Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Musk's Doge Sets Its Sights on the Penny to Cut Federal Spending; Trump Take First Steps to Enact Sweeping Agenda with Executive Orders. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired January 24, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He wants to abolish the penny?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He doesn't want to abolish it as much as he wants to give his boss a reason why we can't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it's stupid.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, the thing is, it isn't really.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turns out the majority of pennies don't circulate. They go in jars, sock drawers. Two-thirds of the pennies produced in the last 30 years have dropped out of circulation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: If Elon Musk gets his way, that decades-old pitch from the West Wing could become reality. The United States may soon say sayonara to copper coins. In its stated quest to eliminate waste, the Department of Government Efficiency pointed out on X that producing pennies cost taxpayers nearly $180 million in the fiscal year of 2023.

That same year, the U. S. Mint reported that roughly four billion pennies were put in circulation that year and reported that the cost of producing them is actually increasing. It costs, believe it or not, just under four cents to produce and distribute a single penny. That's up 20 percent from the previous year. Why the added expense?

The rising cost of metals like zinc and copper. And now, as you saw in that clip, people have been advocating for eliminating the penny for years, especially as shoppers have migrated online, where cash takes a backseat to plastic and other intangible methods like Apple Pay or Venmo. Some businesses and workers are also getting behind this push.

A VP at the National Association of Convenience Stores, where cash does remain dominant, tells CNN that about 52 million in person cash transactions happen at convenience stores every single day. And they make this argument, quote -- maybe I could get better at the magic wall.

They say, quote, If we save every one of these customers two seconds, that's 104 million seconds or 1,200 and three days. And that doesn't factor in time compounding, saving two seconds for the other people waiting in line before they get to pay.

[15:35:02]

They essentially argue that we'd save a ton more time if clerks and cashiers didn't have to sit there simply counting pennies.

Recently, a New York Times magazine story put it this way. The necessity of abolishing the penny has been obvious to those in power for so long that the inability to accomplish it has transformed the coin into a symbol of deeper rot.

In so many ways, we've seen Donald Trump break with precedent. Could his administration now permanently do away with a single cent? A sock full of pennies for your thoughts?

ERIC HILL, CNN HOST: You know, it's certainly an idea that's been raised several times. Be interesting to see if it finally happens.

All right, well, in just hours, the Senate is expected to vote on whether to confirm Pete Hegseth as the nation's 29th defense secretary. That vote set for 9 p.m. Eastern. At this moment, only two Republican senators are opposing his nomination. That, of course, falls far short of the four total votes that would be needed to defeat it.

President Trump's pick has been plagued with allegations of sexual misconduct, financial mismanagement, all allegations which he denies. The vote tonight, though, could be closer than expected. There is some question over just what former Senate leader Mitch McConnell plans to do.

President Trump has complained that McConnell was, quote, always a no, possibly indicating the White House may have been told McConnell's vote ahead of time. And then, just a short time ago, Republican Tommy Tuberville talked about tonight's vote and actually pointed out yesterday's procedural vote on Hegseth, passing on a slim margin.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE ( R-AL): Oh, it's going to be tight. 51 is tight. And that's what it was yesterday. It could even be 50. Who knows? Hope is at least 50, because he still gets in. But we'll have to wait. Nine o'clock tonight will be the vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Of course, if that vote is 50-50, it is expected that Vice President Vance will provide the tie-breaking vote for Hegseth.

President Trump wrapping up his first week back in the White House. We're going to take a look at the slew of executive actions he's already taken in just these first five days that could reshape the federal government.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: President Trump is wrapping up a fast-paced first week on the job as he kicks off his second presidential term, and soon he's going to land in Southern California for a tour of wildfire damage in Los Angeles County.

HILL: That West Coast visit, of course, comes after he signed a flurry of executive orders during his first few days in office, among them orders to grant pardons or clemency to nearly all of the 1,600 January 6th defendants. Many of the actions signed by Donald Trump are the culmination of pledges that the president made, of course, during his 2024 campaign. A number of them aimed at kick-starting his promised transformation of the federal government.

Joining us to discuss, Larry Sabato. He's the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and also the author of the book, The Kennedy Half-Century, The Presidency, Assassination and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.

And Tim Naftali, also with us, a CNN presidential historian and the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library. It's nice to see both of you this afternoon.

So I'm also struck by -- I mean, there's so much that has happened this week. You really need to take a minute to soak it all in. It's like drinking from a fire hose.

Tim, one of the things the president has done, too, is really make good on these promises that he has of revenge and retribution.

We're talking about the pardons, the commutations for January 6th rioters, also stripping Dr. Fauci, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo of their security coverage. It is day five. Is there any historical precedent for this?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, there's no historical precedent for having this many executive orders, as Larry well knows, too. You know, Ronald Reagan, who promised a revolution in the nature of the relationship between the American people and their government, Ronald Reagan took a few days to get his -- to sign his first executive order. So Donald Trump, in using the executive order the way he, executive orders the way he has, has really put his imprint on this government and assumed power in a way he promised to do during the campaign.

In terms of the retaliation, no. There is absolutely no precedent to the way in which Donald Trump has made absolutely clear from the moment he became president that he wants to not only reverse the conversation about January 6th, but he wants to penalize those who sought to make clear January 6th was an insurrection and should be punished, and to punish and to make sure that those who were punished by our judicial system be pardoned or have their sentences commuted. So we've never seen anything like this.

And the only comparable moment was after the Civil War. And the president then was Andrew Johnson. And of course, we saw what happened in the South, when he used his pardon power to help Confederates come back into public office.

SANCHEZ: Larry, you've argued that the economy was the principal reason that Trump won the election. Are you seeing anything from his first week on the job that shows he has a plan to bring prices down or to boost wages?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS AT UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: No, and actually, I was in the grocery store yesterday, and I took a look at the price of a dozen eggs, and it was actually up. But of course, it's the first week, so we'll see what happens.

On Tim's discussion there, I would also say Nixon would be one who would match Trump at least to a certain degree in the revenge category, but not this early in his term.

[15:45:02]

You know, the enemies list evolved over a long period of time, and the funny business with the Internal Revenue Service, checking his enemies and so on. This is really unprecedented. But then Trump had four years to sit down and think about who he wanted to get revenge on, and also what he wanted to do in this second term that he didn't do in his first, which he wasn't prepared for. I think partly because he didn't think he was going to win either.

But this time, he is prepared, and he's doing things from a conservative direction that the Republican Party likes. But he's also doing things that the public generally does not like, especially those pardons.

That's the biggest error of his first week. It's going to hurt him. It's going to continue to hurt him because it's so outrageous. And people have every right to judge him on that basis.

But there's something every day -- just to add one final point. I've been watching the coverage today of what he said in D.C., and then said down in North Carolina, and what he said about his California trip upcoming here today and it's shocking. It's absolutely shocking. We have never had a president who equated support for a state during a natural disaster on the basis of support -- or support for him, or made it so partisan.

You know normally, when a president comes into a state during a disaster, he gathers all the public officials together of both parties and says nice things about everybody because it's an opportunity for unity. That isn't happening, is it? It certainly is not.

HILL: Tim, do you see any sign that there could be a shift? We were told ahead of his inaugural speech, it didn't exactly measure up, but we were told that it would be about unity, right, that that was going to be the message of the day. You know to Larry's point, we are seeing more partisanship.

It's only five days in. Things could change. Do you see signs that that is a possibility, Tim?

NAFTALI: At the moment, I don't. I'm very worried about the establishment of Schedule F in the federal government, which is going to make more and more positions, political appointees in our government. And one of the arguments that the MAGA world makes is that expertise is partisan, that there is no such thing as nonpartisan, objective expertise.

Well, I don't agree with that. And in fact, we are a weaker nation if we don't believe that experts can do their business in a nonpartisan, nonpolitical way. So at the moment, it seems to me that President Trump has been very successful at changing the cultural norms of our nation.

Certainly, the majority view has shifted. And that's not going to lead to more unity. That's going to lead to more division, I'm afraid.

HILL: Tim Naftali, Larry Sabato, I think we have to leave it there, but it will not be the last time we have one of these discussions that we can guarantee. Thank you both.

NAFTALI: Thank you.

HILL: Just ahead here, as we roll into the final week of what might be your dry January, not mine. How many alcoholic drinks are actually OK for your health? Well, it turns out there's a little debate about that. Stay with us.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: This is a question that springs up all sorts of heated debates. Is drinking alcohol bad for your health? A new CNN poll finds that half of American adults say that even moderate drinking is unhealthy, though they were split down the middle on whether the government should actually provide guidance on how much to drink or just let folks make up their own minds.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard is here. So, Jacqueline, where do Americans stand on alcohol right now?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: That's the thing, Boris. We do see this shift in where Americans stand. And what I mean by that is, like you mentioned in our latest CNN poll, we did see that 50 percent of U.S. adults who were surveyed said that moderate drinking is bad for your health. That share of adults is more than double the share that held that view just two decades ago in 2005.

And what's driving this shift appears to be younger adults, because we know that Americans younger than 45 are more likely to hold that view around alcohol. And, you know, Boris, these numbers are coming out after just recently the surgeon general issued an advisory saying that there's a direct link between cancer and alcohol. And he recommended that we update warning labels on alcoholic beverages.

And when you look at opinions around that, our CNN poll found that 74 percent of adults support revising those health warning labels. And again, that's a number that really does reflect this shift that we're seeing in public attitudes around alcohol drinking.

SANCHEZ: And Jacqueline, what do the current guidelines actually say for what is safe?

HOWARD: The current guidelines, the federal government, a dietary guidelines say that for men, it's recommended to limit your alcohol intake to two drinks or less each day.

[15:55:00]

But these guidelines, Boris, they're up for review this year. So it will be interesting to see what updates are made there, especially knowing that there is this shift in public opinions.

SANCHEZ: Jacqueline Howard, thanks so much for the reporting.

You can now visit some of the nation's newest residents of the capital and not folks in Congress or the White House. These guys are furry, adorable and kind of uncoordinated. The nation, the National Zoo's pandas. When we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: We have been just tracking this all day. It's a day of pandemonium with two brand new pandas making their debut at the Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C. Bao Li and Qing Bao, both three years old, they've been in quarantine since arriving in the U.S. from China in October. The wait, though, as you can see, is finally over.

HILL: Thank goodness. Zoo officials say that more than 14,000 passes have been reserved so far to see these little cuties over the weekend. Their debut kicked off this morning with kindergartners reciting the poem Giant Panda Friendship Rhyme.

[16:00:00]

They also performed a song. I like this. This is adorable. It's not just the pandas who are cute people. The kids are cute, too.

For behind-the-scenes look at just what went into the pandas' big debut, you know where you can find that? Right here on CNN Sunday night. "THE WHOLE STORY, OPERATION PANDA," airs Sunday at 8 p.m.

SANCHEZ: Yes, David Culver went all out. He wore a panda outfit, sprayed panda urine on himself.

HILL: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Don't want to miss it. Thanks for being here with us this week, Erica. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.

END