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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Names Campaign Manager as WH Chief of Staff; DHS Officials Prepare for a Seismic Shift in Immigration Policy. How Will Trump Wield Justice Dept. After Talk Of "Revenge"?; Democrats Search For Answers And Blame Each Other In Wake Of Election Loss To Trump; Elon Musk Could Play Significant Role In 2nd Trump Admin; Trump Campaign Successfully Targeted Young Male Voters. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired November 07, 2024 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What they know about Donald Trump is that he's a celebrity businessman and don't really pay attention or remember the history of Trump's first term.
Another thing that is important to point out, this is really fascinating, Erin, is that many Latino immigrants come from countries where they have truly evil dangerous political leaders and so, because coming from that and experiencing that, the American political system and Donald Trump, is far less harmful.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Much more tame, all right, Ed, thank you very much. Thanks to all of you for being with us. Anderson starts now.
[20:00:33]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, breaking news, President-elect Trump names a chief-of-staff making campaign manager Susie Wiles his first Cabinet pick and the first woman ever to hold the title.
Also tonight, mass deportations of migrants on day one. Trump campaigned on it, what that might actually look like and mean for millions of people.
And Elon Musk, what does he do for a new Trump administration, what does he get in return. We'll talk to Professor Scott Galloway of about Musk and the impact young men had on this election.
Good evening, thanks for joining us.
We begin with Donald Trump's choice of campaign manager Susie Whiles to be White House chief-of-staff to do a job that four others did with varying degrees of success and frustration in the first Trump administration in which CNN just learned she put conditions on taking. Especially one source tells us concerning access to the president or in the source's words "the clown car cannot come in to the White House at will." And that same source adding, "And he agreed with her."
Now, late today in a statement announcing his decision, the president- elect said, "Susie is tough, smart, innovative, and is universally admired and respected. Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again."
She certainly had a job to do as a campaign manager for candidate acknowledged to be difficult to manage and a president who frustrated several chiefs of staff the first time around, and thanking her and her fellow campaign official, Chris LaCivita, he highlighted her preference for avoiding the spotlight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me also express my tremendous appreciation for Susie and Chris, the job you did. Come, Susie, come. Come here Susie. Chris, come here Chris. Susie likes to stay sort of in the back, let me tell you. The ice maiden. We call her the ice maiden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Susie Wiles is the first of many people who will be chosen to serve in the second Trump administration that critics and supporters alike say will differ from the first, something that Donald Trump, Jr. underscored today while saying he will have a role in the selection process.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, JR., ELDEST CHILD OF U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: I'm going to be heavily involved in the transition. I want to make sure, now that we know who the real players are, the people who will actually deliver on the president's message, the people who don't think that they know better than the duly elected president of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: He seems to be suggesting there will be fewer independent thinkers, more loyalists than before to carry out many promises that Trump made on the campaign trail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: On day one I will launch the largest deportation program in American history and if these companies don't make their products here than they will be paying a stiff tariff when they send their products into the United States for the privilege of competing with our workers and are now protected companies.
I will end the war in Ukraine. I will stop the chaos in the Middle East and I will prevent World War III from happening. We will build a missile defense shield massively. We are going to build the greatest, the biggest missile defense shield.
REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): We are going to protect kids in America and we are going to get men out of women's sports in America. TRUMP: Bobby Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., RFK Jr. And he is going to work and he does -- he's very strong on you know, the pesticides and all of the different things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: We will talk more, tonight about how he planned on some of that and some of the repercussions he does especially for his deportation plans. First though, more on the chief-of-staff appointment with Kristen Holmes.
So, what should people know about Susie Wiles?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Susie Wiles is a Trump loyalist, she is one of the only people, Anderson, who stuck by his side after he left Washington in disgrace in 2021. She came to work for him and she really stuck with him throughout the entire campaign. She served as the de facto chief-of-staff after his first term. I was there on election night when he threw a fit because, this is a 2022, excuse me, because none of his candidates won.
She was by his side then. She was by his side when he announced his candidacy afterwards and she has remained by his side and I do think one of the important things to point out here is that, that our colleague Steve Contorno got from someone who is ally of Susie Wiles about the "clown car" because that is something that she did and did well on the campaign.
One of Susie's mottos when she talks to people close to her is that she can't control Donald Trump and she understands that but she can control everything around him and that means access to the former president, now president-elect. And that is clearly something she is going to do in the White House.
They believe she did this well. It was keeping controversial figures away from Donald Trump. Obviously, she cannot always do it but it was trying to keep the chaos around him, who is a chaotic person to a minimum.
Now, this is really setting the tone for the entire administration because it is clear that she is someone who has taken seriously in Republican polls, particularly not just the MAGA side of things but also the establishment side. People respect Susie Wiles. So this is really giving you an indication of where this is going to go but first and foremost, Anderson, the thing that he cares about most is the fact that she is loyal to him.
[20:05:37]
COOPER: Yes, and who are some of the other people being talked about for high profile jobs?
HOLMES: There is quite a long list here and again, I want to make sure we are being clear that there is going to be a lot of jockeying and these positions are going to roll out. We know some of them might come as early as these week that these are just some of the names being floated around.
For Secretary of State, one big one is Senator Marco Rubio. This has been floating around since he did not get vice president. One thing to note, Don, Jr., top adviser to Donald Trump, his father, lashed out at Marco Rubio, had some nasty things to say when he was up for vice president so we will see how that plays out.
Next, attorney general, which is going to be one of the most important positions in Donald Trump's administration because Donald Trump wants to control the Justice Department. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general is on that list. Mike Lee, also on that list. I also want to add one name we don't have on this one, but it is John Ratcliffe, the former director of National Intelligence. These are names floating around.
Elon Musk, he is up for some kind of government efficiency adviser. One thing to note about that, Donald Trump has joked about the fact that Elon Musk will not join the government. He doesn't want to get rid of any of his properties or any of his companies. He does not have to divest. We are told this is likely to be a workaround for Elon Musk, in kind of some kind of form of a committee or adviser role.
Now, obviously Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., someone, we're very interested in that, a public health adviser likely. We will see how this all plays out. We know the RFK has been talking about how he wants to be to be potentially a secretary.
Elise Stefanik for UN Ambassador, that's one that I'm told, she's already met with the heads of the transition team and potentially Karoline Leavitt for press secretary. So, this is moving fast as he names Susie Wiles today. We will see what the next position he puts forward is.
COOPER: All right, Kristen Holmes, thanks.
Joining us now is Republican strategist, Shermichael Singleton, CNN senior political commentator, David Axelrod; journalist Gretchen Carlson, co-founder of Lift Our Voices; and Sabrina Rodriguez, a national political reporter for "The Washington Post".
David, what do you make of the pick for chief-of-staff?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I've said many times here during the course of this campaign that Donald Trump, you know, that Trump campaign -- they're a rational campaign and an irrational candidate and she kept the campaign, she and Chris LaCivita kept the campaign on track and they did to a large degree, keep the clown car away. It is tougher in some ways in Washington but --
COOPER: Talk about the role of the chief-of-staff. You saw this obviously in the White House yourself in the Obama administration. There were in the last, in the former Trump administration, there were meetings with some of the leaders.
AXELROD: My guess is one thing she's going to do is try to tightly control who goes into that Oval Office so that people cannot wander in and influence things without her knowledge and that's going to be very important.
A chief-of-staff -- if a chief-of-staff is empowered can be really, really important in terms of the paper flow to the president, the people that the president sees, the decision tree. It can be very important but I will tell you this. Chief-of-staff is very effective if the feeling around Washington is that chief-of-staff has the confidence of the president and the fact that they have developed this close relationship is very important.
COOPER: Shermichael, as a Republican, what do you think of this?
SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I'm excited about it. I mean I've known of Susie Wiles for a very, very long time and there are people who are not necessarily pro-Trump but who are pro-Susie Wiles because to them, this signals that the second coming of a Trump presidency is going to be very different.
She is a trusted thinker. She has several decades of political experience and she is someone who can prioritize and manage an operation and David, you know this very well, that is going to be critical to David's point of controlling the flow of information and access to the former president and having someone that he trusts who can sort of set up those guardrails will be critical to making sure that whatever types of judgment calls that are made, the best advisers are getting to him first and not anyone else. So I feel very confident about how this is shaping up so far.
COOPER: Controlling though, I mean, obviously, Donald Trump is a unique figure in American politics and given what we have seen, there is only so much one can do, I would imagine.
GRETCHEN CARLSON, JOURNALIST: Well, she obviously was doing something right because she has lasted a long time with him and the idea that she was as disciplined with him as possible -- I'm thinking about Laura Loomer who was with him during the 9/11 ceremonies which was not a good look and she probably was not happy about that.
One thing I want to focus on though is that she is the first female chief-of-staff, which when I heard that today I was like, wow, like that has never happened before and the first thing I thought of actually after that was Mark Cuban owes her an apology for saying that Donald Trump was not surrounding himself with strong and smart woman because obviously she's been able to hang on to this role as a smart strong woman with Donald Trump this long.
[20:10:33]
I did also like the fact that she is going to keep the clown car out. I think Donald Trump is influenced by the last person he speaks to, and so that is important and I also thought about the fact that he brought in Corey Lewandowski this past summer and I'm sure she did not like that as well because the talk at that time was maybe she is going to be on the way out and Corey Lewandowski is going to be higher up. So, I think this is a well-deserved role for her.
COOPER: Sabrina, you've followed the campaign obviously very well. SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: For me what is going to be interesting is seeing voter reactions to this. I think voters are less concerned about who exactly are the people that are going to be executing the policy, what they want to see is Donald Trump come into office on day one, and do the things he promised he was going to do.
And a lot of these things are very lofty, ambitious plans, I made to execute the largest mass deportation effort in US history is going to require a lot of coordination and we know from extensive reporting that behind the scenes, Trumps allies have been planning for this for a while.
So really it's a question of watching him set up things in the next few months to be able to start implementing those things on day one.
COOPER: In terms of selecting people, David, in a new administration, what is that process generally like? They have an advantage this time. They have done it before, so they know what mistakes they made the last time.
AXELROD: And obviously, a lot of people have been thinking about this and they had a process going on.
COOPER: And loyalty seems to be very top of the list.
AXELROD: What happened the last time was they had a transition team and Chris Christie was heading that transition team. He had differences with Jared Kushner, had differences with him and took his transition report threw it in the garbage.
Obviously, this is a little more orderly and now that she is empowered is the chief-of-staff, you would think that she's going to play an even larger role in one thing we should mention, this will mean nothing to you, Anderson, but a lot of people will know this. Pat Summerall was her father, who is a great football player and kicker and broadcaster. So she's been around blocking and tackling all of her life and that will be useful.
COOPER: Shermichael, you heard Donald Trump, Jr. saying he's going to be very involved in looking over the vetting process, the hiring process. Loyalty clearly, they feel that they had people around the president, then President Trump the last time who were trying to kind of control his impulses. It seems like they don't want that same type of person around.
SINGLETON: I think Susie Wiles is going to try to do a little bit of that but it think, look, he is the president. You want individuals who are going to serve the president and serve him well. I was part of the transition team in 2016 when Dr. Carson went to HUD. I'm very familiar with that process and you have some good people. You have some not so good people, I suppose.
I've got a feeling this time though, Anderson, looking at some of the names we have seen suggestive for some of those key roles, this is going to be different and you saw Sabrina talk about the mass immigration. How are you going to execute that? You need people that are going to be able to do it and do it well. What is that going to look like? Who are you choosing?
I mean, there are a lot of complexities there and I think if you are looking at this from Trump's perspective, you're looking at the first 60 to 90 days not only on immigration but also the economy, what is that going to look like? What is going to be the focus there? So I think it's not necessarily about finding people who are over loyal to the president but loyal to trying to bring to fruition his ideas for the American people.
CARLSON: I think this time around he's going to win the popular vote. And so I think that he feels like his mandate -- he has more power in his mandate thinking that a majority of the American citizens want him to do what he campaigned on, whether or not that is true to the 46 other percent who did not vote for him, that is another story but I think that he is going to take control in a different way this time. He did not understand Washington, DC when he came in 2016 so he brought in people who understood it better than he did and he clashed with a lot of those people.
COOPER: It's also very interesting to see what role Vice President Vance will have in this administration. Obviously, when you're running, you see the vice president out camping a lot as we saw when Biden took office, Vice President Harris sort of disappeared from public view for a long time.
RODRIGUEZ: Yes, I think it's an open question at this point how involved Vance is going to be or what exactly Donald Trump will want to see him doing.
I mean, if it is going to be having Vance out touting what Trump is doing in those first days and really being a cheerleader for Donald Trump, I think we will see some of JD Vance. If JD Vance goes off script, and gives some different messaging around how things are going to be executed, I think he will be in a more behind-the-scenes role and sort of what we expect from vice presidents often.
COOPER: Now, we're going to take a break. Coming up next, new reporting on the planning underway to implement the president-elect's mass deportation promise. Also, his promises to investigate and prosecute political rivals and use the military necessary against the Americans -- plus, the near total immunity the Supreme Court gave him, does that add up to the rule of law, we'll take a look at that next.
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[20:19:27]
COOPER: There's more breaking news tonight, a federal judge struck down the Biden administration's policy of giving legal status to certain undocumented individuals who are married to US citizens. Now, this comes as multiple sources tells CNN that the Trump transition team along with some of the private sector are preparing to carry out candidate Trump's promise to launch the largest mass deportation ever of migrants living in the US. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, joins us with more on what that might actually entail or what would mass deportations look like.
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, there hasn't been anything like mass deportation in recent memory because it is so challenging to do with the limited federal resources that there are.
But Donald Trump has said no doubt that his first order of business is mass deportation.
There is a key difference from his 2016 campaign, which was focused on the border, and the border wall and it comes against backdrop of course of the last few years of border crisis under the Biden administration, which resulted in criticism of this administration from Republicans and Democrats.
[20:20:27]
Now, I have been talking to Homeland Security officials over the last several days and they are preparing for seismic change in immigration policy, and they are no strangers to the whiplash. Remember that when President Biden took office, he reversed the Trump administration policies and now the same Homeland Security officials are anticipating the return of those policies and in talking to them they tell me it has been a mixed bag of emotions.
Some are shell-shocked by the election results while others are more optimistic and hopeful, wanting a stronger posture on the US Southern border but it speaks to the reality of the situation, Anderson, which is that immigration policy has been dictated by executive actions which result in this whiplash from one administration to the next, and now it is paving the way for these mass deportation plans that Donald Trump has promised repeatedly on the trail.
COOPER: So, how difficult could it be to put this into motion? There are a lot of moving parts, what I am being told by sources is that even before Election Day, Trump allies and some in the private sector were preparing for detaining and deporting migrants on a large scale and I mentioned the private sector because the federal government largely leans on contractors to manage facilities, so they need them to do this type of work mostly because there are very few federally- owned facilities and that is the key element of all of this, detention.
You cannot mass-deport without mass detention. If you arrest someone they need to be detained somewhere before they are repatriated to their home country. So, that is a key element of this and that requires money.
Now, earlier, Donald Trump said there is no price tag to mass deportation. There is, however. In fact, for one undocumented immigrant to be apprehended, detained, processed and removed is nearly $11,000.00. That is just for one individual. Add that up, we are looking at millions, if not billions of dollars. Now, the Department of Homeland Security has previously moved money around to try to shore up funds for more detention space, but I have spoken to officials who say it would have to be so much more than what they can do right now with the money that they have, so that is part of it.
They also need more personnel and of course, Anderson, there is an element of diplomacy here. There needs to be agreements with countries if you're going to send people back.
So certainly a lot at work here, but what I am being told by sources is that this is being discussed and there are operations on going to try to execute on this as soon as Donald Trump takes office.
COOPER: All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thanks very much.
Back now with the panel.
David, I mean, you went through this with the Obama administration early on. There were deportations. What are the difficulties? How do you see the Trump promise --
AXELROD: Well, I mean, I think Priscilla laid them out. It is very involved process to deport people, and one of the questions I have is, whatever deportations Donald Trump has, he will say is the largest mass deportation in history. What that number actually turns out to be is another question because in addition to all the expenses of deporting people, you know, there is a disruptive element.
If you were really to engage in mass deportations in this country, there are economic implications of that. There are diplomatic implications of that. There are all kinds of implications of these decisions and --
COOPER: There's also, I mean there's people who are in prison serving sentences.
AXELROD: Yes.
COOPER: They are not deported until they finish serving those sentences. I mean, it is complicated. If you're looking to deport a million people, it is not all people who have committed crimes.
AXELROD: Right.
COOPER: It is people who are married to an American citizen but they don't have citizenship.
AXELROD: Yes, I mean, you know people in this country are frustrated about what happened at the border. They're frustrated about people who break the law, they come into the country. And he was speaking to that in the course of the campaign, living up to the words, which were really meant to provoke. Actually implementing them as a policy, far more complicated.
CARLSON: I dug up the numbers, 11 million undocumented immigrants in 2022. Trump says there is more, $315 billion to deport them. We don't have the manpower to do that. You would have to get the National Guard out there, which he may do but you are also talking about huge employers were not going to necessarily be happy with this because these are the workers that are working for them and so suddenly in the hospitality industry for example, in Las Vegas or other big cities, they potentially would lose all of those workers.
So, you are going to have the influence of the CEOs coming to Trump, now that he is elected and saying I don't know, maybe not so fast. So, there are tons on implications as David is pointing out.
[20:25:23]
COOPER: Sabrina, you attended a lot of rallies and this was talked about a lot.
RODRIGUEZ: Oh, this was I mean, the number one talking point. I think some of the loudest cheers you would hear in each of his rallies was when he was denigrating undocumented immigrants that have come in recent years and him making this promised repeatedly throughout his rallies. But I think what is interesting is for talking to voters, a chunk able who voted for Donald Trump don't actually believe he's going to deport every immigrant.
There is an expectation, a belief that he is going to focus on criminals, that he is going to focus on people who have come in the last four years under the Biden administration, there's going to be distinctions made on who exactly gets deported.
So a lot of people are not necessarily expecting that on day one, he is going to start rounding up people and a lot of people don't actually believe that the concept of -- oh, they're going to be camps to you know, help transition people in the process of deportation.
So I think there's the real question of how this is going to be executed and I think that for some of the people who voted for Donald Trump, there is certainly going to be a grace period of them trying to see how exactly he navigates it.
COOPER: Well, Shermichael, I mean, is it as David said, you just call it mass deportation and you know, it's not actually mass deportations.
SINGLETON: I mean, he has to address it. I mean, I think our immigration laws have been modified in such a way that leads to an influx of illegal immigrants, thus low skilled workers and those low skilled workers compete against a lot of Americans who would typically fulfill those jobs.
I think some could also argue that they do put some extremities on already existing limitations of social programs in many cities across the country whether that is housing, healthcare, and other things.
So, I think the mandate on the former president will be your president-elect rather will be to address this in some capacity. Does that appear to be legislation? Does that appear to be removing some individuals that they would say well, these individuals have created heinous acts against Americans therefore we are going to deport them? You need to have some of this in order to fulfill that desire for people who voted for him.
COOPER: David, I mean, this wasn't just though a tagline that he, I remember at the convention, there were printed signs that they passed out to everybody at the convention saying mass deportations.
AXELROD: Yes.
COOPER: Is it enough if he throws out some people who have committed crimes, served their prison sentence and then makes a big deal of throwing them out or if it gets into separating families, that's a whole other level that I mean, I'm not sure people are prepared for.
AXELROD: No, look, I think Donald Trump, and Sabrina can speak to this, you know, this is an applause line for him. I'm not questioning that he does -- most Americans believe the border needs to be secure and people should not flow in here illegally but it played well, and I think that was why he said what he said.
If aspects of this starts to not play well, I think he will pull back from it. He's not going to want to go to places that will create problems, political problems for him.
One thing we should mention though, in addition to everything that Gretchen said, the strain that this would put on local law enforcement, so it kind of conflicts with another goal of his, which is the notion that he's going to somehow impact on crime, which has been coming down anyway by the way, but he's going to impact -- and I think local law enforcement around the country are going to have some feelings if they're going to be drawn into this.
CARLSON: The thing I would add to that though, is that poll after poll showed that the majority of Americans, whether or not it was a tagline or just to get people thinking about it and riled up, the majority of Americans agreed with mass deportation.
AXELROD: As a concept --
CARLSON: As a concept, yes.
AXELROD: But if it means that all these restaurants and hotels --
RODRIGUEZ: There also wasn't a compelling argument on the other side. I mean, we did an analysis on just the amount of ad spending. Republicans, the campaign and Republican groups spent $243 million since Kamala Harris joined the race, on immigration-related ads. Democrats on the other side spent $15 million. Let's think about those numbers.
So, the American people were repeatedly hearing about a crisis on the border, about fear-based messaging, how bad it was, all the immigrants that have come in the last four years and on the Democratic side this is not something Kamala Harris was leaning in on the immigration.
Democrats have struggled to talk about this issue in the years since the Biden administration came into office so that as part of it. You are listening to one person offer a solution and that is the one a lot of people went with.
SINGLETON: But the mandate is to readdress this grievance for a lot of his voters and I'm looking at it in two ways. You have to address those who have committed heinous acts. You also have to address the fact that this is an issue as it pertains to low skilled workers and increase competitiveness. It he can do that then that's success in my book.
COOPER: Shermichael Singleton, Sabrina Rodriguez, Gretchen Carlson, thanks so much. David Axelrod is going to come back in a moment.
Just ahead, the president-elect has suggested prosecuting high level Democrats and called some, the enemy from within, the question is what will the Department of Justice look like in the second Trump administration, someone who knows his wrath, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, joins us next.
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SHERMICHAEL SINGLETON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: -- who have committed heinous acts, and you also have to address the fact that this is an issue as it pertains to low skilled workers and increased competitiveness. If he can do that, then that's success in my book.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Shermichael Singleton. Sabrina Rodriguez, Gretchen Carlson, thanks so much. David Axelrod's going to come back in a moment.
Just ahead, the President-elect has suggested prosecuting high level Democrats and called some the enemy from within. Question is, what will the Department of Justice look like in the second Trump administration? Someone who knows his wrath, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe joins us next.
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COOPER: Last year, the President-elect said that if he won the White House, he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after President Biden. This year, he said Vice President Harris should be, quote, "impeached and prosecuted." Special Counsel Jack Smith, Trump said should be, quote, "thrown out of the country." And last month, he said the military should be used against the, quote, "enemy from within".
Days later, he called Democratic Senator-elect Adam Schiff and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi each an enemy from within. Also, over the course of just a few days in June this year, he said this, in two sit down interviews.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, revenge does take time, I will say that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It does. TRUMP: And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil. I have to be honest. You know, sometimes it can.
[20:35:01]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Those that want people to believe that you want retribution, that you will use the system of justice to go --
TRUMP: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- after your political enemies.
TRUMP: So number one, they're wrong. It has to stop because otherwise we're not going to have a country. Look, when this election is over, based on what they've done, I would have every right to go after them, and it's easy because it's Joe Biden, and you see all the criminality.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
COOPER: Joining me now is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired hours before his retirement by the President's first Attorney General. McCabe settled a subsequent lawsuit after alleging the termination was politically motivated. McCabe is also co-host of the Jack podcast, which covers the special counsel prosecutions against Trump now in jeopardy.
Andrew, what do you think the rule of law will look like in the second Trump term?
ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I think it's going to look very different, Anderson. And I think that the entire administration of the Justice Department, the leadership in the department, the way they think about their mission, all of these things can be fundamentally changed in ways that we haven't seen since the imposition of the civil service regime so many years ago.
I think the chief bellwether, what to look for first, in terms of those things will be whether or not the President goes back to his plans with Schedule F. So basically, signing an executive order that would change the nature of all of the high level and mid-level leadership positions in the department of the FBI to political positions.
So jobs that could be held by political, you know, flunkies and hacks --
COOPER: Explain why that would be --
MCCABE: -- if he does that.
COOPER: -- such a big deal because I think it sounds granular. People don't really understand what that might mean.
MCCABE: Yes, sure. So those positions right now are protected, you know, federal government positions or people who are in them have the protections of the system. They can't be fired for political reasons and things like that. They'll -- if you change that kind of position description to some -- to one that can be filled by a political -- somebody who is appointed at the will of the president, rather than someone who has come up through the meritocracy, you completely shift the nature of the leadership of these organizations.
They'll be filled by people who are there to follow the will of the president and the administration, rather than to make decisions based on the facts and the law, which is what the department does today. So I think that shift will be seismic if, in fact, he follows through on that plan.
COOPER: Yes. Some in the Trump world call -- refer to that as the deep state. Others say those are civil servants who have institutional knowledge, who have been there for years and built up a skill set as opposed to somebody who's just coming in based on a political basis. How important will Trump's choice for attorney general be?
MCCABE: Critical. Critical, right? So you have -- we have enjoyed attorneys general, whether you like them or not, personally. Our attorneys general since the Nixon era have been committed to this idea that the department should act independently when it comes to making decisions about investigations and prosecutions.
Despite what you've heard in the campaign rhetoric and all the other stuff, the department doesn't decide who to prosecute and investigate based on what the president tells them. That will all change if you have -- if the department is led entirely by people who owe their jobs and their careers to the president and not to the organization itself.
So, yes, this -- if you have someone who takes over the department, who is open about the fact that he's there to do what the president tells him, the implications for that on individual cases and prosecutions of the people who are affected by those actions are enormous, enormous.
And, in fact, it sets a tone for the department where people will be afraid to stand up and take independent action to push back against politics when the facts and the law don't call for that sort of action. Those people might very well be afraid of standing up for the facts and the law when they're afraid of losing their jobs to the political folks that they report to.
COOPER: Do you think he's going to follow through on the sort of the vengeance talk (ph)?
MCCABE: I think we have every reason to believe he will, Anderson. I mean, he has said it as your introductory piece made very clear. He's been -- he's made his intent as we say, in the criminal investigative business, very clear and the conditions within which he'll be operating are very different than those he faced in 2016.
He's not going to have people around him who are committed to kind of keeping him within the guardrails and telling him what's unlawful or inappropriate. Be surrounded by mostly political sycophants who are there to facilitate whatever it is he wants to do. He's not running for re-election ever, so he's not constrained by that. And, of course, the Supreme Court has bestowed him with essentially complete immunity. So everything he tells the department will do, comes within the penumbra of that immunity, and he essentially can't be held accountable for any of those statements or actions.
[20:40:12]
COOPER: Yes. Andrew McCabe, I appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.
Up next --
MCCABE: Thank you.
COOPER: -- elections have consequences on the country and the party that loses. So the question is, where do Democrats go from here? Two veteran political strategists, David Axelrod and Mike Murphy, join me next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Day after Democrats lost the White House and Senate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders offered this diagnosis on social media, quoting him now, "It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that working class -- that working class has abandoned them."
This morning, the party's chairman responded, saying, quote, "This is straight up BS. Biden was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime." Just one example of some of the recriminations and post- mortems going on right now for Democrats.
David Axelrod is back and joining us as Republican consultant, Mike Murphy. Two veteran political strategists are co-hosts of the Hacks on Tap podcast. So David, first of all, what do you make of this back and forth between Sanders and the head of the Democratic Party? And also, where should Democrats be pointing the finger?
[20:45:00]
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you've heard me over the last few days. I do have concerns about the way the Democratic Party has relates to working class voters in this country. The only group that Democrats gained with in the election on Tuesday was white college graduates and among working class voters, there was a, you know, a significant decline.
The only group they won among were -- Democrats won among were people who make more than $100,000 a year. You can't win national elections that way, and it certainly shouldn't be that way for a party that fashions itself as the party of working people. So I think he has a point.
I -- Mike knows this because we've been talking about it. You can't approach working people like missionaries and say, we're here to help you become more like us. There's an kind of unspoken disdain, unintended disdain in that. I think Biden has done, you know, programmatically some good things for working people, but the party itself has increasingly become a smarty pants, suburban, college educated party. And it lends itself to the kind of backlash that we've seen.
COOPER: Mike, where do you put the blame in terms of the Democrats?
MIKE MURPHY, GOP CONSULTANT: Well, yes, they do have a problem of working class voters. Trump's populism, like it or not, has been an effective magnet. You know, if you look at the exit polls, they won college educated white people, the Democrats did by single digits. Trump blew away among non-college educated white people by nearly 30 points.
So, you know, you can't have a lopsided deal like that. Part of it's cultural. I think the Democrats need to step back. There's going to be a temptation to criticize the glue on the bumper stickers and, you know Connelly should have gone to Rhinelander, Wisconsin two more times. That's not where the story is.
It was a solid campaign. Wasn't a great one. I don't think a great one would have worked. Almost 70 percent --
COOPER: Do you think even though like a great -- the greatest run campaign wouldn't have worked?
MURPHY: Yes. I mean, the truth is technically, I think it -- Harris campaign was still stronger than the Trump campaign, but Trump had what I was calling the 100-mile wall of lava behind them. People wanted to fire everybody connected to the Democratic Party based on inflation and immigration.
And so, you know, what they need to do is back up and look about how do they make a case to these workers? How do they fix the Democrat woke liberal wine and cheese brand? And how do they get it ready for the midterms?
Because that's the next big contest and 5 percent more what they're doing now or tweak here and there, I don't think it's going to cut it. They need a clean sheet of paper and a really hard headed look at why they can't connect to people who don't have a college degree.
AXELROD: Yes. I don't necessarily agree on one point, which is that the Trump campaign didn't run a good campaign. They had an easier campaign to run. They just needed to say over and over and over again, she was Joe Biden's vice president.
MURPHY: Right.
AXELROD: She was responsible for these policies and she's going to continue these policies.
COOPER: In past defeats, I mean, how do parties change? I mean, whether it's Republicans or Democrats, you've talked before about, you know, Bill Clinton came out of a kind of a turn inward where --
AXELROD: Yes.
COOPER: -- governors, democratic governors around the country got together --
AXELROD: Yes.
COOPER: -- and started --
AXELROD: Listen, Mike Murphy was part -- he was one of the mischievous fellows who behind the Reagan conversion of Democratic voters in the 80s. And Democrats had to consider how have we drifted away from our base. There are these periods of renewal, but they require you to think deeply, not to lash out, but to think deeply about what are we missing? Why aren't we connecting?
And fund -- and afford voters the respect of listening to what they're saying. Governors understand that better than people who live in Washington, D.C. most of the time. And there are a lot of very strong and successful Democratic governors.
Look, in Pennsylvania, you know, Josh Shapiro has really a lot of support in rural areas and small towns. And he's -- and he has articulated positions such as state jobs for people who don't necessarily have a college degree, but are qualified to do them and he has broken through. So there is going to be a -- an effort to try and think this through, I believe.
COOPER: Mike, do you think it's -- yes, what do you -- how do you see it?
MURPHY: Yes, there has to be an effort, but the problem is, and this is going to be the battle, is the moderate Democrats will say, well, it's obvious. We need to be more moderate. And the progressives will say, well, we lost because we weren't committed.
I always call it the fight between the mathematicians and the priest. The mathematicians say, well, look at the, you know, look at voters with a high school education, look at blue collar workers. Then the priest come in and say, it's faith. Shout the gospel louder, go to the left.
[20:50:00]
So, you know, they've got a fight on their hands. And I can't tell you how it's going to turn out. I'm a mathematician. I think the numbers are pretty clear. I think David knows exactly what they need to happen, but you got to look at the internal incentives within the party where ideological interest groups have a lot of power.
So, I think Axe is right. Look to the governors who tend to be the higher level politicians who get outside the D.C. Hatfield-McCoy thing and operate a little more creativity --
COOPER: Yes.
MURPHY: -- with a little more creativity. COOPER: Yes. Mike Murphy, David Axelrod, thanks so much.
Still ahead, what Elon Musk now does in a new Trump administration, what he gets in return. Professor Scott Galloway joins me next to talk about Musk and what Scott calls the testosterone election.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: We're now in the role tech billionaire Elon Musk might have when President-elect Trump returns to the White House. He was one of Trump's biggest financial backers. His pro-Trump's Super PAC spent nearly $120 million on the campaign, which got the attention of course of Trump supporters who cheered his name when the President-elect gave his victory speech early yesterday morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
TRUMP: Who did you say?
AUDIENCE: Elon.
TRUMP: Oh, let me tell you, we have a new star. A star is born, Elon.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
COOPER: The President-elect hailing Elon Musk. Perspective now from Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University Stern School of Business. Scott, in terms of Elon Musk, how much influence do you think he's going to have in this administration?
[20:55:03]
SCOTT GALLOWAY, HOST, "THE PROF G POD": I think he'll have real influence mostly on his own companies. I don't know if he has the time or the inclination to get involved in real kind of government reform, but I think he'll have a pretty heavy hand when it comes to regulation.
COOPER: You said before the election something that I think is really prescient and important. You said this election is going to be decided on who presents a more aspirational vision of masculinity. Donald Trump doubled down on young men, really focused on reaching out Elon Musk -- I guess you can see a sort of part of that, but can you just talk about that, that idea of who presents a more aspirational vision of masculinity, why that is so important?
GALLOWAY: Yes, everyone thought this was -- this election was going to be a referendum on women's rights. I would argue this was a referendum on who presented a more aspirational vision of masculinity. Elon Musk is sending satellites into space, building cars. He's magnificently wealthy. He's provocative. He's entertaining.
I would argue he's probably the most aspirational role model for most young men globally, even if you think that's healthy or not. So in addition, the right Trump to his credit, embrace the manosphere. This -- I would argue this was the manosphere election, Anderson. He went on Alex Schultz, Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman. He basically went on the biggest manosphere podcast and it was the smart thing to do. Let me give you some numbers. The Joe Rogan interview of Donald Trump got 40 million views on YouTube, approximately 15 million downloads. That's 55 million people saw Donald Trump for three hours
That's more people or about the same number of people to watch the entire world series. If you were to try and get that same audience on cable television, he'd have to go on this and every other prime time cable news network every night for two weeks.
This was not only the manosphere election, it was kind of the podcast election. But going all in on this more aggressive, provocative, I'll put money in your pocket, I'll get you out of your parents' house, I'm all about the economy, I'm not as worried about social justice issues, I'm a little bit irreverent, I'm aggressive, I'm provocative, boy, it resonated.
This was kind of the, you know, simply put, I would argue this was more of the testosterone election than it was a referendum on bodily autonomy for women.
COOPER: And you're saying this, by the way, is somebody who publicly endorsed Harris. You were critical of the campaign of the Democrats efforts, if there were to specifically reach out to young men.
GALLOWAY: Well, Anderson, you were at the convention. There was a parade of every special interest group. There were no young men. There was no acknowledgement of the group that has fallen further faster than any group in American history over the last 20 years. And that's young men.
More single women on homes and single men. Women are making more money in urban centers under the age of 30, which I think is fantastic. But here are some grim statistics. Young men are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to be addicted, 12 times more likely to be incarcerated.
Only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship. One in three live at home. One in five 30-year-old men live at home, whereas one -- whereas two and three women are in a relationship. So what do you have? You have a bunch of men who are not engaging in work, not engaging in relationships, not engaging in school, them and their parents feel it.
And if you look at the polling results, the group that swang most aggressively towards Trump other than Latin men was young people 18 to 29. And the second biggest demographic by age that swung towards Trump was people age 45 to 64. And my thesis is that, that is their parents.
Social justice issues and what's going on in Ukraine, take a back seat. When your son is in the basement vaping and playing video games and can't find a job.
COOPER: And yet, you've pointed out that you believe under -- in the Trump administration, it's likely there would be a tax increase for young men.
GALLOWAY: The Harris campaign was unable to expose a basic economic truth and that is deficits, which have been bad under the Biden administration, but under the Trump administration versus the Harris economic plan, the deficits are going to be triple.
And it's great for you and me, Anderson, because we own homes and we own stocks and the stimulus of that deficit spending will take the value of our stocks and our real estate up. But our kids are going to have to pay that back at some point.
And they're facing inflation and possibly mortgage rates of 15 percent to 20 percent. So all deficits do is take the credit card of youth, run it such that we can have champagne and cocaine in the club. Deficits are nothing but delayed taxes on the young. And the Harris campaign was not able to square that circle for young people.
The largest tax increase in history is about to happen, vis-a-vis a massive increase in deficits from Donald Trump.
COOPER: I know you were speaking metaphorically, I think about the club stuff.
Scott Galloway, appreciate your time. Thank you.
GALLOWAY: Thanks, Anderson. Good to see you.
COOPER: Well, that's it for us. The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now. See you tomorrow.
