CBS News
Transcript: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sept. 15, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Sept. 15, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re joined now by Maryland Democratic Governor, Wes Moore. He’s a member of the Harris campaign’s National Advisory Board. Governor, I have a lot to get to with you, but I want to start on where we left the conversation with the senator from Ohio, JD Vance. He argues that talking about this strain on the local community from migrant populations should not be dismissed as racist by the Harris campaign, and should be discussed on its merits, merits. What do you make of the continued push to focus the conversation here?
GOV. WES MOORE: Well, I mean, there’s a remarkable amount of not just inaccuracies, but dog whistling that we heard from that. But you know, of all the many things that I think were really problematic with what Senator Vance said when at the end of the interview, when he started talking about the just some local elected official and what they have to say. These are people who are closest to the ground. These are the people who are closest to their constituents. These are public servants, and these are partners inside the work. And in the case of that Mayor, that’s a Republican who’s saying that that this isn’t about politics, and it’s not not about politicizing this issue. We know that to be able to address these issues, and particularly big, complex issues like the border crisis that our nation continues to confront, we have to do it in partnership. And I think when you’re hearing those kind of comments from someone who is who is aspiring to be the Vice President of the United States, I think for all of us as local and statewide elected officials, it just gives a sense about how he views partnership and how he views the intelligence that’s coming from us who are on the ground having to deal with these challenges.
MARGARET BRENNAN
The governor of Ohio, a Republican, also, again today, said the claims being made there were not borne out by fact. But he’s also asking for federal help with a very real thing – strain from the migrant population. Should the Harris campaign talk about that more? Should the federal government be doing more?
GOV. WES MOORE: Yeah, well, the federal government absolutely needs to do more, as does Congress, and I think that that’s part of the reason why the frustration that we saw when it came to things like the border deal. Which was a bipartisan deal that we had both Democrat and Republican support for that one of the anchors and one of the one of the authors was one of the most conservative people within Congress, Senator Lankford. And the deal was killed because Donald Trump said that this was not going to be advantageous to my campaign. So the challenge is, is what we’re seeing from from both Donald Trump and JD Vance, is we’re receiving political talking points, but we’re not what we’re not receiving actually actionable ideas to be able to address the issue.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But I guess on the issue of empathy or understanding, should there be more recognition? Not just, oh we tried and it didn’t get through up at the national level, but on the local. Reach out to Governor DeWine and say, I understand you have problems with your hospitals, with your safety, with the languages. Those things are real.
GOV. WES MOORE: Yes, they are real. And frankly, those conversations have happened. You know, we’ve had conversations for continuing on for months, with the White House, with the administration, about what we’re seeing on the ground and about the supports that we need. So, we know that we actually have an administration that is working in partnership with us. And in the case of Vice President Harris, we have a presidential candidate who actually uses the power of personal connection to be able to connect with us as state and local leaders. From what we’re seeing in the state of Maryland, what other governors are seeing around the country, and actually coming up with plans together to be able to address this crisis.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about the Harris campaign, because you are out campaigning for them, and there’s a big push in the coming days to focus in on black voters in particular. The NAACP released a poll on Friday that showed while Black Americans overwhelmingly overwhelmingly identify as Democrats, over one quarter of Black men under 50 said they would support The Republican candidate in this year’s election. Why do you think that younger male Black voters are changing their association like this?
GOV. WES MOORE: You know, I think there is a, you know, especially for younger black men, there is a frustration. But it’s not necessarily frustration with Vice President Harris, and it’s not even frustration with the Democratic Party. Frankly, it’s a frustration of the pace of progress in America. You know, I think about my state, in my state, when I was inaugurated, we had an 8 to 1 racial wealth gap in the state of Maryland, and that’s not because one group was working eight times harder. That’s because of historical policies and circumstances. When I’m I’m the third African American ever elected governor in the history of the United States. That’s not because I’m only the third African American ever qualified to be a governor. And so I think the thing that we continue to see, and frankly, I think that debate was actually a perfect illustration. Where for many of us, we grew up being told by our family members, you’ve got to work 10 times as hard in order to get ahead, in order to get an opportunity. We saw Donald Trump walk on that debate stage uniquely and historically unprepared. And because he thinks he can win on a whim. And so I think the frustration that people feel is real, but I think the thing that we’re continuing to push to a lot of voters, particularly African American voters, is that Donald Trump is a vessel to the skepticism, but what he is not is actually a vehicle for the solution.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about something on the debate stage that the Vice President said. I know you served in the Army and you deployed to Afghanistan. During the debate, Vice President Harris said this:
[SOT]
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world. The first time this century,
[END SOT]
MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s false. That’s alienating the military families. What was the intent?
GOV. WES MOORE: Well, I think what was, what the intent was, was that this is not, you know, counter to the to the convictions of the Trump administration that somehow our world was safer under him, or we had less people in conflict. That is just not true. But I think the really important thing to remember is, is that we do have people who are in harm’s way every single day. We have, we have soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, coast guardsmen, who every single day, are out there with our flag on their shoulder and who are defending our freedoms and defending our values. We have to make sure that we’re not just supporting them in their operations, but also making sure that we’re supporting them when they come back home, making sure that we’re supporting their families. And frankly, what we have seen from this administration, where we saw an administration who was able to pass things like the PACT Act to make sure that we are addressing, we’re addressing the people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who are having burn pit exposure, that we actually have an administration who is focusing on things like being able to support a Department of Veterans Affairs. And the thing that we’ve actually heard, in fact, recently, as recently as yesterday, from Senator Vance is that he wants to privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs. We’ve got to make sure we’re supporting our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen and marines, not just while they’re deployed, but also while they are coming home. And frankly, we have one campaign, the Harris Walz campaign, that actually has a vision for that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Governor, thank you for your time today. We’ll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.
Washington — President-elect Trump is meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Chew on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
The news was first reported by CNN.
A spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference earlier Monday, Trump had warm words about TikTok and its near-term future.
“We’ll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that,” Trump said when asked about how he would stop a ban. Harris won 54% of voters under 30, but Trump made inroads.
During his first term in the White House, Trump tried to ban the app.
President Biden earlier this year signed into law a bill passed by Congress requiring TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, face a Jan. 19 deadline to cut ties or be banned in the U.S. The companies have tried to delay the deadline pending a Supreme Court review, but a federal appeals court, which upheld the law, denied the request last week. The companies asked the Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily pause the law.
“A modest delay in enforcing the Act will create breathing room for this Court to conduct an orderly review and the new Administration to evaluate this matter — before this vital channel for Americans to communicate with their fellow citizens and the world is closed,” the emergency application said.
The filing asked the Supreme Court to make a decision on the request by Jan. 6 so ByteDance and TikTok can “coordinate with their service providers to perform the complex task of shutting down the TikTok platform only in the United States” if the justices decline.
A 90-day extension could be granted if a sale is in process by the deadline. But TikTok has argued that a sale is unfeasible and the Chinese government opposes the sale of the algorithm which powers the app.
Most Americans may consider the standard retirement age to be 65, but the so-called “full retirement age” for Social Security is already older than that — and it’s about to hit an even higher age in 2025.
Social Security’s full retirement age (FRA) refers to when workers can start claiming their full benefits, which is based on the number of years they’ve worked as well as their income during their working years. The longer someone works and the higher their income, the more they can receive from Social Security when they finally claim their benefits.
While the FRA used to be 65 years old, Congress overhauled the program in 1983 to raise the retirement age threshold in order to account for longer life expectancies.
As part of that revamp, the FRA has been inching higher by two months at a time, based on a person’s birth year. For instance, people who were born in 1957 reached their FRA when they turned 66 years and 6 months old, or starting in 2023; but people born in 1958 must turn 66 years and 8 months old to qualify for their full benefits, or starting in September 2024.
The full retirement age is set to increase again by two months, to 66 years and 10 months old, for people born in 1959. That means the higher FRA for that cohort will go into effect in 2025, with people born in 1959 starting to qualify for their full benefits in November 2025. (You can calculate when you could get your full benefits on this Social Security Administration page.)
To be sure, there is flexibility about when to claim Social Security benefits. People can claim as soon as they turn 62 years old, but the trade-off is a reduced benefit that’s locked in for the rest of their retirement.
For instance, claiming at 62 will result in a benefit that’s about 30% less than your full benefit — a sacrifice that many older Americans opt for, given that many are forced into retirement earlier than they expected or because they believe it makes more sense to claim more years of guaranteed retirement income, even if it’s at a lower amount.
Young boomers and Gen Xers
The increase in the FRA for people born in 1959 marks the penultimate age change, with the final jump occurring for workers born in or after 1960. Those Americans won’t be able to claim their FRA until they hit 67 years old, which means that someone born in January 1960 must hold off until January 2027 to get their full retirement benefits.
That will mostly impact the youngest baby boomers and Gen Xers, with the latter generation spanning 1965 to 1980.
These workers, however, are among the least prepared for retirement, according to recent research. The youngest boomers — those born between 1959 and 1965 — started to hit 65 this year, but many of them lack adequate savings to support themselves in old age, the ALI Retirement Income Institute found earlier this year.
About 1 in 3 of these younger boomers will rely on Social Security benefits for at least 90% of their retirement income when they are 70, the study found. But Social Security benefits are designed to replace about 40% of a person’s working income.
Gen X, meanwhile, is also shaping up to hit retirement without enough saved for their golden years. The average retirement savings of Gen X households is about $150,000 — far below the roughly $1.5 million that Americans say they need to retire comfortably. Another study found that about 40% of Gen Xers don’t have a penny saved for retirement.
Meanwhile, older Americans can also maximize their Social Security benefits by delaying claiming until they turn 70 years old. At that point, one’s benefits are boosted about 25% higher than their full benefits. But only about 4% of Americans wait until they’re 70 to claim the maximum Social Security benefit, according to a recent study from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.
CBS News
Trump threatens to sue Des Moines Register over poll, promises more lawsuits against news outlets after ABC News settlement
The announcement Saturday that ABC has agreed to commit $15 million toward President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential foundation to settle a defamation lawsuit was a rare victory for Trump in years of lawsuits against news organizations.
In the settlement’s aftermath, Trump said Monday at a news conference in Florida that he planned to sue the Des Moines Register over a poll and vowed to continue filing suits against news outlets whom he’s long accused of bias.
He complained that the pollster, J. Ann Selzer, “said I was going to lose by three or four points,” after previous Iowa surveys showed he’d win the state easily, “by 20 points.” Trump won the state by 13 points.
“In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” he said, adding, “we’ll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.”
Lark-Marie Anton, a spokesperson for the Des Moines Register, said in a statement to CBS News, “We have acknowledged that the Selzer/Des Moines Register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump’s Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll’s full demographics, crosstabs, weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster Ann Selzer.”
“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” Anton said.
Such litigation is unusual for presidents to pursue, according to Ohio University professor Aimee Edmondson. Trump has a long history of suing the media, she said, though his lawsuits aren’t often successful.
“It’s a rarity that he would actually win a settlement against a journalistic outlet, when I saw that I was astonished,” said Edmondson, who researches media law and journalism history.
Trump has sued CNN, The Washington Post and the New York Times multiple times, including during his first term in office. It’s a tactic he pursued both before and after his presidency, suing journalists and their book publishers, and major outlets — including CBS News — for coverage he didn’t like.
Edmondson said the lawsuits appear to have an added benefit for Trump.
“He has really done a good job repeating that message that journalists are the enemy of the people,” Edmondson said.
During the press conference on Monday, Trump said, “I feel I have to do this,” and added, “It costs a lot of money to do it but we have to straighten out the press.”
While Trump’s recent lawsuits have focused on outlets that are subsidiaries of deep pocketed corporations, Edmondson said she worries they might inspire others to sue “mom and pop” local media in response to coverage.
“Think of the state and county local officials, who might say, “Oh, this will be a great way to punish local journalists,” Edmondson said.
Trump’s suits often demand extraordinary figures from the defendants. Trump sued Timothy O’Brien after the journalist wrote a book questioning Trump’s claims about his own net worth, demanding $5 billion in damages. The case was dismissed, and Trump later told a reporter for The Washington Post that he knew he couldn’t win the suit.
“I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” Trump said.
Trump sued ABC for defamation after anchor George Stephanolopous said that Trump had been “found liable for rape” during a March 10 interview with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
A unanimous civil jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexual abuse of the writer E. Jean Carroll. The sexual abuse claim included an allegation that Trump forced his fingers inside Carroll against her will. The federal judge who presided over the case later wrote, “the jury implicitly found Mr. Trump did in fact digitally rape Ms. Carroll.”
Trump sued CBS News in October, accusing the network of “deceitful” editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump has claimed CBS News edited Harris’ response to a question about conflict in the Middle East in order to mislead the public. He reiterated that claim Monday.
“They took Kamala’s answer which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later in the interview,” Trump claimed.
CBS News said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed that its claims are “completely without merit.” The network said it will vigorously defend against the lawsuit.
CBS filed a motion to dismiss the suit on Dec. 6, arguing the case has no merit and that it should not have been filed in Texas, which is home to neither the defendant or plaintiff. CBS is New York-based, and Trump lives in Florida.
Trump has also sued journalist Bob Woodward and publisher Simon & Schuster in January 2023, claiming Woodward publicly released interview recordings made for the book “Rage” without Trump’s permission.
Trump said Monday that Woodward “didn’t quote me properly from the tapes,” and he claimed Woodward “sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do.”
The publisher’s parent company at the time, Paramount Global, was named as a defendant as well. Paramount is also CBS News’ parent company.
Soon after the case was filed, Simon & Schuster and Woodward released a joint statement calling the lawsuit meritless.
“All these interviews were on the record and recorded with President Trump’s knowledge and agreement,” the statement said. “Moreover, it is in the public interest to have this historical record in Trump’s own words. We are confident that the facts and the law are in our favor.”
The case is ongoing, and the defendants have asked a judge to dismiss the suit.
In 2022, Trump sued the board that bestows journalism’s most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize. The case revolves around a statement the board made reaffirming its decision to give The New York Times and The Washington Post an award in 2018 for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller III later found “insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.”
Trump said Monday, “it turned out to be a hoax and they were exactly wrong.”
The Pulitzer Prize Board put out its statement after Trump called for it to revoke its 2018 awards. The board said two independent reviews found “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”
A Florida judge in July rejected an effort by the defendants to have the case dismissed. It remains ongoing.
TikTok CEO meets with Trump ahead of January ban
Social Security’s full retirement age is increasing in 2025. Here’s what to know.
Trump threatens to sue Des Moines Register over poll, promises more lawsuits against news outlets after ABC News settlement
TikTok CEO meets with Trump ahead of January ban
Social Security’s full retirement age is increasing in 2025. Here’s what to know.