Transcript: Sen. Mark Warner on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," June 29, 2025

The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that will air on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on June 29, 2025.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We begin today with Virginia Democrat Mark Warner. He is the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Good morning.

SEN. MARK WARNER: Good morning.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve been, probably, sleep-deprived with all of what is happening, but I want to ask you about what’s going on in Capitol Hill. Republicans are going to pass this along party lines. It’s expected, right? But, it includes things in here that Democrats, including you, had supported, right? The no taxes on tips provision, more money for Border Patrol, expansion of the Child Care Tax Credit upwards of $2,000. Why vote against it, when there are popular provisions within it, and doesn’t that just allow the President to say, oh, you want to raise taxes?

SEN. WARNER: You can put as much lipstick on this pig as you want. This will- this will be a political albatross for the Republicans —

MARGARET BRENNAN: — Why? —

SEN. WARNER: — because it takes 16 million Americans off of health care coverage with cuts to Medicaid, and cuts to the Obamacare marketplace. That will move us, as a nation, back to the same percentage of uninsured we had before- before Obamacare. And, it’s not like these people are not going to get sick. They’re going to show up at the emergency room. Rural hospitals are going to shut down. That has been evidenced across the nation. It also goes after food assistance. So we are really in such a place that we’re cutting, in my state, a couple hundred thousand people off of school lunches, school breakfasts. They even cut food banks. It’s- it’s cruel. They have also ended up, at the end of the day, cutting 20,000-plus clean energy jobs. And for what? This was to make sure that the highest, most wealthy Americans can get an extra tax-break. And, as you just saw on your chyron, there, it adds $4.5 trillion to the debt. I think many of my Republican friends know they’re walking the plank on this, and we’ll see if those who’ve expressed quiet consternation will actually have the courage of their convictions.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, some of the Republicans are arguing, well, we have to deal with these entitlements and the work requirements and things that may lead to some of the lack of qualifications you talk about. They’re not that burdensome. It’s volunteer work or part-time work. So, are you overstating it?

SEN. WARNER: No. It’s 16 million Americans off of health care. You know, Medicaid cuts- these numbers, they’re not my numbers. They’re all independent sources. And what- the thing that I don’t think people have realized is people say, well, Medicaid, I’m not poor. I, maybe, buy my health insurance through the marketplace. Your rates will go up $800 or $900 a month. And that will trickle through the whole rest of the healthcare market, because if you suddenly take people out of the system, they show up at the emergency room in uncompensated care. The only way those costs get passed on, is higher health insurance to all of us who have traditional coverage.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, if this is so against their own interest, why haven’t you been able to peel more Republicans away?

SEN. WARNER: Well, I think we’ll see. Even as recently as just an hour ago, some of the special Medicaid provisions for certain states, I think, were disallowed because of the so-called Byrd Rule. It’s not over until it’s over. I will give you- I will grant that President Trump has been able to hold his party in line in an unprecedented manner. At the other end, this bill will come back and bite them. This is going to do so much damage in terms of, not only health care, food assistance, you know, the whole notion that we are moving towards cleaner energy jobs, all on the chopping block, adding $4 trillion to the debt. Tell me, at the end of the day, how that is good for America? I don’t think you can make the case.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Education is another front in this fight with the President. And I want to ask you about what’s happening in Virginia. We saw the University of Virginia’s President, James Ryan, resign on Friday. This was extraordinary. This was a pressure campaign from the Trump administration over diversity, or so-called DEI programs. In the letter, and I want to read this, Ryan wrote that if he had tried to fight back, hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld. But, he resigned to avoid this. Is that now the playbook for other university presidents: walk away, don’t have the fight?

SEN. WARNER: This is the most outrageous action, I think, this crowd has taken on education. We have great public universities in Virginia. We have a very strong governance system, where we have an independent board of visitors appointed by the Governor. Jim Ryan had done a very good job; just completed a major capital campaign. For him to be threatened, and, literally, there was indication that they received the letter that if he didn’t resign on a day last week, by five o’clock, all these cuts would take place. —

MARGARET BRENNAN: — It was that explicit? —

SEN. WARNER: — It was that explicit. —

MARGARET BRENNAN: This is- but that sounds personal. That doesn’t sound specific to policy or changes. Like, how does the next university president get in line and get the money?

SEN. WARNER: You’re shocked it’s coming- personal attacks are coming out of this administration? This is, you know- I thought the Republicans were about states’ rights. I thought the Republicans were about, let’s transfer more power in the States. This federal D.O.E. and Department of Justice should get their nose out of University of Virginia. They are doing damage to our flagship university. And if they can do it here, they’ll do it elsewhere. At the end of the day, I understand that, with so many things at stake, that the idea, and I think Jim Ryan laid it out, that he was going to make his personal- personal job more important than these cuts. But, boy, that shouldn’t have been the choice.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, and we know that the universe that the administration is looking at more universities, and the assistant A.G., Harmeet Dhillon, indicated that publicly, and University of California is next to the crosshairs, so we’re going to be watching that carefully —

SEN. WARNER: They all want to make them like Harvard. They want to take on public universities, the way they have now taken on the Ivys. End of the day, this is going to hurt our universities, chase away what world-class talent. And, frankly, if we don’t have some level of academic freedom, then what kind of country are we?

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about your oversight role on intelligence. You were briefed on what’s going on with Iran. You said you fear the American people are being given a false sense of comfort with these declarations of mission accomplished. Do you believe U.S. intelligence knows how much of a capability Iran maintains now?

SEN. WARNER: I don’t think we have final assessments. Let me- first of all, we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Secondly, the military performed an extraordinary mission, and I think they affected a great deal of damage to Iran’s facilities. But, the idea that the President of the United States, with no data, two hours after the strike, is suddenly hitting the standard of saying total obliteration. That leads us to think that they are out of the game, and we don’t know that yet. And, let’s just be clear, you can actually set back the major program where they were trying to create, potentially, and there’d been no decision made by the Ayatollah to actually move towards weaponization, but where they could have a weaponized system with a dozen-plus missiles that are nuclear warned. But what they don’t know is they didn’t, and this was appropriate, I’m not criticizing the administration; they didn’t go after the enriched uranium that was Isfahan, at that base, because it’s buried so deeply —

MARGARET BRENNAN: — They just hit it with Tomahawks, not the bunker-busters —

SEN. WARNER: — So, the fact that they can have, still, enriched uranium, they may have some ability to still cascade that- means they could still move forward on something, that might be not delivered by a missile, but a bomb in a trunk of a car. And all I don’t want is the American people, or, for that matter, our allies in the region, to rely on a term that was set by the President before he had any facts.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Point taken there on the specifics of the rudimentary bomb. But, coming back to what you just said, there had been no decision by the Supreme Leader to make a weapon. Secretary of State Rubio, on this program, last Sunday, told me it was irrelevant, the answer to that question, because Iran had everything it needed to make and build a weapon. So, based on what you know, was there an emergency? Was there a reason the US had to act in the moment it did?

SEN. WARNER: We were on the verge of what could have been a much greater war, in terms of Iran and Israel spreading to the whole region. Was there the imminent emergency that would trigger? Because lots of presidents have looked at taking this action, I think that’s- that’s very debatable. If, at the end of the day, we end up where this peace holds, and Iran doesn’t strike back, Hallelujah. But, what we don’t know, for example, is Iran going to try to hit us on cyber with this administration cutting, literally, half of our cyber-security personnel in this country? So, I just want to make sure that we- we do this in a measured way. The military did great. We have set them back. But let’s not pretend that they don’t have any capabilities. And the only way we can get resolution on that, Margaret, and Secretary Rubio acknowledged this in the brief, is if we have boots on the ground with inspectors. That means we’ve got to go to diplomacy. If America and Iran start negotiating this week, face-to-face, that would be good.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And we were- we will talk to the man who directs those boots on the grounds, potentially, the inspectors later on in the program from the IAEA. Thank you very much, Senator. We’re going to have to leave it there. We’ll be back in a moment.