sign saying.

[Host/Interviewer]

That you were lying when you said that?

[John Bickley]

Because you are the one who said.

[Host/Interviewer]

You would not take them away.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

You want me to indicate a product for which there is no clinical data? Is that what you want?

[John Bickley]

Now, on the recent CDC shakeup, 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.

[Amanda Presto]

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?

[John Bickley]

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.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

The COVID vaccine was critical. President Trump's leadership got it to us when our society was locked down. It allowed us to open up. Right now, we're dealing with completely different circumstances, so the calculus is different.

[Amanda Presto]

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.

[John Bickley]

You're welcome.

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[Amanda Presto]

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.

[Host/Interviewer]

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?

[Tim Pierce]

Yeah, Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olihan actually broke this story. Here's her explaining it's really important to.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Tim Pierce]

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.

[Host/Interviewer]

So a very politically charged issue. What's the Democrat response to this idea?

[Tim Pierce]

Well, Democrats have treated the Annunciation shooting as a gun issue. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said Tuesday he intends to call a special session of the state legislature to talk about new gun laws. Here's Walz talking about that in a press conference outside of an elementary school on Tuesday.

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[Tim Pierce]

Walsh said that Scotland and Australia's gun laws should be models to the United States. But it's not clear how Walz plans to get strict gun control measures through the state legislature. In the state House of Representatives, Republicans have one seat majority, so any bill would have to have some GOP support.

[Host/Interviewer]

Now, Vice President J.D. vance visited Annunciation Catholic School this week. What was his message to those families?

[Tim Pierce]

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.

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

[Tim Pierce]

So clearly a pretty emotional day for the vice president.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, our hearts go out to those families. Tim, thanks for reporting.

[Tim Pierce]

Thanks for having me.

[Host/Interviewer]

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

[Amanda Presto]

Joining us now to discuss is Curtis Hauck, managing editor of News Busters. Thanks so much for coming on. So first, CBS has been caught once again making questionable edits. This time it's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem 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.

[Curtis Houck]

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 Noem, it was pertinent to the issue at hand. It was the alleged criminal record of Kilmar Abreu Garcia and thus why the administration has been fighting so hard to have him deported from the country.

[Host/Interviewer]

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.

[Curtis Houck]

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 there editors and their supervisors making the right decisions when trimming a story for Time?

[Amanda Presto]

Now, you mentioned the other examples of controversial edits there. Can you unpack some of those for us?

[Curtis Houck]

Yeah. Well, working backwards Here, we have Governor DeSantis on 60 Minutes with Sharon Alfonsi, one of their correspondents, a few years ago talking about the COVID vaccine and rollout of the COVID vaccines in Florida and 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, 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.

[Amanda Presto]

Yeah. Speaking of that, we have a major shakeup happening reportedly in CBS related to Barry Weiss, a deal being worked out. Can you tell us what we know so far?

[Curtis Houck]

Yeah, this is coming out of Puck still and 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.

[Amanda Presto]

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.

[Host/Interviewer]

Thanks for waking up with us. And if you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We'll be back later this evening with more news you need to know.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer. During Answer the Call, I take questions from people just like you about their problems, opportunities, challenges, or when they simply need advice.

[Tim Pierce]

How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?

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How do you repair this kind of damage?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

My daughter Michaela guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives.

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Everyone has their own destination.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Everyone.