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Trump: trump Signs Executive Orders at White House; Trump Signs More Executive Orders After Pausing Mexico Tariffs; Mexico Agrees to Put 10,000 of Its Soldiers on U.S. Border "Maybe Forever" to Fight Drug Trafficking;. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired February 03, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, 45TH & 47TH U.S. PRESIDENT: -- or two more and we'll be done.

MAN #1: (Inaudible) Tulsi Gabbard (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Say it?

MAN #1: Tulsi Gabbard (inaudible) --

TRUMP: Yeah, I think Tulsi is going to be doing okay. I'm not sure. I can't guarantee anything, but she's liked by so many people, especially people in the military and law enforcement.

MAN #1: She is a little bit of trouble with some senators over her thoughts on Edward Snowden. I know Snowden, you've mentioned in the past you're thinking about pardoning him. Are you still? And what do you think about that --

TRUMP: No, I don't talk to him about it right now. I just -- people feel very differently. Some people think he should be pardoned and some people think it would be a terrible thing to do. But I don't get involved in that.

MAN #2: Mr. President, what are you discussing with Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Elsik? (ph).

TRUMP: Just respect. I have great respect for Rupert Murdoch. I disagree with him a lot of times with the Wall Street Journal, but that's all right. We've disagreed before, but -- and I'm sure they didn't have any idea what they were talking about because already you see what's happening.

Look at Colombia. Look at what happened with that. Everybody said that with Colombia it was going to be a disaster. In one hour, everything was settled. You know why? Tariffs. Tariffs. Without tariffs, they wouldn't have been the same way. They would not have treated me the way they treated me, which was extremely nicely.

And I don't want to use countries, I don't want to use names, but tariffs are very powerful both economically and in getting everything else. You want tariffs for us? Nobody can compete with us because we're the pot of gold. But if we don't keep winning and keep doing well, we won't be the pot of gold and then tariffs won't be so good for us.

But when you're the pot of gold, the tariffs are -- the tariffs are very good. They're very powerful and they're going to make our country very rich again. Thank you very much, everybody.

MAN #3: Thank you, guys. (Inaudible).

TRUMP: I don't know.

WOMAN #1: Thank you, guys.

MAN #3: Thank you, guys.

TRUMP: How is the market doing?

MAN #3: Thank you, guys.

WOMAN #3: Thank you, guys.

TRUMP: It did? I don't know. I don't think about it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We can fact check that one, though. He does think about the market often, and we certainly know that. You can call it the weave. But for a press conference where he talked a lot about the Panama Canal, it meandered more than the Panama Canal and with all of the ups and downs of it to boot.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: He covered a lot of ground there. My notes are a bit of a mess given the amount of stuff we just heard from President Trump. He talked about a sovereign wealth fund. He signed an executive order to create an exploratory committee to go that route.

He also talked about the firings of officials at USAID. He essentially said that he believed that disintegrating, that agency is within the purview of the White House. He said he doesn't need congressional approval to shutter it. He made some accusations about fraud regarding that agency that I at least had not heard before.

He also talked about tariffs, discussing his phone call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum this morning, an agreement that Mexico made to send 10,000 troops to their border to try to block fentanyl and undocumented immigrants from crossing the border. He also previewed his conversation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada later this afternoon.

KEILAR: That's right. He's really trumpeting this approach, which is using tariffs as a big stick, whether it is in Colombia, whether it is in Mexico, where they have agreed to get a pause in these tariffs to have 10,000 Mexican soldiers on the border. And when it comes to Canada, as he's waging a trade war there, and we're seeing this -- expecting this call here in about an hour. He said we don't need them to take our cars.

But what is sort of missing, and we're going to bring in our reporters to talk about this, is just how inextricably linked the auto industries of America and Canada are. You may ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar. They may ask you for some flour. But if you look at Detroit, it is right next to Canada, and they are like that when it comes to auto parts or software or molds. These are things that are crossing the border in the course of production and they are very much linked.

I want to bring in Jeff Zeleny, who was there. We heard him asking questions during this. Jeff, tell us a little bit about what stood out to you.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Brianna, you and Boris were talking about at the very end there where President Trump said he doesn't look at the stock market. We asked that question if this was a decision he made with the Mexican President this morning because of the global stock reaction. And he said no. And he said, I don't look at the market. What was it doing?

We know, obviously, based on watching him for a very long time that is not true. We do not know if that's why he reached a temporary agreement with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. But that was certainly interesting.

But I think just overall. Clearly, the President is, you know, saying that he has a 3 p.m. phone call with the Canadian President.

[14:05:00]

But he put a lot of distance between and differentiated between Mexico and Canada.

But you are absolutely right. The big picture here is that a lot of these supply chains, a lot of manufacturing is North American manufacturing, of course, including Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. But in that wide ranging signing of executive orders, the President clearly in an upbeat mood there, except when we asked him about the Wall Street Journal, really demonizing and criticizing the trade war, calling it the dumbest trade war.

Rupert Murdoch was sitting in the Oval Office. Of course, he is the longtime patriarch of the Wall Street Journal. He's essentially passed most of that on to his family now. But he got a smile on his face. The President had a smile on his face, said the Wall Street Journal is often wrong.

But the reality here is business leaders and Republicans on Capitol Hill from red states, were very concerned about the ramifications of this trade war. The President said he did not blink on this. He said the deal with Mexico to have some 10,000 National Guard -- of their National Guard on the border was a good deal, but left unclear what will happen with a candidate or China by midnight when that deadline is still looming. SANCHEZ: Yeah, he mentioned that he's going to have a call with China in the next 24 hours. Notably, Jeff, he also spoke there extensively about the Panama Canal and doing something big to take it back essentially. He apparently said that there's a call with Panama on Friday. Of course, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on his way back from there.

Pivoting though to USAID and Elon Musk. Something notable. The President there was asked whether Musk had any conflicts of interest, whether he might have made decisions that the White House didn't agree with. And Trump essentially said that Musk is only taking steps if we agree with him for these firings and arguing that the Tesla founder, the founder of SpaceX, who has all these government contracts, does not have any conflicts of interest. What did you make of those remarks?

ZELENY: Look, I mean, that is something that is very much an open question here. And the President saying that conflicts of interest do not exist does not make it so. But I think on USAID, when we asked the President if he believes he can dissolve it without an act of Congress, he says yes, he believes he can. There are many people who disagree with that.

We also asked about the USAID and foreign aid. In his first administration as President, he looked very favorably or certainly more favorably on USAID. Ivanka Trump, of course, his senior adviser, was using USAID for women's programs, proposals and things. And he said yes, he thinks it is a good idea. But then he talks about fraud. That was unsubstantiated and the like.

But on Elon Musk specifically there, he said that, you know, he is giving Elon Musk these directions. But the question here is how much detail the President and even some people in the White House are aware of what Elon Musk and some of his top lieutenants are doing. That is very much an open question here. But he did raise the conflict of interest idea, saying if there were conflicts that is something that he would call out. But again, a little bit like the chicken guarding the henhouse here.

KEILAR: All right, Jeff. Let's bring in Daniel Dale. You have a lot to fact check here, Daniel. I don't know. I'll take one off your plate, though, which is the condoms for Hamas. Not true. It's kind of become the Haitians eating your pets because it's been debunked. It's not true. But it plays well with the base.

So he's repeating it here. We should say worldwide, USAID didn't provide $50 million in condoms, no condoms to the Middle East during that time period of the last few years in question. Take it away. What else? What else?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: So he said that 38,000 Americans died during the construction of the Panama Canal. In fact, during the American construction phase, that we're talking early 20th century, it was roughly 6,000. But those people, even though 6,000 were not all Americans, they were mostly poorly paid Caribbean workers. The actual American number was in the hundreds. So a gross exaggeration. He said, when talking about Canada, they don't take our agricultural products for the most part. In fact, Canada is the third largest export market for U.S. agriculture, about $28 billion in purchases in 2023. There is a dispute about milk exports that he referred to, but in terms of agriculture as a whole, it's not true.

He said that the European Union doesn't take our farm products. The European Union is the fourth largest export market, about $12 billion per year. He said we have about a 350 billion trade deficit with the EU, another gross exaggeration, it's about 125 billion. And he repeated this claim about aid to Ukraine that he repeatedly -- that he regularly makes. He said that the EU provides way less aid to Ukraine than the U.S. does.

[14:10:02]

They need to catch up and so on.

In fact, according to the latest numbers we have, the EU has committed about double the aid to Ukraine during this war than the U.S. has. About 250 billion to about 125 billion to the U.S. EU also leads in terms of the amount of aid actually allocated. So that's not true as well.

SANCHEZ: I actually want to fact check something you said just now, Brianna, because I believe I wrote it down. Trump actually exaggerated his own made up exaggerated --

DALE: He doubled it.

SANCHEZ: -- claim during this -- he doubled it. He used to say that it was 50 million for condoms in Gaza.

KEILAR: What did he say?

SANCHEZ: He said 100 million --

KEILAR: Oh.

SANCHEZ: -- this time.

DALE: Yeah.

SANCHEZ: Neither of which --

KEILAR: Thank you for fact checking me, Boris --

SANCHEZ: Neither of which --

KEILAR: -- I do appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: -- to be clear, Daniel, are correct.

KEILAR: But one is doubly incorrect.

DALE: There's a -- yeah, there's a concept I think of as Trumpflation (ph) where he makes a false claim and then it keeps getting falser and falser over time. The numbers keep rising. So a good example there.

SANCHEZ: Daniel Dale, thank you so much. We also have Matt Egan with us who has been watching markets very closely. And it was clear, Matt, this morning once the deadline for these tariffs were obviously looming before midnight tonight, that markets were not responding well. The announced deal with Mexico to delay them for a month saw a quick bump up and they're kind of back down now, right?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yeah, Boris. You know, so much about tariffs can be really complicated, but the stock market reaction was really simple, right? We saw markets take a hit on Friday when investors realized that President Trump may actually go forward with these tariffs. The market opened sharply lower. The Dow is down about 700 points at one point this morning.

But yes, you're right. Look at that. You can see the market bounced all the way back as those tariffs on Mexico have been delayed. But the broader market still down a bit because there is obviously so much uncertainty.

Now, I found this conversation with President Trump in the Oval Office that we just saw really fascinating, a fascinating window into why he loves tariffs so much, right? He views them as this magical negotiating tool, right? This ability to get leverage over other countries.

And he doesn't really distinguish almost at all between friends or rival countries, right? And so he's willing to threaten to impose tariffs on longtime allies and neighbors like Canada and Mexico, as well as on China. And so there were some really important updates there, right? He was praising the President of Mexico, explaining why those tariffs have been not canceled but delayed.

But he had tougher comments about the prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. He was complaining about some of the regulatory practices in Canada and sort of suggesting that we don't need to bring in some of the goods from Canada, although I think the housing industry has been pretty clear in their arguments that we do need to bring in a lot of those building materials like lumber. And Trump also made clear that really this is just the beginning of his tariff strategy here, right?

I mean, he said that this is just an opening salvo when it comes to China. He said tariffs will go much higher if they need to. He suggested tariffs on the European Union as well. And so this is just another reminder of how all of this uncertainty is really just beginning here, right? Tariffs are on, they're off, they're dialed up, they're dialed back. In the meanwhile, we see the market go all over the place and consumers, investors, CEOs, are just trying to make sense of it all.

SANCHEZ: A roller coaster.

KEILAR: That certainly is. Matt Egan, thank you so much for that. We do appreciate it. And we're joined now by Charlie Angus. He is a member of the Canadian Parliament. You heard him there, sir. What I'd like is for Canada to become our 51st state. He said it before. He just said it again moments ago. Your reaction?

CHARLIE ANGUS, CANADIAN MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: Well, what President Trump also said is that the tariffs will not come off until we give up our birthright and our sovereignty to a convicted predator. That is never, ever, ever going to happen. So what Donald Trump has done is unified Canadians in a manner I've never seen before. And while Americans may be waking up to the tariffs, we've already started the pushback.

People in Kentucky, did you know that your biggest export market for SPE here, it says Canada. We just took everything off the shelves. California, did you know that the largest purchaser of wines in the world is the liquor agency in Ontario? You don't get any more California wines in Ontario.

Elon Musk, our premier just canceled $100 million deal today. Canada is getting ready for this fight because we know he's erratic. It may be this week, it may be next week, but there's a huge actual boycott going on.

Grocery stores, ordinary people, people stopping me on the streets. Nobody is buying anything that comes out of the United States right now because we understand this is a threat to who we are as a nation.

[14:15:00]

KEILAR: There are also Republicans here in farm states concerned about ingredients for fertilizers that come from Canada as well. There are a myriad of products that we are just learning about as Americans. Fascinating, although perhaps not under duress to learn about them.

He's obviously looking for some kind of concession. You hear him, he talks about Colombia, he, he's talking about Mexico and the 10,000 Mexican troops. And I know you view him as unreasonable to say the least here. But do you think that ultimately Canada might end up conceding or is that not even a possibility?

ANGUS: Well, I think the issue is, is that Donald Trump has claimed that Canada is a Narco-State. The man's a liar. So would we put some more money on the border? Sure, I'd love to put more money on the border to keep American guns from shooting our people on the streets. We would do that to avoid a trade. We're reasonable as Canadians.

But when you have somebody threatening our sovereignty, well, we're hunkering down for a fight here. So, yes, for people in the grain growing belts, potash from Canada is essential for the tech people. Critical minerals. We've already had our B.C. premier talk about shutting off the critical mineral flow. Would you need that?

But the big issue, and I think it was raised by some of your previous panelists, auto. The auto sector is so integrated that within a week with even without the retaliatory trade pressure from Canada, you'll start to see Lansing, Toledo, Bowling Green start to sputter and go down because this is just in time delivery. Our whole North American economy is based on this. So that Donald Trump thinks that Canada is his biggest enemy. The guy wouldn't stand up to Putin. He gives a feather to China, but he's going to pick a fight with us. Well, if that's the way it's going to be, we will be there pound for pound. It's going to hurt us a lot. But the American people are much more divided than we are right now and we are unified. So we wait to see what comes next.

KEILAR: We're going to see this call or hope to see soon what comes of it. It's supposed to take place in about 45 minutes. Would you say then that Canada is going to call his bluff or is already calling his bluff?

ANGUS: Well, we've already announced, I think $125 billion in retaliatory tariff. We will give 21 days pause so that our companies can start to retool before we launch the next level. We've already started pulling off a lot of American products off the shelves prior to this. I'm hoping that our Prime Minister will cut a deal.

I think with Donald, it's so important that he looks like he's won something. I mean, this isn't gunboat diplomacy. This is really, I don't know, like Al Capone in a syphilitic period trying to do a shakedown. So, yeah, we'll make concessions on something that, you know, he can write a press release about.

But on key areas, Canadians would, I think, would hunt our leaders down if they bowed and kissed the ring to the man from Mar-a-Lago. It's not going to happen. So we shall see. I'm hoping that we can get through this and get back to work with our American cousins.

KEILAR: Sir, thanks for being with us. Canadian MP Charlie Angus. We do appreciate it.

ANGUS: Thanks so much.

KEILAR: Still to come this hour. Elon Musk upending the lives of many federal workers. Thousands have been told to stay home today after the world's richest man announces via X, his social media platform, that their agency is being shut down.

Plus, crews have begun salvaging the wreckage of American Airlines Flight 5342 as new clues reveal the plane's pilot may have seen the Black Hawk helicopter that it collided with just before impact. We'll have these stories and much more coming up on CNN News Central.

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[14:23:21]

SANCHEZ: The future of the U.S. Agency for International Development is in doubt this hour. Just moments ago from the Oval Office, President Trump said that he unilaterally has the power to scrap USAID. Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he is now the agency's acting director, confirming that it's essentially been folded into the State Department.

USAID spends billions of dollars each year to fight poverty, treat disease, and respond to natural disasters around the world. We're joined now by Jeremy Konyndyk, a Former Senior Official at USAID. He's also the President of Refugees International.

Jeremy, thank you so much for being with us. First, I just want to get your reaction to what you heard there from Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Not just saying that he doesn't need congressional approval to scrap USAID, but also making these accusations about fraud and corruption at the agency.

JEREMY KONYNDYK, FORMER SENIOR USAID OFFICIAL: Yeah, there's a lot of disinformation flying around from the administration right now. But to be really clear what's happening, this is the world's richest man deciding the world's richest country should stop helping the world's poorest people. That is the story here. The President does not have the authority to unilaterally shutter a federal agency that has been established in congressional -- in congressional statute.

SANCHEZ: I wonder what you make of Marco Rubio then saying that he's now the acting director of USAID.

KONYNDYK: I saw that. I suspect that's a sort of gambit for them to get away with saying, well, we haven't destroyed the agency as a legislative matter yet. We still have a director. It just happens to be the Secretary of State. But look, there is, there has been a lot of destruction at the agency over the weekend. There's very little clarity on what's replacing it or what they're kind of what their actual affirmative plan is to continue this vital mission.

SANCHEZ: Is there any recourse for legal action or congressional intervention, perhaps to try to question or argue against what Trump is saying, that he can do this unilaterally?

[14:25:05]

KONYNDYK: I expect there will be legal challenges. A number of Congress -- members of Congress have been out front of USAID this afternoon rallying in support of the agency, standing up for congressional prerogatives, noting that this is, in fact a congressionally mandated agency. It can't just be disappeared.

SANCHEZ: What about this argument from Rubio when he was in El Salvador saying that USAID is supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, yet it refuses to do so?

KONYNDYK: It does respond. It is mandated to respond to the policy directives of the Secretary. That's not new. That's been law since the late 1990s. Every USAID administrator of both parties has always followed that. I have no idea what he's talking about. They're notably short on specifics on a lot of these accusations that are being lobbed against the agency.

SANCHEZ: You don't see a space where, as they've argued, the work of USAID directly interferes with UN rather with the United States national security objectives.

KONYNDYK: No, not at all. You know, most of what -- most of the work USAID does is actually directed by Congress. Congress says, fund this much for health, fund this much for education, fund this much for humanitarian assistance. The administration negotiates that budget with Congress every year and then executes that. I don't see where they're seeing some huge disconnect. Certainly, the agency is not operating on its own power. They're operating under congressional and State Department directives.

SANCHEZ: On the DOGE personnel that went to headquarters this weekend and apparently got access to USAID security systems and personnel files. What would they gain trying to access that information? What do you think their objectives were?

KONYNDYK: That is a very, very important question to dig into. You know, like any national security agency, and of course, the USAID is a national security agency, part of the foreign policy apparatus. They have access to highly classified intelligence through their secure facilities. It's very, very worrying if people without the appropriate clearances got into those facilities.

And, you know, if I'm a partner country of the United States that shares intelligence, I'm now wondering, is Elon Musk or is some 23- year-old who works for Elon Musk able to read what I'm sharing with the U.S. Government?

SANCHEZ: Have you heard from any USAID employees that got that email telling them to stay home today? How are they feeling about all this?

KONYNDYK: I think the whole USAID workforce is just gutted right now. You know, I've served in that agency two times in prior administrations. I know many of those people. They do this work, you know, not for glory. Most of the time USAID is out of the headlines and no one pays it. This is probably the most attention USAID aid has ever gotten.

So they are doing this because they believe in the mission and their mission is to help support people around the world. Going back to why JFK created this agency back in the early 1960s. That's why they're there and they're gutted not to be able to do that.

SANCHEZ: Jeremy Konyndyk, we appreciate you coming in and sharing your perspective. Thanks much.

KONYNDYK: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come on CNN News Central. Investigators revealing new clues about the final moments of that doomed American Airlines flight as crews begin salvaging pieces of it from the bottom of the Potomac. An update just moments away.

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