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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Trump: Judges Shouldn't Be "Dictating" What I Am Doing; White House: Russia Releases Wrongfully Detained American; Speaker Johnson: The Courts Should "Take A Step Back"; Trump & Musk Defend Aggressive Efforts To Overhaul Government. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired February 11, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:01]
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: It really depends on the weather, Boris. One thing we are seeing is that other countries are getting in the mix, like Ecuador. They're starting to grow their own cocoa trees. But Boris, it takes 4 to 6 years for those trees to be available for harvest.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yeah.
YURKEVICH: So a long term solution, not an immediate fix, Boris.
SANCHEZ: Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you so much.
If you really want to flex and get your loved one a luxury item, buy them a dozen eggs.
Thanks so much, Vanessa.
"THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Apparently on President Trump's out list, paper straws, the penny and the judicial branch.
THE LEAD starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out. And what we're doing is good and right for the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: The Republican House speaker, they're siding with the president and the vice president, suggesting that the judicial branch judges just take a breather, let Elon Musk take out the executive branch for a little spin. So how far can the Trump administration go as the president engages in operation disruption?
Plus, New York Mayor Eric Adams, it appears to be case closed on the corruption charges against him. Did Mayor Adams woo his way out of trouble? How much are politics in play? And a selfie with stolen -- stolen jewelry, expensive necklaces, watches and cash laid out, the new evidence prosecutors are revealing as they investigate an alleged theft ring tied to break-ins at the homes of NFL stars.
(MUSIC)
TAPPER: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.
In our politics lead, the power struggle between President Trump and the courts. Here's President Trump giving his unvarnished take.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Judges should be ruling. They shouldn't be dictating what you're supposed to be doing.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
TAPPER: The question for the nation is whether President Trump intends to ignore altogether judges' rulings, ignore altogether the judicial branch of government. In his open challenge to the rule of law and the power of the courts, or whether President Trump is just talking, pontificating, trying to dissuade other judges from ruling against him.
If it's the former, if he intends to ignore what the courts say, this country will potentially find ourselves in a constitutional crisis. More than 40 lawsuits have already been filed to challenge Trump's various actions, from his attempt to revoke birthright citizenship to giving Elon Musk and the DOGE team access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems.
Judges have already ruled telling him to halt or pause those actions and more, such as freezing federal funds or reducing health research grants for priorities such as fighting cancer or the push to get federal employees to quit.
And now, a federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration is defying his orders.
Let's go to CNN's Jeff Zeleny at the White House.
Jeff, as we ponder how serious Trump is about challenging the courts, defying the courts. He's in the Oval Office right now with Elon Musk. Tell us what they're doing, what they're discussing.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, a week ago, the cover of time magazine with Elon Musk standing behind the resolute desk has now become reality. Elon Musk has been in the Oval Office for about the last half hour or so, initially signing an executive order that is yet one more in this wave of executive orders. It's unclear exactly the authority it would have.
But essentially, we're told, is directing agencies to follow the Department of Government Efficiency. Of course, that's Elon Musk's group, the DOGE group that is going from department to department.
But Elon Musk taking a series of questions. We will see this play out a little bit later, likely this hour. This is not live because it's in the Oval Office. But defending his work across the government and talking extensively about what he's finding, several examples.
Of course, it's difficult to fact check these in real time, but he is saying that, you know, the bureaucracy has to be responsible to the American people. And talking about how some federal workers are good people. But he believes they should be higher productivity. Even talking about some wild examples, according to our reporters in the Oval Office, about someone receiving a Social Security check who's 150 years old. We will have to see all this play out.
But the president certainly doubling down on having Elon Musk, one of his top advisers, into the Oval Office for this signing ceremony. Again, it's been going on for at least a half an hour or so. So we'll see what else they say, Jake.
TAPPER: All right. And Jeff, there other big news out of the White House today? Good news. A wrongfully detained American has been released from Russia.
ZELENY: That's right. Marc Fogel, who was a schoolteacher who's been held captive in Russia for about the last three years or so, was -- is on his way now back to the U.S., flying back to the U.S.
[16:05:03]
As Steve Witkoff, who's a top adviser of the president, longtime friend of the president, he was just a Middle East envoy, but now his portfolio has broadly expanded. So there was some type of a swap. We don't know all the details of this, but this certainly signifies that relations are opening up between Washington and Moscow, which, of course, leads to more discussions about Ukraine.
This is the first time in several years that a top U.S. official has been on the ground in Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine. So, certainly, the release of this American hostage is very important, but it also signifies more to come with Russia and Ukraine, Jake.
TAPPER: All right. Jeff Zeleny at the White House, thank you so much.
Let's go to CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill for us.
Manu, Speaker Johnson's comments to you this morning about Trump and the courts drew quite a reaction.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And look, this is further than he went yesterday when I talked to him about this issue before. And since then there have been a number of judges that have stepped in and said that some of several of Trump's actions simply go too far and halting several of Donald Trump's early moves, raising questions about how exactly the White House will respond.
Now, when I asked Mike Johnson about this today, I asked him about whether he believes the White House should comply. If ultimately the courts were to say that they did something wrong, they were in violation of the law. And about J.D. Vance's tweet from over the weekend when he said that judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate, legitimate power. And the speaker indicated that he was aligned with the vice president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHNSON: I will say I agree wholeheartedly with -- with Vice President J.D. Vance, my friend, because he's right. What they're doing in the executive branch. And there's a lot more to come. And I think that the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out. What we're doing is good and right for the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RAJU: Now, the Senate majority leader, John Thune, also addressed this both yesterday and today. Yesterday, when I talked to him about it, he indicated he believes the courts play an instrumental role, but didn't say one way or the other, how the White House should deal with this, these rulings from these judges.
Today, when he was asked about this, he downplayed the back and forth between the White House and the judicial branch, just calling it a, quote, give and take, a natural give and take between the branches of government. He went on to say, Jake, that the courts have a very valid role in all of this, but not going as far as some Republicans and a lot of Democrats, which believe that there needs to be compliance fully with what the courts are saying, if not warning of a deeper problem and a potential constitutional crisis if the White House does not comply, Jake.
TAPPER: All right. Manu Raju on Capitol Hill for us, thanks so much.
Let's discuss with our panel.
Mike Dubke, you're the former Trump White House communications director from the first administration. Republicans used to rail against executive orders. You might remember during the Obama years and Biden years. But now obviously, they are embracing them. And really to a degree that we haven't seen an assertion of executive powers. I mean, one can certainly criticize individual executive orders by Biden and Obama, but this is some sweeping stuff.
MIKE DUBKE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Oh, it is. But getting back to what you're talking about with the judges, I mean, what were seeing right now is, you can -- you can talk about judge shopping. We're -- we're at the early stages of this conversation. So I don't fully agree with what the vice president said about, you know, not listening to what the judges are saying.
But at this point in the process, and I think this is the important thing for the American people to understand is this administration is pushing the limits to see how far their power goes. And in some judges, in different jurisdictions are saying, wait, it's going a little too far, but we've got to let the whole judicial process play out. When I was here last time, I said, welcome to the third -- you know, the third arm of American government. We're going to get reintroduced to the judiciary.
TAPPER: Yeah.
DUBKE: That's exactly what's going on here. These initial --
TAPPER: That's reasonable what you're saying.
DUBKE: Well, well, look, these initial judges, if I had to make a bad analogy, they're like the East German judge judging the Soviet athlete. They are --
TAPPER: Judging the American athlete.
DUBKE: Yes. Well, yeah, if they're giving them a negative. Oh, I guess they would. That would be a better one. Yeah, yeah. I'm just an analogy.
TAPPER: I'm just trying.
DUBKE: I really appreciate it.
TAPPER: Thank you. But I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying. And I have to say, Paul, the Democrats are very frustrated, but they do not seem organized. They the word feckless comes to mind. The word impotent comes to mind. Like, I don't understand what they're doing, how they're doing it.
Like this is Donald Trump is pushing the limits of executive power, and they are teasing the idea of ignoring the judicial branch altogether. I'm not saying they're doing it right, but they're teasing the idea of it. Where's your party?
PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, out of power. That's where they are. Out of power.
And, Mr. Trump, I think you're right. I don't think we're quite at a constitutional crisis yet. But can you see it coming. And this happened once in American history. Andrew Jackson said Mr. Justice Marshall has issued his ruling.
[16:10:03]
Let's see him enforce it. If --
TAPPER: Apocryphal, but yes. We looked it up. But yes, we take your lead.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: The idea -- the idea is, just for people at home, I think this had to do with the Cherokee, but it was about --
BEGALA: A Georgia case, about the Cherokee Indians. TAPPER: Yeah, it was basically President Jackson was saying, that's
great. The Supreme Court wants to say that. Have the chief justice come over and make me do it.
And he ignored it. He completely ignored it.
BEGALA: And Mr. Trump has not done that.
DUBKE: He has not.
BEGALA: He has not.
TAPPER: Right.
BEGALA: But there's a lot of concern that he might. And I think Vice President Vance is pointing in that direction. A lot of Mr. Trump's supporters are arguing in that direction. That will be a full blown crisis.
You can't blame that on the Democrats. Mr. Trump has the Congress if he wants to shut down the Department of Education, he has to pass a law. I love executive orders. I worked on a bunch of them. But an executive order is just a memo from the boss saying, my employees need to do this.
TAPPER: Yours were about school uniforms. I mean --
BEGALA: Yes, I know it was not about shutting down. But Congress has created this --
DUBKE: Now, it's also about plastic straws.
BEGALA: But Congress has created the Department of Education, right.
(CROSSTALK)
BEGALA: Like, look at the Department of Education, okay? It is vital Congress believes that. And they funded it and they staffed it. And the president needs to go to the Congress. He's got the House. He's got the Senate. He needs to act like a president.
DUBKE: If the Democrats ever had a personify how feckless and to use your word, impotent they are, it was the vision of them standing in front of the Department of Education, pounding on a door and not getting let in. I don't understand why --
BEGALA: Which is outrageous.
DUBKE: -- the Democrats -- literally, why that is what they're there -- they're trying to do, rather than actually make some --
BEGALA: Let's bring -- let's bring in Catherine Rampell, who is joining us from the bat phone.
Catherine, thank you for joining us. So today, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, he testified on Capitol Hill as
part of his semiannual report. And he was asked if the Fed was, quote, absurdly overstaffed, unquote, as Elon Musk has claimed recently. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLLIP)
TOM HOMAN, BORDER CZAR: He's got a wall around the Vatican, does he not? So he's got a wall around to protect his people and himself. But we can't have a wall in the United States, so I wish he'd stick --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: That's obviously not it. But anyway, what Jerome Powell said was Fed employees are overworked and the agency is not overstaffed. And then he explained that the Fed is primarily self-funded through the interest it earns.
In other words, cost cutting measures such as laying off employees would ultimately not save taxpayers much money.
So he's -- he's criticizing DOGE implicitly and explicitly at what they're saying. Where do you see this going? Do you think this is going to escalate?
CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely. I think the Fed is trying its darndest not to let this escalate. And the Fed is potentially on a crash course with the Trump administration for a whole bunch of reasons, not just DOGE, but the fact that they've been holding off potentially on continuing to cut interest rates, which Trump the king of debt, wants to keep happening.
There are a bunch of reasons why -- why the Fed is potentially in Trump's crosshairs and really don't want to be. They want to be politically independent. They have -- they have historically been politically independent, and that independence is crucial to their ability to continue to do their job, i.e., to get inflation down.
And just to remind people, inflation has come down quite a lot in the past few years. It's not where it needs to be, certainly, but the fact that we have made as much progress as we have without tipping into recession, as many economists feared, is largely a credit to the Federal Reserve and its ongoing independence. So picking a fight here, whether Elon Musk is doing it or Trump is doing it, will end quite badly for the economy writ large.
TAPPER: So lets turn to some new tension between President Trump and the pope. Remember, this was a plot in season one. Now were here again.
Some background, Vice President J.D. Vance, who is a convert to Catholicism, has claimed that a concept from medieval Catholic theology justifies the America first immigration crackdown. Now, the pope, in a letter to American bishops, appears to be firing back as much, as a pope fires back at Vance writing, quote, the rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.
Now, that's not exactly Kendrick versus Drake in terms of diss tracks, but -- but here is the border czar Tom Homan reacting to this outside the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HOMAN: He's got a wall around the Vatican, does he not? So he's got a wall around to protect his people and himself. But we can't have a wall in the United States. So I wish he'd stick to the Catholic Church and fix that and leave border enforcement to us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: What do you think?
DUBKE: Never pick a fight with the pope. It just doesn't pay, but in this instance, it seems like the pope picked the fight with J.D. Vance.
[16:15:01]
So we're -- we're going to have more of this debate going back and forth. I just -- it's got nowhere to go.
BEGALA: Mr. Vance, Vice President Vance picked the fight originally with the U.S. bishops and cardinals, where he ridiculously accused them of somehow profiting off of the charitable work that they do with migrants. Cardinal Dolan, a big fan of Trump's, the President Trump's, Cardinal Dolan gave the invocation at his inaugural.
He has called -- he says, Mr. President, Trump has been particularly sensitive to the feelings of the religious community. Okay. A pro- Trump cardinal said that Vance's comments were not true, scurrilous and nasty.
And I've got to say, as a faithful Catholic, J.D. has been a Catholic for about five years. We're glad to have him, okay? But he's already picking a fight with the Holy Father. There's a Latin phrase for that we have in the Catholic Church -- chutzpah.
TAPPER: Yeah.
BEGALA: Like shut up, J.D., do your job as vice president. Don't tell the Holy Father how to run our church.
TAPPER: Well, I mean, but remember, we did -- we did see some of this back and forth. And, look, conservative Catholics think that this pope is too liberal, too much of a bleeding heart. You know, so, I mean, were going to see more of this I would -- I would suspect.
DUBKE: Oh, I think we're going to see. Look, if you look at the -- the pope as a foreign leader, he's the leader of the international organization. We're going to see more of this.
Donald Trump represents for the norms of world order, a massive disruption. So we're going to -- we are going to see this from all different leaders across the -- across the globe.
TAPPER: And, Catherine, this -- this Trump-Pope dispute. You recently wrote in "The Post", the Washington Post about religious groups suing the Trump administration to stop ICE from being able to -- I mean, they're allowed to, but they -- there's been a tradition that they don't go into houses of worship.
RAMPELL: Right. There has been guidance, a directive from DHS or its equivalent going back to 1993. At the very least, that enforcement operations, immigration enforcement operations will not happen on so- called sensitive sites. So that includes schools, daycare centers, hospitals, churches without, or -- excuse me, unless there are exigent circumstances or advanced in writing permission from a high up supervisory person.
So they can do these kinds of operations, but they really have to be careful and use, you know, limited. They have a lot of constraints essentially on when they can do this. Trump has instead basically said ICE agents have free reign to storm churches whenever they like, so long as they use their, quote/unquote, common sense, whatever that means.
And I've been talking with faith leaders across the country for the past few weeks who are extremely concerned about what this means for their congregants, whether immigrants are able to continue going to services or, for that matter, whether U.S. citizens are having their liberty infringed by not being able to minister to refugees.
TAPPER: All right. Catherine, thanks to everybody.
Donald Trump, President Trump just spoke in the Oval Office with Elon Musk by his side. Let's listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So thank you very much. We had a busy day today. The king just left and we -- we've had a great discussion, terrific discussion concerning Gaza and everything else.
We had discussions also about Saturday at 12:00. It's going to be a big moment. We'll see what happens. I don't expect much happening with these people, but we'll see what happens.
And we're going to be signing a very important deal today. It's DOGE and I'm going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it and some of the things that we found, which are shocking billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. And I think it's very important. And that's one of the reasons I got elected.
I said, we're going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick and that corrupt. And it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars worth -- much more than that in just a short period of time. And we want to weed out the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don't want you
to do that. Well. So maybe we have to look at the judges, because that's a very serious I think its a very serious violation. Ill ask Elon Musk to say a few words and we'll take some questions.
Elon, go ahead.
ELON MUSK, DEPARTMENT OF GOVENRMENT EFFICIENCY: Sure. So the -- at a high level, you say what is the goal of DOGE, or and I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy. This may seem like -- well, aren't we in a democracy? Well, if you don't have a feedback.
OK, X, we're going to have to if you -- it's all right. So tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes.
So if, if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the, to the government.
[16:20:03]
And if you have rule of the bureaucrat -- if the bureaucracy is in charge and then what meaning does democracy actually have if the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.
So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop. We fix that feedback loop, and that the public, the public's elected representatives, the president, the House and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.
This is not to say that there aren't some good -- there are good people who are in the federal bureaucracy. But you can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that is responsive to the people. That's the whole point of a democracy. And so, and if you looked at the -- if you look at the founders today and said, what do you think of the way things have turned out?
Well, we have this unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative. And this is this is not something that people want. And it's not -- it does not match the will of the people. So it's just something we've got to -- we've got to fix.
And then we've also got to address the deficit. So we've got a $2 trillion deficit. And if this if we don't do something about this deficit, the country's going bankrupt. I mean, it's really astounding that the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we've got a lot we spend a lot of money on defense.
But -- and if that just keeps going, were essentially going to bankrupt the country. So what I really want to say is like, it's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country. And it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens, and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt.
TRUMP: And also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found, some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about 30 million?
MUSK: Right.
TRUMP: Et cetera?
MUSK: Well, we are we do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there are quite a few, uh, people in, in the bureaucracy who, who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is, you know, what happened at USAID. We're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they're very good at investing, in which case we should take their investment advice, perhaps.
But just there seems to be mysteriously, they -- they get wealthy. We don't know why. Where does it come from?
And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at taxpayer expense. That's -- that's the -- that's the honest truth of it.
So, you know, were looking at, say -- well, we would just if you look at, say, say Treasury, for example, basic controls that should be in place that are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment and that if a payment is on the do not pay list, that you don't actually pay it. None of those things are true currently.
So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building. So you can't reconcile blank checks.
You've got a comment fields that are also blank. So you don't know why the payment was made. And then we've got this truly absurd -- a do not pay list which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a do not pay list.
And we're talking about terrorist organizations. We're talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not match any congressional appropriation can take up to a year to get on the list. And even once on the list, the list is not used. It's mind blowing.
So, what we're talking about here, were really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present, that haven't been present. So you say like, well, how could such a thing arise? That's -- that seems that seems crazy, that when you understand that really everything is geared towards complaint minimization, so that then you understand the motivations.
So if people receive money, they don't complain, obviously. But if people don't receive money, they do complain. And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest.
So, then when you understand that, then it makes sense.
[16:25:01]
Oh that's why everything just they approve all the payments at Treasury. Because if you approve all the payments, you don't -- you don't get complaints.
But now, now, we're saying no, actually, we're all going to complain. If money is spent badly, if your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and frugal manner, then that's not okay. Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on the things that matter to the people.
I mean, these things like its just common sense. It's not -- it's not draconian or radical I think. It's really just saying, lets look at each -- each of these expenditures and say, is this actually in the best interest of the people? And if it is, its approved. If its not, we should think about it.
So, you know, there's crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 150 years old now. Do you know anyone who's 150? I don't. Okay.
They should be on the Guinness Book of World records. They're missing out. So, you know, that's a case where, like, I think they're probably dead. It's my guess. Or they should be very famous. One of the two.
And then there are a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there's no identifiable identifying information. Well, like, why is there no identifying information? Obviously, you want to make -- we want to make sure that people who deserve to receive Social Security do receive it, and that they receive it quickly and accurately. I'll tell you another crazy thing. So, you know, one of the things is like we're trying to sort of right-size the federal bureaucracy. Just make sure that there's obviously needs there needs to be a lot of people working for the federal government, but not as many as currently.
So we're saying, well, okay, well, let's if people can retire, you know, with full benefits, benefits and everything, that that would be good. They can retire. Get their retirement payments and everything.
And then we were told, this is actually, I think, a great anecdote because we were told no, the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why? Why is that?
Well, because all the -- all the retirement paperwork is manual, on paper. It's manually calculated. They're written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down a mine and we're like, what do you mean a mine? Like, yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork that -- and you look at a picture of this mine, we'll post some pictures afterwards. And this, this mine looks like something out of the '50s because it
was started in 1955. So it looks like it's like a time warp. And then the speed, then the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move, determines how many people can retire from the federal -- federal government. And the elevator breaks down sometimes. And then you can't -- nobody can retire.
Doesn't that sound crazy? There's like a thousand people that work on this. So I think if we can take those people and say, like, you know what, instead of working in a mine shaft in carrying manila envelopes to, you know, boxes in a mine shaft, you could do practically anything else and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way.
So, anyway, so I think, you know, that's an example like at a high level, if you say like, how do we increase prosperity is we get people to do to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles. And so, you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there's a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's -- that's the actual goal.
Everyone's very quiet, by the way people. Nobody goes quiet.
REPORTER: Your detractors, Mr. Musk --
MUSK: I have, what?
REPORTER: -- including a lot of Democrats.
MUSK: I have detractors?
REPORTER: You do, sir.
MUSK: I don't believe it.
REPORTER: Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a nontransparent way.
What's your response to that criticism?
MUSK: Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted, you know, we have a majority of the public voting for President Trump. We won the House. We won the Senate.
The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign.
The president spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major government reform. And that's what the people are going to get. They're going to get what they voted for.
And a lot of times, the people that don't get what they voted for. But in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. And that's what democracy is all about. REPORTER: Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify and
excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?
MUSK: Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible.
[16:30:01]
In fact, our actions -- we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So, all of our actions are maximally transparent.
In fact, I don't think there's been I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization. And so, you know, the kind of things were doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic. They're not were -- you know, what I mentioned, for example, about treasury, just making sure that that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out is categorized correctly, that that the payment is explained, that organizations on the do not pay list, which are takes a lot to get there. They actually are not paid, which currently they are paid.
These are -- these are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So it's got nothing to do with like say, a contract for some company of mine at all.
REPORTER: But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president, I know has directed you to look into.
MUSK: Yeah.
REPORTER: Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?
MUSK: Well, all of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything you say like, wait a second. Hey, Elon, that doesn't that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there.
It's not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately. You know?
REPORTER: You yourself.
MUSK: Yes. But what transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust. It's not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency. So you can see everything that's going on and you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally obvious.
TRUMP: And if we thought that, we would not let him do that segment or look in that area. If we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest.
And we watched that also. He's a big businessman. He's a successful guy. That's why we want him doing this. We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this.
Now, one thing also that Elon hasn't really mentioned are the groups of people that are getting some of these payments. They're ridiculous. And we're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We've found fraud and abuse.
I would say those two words, as opposed to the third word that I usually use. But in this case, fraud and abuse, it's abusive because most of these things are virtually made up. Or certainly money shouldn't be sent to them. And you know what I'm talking about. It's crazy.
So but we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found. And now a judge who's an activist judge uh, wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why? Why would they want to do that? I campaigned on this.
I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt and it is very corrupt. It's very, very -- it's also foolish. As an example, a man has a contract for three months and the contract ends, but they keep paying them for the next 20 years, you know, because nobody ends the contract. You got a lot of that.
You have a contract that's a three -- a three-month contract. Now, normally if you're in a small -- in all fairness, it's the size of this thing is so big. But if you have a contract and you're in a regular business, you end the contract in three months. You know, it's a consultant.
Here's a contract for three months, but it goes on for 20 years. And the guy doesn't say that he got money for 20 years. You know, they don't say it. They just keep getting checks month after month.
And you have various things like that, and even much worse than that, actually much worse. And I guess you call that incompetence. Maybe it could be corruption. It could be a deals made on both sides. You know, where the guy gets the money, he kicks. I think he has a lot of kickback here. I see a lot of kickback here.
MUSK: There's a lot of kickbacks, a tremendous kickback, because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts. So he has to get a kickback. So, that's what I got elected for that, and borders and military and a lot of things. But this is a big part of it, and I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do.
We got elected to, among other things, find all of this fraud and abuse, all of this, this horrible stuff going on. And we've already found billions of dollars, not like a little bit billions, many billions of dollars. And when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to $1 trillion. It could be close to $1 trillion that we're going to find. That will have quite an impact on the budget. And you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge, and he has
certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings and he wants us to stop looking.
[16:35:02]
How do you stop looking? I mean, we've already found it.
We have a case in New York where a hotel has paid $59 million -- $59 million because of because its housing migrants, illegal migrants, all illegal, I believe.
MUSK: And they were being paid twice the normal room rate at 100 percent occupancy.
TRUMP: Unbelievable.
MUSK: So it's a racket.
TRUMP: Yeah.
REPORTER: Mr. Musk, can I ask you a question? You said --
MUSK: If I may sort of just going over the presidents comments at a -- at a high level, you say, well, what -- how -- how do -- what are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1 trillion? And it's really two things, competence and caring.
And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half. And I fully expect to be scrutinized and get, you know, a daily proctology exam, basically I just camp out there. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop.
And but with the support of the president, we can we can cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1 trillion. And then with deregulation, because there's a lot of sort of regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good, we need to free -- free the builders of America to build.
And if we do that, that means I think we can get the economic growth to be maybe 3 or 4 percent, maybe 5 percent. And that means if you can get $1 trillion of economic growth and you can cut the budget deficit by a trillion between now and next year, there is no inflation. There's no inflation in '26.
And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So the mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, their student debt, the monthly payments drop.
That's a fantastic scenario for the average American. I mean, imagine they go down the grocery aisle and the prices from one year to the next are the same. And they're and their, their, their mortgage, all their debt payments dropped. How great is that for the average American?
TRUMP: We had no idea. We had no idea we were going to find this much. And it's open. It's not like complicated. It's simple stuff.
MUSK: It's not complicated. It's a lot of work, yeah.
TRUMP: We can't believe it. A lot of work, a lot of smart people involved. Very, very smart people. But it's -- you're talking about anywhere, maybe $500 billion. It's crazy the kind of numbers you're talking about.
MUSK: It's really crazy.
TRUMP: You know, normally when you're looking at something, you'll find -- you're looking for one out of 100 here, you're almost reversing it. You look for one. That's good. Yeah. And you can look at the title and you say, why are we doing this? Why are we doing that?
And the public gets it. You know, the public gets it. You've seen the polls. The public is saying, why are we paying all this money? This is for years this has gone on.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Yeah. Go ahead. Wait. Go ahead.
REPORTER: Senator Rand Paul today said that DOGE cuts will ultimately need a vote in congress. Do you agree with that? Is that the plan?
TRUMP: I really don't know. I know this. We're finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse, it be -- it's fine with me. I think well get the vote. Although there'll be some people that wouldn't vote.
And how could a judge want to hold us back from finding all of this fraud and finding all of this incompetence? Why would that happen? Why would even Congress want to do that?
Now, Congress, if we do need a vote, I think we'd get a very easy vote because we have a track record now. We've already found billions of dollars of abuse, incompetence and corruption, a lot of corruption.
REPORTER: If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you comply?
TRUMP: Well, I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it. But then what he's done is he's slowed down the momentum and it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books. You know, if a person's crooked and they get caught, other people see that and all of a sudden, it becomes harder later on.
So --
MUSK: Yeah.
TRUMP: -- yeah, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them, and well appeal. But appeals take a long time, and I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show 'em, here's a corrupt situation, we have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want us to send this corrupt check to a person, or do you want us not to give it and give it back to the taxpayer? I would hope a judge would say, don't send it. Give it back to the taxpayer.
MUSK: Yeah, if I can add to that, what were finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So I think we can all agree that if there's going to be fraud, it should at least go to Americans. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in the United States are taking advantage of federal government, especially the entitlements programs, are actually foreign culprits. They're operating in other countries and actually exporting money to other countries.
[16:40:03]
We should stop that. And this is big numbers, from $100 billion to $200 billion a year, serious money.
REPORTER: Mr. Musk, you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza. But after fact check this, it apparently Gaza and Mozambique, and the program was to protect them against HIV.
So, can you correct this statement it wasn't sent to Hamas? Actually it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms was sent there.
MUSK: Yeah.
REPORTER: And how can make we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct, so we can trust what you say?
MUSK: Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going to bat a thousand. I mean, any -- you know, we will make mistakes but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes.
So, you know if -- if the -- I'm not sure we should be sending $50 million with the condoms to anywhere frankly. I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. And that that is really an enormous number of condoms you think about it.
But, you know, if it -- if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like okay, that's not as bad but still -- you know, why are we doing that?
REPORTER: Can you talk a little bit about how closely you're working with agency heads as you're directing these cuts? Do they have the -- how input do agency heads have when you're making these decisions?
MUSK: Yeah. We work closely with the agency heads. And yeah, so there -- there is -- there are sort of checks in place so it's not us just going in and doing things willy-nilly. It's in-- it's in partnership with the agency heads and -- and I checked regularly with the president to make sure that, you know, this -- this is what the president wants to have happened. So, you know, we talk almost every day and I -- you know, I double
check things to make sure is this something, Mr. President, you want us to do this? We'll -- we'll -- then, we'll do it.
REPORTER: USAID has been one of your main targets. Are you concerned at all that some of the cuts or that shutting that agency altogether may lead to diseases or other bigger problems starting in other countries that then come to the United States?
MUSK: Yeah. So that's interesting example so that's something where we work closely with the State Department and Secretary Rubio, and we have, for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention.
REPORTER: You left that?
MUSK: Yes, correct. And we are -- we are moving fast. So we will make mistakes but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly. So --
REPORTER: You see as a worthy cause USAID?
MUSK: I think that there are some worthy things, but overall, if you say what was the bang of the bunk, I would say it's -- it was not very good and there was far too much of what USAID was doing was influencing -- influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand the light of day.
REPORTER: Just have to follow up to the Pentagon contracts. If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the president's directing you to look into the Department of Defense is that a conflict of interest?
MUSK: Yes, if we definitely need to -- are going to do, at the president's request.
REPORTER: Does that present a conflict of interest for you?
MUSK: No, because you'd have to look at the individual contract and say -- first of all, I'm not the one, you know, filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX or something will be putting for the contract and I'd like to say, if -- if you see any contract where the -- where it was watered to SpaceX and it wasn't by far the best value money for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was.
REPORTER: The president said the other day that you might look at treasuries. Could you explain that a little bit? What kind of fraud or -- and that question goes to both of you. What kind of fraud are you expecting to see or do you see right now in U.S. treasuries?
MUSK: I think you mean the Treasury Department as opposed to treasury bills or --
REPORTER: You also reference treasuries on Air Force One the other night.
TRUMP: Go ahead. MUSK: Well, the -- as I mentioned earlier, really, the first order of business is to make sure we're actually collecting -- sorry for this, I thought my son might -- might enjoy this but it's -- he's sticking his fingers in my ears and stuff. It's bit hard to hear sometimes. Hey, stop that.
So, no, the stuff we're doing with Treasury Department is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't exist already. So, for example, like I mentioned, just making sure that that when a payment goes out, it has to have the payment categorization codes like what type of payment is this. You can't just leave the field blank. Currently, many payments the field is left blank, and you have to describe what's the payment for, some basic rationalization that also is left blank.
So this is why, you know, the Pentagon -- when's the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? I mean, a decade ago, maybe. I -- ever really? And we want to just -- in order to actually pass audits, you have to have financial information that allows you to trace the payments.
So, you know, and once in a while, the Treasury has to -- has to pause payments if it thinks the payment is going to a fraudulent organization like if -- if a -- if a company or an organization is on a do not pay list, we should not pay it.
[16:45:19]
I'm sure you would agree. Like, if it's quite hard to get on that payment, then do not pay list. It means that this is someone that is deceased is like dead people, terrorists, known fraudsters, that kind of thing. We should not pay them. But currently we do, which is crazy. We should stop that.
TRUMP: And by the way, hundreds, thousands of transactions like that. You know, we have a big team. And for the sake of the country, I hope that the person that's in charge and the other people that report to me that are in charge are allowed to do the right thing, namely, make sure everything's honest, legitimate and competent.
But we're looking at just -- when you look at USAID, that was -- that's one. We're going to look at the military. We're going to look at education. They're much bigger areas.
But the USAID is really corrupt. I'll tell you, it's corrupt. It's incompetent, and it's really corrupt.
And I can't imagine a judge saying, well, it may be corrupt, but you don't have the right. You got elected to look over the country and to, as we say, make America great again. But you don't have the right to go and look and see whether or not things are right that they're paying or that things are honest, that they're paying.
And nobody can even believe there's -- other people, law professors. They've been saying, you can't -- how can you take that persons right away? You're supposed to be running the country, but we're not allowed to look at who they're paying it to and what they're paying. We have massive amounts of fraud that we caught. I think we probably
caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in, what, two weeks?
MUSK: Yeah.
TRUMP: And it's going to go to numbers that you're not going to believe. And much as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it. And the only way were going to catch it is to look for it.
And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's pretty sad for our country. I don't understand how it could even work.
REPORTER: Sir, can you personally guarantee that --
TRUMP: Which one?
REPORTER: The buyout program, the operative federal workers? Can you personally guarantee that the workers who opt in to resign now will be paid through September?
TRUMP: They will get their money, but they're getting a good deal. They're getting a big buyout. And what were trying to do is reduce government.
We have too many people. We have office space. It's occupied by 4 percent. Nobody's showing up to work because they were told not to.
And then Biden gave 'em a five year pass, some of them, 48,000 of them, gave him a five year pass that for five years, you don't have to show up to work.
And let me tell you, this is largely much of this stuff is because of Biden. It's his fault that he allowed this country what he did on our border. What he did on our border is almost not as bad as what he did with all of these contracts that have come out.
It's -- it's a very sad day when we look at it. I can't even believe it. But many contracts just extend and they just keep extending and there was nobody there to correct it. And that cannot be. I can't imagine that could be held up by the court.
Any court that would say that the president or his representatives, like secretary of the treasury, secretary of state, whatever, doesn't have the right to go over their books and make sure everything's honest -- I mean, how can you have a country? You can't have anything that way. You can't have a business that way. You can't have a country that way.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on guys. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Headed out.
TRUMP: Back tonight.
Marc Fogel will be at the White House tonight at about 10:00. If you want to come over, you can say hello to him.
REPORTER: You guys need anything in return?
TRUMP: Not much. No. They were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually.
I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war, and millions of people can stop being killed. They've lost millions of people. They lost in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million soldiers in a short period of time.
We got to stop that war. And I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of death. We're losing all those soldiers, and they're not American soldiers. The Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. But you're probably talking about a million and a half, I think -- I think we got to bring that one to an end. Okay?
Thank you. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, thank you. We're moving.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPER: All right. You've been watching President Trump and first buddy Elon Musk at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, defending their aggressive efforts to overhaul the government and root out fraud. Musk, who is, of course, the world's richest person, was not elected, defended his departments -- the Department of Government Excellence unfettered access into multiple federal agencies.
[16:50:04]
Trump, the president, also continuing with his suggestion that judges -- the judicial branch of government should not be standing in the way of his administration's moves.
Let's bring back CNN's Jeff Zeleny at the White House.
And, Jeff, this -- oh, its snowed since I last saw you there, Jeff.
This was a rather extraordinary moment, a long conversation at the Oval Office. The president and Elon Musk answering questions from reporters, you know, applause, applause for taking all those questions if -- even if you don't like what they're doing.
What did we learn about their working dynamics there, do you think?
ZELENY: Jake, it was extraordinary, as you said, the world's richest and unelected man essentially functioning as the fourth branch of government right there. As the president looked on from the resolute desk, there are very few speakers who can command so much attention and time as the president patiently waits.
And we saw Elon Musk really taking questions for the first time since joining the government here. We've seen him speaking at rallies and a few other instances, but never taking questions about what exactly he's doing in the Department of Government Efficiency.
But after only three weeks on the job, Elon Musk certainly delivering a verdict about this government that, you know, is quite extraordinary. I mean, the inspector generals of all these agencies have been fired by Donald Trump. The oversight committees on Capitol Hill, in both the House and the Senate, are charged with sort of supervising all of this. Never mind that Congress appropriates the spending.
So many comments there about all the fraud and abuse were unsubstantiated, at least in terms of fact. We will see if -- if they provide details exactly on the fact that some people in USAID, in the words of Mr. Musk, are getting rich on the job, essentially accusing them of taking kickbacks, also saying that there are people who are receiving Social Security payments who are 150 years old. Of course, we will see how many of those.
But I think the big thing, Jake, Elon Musk said he would be transparent. One thing he's not doing is filing his own financial disclosure forms. He, of course, receives an extraordinary amount of money from the government. He essentially said he'd be policing himself -- Jake.
TAPPER: Yeah. And that transparency that you're calling for, Jeff, is so important because, I mean, these are very strong allegations. I have no idea if they are true or not. I'm not inclined to think that there isn't a ton of fraud in the government, when you have dollars that that big and so little oversight.
But where's the evidence? Where's the transparency? I have been asking DOGE to provide evidence for so many of these accusations. They have not been providing it.
And as one of our panelists just said, they're not only not providing it to me and other journalists asking for it, they're not providing it to chairman, Republican chairmen of Senate committees that have a right to see what they're talking about.
So I hear all of these very stark, disturbing details. Let's see the evidence for it.
Jeff Zeleny, thanks so much.
ZELENY: Sure.
TAPPER: Let's bring in CNN's Daniel Dale for a fact check.
Daniel, two guys there that are not necessarily strict adherence to truth. What stood out to you in the remarks from both President Trump and Elon Musk? DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Three quick points, Jake. Number
one, I'm with you. We heard a lot of big startling claims about kickbacks, massive corruption. I'm not saying none of this happened, but we have not seen the evidence for it.
What we have largely seen evidence for is that there are certain contracts and certain spending at the federal government that Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk don't like. That is what has largely been canceled so far. That is what largely we're seeing from DOGE. So in terms of these claims about criminality, essentially, I think we need to wait and see.
Number two, on the question of transparency, I think you made some good points. Mr. Musk is certainly tweeting a lot about their activities or posting on X, as he would say, but also in other respects he has not been transparent. For example, there was an X user who posted the names of some of the people working with this DOGE team. He responded that you have committed a crime, so merely disclosing who is working with him. He's alleging wrongly is a crime.
And then number three, I thought there was a remarkable moment when a journalist there raised this point about the so-called 50 million in condoms to Gaza, he said. Musk said, look, some of what I say is wrong.
Yes, all of us get some things wrong sometimes. But this has been not only repeated by the president, but turned into 100 million in condoms for Hamas, so turn into an even more incendiary claim. Mr. Musk has not corrected it, as far as I can tell, until today.
TAPPER: Well, you know, it's interesting you say that, Daniel, because the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Brian Mast, Congressman Brian Mast, was on the show last week and said that there were $15 million in condoms given to the Taliban.
[16:55:01]
And I said, okay, can you provide the information? His office sent us a link to a "Washington Examiner" story that said there was $15 million in birth control given to Afghans -- Afghans, and that did include condoms that also included birth control pills, oral contraception.
That wasn't given to the Taliban. It was given to the Afghan people. And people can say whether or not the United States should be in the business of providing birth control to other countries. But it's not $15 million in condoms given to Taliban. I mean, it's -- it's not accurate.
DALE: Right.
TAPPER: So anyway, Daniel Dale, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
And thanks to our panelists.
As President Trump and Elon Musk, making quite an aggressive defense of their actions so far to reform the federal government, more reaction ahead.
Plus, top Democrat in the Senate Judiciary Committee will be here with why he's calling out Trump's FBI director nominee, Kash Patel. We're back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.
And this hour, it is a battle between the billionaires. And now it's getting personal. What is the beef between first buddy Elon Musk and Sam Altman, head of the company behind ChatGPT? Well, it goes back further than you may think, and it may be all about the Benjamins.
