The following is a transcript of an interview with Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator in the first Trump administration, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Nov. 17, 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Deborah Birx served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator in Donald Trump’s first term. She also had a long career in public health in the army, working on AIDS in Africa, at the State Department, as well as time at the CDC. Good morning. Welcome back. 

FORMER WHITE HOUSE COVID RESPONSE COORDINATOR DR. DEBORAH BIRX: Good morning, Margaret. Glad to be with you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So Dr. Birx, I want to ask you about your views on public health, which we’re looking at because of this nomination, potentially of Robert F Kennedy Jr. HHS has a wide portfolio here, vaccines, medicine, oversees Medicare, regulates food, beauty products, baby formula, reproductive health care. What would the impact be of having someone without government experience in that top job? 

DR. BIRX: Well, I think the most important thing is what team he would bring with him, because you’re talking about really a large cap corporation with a highly diverse group, which you have to really bring together and, frankly, eliminate some of the duplication set between these agencies to really become more cost effective, and so really having a management person at his side, a chief of staff, perhaps that has really come out of industry that would know how to bring and look and bring those individuals together that are running the other agencies, because it’s a very comp- HHS is probably one of our most complicated departments.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you’re saying people with experience around him, we need to look at those lower level appointees Mr. Trump might make. Well, what’s so interesting with RFK Jr. is how he has, in some ways, tapped into this health movement in America. He’s talking about more regulation, not less when it comes to American food, here’s some of what he said:

ROBERT F KENNEDY JR.: I’m just going to tell the- the cereal companies to take all the dyes out of their food. I’ll get processed food out of school lunch immediately. 10 percent of food stamps go to sugar drinks to, you know, sodas. We’re creating diabetes problem, and our kids are giving them food that’s poison, and I’m going to stop that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Those sound like good goals. Can you actually take on big agriculture and get that through?

DR. BIRX: I think because a lot of the people who are suffering the most from these additives are actually people in our rural areas. 16 percent of the Americans live in a rural area, but they are providing all of our oil and gas, all of our fiber, all of our cotton and all of our food. And the level of diabetes in these communities because of their access to certain foods is extraordinarily high. I just came out of the field, 58 percent of the adults in the town that I was just in had already diabetes or prediabetes, based on a household survey where we went house to house. This is the reality of America and so what I’m hoping is he brings his transparency for all Americans and we really start to tackle these issues one-by-one-by-one. I think everybody across America wants to have healthy kids that they know will grow up and not end up with the complications of diabetes or heart disease.

MARGARET BRENNAN: It was very hard for Michelle Obama, when she was first lady to get any of that done, and it might be hard for lawmakers who come from some of those agricultural states to vote against their own interests in terms of the farm subsidies and the like. 

DR. BIRX: Well, we’re not talking about eliminating good food. We’re talking about using all of their ingredients in a way that is more healthy for Americans and I think that’s what people are calling for now. Europe did it years ago, and I think we’re capable of doing that. We are really smart, high levels of technology, we can make food tasty without a lot of these additives, because we can see that other groups are doing it in a small way. So we’re not talking about eliminating the need for wheats and grains. We’re talking about putting those together in a healthy way.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you as well about some of his- the things he said about vaccines. As you know, the vaccine- vaccination rates are declining in America. He said things like restoring transparency around them. It’s not really clear what that means. Why do you think there’s a decline in vaccination? 

DR. BIRX: I think there’s two pieces to it. I think when we talk about things in public health, we don’t acknowledge the concerns because when my children went to school, there was maybe one in 1000 kids with autism, diagnosed with autism. Now it’s three per 100. So every mom is seeing a classroom of kindergarteners where one of the children has autism. That’s scary to moms and dads, they want to know why. So it’s not good enough for us to just say vaccines don’t cause autism. It’s us finding what is the cause of autism and reverse it–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I think a lot of people would absolutely agree that it is ridiculous that there isn’t a lot of research and established causation for autism, but what he has said in the past is that autism is caused by vaccines and there’s no scientific basis for that conclusion as I understand it.

DR. BIRX: That’s correct. And so that’s why, when he talks about transparency, I’m actually excited that in a Senate hearing he would bring forward his data and the questions that come from the senators would bring forth their data. What I know for sure is he’s a very smart man who can bring his data and his evidence base forward, and we can have a discussion that many Americans believe already is a problem. So until we can have that transparency and that open discussion from both sides, I know the members have incredible staffers who will bring great questions from their constituents, and that hearing would be a way for Americans to really see the data that you’re talking about, that we can’t see that causation right now, but what is causing it? And so you’re absolutely right, addressing what the cause is will be critical and I think what has confused people is we weren’t clear about what COVID vaccines do and don’t. And so now people are questioning, well, what do my childhood vaccines do and don’t, and they don’t understand that some of the vaccines that their children are getting protect them from both disease and create herd immunity, and some of them that they get are just for their child, like H Flu and pneumovax to protect their child from getting very serious illness, and we’re just not explaining all of this correctly.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, and that’s why the messenger matters– 

DR. BIRX: Yes, it does.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –so much on this, which is why his past statements are being scrutinized. You worked on AIDS for a good part of your career. He has said that he doesn’t take a position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS, but then he laid out alternative theories in his book, and said Dr. Fauci never produced a study to demonstrate his hypothesis using “accepted scientific proof.” Do you agree with that assertion, and HIV and AIDS? 

DR. BIRX: Well, having spent a career in understanding how HIV and AIDS progresses, HIV virus is the cause of AIDS, there’s a whole set of things that happen, and I think what HIV taught me is you have to- it’s asymptomatic for 10 years, and we’re finally recognizing how important asymptomatic disease progression and disease transmission is. That’s what HIV taught us. But what other HIV taught us was the entire human immune system. So by investing in HIV research, we learned about CAR T-cells that we use today in cancer. So a lot of these research and investments pay off in other areas and I think once he’s there at HHS, he’ll see that. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: If he’s open to the data. Dr. Birx, thank you. We’ll be right back.

The following is a transcript of an interview with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Nov. 17, 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by Kentucky governor Andy Beshear who joins us from Lexington. Good morning to you, governor. You’re a blue governor in a very red state. How do you even begin to try uniting a country as united- as divided as this? Are there lessons we can learn from Kentucky?

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR: I think there’s absolute lessons that- that we can learn from Kentucky, a state where, last year, I won as a Democrat by five points and Donald Trump just won by 30. And I think it basically boils down to both running and governing, where people wake up in the morning and what they worry about when they go to bed at night. And that’s not the next election. It’s their job, and whether they make enough to support their family. It’s the next doctor’s appointment for themselves, their parents, or their kids. It’s the roads and bridges they drive every day. It’s that public school they drop their kids off at, and it’s public safety in their community. The goal here is to focus on all of those things, where, if people don’t feel secure in those areas, they don’t get to anything else. They don’t get to the crazy thing that some politicians said last night or this morning, they don’t get to that next piece of policy that’s out there. So it’s a- it’s about a relentless focus on people’s everyday needs and their everyday life.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah. We’re going to take a break, come back and have the rest of the conversation on the other side of it. All of you, please stay with us. More from Andy Beshear in a moment.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN:  Welcome back to “Face The Nation.” We return to our conversation with Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. Governor, Kentucky has a lot of coal. It’s got natural gas. Mr. Trump has selected Chris Wright, the CEO of Liberty Energy, to be the next Energy Secretary, if confirmed. He’s also selected Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, to run the Interior Department, and he’s promised to open up more federal lands to drilling. Do you have any idea what the impact would be on your state from the signals being sent with these selections? 

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR: Well, we’ll see. I mean, I saw the comments recently from the CEO of Exxon, which was a little different than what we might expect, talking about needing to move to greener forms of- of energy, regardless of what the policy of the day is. And I certainly see from companies that are coming into Kentucky each and every day, we just announced a new industrial battery facility that’s going to create 1600 new jobs. They demand a certain portfolio of energy. Yes, the lights have to come on, but especially over time for their customers, they want a certain amount of renewables. So what I’ve seen as governor is a private sector push that I do not think is going to change demands placed on states, demands placed on utilities, and the private sector ultimately moving us to a more diverse and cleaner portfolio. So here in Kentucky, yes, we have many traditional forms of energy, and they have really good jobs, and we want to make sure that we never look down on and- and we support each of those jobs. But my goal is to diversify our production as much as we can so that we have the jobs of the present and those jobs of the future.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You said Kentucky has something like 10,000 jobs related to electric vehicles. You really made a big push on that during the campaign. Mr. Trump vowed to undo the “electric vehicle mandate,” that’s what he called it, and he’s going to, he says, repeal the law that includes credits for green projects. Do you know at this point if Republican leaders intend to keep parts of that? And are there projections on what repealing that law entirely would do to the job creation in your state?

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR: Well, it’s really concerning. You look at a state like Kentucky that voted for President-Elect Trump by 30 points, and it’s 10,000 EV related jobs on the line, and those are only growing. Go up to Ohio and look at that $20 billion chips factory, which I’m a little bit jealous of, but happy for the people of Ohio and- and what that would mean in another state that voted for the president-elect. So you look at all of these jobs and jobs of the future that have come to what- what the administration will probably view as red states. It’s important that these projects continue. Remember, a lot of the people taking these jobs, jobs that support their families, voted for President-Elect Trump because they thought that would improve their job, that he was focused on their job. So I hope that he will get good advice, and I’ll do everything I can to get my message out through our federal delegation of how important these jobs are. And they’re not in urban Kentucky. They’re in rural Kentucky. They are game changing investments that- that have created a bright future here, and I’m certainly going to do everything I can as governor of Kentucky to protect them, and not because I’m a Democrat, but because I’ve shown my people that every single day I’m going to try to create a better life for them, and that’s what those jobs do.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah, 14 billion between now and 2030 was what was promised to your state. I wonder if you just think Democrats didn’t do a good job of explaining that?

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR: Well, I certainly don’t want to do any finger pointing, because the- the Vice President had 107 days, and she did her very best, and I proudly crisscrossed the country in support of her. But what I know is, going forward, over the next couple years, we have a chance every day, every moment, to show the American people that we are laser focused on jobs, on their health care, on their infrastructure, on their kids’ education, just- just those everyday worries, and with this administration, at least right now selecting some very extreme appointees, it’s a chance to make a real difference, to really show people that- that we’re where their basic needs are.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, but there was, as you know, some analysis after the fact among Democrats about the focus on some culture war issues, or so to speak. Congressman Seth Moulton said, of transgender issues, “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.” He says he’s “speaking authentically,” and said Democrats should do more of it. Do you think Democrats have been out of touch on some of these things that obviously resonate in states like yours?

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR: Well, I think that- that all candidates should stand up for- for their beliefs and that- and that we don’t have to abandon those beliefs. You know, I vetoed one of the nastiest anti-LGBTQ bills that my state had ever seen in my election year, but- but I did two things. Number one, I talked about my why, for me, that’s my faith, where I’m taught that all children are children of God. And I wanted to stick up for some children that were being picked on in a pretty rough bill. But the second thing is, the- the voters in my state knew the very next day, I was going to be working on jobs. I was going to be opening a new health clinic, first hospital in our largest African American neighborhood in 150 years, we just cut the ribbon on. We’ve created two pediatric autism centers in- in Appalachia, so that people don’t have to drive two hours. So it’s- it’s both sharing your why and your authentic why for- for your views, but- but the other piece is about that focus. Because remember, if we’re talking about this issue of the day, and then we’re talking about what Donald Trump said last night, and then we’re talking about jobs. We’re only spending a third of the time talking about what people are worried about and what impacts their life the most.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Governor, thank you for joining us today. We’ll be right back.

The following is a transcript of an interview with Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of National Intelligence in the first Trump administration, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Nov. 17, 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by Sue Gordon. She served as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence during Donald Trump’s first term in the White House. Good to see you here again. 

SUE GORDON: Great to see you, Margaret. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you personally briefed Donald Trump as President in the Oval Office. If this nominee to be Tulsi Gabbard becomes the Director of National Intelligence, and John Ratcliffe becomes the CIA director, are you confident that Mr. Trump will be told the information he needs to know, and not just what he wants to know? 

SUE GORDON: Well, I think that’s the- I think that’s the question of the day. Intelligence is weird

because it’s always uncertain, and you are always making an assessment so that a decision-maker can figure out what they’re going to do with it. And so it’s particular. And you- your only job is to ruthlessly report what you see, not what you prefer. So that’s the primary job of the DNI, is to go in there and to be his principal advisor on intelligence. You’re the first in, you’re the last out. You cannot afford to, I’ll say pander to preference. Loyalty doesn’t serve you well in that job. You have to be so committed that you will say inconvenient things. I will say the former president would tell you that I would talk to him about Russian interference. I know he hated it, but Russia was in fact interfering, and he needed to hear that information. So do I believe that Tulsi and John can be that person? If they believe they must be, they can learn. If they lean on the women and men of the intelligence community, they will produce an assessment. But that’s a hard day, and you better be good at it. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: You had to undergo an FBI background check to obtain a security clearance and to maintain it. You were a career official, 25 years at the CIA, then, as we said, moved on to national intelligence. The New York Times is reporting the Trump team may bypass the FBI process and just use a private firm to vet candidates. Then, when the president is sworn in, he can grant access to the nation’s secrets rather than go through that screening. What risk is there in bypassing the FBI?

SUE GORDON: Well, the first risk is that you will get an incomplete picture of the human that is carrying both the trust of the American people and the trust of our allies and partners and the trust of the women and men that are putting their lives on the line for that judgment, right? Everyone hates vetting. It’s intrusive. It- you don’t know why anyone should have to do it, because you know who you are. But the truth is, we know adversaries and competitors will exploit humans to be able to advance their interests, and you want to make sure that the people that hold the American people’s trust and the most precious pieces of information we have of advantage, have no cracks in who they are. And so it seems expedient, but I think it will ultimately harm the institution. And by that I mean the institution of America, if you have people who we discover later that they should not have had access, or we discover later that they were vulnerable to the actions of our allies and of our adversaries and competitors–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –Because of leverage on them– 

SUE GORDON: — It is, I mean, that’s, I mean, the craft of human intelligence is actually finding someone who has a weakness and getting them to be able to advance your interests, and it just- and what a really good day is when you find someone whose interests align with yours, and then you really push that. So a private firm isn’t going to have the standards that we’ve had. I know it’s inconvenient, but I think it’s a bad strategy and risky for America. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: So CBS has also learned that, to date, the Trump team hasn’t signed the paperwork that would start the process of the national security briefings, so that someone’s not walking in cold they’re briefed and up to speed, along with these background checks. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that helps with the transitions, confirmed that to CBS. Is there any good reason not to sign those papers, and what does it do for the officials who arrive without being read in on what’s happening now?

SUE GORDON: Yeah, I can’t think of a- I can’t think of a good reason. I think one of the great falsehoods that’s been perpetrated on America is that our institutions are malfeasant. They need to be better, they need to be slimmer, they need to be more transparent, but they’re not bummed. So you’re not protecting anybody by not signing those papers, and especially with some of the nominees we have that don’t have the really deep experience base, these are big jobs. I mean, intelligence is not just advising the president, it’s also running a huge enterprise in a manner that allows our allies and partners to trust us with their most precious thing. So I can’t think of a reason why that’s not signed- signed, and to start your gig without any foundation at all, especially when the institutions are begging to give you that foundation just seems wrong-headed. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re diplomatically referring to Tulsi Gabbard there, who doesn’t have a background in intelligence. She also has a history of statements, of saying things that mirror the rhetoric of us adversaries, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. There were at least two chemical weapons attacks in Syria that killed thousands of people, and the US intelligence community came to public assessments of high confidence. I imagine you saw all of that intelligence and you briefed on it. 

SUE GORDON: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So when she comes out and says that she doubts it. She’s skeptical. How is that going to be received by the career professionals who work for her?

SUE GORDON: Yeah I mentioned one of her jobs would be to be the senior advisor. The second is to be responsible for all intelligence sharing agreements so our allies and partners upon whom we rely, that Syria assessment, that was joint with our allies and partners. The one we had on Skripal was joint. Our assessment of Ukraine was joint–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –That was sorry, just to explain for our viewers, Skripal, you’re talking about the killing on British soil of a former Russian by Russian intelligence.

SUE GORDON: But all those were jointly done with our allies and partners. We need them. It’s one of the greatest strengths of America, but they will make their own assessment over whether we can be trusted with their nation’s interests, and whether she meant it or not, whether she was just ill-informed of that, she comes in with strikes against her in the trust perspective, can we trust her with our most sacred intelligence to represent that in a fair way. So I think it’s a problem, whether it’s judgment or any other thing that she has represented there.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Another nerve in the intelligence community, of course, is Edward Snowden. Tulsi Gabbard, and the selection for the attorney general, Matt Gaetz, put forward resolutions to call for the charges to be dropped against him because he leaked classified national intelligence material. He’s living in Russia these days. That kind of a position, how’s that going to be received?

SUE GORDON: It reflects a lack of understanding of who we are, and it reflects a lack of respect for what we do. Unauthorized disclosures of intelligence are always bad. Don’t go with the good or bad, any good outcome or whether he was right or wrong. He had no authority, and he had different paths, and he harmed America. He not only harmed intelligence, he harmed our allies and partners, and he harmed our businesses by what it allowed China to assume about that. there is nothing justifiable about what he’s done. None. And so if they vacate it, what they’re basically saying is all those rules you follow in order to be able to serve America, they don’t matter anymore.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Sue Gordon, thank you for explaining this very opaque world of intelligence to us and for your analysis today. We’ll be back in a moment.