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European Leaders Send Congratulations to Donald Trump for His Presidential Win; President Biden Invites Donald Trump to White House; Many from Silicon Valley Tech Industry Vying for Position in Trump Administration; Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) Interviewed on Lessons for Democrats from Donald Trump's Presidential Victory and Possibility of Democrats Winning Majority in House of Representatives. Aired 8-9:00a ET.

Aired November 07, 2024 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00]

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: President Zelenskyy is there, the NATO secretary general is there. All these leaders, these European leaders who are there are making the right noises. They've called President-elect Donald Trump already. They've issued sort of congratulatory messages over X and other places. So they're making the right noises.

But the noise that they're going to have to make is that Europe is going to have to stand more alone, be ready to support Ukraine more alone. They recognize that President-elect Donald Trump has said that he'll end the war in Ukraine in the matter of a day, and that concerns them, because they think the United States is going to withdraw some of its support. They don't think that's good for them. So that's the pressing issue. That's getting a lot of attention today. And I think you get a sense of that from what the French president said today at that big meeting in Budapest. He said that we've got to look to ourselves. We cannot rely on the United States to be our security crutch going forward.

So Ukraine, that's the first one, I think, that really worries, particularly U.S. allies.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Nic Robertson, great to see you this morning. Thank you very much.

We've got a lot of new information coming in. A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a landslide. President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to move back into the White House and possibly make good on his day one promises. Speculation swirling on his staff picks. Those decisions could come within days.

And Republicans are celebrating getting control of the Senate, but will they also keep control of the House? They're making moves as if it's already a done deal. It is not, just yet.

And millions in southern California facing dangerous conditions of powerful winds fueled multiple dangerous wildfires. Thousands have already been forced to evacuate.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: All right, happening now, the Trump transition 2.0. For Republicans and Donald Trump's friends, it's two-point-oh, yeah, just like the red Kool-Aid man, as they right now try to bust through the walls for a spot in the president-elect's cabinet.

For Democrats, it's kind of like two-point-oh, no, as there is blame game this morning that plays out ahead of President Biden's first on- camera remarks since Donald Trump's win.

CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston still sporting the playoff beard joins us this morning with the latest. Let's talk first about President Biden. We have not yet heard from him.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: We haven't heard from him. We do expect to hear from him in a couple of hours right now. An interesting position he's being put in, right. He had to step aside to allow Kamala Harris to run, because he wasn't going to have any chance of winning. And of course, she lost.

So he'll address the nation in a couple of hours, and he'll talk about -- we expect him to talk, anyway, about the peaceful transfer of power, how he'll work with Donald Trump. I wouldn't expect any inflammatory music out of him -- music, listen to me -- any inflammatory language out of him. But however, I would expect him to be stern and probably try to lay a marker down for the incoming Trump administration to try to do the right thing.

BERMAN: And look, I do think it needs to be said that Vice President Harris conceding yesterday is something that Donald Trump has still never done from the 2020 election. The outgoing president, you know, Biden, extending an olive branch, inviting Donald Trump in, something that Trump did not do four years ago for Joe Biden when he came in. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both decided treat this very, very differently.

In terms of the transition itself, because the what-next is really what I think is most important here, Mark. You've been digging. You've got some info about what the transition in the early days might look like or who they might look like.

PRESTON: Yes, no doubt. I just got off the phone with a senior adviser with the president-elect. He told me right now that they are getting inundated with resumes, which we would expect. But listen to this. They're getting influx of resumes from Silicon Valley. Now, if you just go back about, I don't know, two, three, four, five, six years ago, Silicon Valley was a Democratic stronghold, still is in many ways. But because of what we've seen, this Elon Musk connection now with Donald Trump and Donald Trump courting the Silicon Valley folks is that they expect several Silicon Valley folks to come in to senior administration positions, as well as throughout the government. So could be an interesting, an interesting four years. BERMAN: And just for our viewers keeping score at home, that was the

back of Kate Bolduan's head right there.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: One good-looking back of the head.

BERMAN: Goes without saying. But Mark -- there's the front.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Very quickly, we do learn, generally, about key senior administration officials. It takes, sometimes, just days to get the appointment of a chief of staff, which requires no Senate confirmation hearing, right?

[08:05:00]

PRESTON: No, absolutely. And the question is, who's going to be the chief of staff right now? And the chief of staff doesn't have to be confirmed. There's a lot of talk that his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, will be the person who goes in and really does all the vetting. I would suggest that he probably hire Susie Wiles to do that, because she's very good at that. But they are going to have to get through all the cabinet secretaries. Will we see the likes of Elon Musk or Robert Kennedy Jr. in a cabinet position? Not at all. We'll they have more influence than a cabinet secretary? They absolutely will.

BERMAN: Mark Preston, great to see all of you here. Thank you very much.

And I now turn it over officially to Kate Bolduan.

BOLDUAN: I'm sorry, guys.

BERMAN: Who's here. Who's been here all along.

BOLDUAN: We've been awake too long and I wasn't listening to my directions. I'm sorry. Hi, Mark.

PRESTON: Hi. Just saw the back of my head, too. It's not bad.

BOLDUAN: So beautiful. So beautiful.

All right, off we go. Sorry, boys. Joining me now -- I'm sorry, Congressman. Joining me right now is Democratic Congressman from New York, Greg Meeks. I'm sorry, Congressman. Let's get back to business. I want to read for you what fellow New York Democrat Ritchie Torres said, told "The New York Times" some of his take coming out of the election, which is this, "the losses among Latinos is nothing short of catastrophic for the party."

And looking at the results from your district, looking at Queens in New York, you can see that Donald Trump is making inroads. His support growing in your district every year he has run. What did the Harris campaign miss? What is the Democratic Party missing, congressman?

REP. GREGORY MEEKS, (D-NY): Look, I think this is what's happened. When you talk about it, Bill Clinton talked about, it's the economy, stupid. What we've talked about here is, as a result of the pandemic, it took place all over the world. We had high inflation. We had a situation where things became more expensive. This was something that took place as a result of the pandemic after Barack Obama gave Donald Trump a good economy.

And so now things are coming down. But people still feel that the cost of rent and the cost of housing and to get goods are too expensive. And I think that the vice president did talk about that. And we did start to move and we're at a point now, most economists will say, and they said, whoever became the next president will be inheriting a good economy. That economy was created.

So I think that the focus was that the people were looking at the short term situation of their immediate lives and not looking at the long-term ramifications of what a second Trump administration would do, particularly for them, because we know if Trump is like the first administration, his first administration, it's all about Donald Trump and not about anyone else, and our national security becomes at stake.

BOLDUAN: So Congressman, you won re-election easily, congratulations. But looking at the whole thing, what is, then, your lesson from this election?

MEEKS: Well, look, let's look at New York, for example, as you said. In New York, under the leadership, for example, of Hakeem Jefferies and others, we won the seats back that we lost in 2022. We won with John Mannion up in New York 22. We won with Josh Riley in New York 19. We won with Laura Gillen in New York 4. We won with Tom Suozzi. We kept the seat with Pat Ryan. So it's not that there was anything gained there because we showed that we can win. And there was a difference from 2022 and 2024 in New York. And it's still not certain where we are going to be in the House, but we have to make sure.

And I think that the economy is improving, and he will inherit again, as Republicans generally do after a Democratic administration, they inherit a better and strong economy than what the Democrats received when they came in. So I think that -- but I am concerned. I'm a foreign policy guy. I'm concerned about our national security. I'm concerned about the relationships that Donald Trump has with Vladimir Putin.

BOLDUAN: Right, Congressman, I hear your concerns, but Donald Trump's win was decisive and broad. So what is the lesson for you from Democrats' loss?

MEEKS: Look, the lesson for me is that we've got to continue, as the vice president said, we've got to continue to move forward and fight and talk to people, not just at election time. We've got to make sure that our message is heard, and what we're doing and have done is something that we're communicating priority to every four years. People need to know from the beginning to the end exactly what we're doing and why we're doing it and what we stand for. I think that's clear.

[08:10:01] So am I concerned or upset or disappointed or heartbroken by this election? Absolutely, because I know who Donald Trump is. And I think that concerns me, also, because if we Americans and not concerned by the content of someone's character, if we don't care about those things, then I think that we do and are in trouble as a nation. I mean, when you look at -- I don't want to be a Russia. I just don't want to be. I don't think most Americans do. And I hope that the administration, this new administration comes is not like the administration four years ago. That's why he was fired four years ago.

BOLDUAN: You are the top Democrat on foreign affairs. The question today is, what is in store for Ukraine? "The Wall Street Journal" is reporting that one idea being tossed around amongst Trump's team that Kyiv would agree not to join NATO for at least 20 years. In exchange, the U.S. would continue to give Ukraine weapons to deter Russian attacks and both sides would agree to something like an 800-mile demilitarized zone, locking the front line in place. Not clear at all if or what part, if any, Donald Trump might pursue of what's being tossed around. What do you think of that idea?

MEEKS: Well, look, I'm concerned. I don't know what Donald Trump is thinking either. I know what he did when he was in office. I know that he was with Vladimir Putin. I know Vladimir Putin is very happy about the results of this election. I know that my European allies and those in NATO, when he was there, we were concerned he was about to pull out of NATO. So I'm concerned with who he is with America first and Donald Trump first. And I think that our European allies and Vladimir Putin are very concerned. The decision, I still say, if there is going to be a resolve and a negotiation that takes place, it's got to be what Mr. Zelenskyy says and the Ukrainian people, and not us imposing something on them.

BOLDUAN: Do you think Democrats will remain in the minority in the House?

MEEKS: No, I think that there is clearly a pathway, still, for us to be in the majority. All of the votes have not been counted. And as we see steadily coming in, we are winning, we have seats that we are still winning and we are and maintaining moving forward. So we've got to count the votes and let's see where the votes are. But either way, it's going to be close, no matter who's in charge. But I believe that there is a pathway, I know that there is a pathway for us to regain the majority.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Greg Meeks, thank you so much for coming on. Sara?

SIDNER: Thank you, Kate.

This morning, Trump's win may be the get-out-of-jail-free card he desperately needed. Talks are happening right now at the DOJ to end the federal case against him.

And will the richest person in the world have a part in the most powerful office in the world? Is Elon Musk headed to Washington to serve on Trump's administration? And what Trump supporters expect to see from the president-elect on

day one.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:58]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, Special Counsel Jack Smith is in talks with the Justice Department about winding down the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election loss and keeping classified documents after he left office.

CNN's senior legal analyst, former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig is with us now. That language is very specific, winding down, what does that mean, how does Jack Smith actually wind down the investigations?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Not a legal term, not an ordinary part of the process.

Jack Smith has accepted reality here that he will be done on January 20th. He's stuck in appellate purgatory on his two cases. Neither of them has any chance of getting to trial or having much else to do.

The only big question is will he write a Special Counsel Report, like we saw with the Mueller Report, the Robert Hur Report, the Durham Report.

The regulations that he's under, the special counsel regulation, say at the end of your investigation, you're supposed to do a final report. Ordinarily, that's after you try all of your cases. Here, that's the only thing left to do.

I suspect he will write a report. I think we will see it sometime between now and January 20th.

One thing that I think is important that people need to understand, yes, Donald Trump said he will fire Jack Smith, "in two seconds." No doubt he will, but Jack Smith would be doing this anyway. He would be winding down anyway because long-standing DOJ policy goes back to Watergate says, you cannot indict, prosecute, try, imprison the sitting president.

So, no matter what Trump said I think Jack Smith would be in the same position.

BERMAN: Right, and probably, they're going to figure out a way, so Smith can't be fired but let's be done and move on before Trump takes office, so it won't have to happen.

All right, you've been on a lot in the last 24 hours talking about Trump's legal situation, and the criminal cases against him and how they all basically go away both state and federal. But what about all the civil cases, Elie, because that's a different ball game?

HONIG: Really important distinction here, essentially, nothing will change on the civil cases. We're talking about the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the verdict in New York for $400 million for falsifying the valuations of his properties.

We know a civil lawsuit as opposed to a criminal case can proceed against a sitting president from the United States Supreme Court's decision in the Paula Jones lawsuit against Bill Clinton, hotly contested, Supreme Court said, no, you can carry on with civil actions.

So, count on hearing continued news on those. They're both being appealed. It might be that the appeals court uphold those verdicts against Trump. It might be that we hear that some of them have been knocked down. It sounds like the $400 million verdict might be reduced, substantially. So, those cases carry on.

So, yes, Trump gets the most important type of protection in the criminal context, but in the civil context, very little, if any protection.

BERMAN: And in a segue to the last subject we want to recovery here which is pardon, it is in one of the reasons I was asking about this, is Rudy Giuliani, you know, was all over the place yesterday driving around in his Mercedes, has to turnover his apartments and whatnot on the civil defamation case he lost. There are no pardons for a civil -- for that, period. Where might we see pardons, first with outgoing Joe Biden and then incoming Donald Trump?

HONIG: First of all, with respect to Rudy and others, Mark Meadows, a lot of them are also facing criminal indictments in state cases, in Georgia, in Arizona. Nothing Trump can do there. No pardons from the president for state cases.

Joe Biden, I guess the big question is, will he pardon his son, Hunter Biden? I suspect somehow rather Hunter Biden will get a pardon or at least a commutation if he's been sentenced my then. I know Joe Biden has denied it, I don't buy that. I think Hunter Biden will pardoned.

[08:20:16]

When Donald Trump gets in office, look, he has a long history of pardoning his friends, his political supporters. A couple of people who've been convicted since the last time Trump was in office, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro both convicted of contempt of Congress, both have already served their time, but still, you can still issue a pardon.

If Steve Bannon gets pardoned, I want the historians out there to check me on this. I don't know whether he will be the only person to ever pardoned twice. Because Trump pardoned him the first time around on a fraud case. So, I look for Trump and of course, look, the big thing, the more serious thing, I think is Trump has said he will pardon some of the January 6th defendants.

We'll see if he maybe draws lines, only the ones convicted of violent acts. To me, that's going to be a historic abuse of the pardon power, but he's got the pardon power. BERMAN: You say abuse. I mean, it is completely unfettered?

HONIG: You can do -- I was going to say "almost anything you want" with the pardon power, you can do anything you want when you're the president with the pardon power. The only thing we don't know if sure if one can pardon themselves, however, Trump is not going to need to, he's going to have those cases dismissed.

BERMAN: Or he could issue a prophylactic pardon but that's a different thing, it's as murky as everything else in this case.

HONIG: Of course.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, great to see you, thank you very much. I suspect we might have more to talk about.

HONIG: Yes, I'll be back.

BERMAN: Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, ahead, immigration, top of Donald Trump's White House agenda.

New information on how his team is developing plans to try to pull off his promised mass deportation of illegal immigrants once he is in office.

And 27 million people are facing a life-threatening fire warning as powerful winds are fueling wildfires in California. Those stories and more, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:25:41]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A potentially big shift is coming to US immigration policy, as Donald Trump is headed back to the White House.

CNN has new reporting that allies of the president-elect and some in the private sector are quietly preparing for a large-scale detainment and deportation of migrants in the United States, which is right in line with what was really the singular most repeated agenda item from Donald Trump on the campaign trail, which is the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

He reiterated his promise minutes into his victory speech early Wednesday morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have a country that needs help and it needs help very badly. We're going to fix our borders. We're going to fix everything about our country and we made history for a reason tonight.

We're going to have to seal up those borders if we're going to have to let people come into our country. We want people to come back in, but we have to -- we have to let them come back in, but they have to come in legally. They have to come in legally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now is the former acting director of ICE, John Sandweg, it's good to see you again, John.

I want to dig in, beyond the policy headline of mass deportation, really what that could look like now. You and I have talked for years about the border and real solutions and what that could really look like. What do you think a policy of mass deportation does look like and the impact it will have?

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, ICE: Well, Kate, as you know, there's been very little details offered throughout the campaign. A lot of talk on mass deportation, a lot of talk about transnational gang members, and criminal -- individuals who commit crimes in the United States, but very little in the way of how we're going to actually accomplish this.

Look, I think the way you've got to view this is it's going to be a full assault on the current immigration enforcement system. Under the current legal framework, with the current resources that are allocated to ICE, you can't get nowhere near the kind of numbers he's talking about, a million deportations in a year.

I think just to put this in perspective, during the biggest years of the Trump administration, ICE deported 267,000 individuals from the United States. You've got to quadruple that.

So, how do you do that? One is, you need more ICE officers. You need to increase the number of arrests. Two, with this administration will want to build mass detention camps to house those individuals before they're deported. But most importantly is the immigration courts. You and I have talked about this for a long time.

Huge backlogs have formed. The Supreme Court has said that migrants before they're deported are entitled to due process. How do you get them through the courts? And I think what the administration in thinking how do we bypass those courts, right?

Not supplement them, not surge resources to them, but how do we eliminate that right to the courts in the first place. And that's going to be the focus of what they're going to launch here.

BOLDUAN: Yes, because it's not just a decision -- there is not a magic wand that can fix this. That goes without saying. There is precedent, and as you said, what the Supreme Court has decided could directly run straight up against what their desires are to do and how quickly they move.

The simple fact of existing space is a big question. Existing space, run by the federal government and ICE to use as a detention space. How much space does the government have? What will happen if there are millions more people being moved into it? SANDWEG: Yes, Kate, look, the bottom line is a lot of talk has been

focused on this and a lot of frustration by Republicans in Congress during the Biden administration that they're releasing migrants at the border.

But the reality is that most detention beds run by ICE are actually paid for, meaning they're operated by either private contractors or state and local jails. So ICE has 41,000 beds available to it and a budget of a couple of billion dollars to pay for those beds.

So, how do you expand that space? You know, they have limitations on what they can afford and what they can pay for. And I think, again, they're going to need to try to, one, shift money around. So, pull money, the problem when you do that, though, is you're pulling money from something else that's really important. So, it might be human trafficking investigations, or ICE Homeland Security investigations, investigations going after a child -- people exploiting children.

You pull money from there and use it to pay for detention beds. But there are limits, Kate, on how much you can do of that. Just like there are limits on how much you can kind of change the law through executive orders.

So, I think we're going to see and I think one thing we need to keep an eye out for here is what happens with the House of Representatives, and do they go to Congress looking for, I think, two things. One, a massive surge of resources, and two would be new legal authorities that allow them to kind of bypass those immigration courts.

Look, I think that, you know, the Biden administration put forward a very aggressive immigration enforcement bill, primarily dealing with the border. But now that you have the president, you have the Senate, and if you get the House, it will be very interesting to see whether we're seeing the first major immigration legislation in 30 years but being an entirely pro-enforcement one.

[08:30:30]