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Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over Gaza, Didn't Rule Out Sending Troops; CIA Sends Buyout Offers to Entire Workforce; Countdown to Super Bowl LIX. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired February 05, 2025 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:00:00]
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump makes a stunning proposal saying America will take over war-torn Gaza, sending in American troops if necessary, moving Palestinians out and Turning the Gaza Strip into, quote, the Riviera of the Middle East. He proposed this break with decades of U.S. foreign policy while standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The fallout, swift.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Breaking overnight, the CIA offers buyouts to nearly its entire workforce. So, what does this mean for the future of the spy agency?
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the U.S. Postal Service is suspending all inbound packages from China and Hong Kong. How long will this last, as the president is now facing down a trade war with China, and what does it mean for your mail?
I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN News Central.
SIDNER: Happening now, blistering outrage and new follow up. After President Trump, in a stunning rejection of decades of U.S. policy, declared the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, own it, a move that would force nearly 2 million Palestinians from their homes and possibly use American troops to get it all done.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative.
They can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. And we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it.
You have to learn from history. You can't keep doing the same mistake over and over again. Gaza is a hell hole right now. It was before the bombing started, frankly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: This hour, Israeli Prime Minister, as you saw there, Benjamin Netanyahu, he is still in Washington, set to meet later today with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Israel's fragile ceasefire deal with Hamas is still in the balance after Trump also suggested the war-torn enclave become the Riviera of the Middle East.
This hour, global shockwaves and stinging rebukes, Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan saying this president is openly calling for ethnic cleansing while sitting next to a genocidal war criminal. And from Republicans, a mixed bag, House Speaker Mike Johnson hailing Trump's bold action, while Senator John Cornyn of Texas has only said, I don't really know what to make of that. We're standing by for more reaction from lawmakers on the Hill.
Let's get right to the White House, though, first with CNN's Alayna Treene, who is there. You have the very latest on this, but this has caused huge shockwaves across the world.
ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: It has. And I think the key question was how long, you know, did Donald Trump -- it take Donald Trump to get to this point, the president, how many people knew that he was going to say this. From what we saw, it was clear that the president was kind of moving toward this all day, even before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even arrived here at the White House yesterday afternoon.
Now, as you said, Donald Trump, when he got up there on that podium -- behind that podium next to the prime minister, he said essentially that, in his view, he thinks the war in the Middle East should end with all of the men, women and children moving out of Gaza and allowing the United States to, as you played, own it and turn it into a Riviera of sorts.
I want you to take a listen to more of how he framed this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good where they wouldn't want to return. Why would they want to return? The place has been hell. It's been one of the meanest, one of the meanest, toughest places on Earth. You take certain areas and you build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, like some place where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they're going to end up dying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TREENE: Now, Sara, this is not just some offhanded comment. We know that the president has used similar rhetoric in the past when referring to Gaza and the Gaza Strip.
[07:05:00]
However, he did go further with this, of course, yesterday than he has before. And not only is this in opposition to what U.S. presidents have said for decades now, but it also could threaten the very delicate deal that is still being worked out, and, of course, the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The other question, of course, is where would the 2 million, roughly 2 million Gazans go if displaced? The president continues to say he thinks Egypt and Jordan should take some of these people in and accept them. But, of course, these countries, we've heard them repeatedly reject that notion.
Now, I do want to just get to a little bit of reaction. We've heard some high officials in Donald Trump's cabinet defend him, including Senator Marco Rubio. I want to read for you what he posted. He said, quote, Gaza must be free from Hamas. As POTUS shared today, the United States stands ready to lead and make Gaza beautiful again. One pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people.
Now, we also heard, though, some skeptical as well from both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. I want to read for you one of Donald Trump's top allies, Lindsey Graham. This is what he said. He told reporters, quote, we'll see what our Arab friends say about that. I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. I think that might be problematic, but I'll keep an open mind.
So, of course, we are waiting to hear more about kind of the fallout of some of these comments and also further conversations as the prime minister is, of course, still here in Washington and meeting with top Trump administration officials. Sara?
SIDNER: It is not lost on any of us that this is a president who said that he wanted to stop getting involved in what he calls endless wars. There is no other place on Earth that has been so volatile and in such conflict for such a long time. So, a real shocker to a lot of people.
Alayna Treene, thank you so much for your reporting there. Katre?
BOLDUAN: Let's get to reaction now. Overseas, Arab leaders in the Middle East are calling the president's proposal hard to grasp and digest. They're also warning of profound implications that it could have on millions of Palestinians, as Alayna was just getting to.
Already an estimated 90 percent of Gaza residents have been displaced in this war last week. One Palestinian returning to Gaza told CNN this, even if it was harder and more difficult than this, I want to live in Gaza.
CNN's Jeremy Diamond is in Tel Aviv and there's a lot of reaction I'm sure you are getting this morning. What more are you hearing, Jeremy?
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Without a doubt, Kate. There has been widespread criticism and condemnation of President Trump's suggestion that the Palestinians be forcibly displaced from the Gaza Strip. He is, of course, talking about moving more than 2 million Palestinians who live in Gaza forcibly outside of the Gaza Strip and also suggesting that this would be a permanent move as the United States would seek to take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into some kind of real estate development.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has now sounded off saying, quote, we will not allow for the rights of our people for which we have struggled for decades and made great sacrifices to achieve to be infringed upon. These calls represent a serious violation of international law.
The countries that President Trump has said would take in these Palestinian refugees, Egypt and Jordan, they have rejected these calls, with the Egyptian foreign ministry once again today making clear that Egypt is opposed to this and wants to see Gaza rebuilt without relocating Palestinians outside of the Gaza Strip.
And it's important to note that beyond you know, this forced displacement that President Trump is suggesting, what he also suggests effectively could close off the possibility of a Palestinian state, at least in terms of the Gaza Strip.
And yesterday, President Trump was also talking about this notion of Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization, and suggesting that he doesn't believe that Saudi Arabia actually needs to see Palestinian statehood. But the Saudi Foreign Ministry is rejecting that, saying in a statement, quote, Saudi Arabia will continue its relentless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that.
The only people who are accepting President Trump's statement so far in the region are far right Israeli politicians, like Itamar Ben-Gvir, like the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who are all praising this idea, because for months now, they have been suggesting forcibly displacing Palestinians from Gaza, and now they're hearing it from the President of the United States. Kate?
BOLDUAN: Jeremy, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for that reporting. John?
BERMAN: Right. This morning, the entire staff of the CIA has buyout offers on the table, this new step in the purge of government workers.
This morning, we're getting new details of what might have led to the plane crash in D.C. that killed 67 people. This comes as overnight President Trump made new claims with no evidence that the FAA employs intellectually deficient air traffic controllers.
And President Trump will be the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. It seems his longstanding beef with the Eagles, after players rejected his invitation to the White House in 2018, lives on, as he hinted, he'll be rooting for the Chiefs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I don't want to say, but there's a certain quarterback that seems to be a pretty good winner.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, the CIA offered buyouts to nearly all of its employees. A CIA spokesman told The Wall Street Journal the goal was to, quote, infuse the agency with new energy.
CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Andrew McCabe, is with us now. Andy, I was last speaking to you at 8:45 P.M. last night about the FBI.
[07:15:01]
Since then, since 8:45 last night, we got this news that the CIA, every employee has been offered to buy out there. What would happen to an intelligence agency like the CIA if you had massive turnover?
ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Gut it, John. The only word to describe it is gut it there. And, you know, I've had the privilege of working very closely with colleagues at the CIA for a large part of my career. And I can tell you that they have spent decades amassing a staff, a personnel workforce that is incredibly expert in what they do. The value of CIA case officers and analysts is the depth of their knowledge on the targets that they track around the globe, whether those are foreign spies who are trying to steal our most sensitive information or foreign terrorists who are trying to kill Americans here and abroad.
And to release those people to encourage them or badger them into leaving the agency en masse would create a significant drain of not just capacity, because of the numbers of folks that might go, but also deprive the agency in the country of the expertise and the unique perspective that these folks have because of the work that they've been doing. That is not a source that you can just tap in the private sector and bring people in. This is something that's built up over years and years of really hard work. And it would be very, very damaging to the agency's ability to continue functioning at a high level.
BERMAN: What does it do? Whether people take the buyout or not, what does it do to morale? What does it do to the ability to keep the United States safe today? And the same goes for the FBI, where there's all sorts of things going on with, you know, requests for resignations there and lists being handed over. What does that do to the security posture today?
MCCABE: Well, you know, it's really kind of the 1st step in this coercive process of trying to reduce the size of these different government agencies, right? It's an offered buyout, but it comes with the implicit threat, that if you don't take this buyout after the offer is no longer on the table, you might be subject to termination. So, even those people who take it, many of them will do so out of fear.
And that subjecting people to that sort of process on its face is wrong. But it ultimately introduces these concepts of instability and insecurity of your job, of your position, that even for those people who remain in the organization, they will continue to do their work, but they'll do it constantly looking over their shoulder worrying about giving answers to people in power that they may not like because of the focus and the scrutiny that providing let's say information or analysis on a critical national security threat that you know the president doesn't want to hear.
There are many categories of information that fit that description. Are those analysts, whose raw and accurate and truthful statements and documents are absolutely critical to protecting the country? How comfortable are they going to be even providing that sort of analysis and advice when they're constantly afraid that their job security, their income, their family's health insurance may be on the line. It introduces a level of insecurity in these critical functions that is just really devastating to the mission.
BERMAN: Good points. Andrew McCabe, nice to speak to you this morning. Thank you very much, Kate?
BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, the first military flight carrying migrants from the United States, arriving at Guantanamo Bay. Details coming up on President Trump's vision for the detention facility now.
And the Kansas City Chiefs have a new fan, that's the quarterback. But Patrick Mahomes also has a new and delightfully adorable reason to be very excited for Sunday's big game.
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SIDNER: All right. You're looking at a live picture there of the Caesar's Superdome in New Orleans. And you know why? Security and excitement building for Super Bowl 59. The Chiefs and Eagles set to go head to head and the fans swarming the city.
These days, a new arrival in the Mahomes household is providing a little extra motivation to the Chiefs' quarterback.
CNN's Coy Wire is in New Orleans following all of the action for us. Good morning to you.
It looks like you may have had a fun night last night, I suspect.
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: What are you trying to say? Is my hair all messed up, Sarah? What's going on here? Good morning to you.
Listen, yes, one of the biggest talking points around this week, and we'll continue to be is this Patrick Mahomes, can he further his status towards becoming a GOAT, greatest quarterback of all time. Already five Super Bowls in seven seasons, three of them wins. He's not even 30 years old yet. He's doing a great job of kind of tamping down all those expectations that added significance and hype. But he did tell me yesterday that there is one thing bringing added motivation and significance to this game, and that's having his third child, newborn baby at home with his wife, Brittany, Baby Golden. He told me this will be her first ever football game Super Bowl Sunday. Here he is talking about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PATRICK MAHOMES, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS QUARTERBACK: It's always motivating whenever you have another baby. I mean, just because I want them to have the same experiences that the other two have. And she's been amazing. She's been sleeping well. Mom's been extremely happy with, and I'm excited for her to be able to come to. I think this will be her first football game at the Super Bowl and hopefully we can get her a win.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[07:25:01]
WIRE: If they will get a win, it will be a first ever three-peat as champions.
Now, on the other side of the equation, the Philadelphia Eagles, their star running back, Saquon Barkley, has a very significant day as well. Super Bowl Sunday is his birthday. He put together one of the greatest seasons we've ever seen from a running back. He's an MVP candidate, came just a few yards shy of breaking the all time single season rushing record. Here, he was talking about the added hype around this game, being it's his birthday. Listen,
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SAQUON BARKLEY, PHILADELPHIA EGALES RUNNING BACK: I think it's pretty cool that the Super Bowl lands on my birthday. You know, not only my birthday, Coop's birthday and Sam's birthday too. But, yes, I don't think you know, when the Super Bowl on your birthday or whether the day before or the day after, I think just when the Super Bowl in general, it's such a cool moment and it puts you in football royalty and it's something that you want to accomplish since you're a little kid. So, whether it was on my birthday or not, to be able to win it would mean everything would mean the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Now, Sara, Saquon will turn 28. This is Super Bowl 59. He mentioned his teammate, Cooper. Cooper DeGene. It's his birthday, too, on Super Bowl Sunday. He's number 33. Saquon wears 26. That equals 59. Some Eagles fans are saying that in Super Bowl 59, it's written in the stars or numerology that they will get it done this time. We'll see.
SIDNER: That's a lot of numbers this early. I am glad you did the math for us there.
Coy Wire, thank you so much. I appreciate it. John Berman.
BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, the post office has stopped accepting incoming packages from China until further notice. How your online shopping could be affected.
And then $40,000 of precious booty stolen from the back of a trailer. What kind of treasure are we talking about? Eggs, 100,000 eggs. This morning, the eggs and the suspects are on the lab. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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