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Ukraine's Zelenskyy Accuses Trump of Repeating Disinformation; Interview with Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE); Firings Could Start Soon at Defense Department; Record Low Temperatures to Hit Numerous States in U.S.; President Trump Attempting to Assert Control over Independent Government Agencies; Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan Rules States Attorneys General Did Not Provide Enough Evidence to Temporarily Suspend Operations of Department of Government Efficiency. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired February 19, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: At least 27 states are now expected to see record lows.

CNN's Derek Van Dam tracking all of this for us. And Derek, conditions, they're getting particularly tough in Kentucky right now, which, honestly, Kentucky needs no more harsh weather for quite some time.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I didn't think it could get worse, but we had warned about this for the past couple of days. After this past weekend's flooding, now we're seeing heavy snowfall in some of those same hard-impacted areas. Here's a look at the roads across portions of Kentucky right now as our snowstorm continues. It's ongoing, especially over the eastern portions of the state. Now moving towards portions of the mid-Atlantic Virginia and to Virginia Beach and Norfolk could see eight to 12 inches of snowfall before it's all said and done. This will be one of their largest snowfalls in several seasons.

Now, we still have our cresting rivers across the state of Kentucky, specifically into the Ohio River Valley. And this area, again with fresh blankets of snow and the cold arctic air that is descending on the region, will complicate the recovery efforts that are ongoing. We have our extreme cold alerts stretching from the border of Canada all the way to Mexico. And as promised, they are moving eastward. This is just incredible. These are record morning low temperatures. And when you start talking about breaking temperatures in Bismarck, North Dakota, and negative 39, we mean business. This is extremely cold, dangerously cold. Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely. Derek, thank you so much. We've got a lot coming at us in the next couple of days, that's for sure.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Reaching for unprecedented power. President Trump seeks a near takeover of departments long considered independent.

Major news developing over the last few minutes, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy seems to have had enough of President Trump trying to rewrite history. He says President Trump, unfortunately, lives in a disinformation space.

And a woman now suing a fertility clinic after an IVF mix-up allegedly led to her giving birth to another couple's biological child.

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

BOLDUAN: A new move by the White House to further centralize federal power and set that power squarely under the direction of President Trump. Overnight, he signed another executive order, but this time trying to make independent agencies blatantly less independent, allowing him to assert executive control over agencies specifically created by Congress decades ago to have separation from, to be separate from a president. We're talking about agencies like the SEC regulating Wall Street, the FCC regulating radio, TV, communications providers, and the FTC regulating consumer protections. Bottom line, the White House is now trying to get more control over the plans, the priorities, and the budgets of these agencies.

CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House. She has got much more of this. Walk us through what the White House is trying to do and what the White House is saying about this.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Right. Well, Kate, this was a sweeping executive order that President Donald Trump signed yesterday. And as you mentioned, it's really trying to get these independent regulatory agencies, as you mentioned, ones that Congress designed decades ago, to operate independently of the White House. This order would bring them directly under White House control.

Now, a key thing, of course, is that this order is likely to face significant legal challenges, similar to the other orders that the president has signed. So stay tuned for that.

But just to get a little bit more into this, the order suggests that the president's power has direct control over the country's major trade, communications, financial regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, among other agencies that you can see up there on the board. All of these, again, that were designed to operate separately from the White House.

And just to give you a little context as well, what some of these agencies do. They were designed to protect American consumers. They regulate banks, stocks, Wall Street more broadly, but also have the power to impose fines on companies that don't follow suit with some of these laws.

Now, I do want to read for you just a line from this order that I think kind of perfectly kind of sums up what this is trying to do. It says, quote, "For all for the federal government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people's elected president." Essentially, Kate, this line in this order and what we know it's trying to do is just the latest example of the president, but also many of the people, many of his allies in the Trump administration more broadly, trying to move to really push the boundaries of the power that the executive branch has and really centralize that power into the White House and the Oval Office.

[08:05:10]

And just one other very quick thing I want to mention, Kate, is Russell Vought's role in all of this. He is Donald Trump's chief budget director, but he was also an architect of Project 2025. One of the key things that he talked about for years now has been trying to expand the power of the executive branch. This order would actually give him the supervising power to oversee some of these different regulatory agencies. So another thing to keep an eye on as well. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Alayna, thank you so much. Sara?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so let's discuss this and more with defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Shan Wu. Thank you so much, Shan, for being here this morning. I'm curious from your perspective, is the law clear or not about what power the executive office has over these regulatory agencies that Congress established as independent?

SHAN WU, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes. I think the law is clear. As you just said, Congress established them as being independent. And it was established that way for a reason, which is to give them the autonomy from the political winds, that you don't want these sorts of important bulwarks for the safety, for the confidentiality of the American people and things like the financial markets, you don't want that to upend itself every four years. You want continuity from it. That's why it was designed that way. So I think that is very, very clear.

There's a lot of complexities as to each individual regulatory body. So I don't even think that getting to Supreme Court on one fell swoop is going to solve all the questions. But I think the law is clear. I think they were meant to be independent. So this would be a violation of that.

SIDNER: All right, I want to move on to the power of DOGE. And what we are seeing in that realm. Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan declined to block Musk and his team from gaining access to the data of seven government agencies, arguing the Democratic A.G.s, attorneys general, didn't show specific examples of how DOGE is causing states irreparable harm. What do you make of this ruling, and what does this say about the power of that agency that has been created by the Trump administration?

WU: This, I think, is a great example of a very good judge applying the law, and the law is coming up short on addressing this really unprecedented challenge to the system, so to speak. What her point was about whether to do this temporary freeze, which is a TRO, a little bit different than a preliminary injunction. But the TRO is meant to be very short in duration, and it's really meant to freeze the situation where things are just happening too fast. Harm might happen too quickly.

That seems to me, looking at it from the outside, is exactly the kind of situation we have. I mean, there's such unprecedented access that there's the potential for enormous harm, that you can't put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.

But legally speaking, her decision can be seen as sound because she's saying, look, I get the fact that you're worried. I, as a judge, may be worried. But I need very specific instances to meet the legal standard for harm. So that's what makes it a very challenging case. Common sense is, oh, my gosh, there's tons of harm going on here. And legally, she's being very specific and saying, I need to see more, even though she was quite critical of the government for essentially not knowing what DOGE was doing or even, frankly, what it is.

SIDNER: Yes. There is a transparency issue, even though they keep saying they're transparent, there isn't a lot of information. The judge pointing that out.

We are seeing another major resignation at the DOJ. The U.S. Attorney's office criminal chief has resigned. Why do you -- why has that happened? And what troubles you about this resignation?

WU: It's troubling because, first of all, that was my home office, so I'm very familiar with it. I kind of grew up there as a young prosecutor. And knowing -- I don't know her personally, but someone who has been there for such a long time, it really signals the grave alarm there is among career prosecutors, not political appointees, but people who have been there through many different iterations of an administration, Democratic and Republican.

From the public reporting, it seems as though this is something that she just found to be unconscionable, that she was being asked to open up a criminal investigation as a means of perhaps harassing or furthering a political end. But as a prosecutor, she just didn't have the necessary prerequisite evidence to even commence that investigation. And that's why she was saying no. And then she had no choice but to resign if not to follow the order she felt was illegal.

[08:10:00]

SIDNER: Shan Wu, thank you so much for talking through all of that with us. Appreciate you. John?

BERMAN: All right, we are standing by for White House reaction after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused President Trump of living in a disinformation space.

The numbers double in the west Texas measles outbreak now wreaking havoc across two states.

And could the future of NASCAR be electric? A sneak peek at the first ever electric race car. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:10]

BOLDUAN: Some tough pushback this morning from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy after the initial talks between the United States and Russia in Saudi Arabia to end Russia's war on Ukraine, talks that did not include Ukraine.

Zelenskyy saying this, "Where are we at this negotiation table? Putin is waging this war inside Ukraine. Putin is killing Ukrainians, not Americans and not Europeans. Our pain is immense and cannot be negotiated without us."

The frustration from the Ukrainian leader very palpable after President Trump on Tuesday left little distance between himself and the Kremlin in falsely claiming that Ukraine started the war when it was very clearly Russia that invaded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard -- oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now, Democratic Senator from Delaware, Chris Coons. He sits on basically every relevant committee when it comes to what we're talking about. Foreign Relations, Judiciary, Approps -- all of them.

Let's start here, though, Senator, because you have the president saying that, and then you also have President Zelenskyy this morning saying this. Let me play this for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE (through translator): Unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for. The American people who always support us, unfortunately, lives in this disinformation space.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Zelenskyy saying that Donald Trump lives in this disinformation space. I mean, no matter the frustration here, do you think it's smart for Zelenskyy in this moment to be challenging Trump so publicly?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Look, President Zelenskyy has shown he has real courage. Three years ago, Putin began this war of aggression by sending hundreds of thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine. They've committed atrocities. They've conquered roughly 20 percent of the country.

And instead of rolling over Zelenskyy and Kyiv in the first few days, as Putin expected and intended, they have fought fiercely. And for every step of the way, the United States and our European allies and partners have been there with them.

In fact, the Europeans have contributed more than we have in military support, economic support, humanitarian support and so, I think it's appropriate for President Zelenskyy, whose people have fought so hard and so many of whom have died for their freedom to be at the table alongside our European partners and allies as we negotiate a potential peace deal.

It's pretty easy, Kate, to imagine what that deal would look like. It would require President Trump to simply show that he knows what peace through strength means, because we do have the upper hand here.

Strengthening sanctions against Russia, strengthening our military support for Ukraine, standing arm in arm with Ukraine and Europe, we could force an end to this war on terms that are good for Ukraine.

Instead, President Trump seems poised to betray Ukraine and abandon Europe. That would make him the biggest loser of the 21st Century. He would be picking the team that includes Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia over the team that is Ukraine and our trusted and loyal allies of 75 years -- France, Germany, the UK, Italy -- who served and fought alongside us. This would be a tragic error of immense proportions.

BOLDUAN: Do you think, with that -- do you think Ukraine is going to get a good deal in the end? Do you think Ukraine is going to win this war in the end, when these negotiations are finished?

COONS: Look, the only way for Putin to lose would be for him to have NATO expand. That's already happened. There's two new NATO members; for him to pay an enormous economic and human cost for this war, that's already happening; and to prevent him from restarting this war in a few short months or years. That's the key point.

If Trump drives a tough bargain here and secures the future for Ukraine, he can still win this for Ukraine.

That doesn't necessarily mean they will recover all of their sovereign territory in the short term, but sidelining Putin, keeping him a pariah, not letting him claim victory on the ground or on TV is a key piece of this. And whether or not that happens is in the hands of a small group of Republican senators who were with me at Munich, and who say they will stand by Ukraine. We'll see what they do this week.

BOLDUAN: When you say making sure that Vladimir Putin remains a pariah, we also heard Zelenskyy say that what Donald Trump is doing is bringing him back out of isolation. Donald Trump is, I think he can guarantee one thing is he is not going to say Vladimir Putin is a pariah.

[08:20:06] COONS: That's correct and that's why it is so alarming, the direction that Trump is already taking by reaching out to Putin directly, by having private negotiations with him, by sitting down, having his National Security adviser and Special Envoy and Secretary of State sit across the table in Saudi Arabia with Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, without Ukraine, without Europe. These are alarming initial steps.

He's also tried to force on Ukraine an extractive minerals deal. And so, Zelenskyy so far is standing firm. I think there's a real chance that both the Ukrainians and Russians keep fighting while there is a lot of talk, but the initial moves that President Trump is making suggests that he doesn't want peace through strength, he wants chaos through weakness by welcoming Putin back onto the world stage.

BOLDUAN: Another move that the president is making is through another executive order that happened overnight, a sweeping executive order I want to ask you about, which is essentially pulling -- trying to pull under White House control agencies that were created by Congress decades ago to be separate and independent of any president. The SEC, the FCC, the FTC, all looking at -- these are those agencies that work towards consumer protections and regulation. What is this going to do?

COONS: Well, this was an issue I focused on in Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings. The unitary executive, a theory that Justice Kavanaugh and other conservatives had advanced for years, which suggests that the president should be much more powerful than I think the framers ever intended.

If the Supreme Court overturns a decades' old precedent called Humphrey's Executor, it would hand President Trump even more power to shut down federal agencies, to lay off thousands of people, to direct their regulatory actions in ways that have not been part of our government for decades. And I think would be a dangerous abdication of the Supreme Court's responsibility to keep in place some of the core guardrails of our modern democracy.

BOLDUAN: Senator Chris Coons -- Senator, thank you for coming in -- John.

COONS: Thank you, Kate.

BERMAN: All right, new this morning, officials say a new round of firings could begin at any moment after Pentagon agencies now were told to submit a list of employees to Elon Musk.

And eight people went missing after trying to hike up the world's most active volcano without a guide.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:05]

BERMAN: All right, new this morning, could cuts be coming to the Pentagon? Elon Musk's team is said to be reviewing lists. Let's get right to CNN's Natasha Bertrand for the latest on this. What are you learning, Natasha?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, DOGE is coming to the Pentagon. DOGE employees already started meeting with officials at the Pentagon on Friday and they have been tasked with asking the Pentagon to essentially come up with lists of probationary employees all across the DoD for potential termination and those lists were due by the end of the day yesterday.

Now, it's unclear at this point just how many civilian employees throughout the Pentagon this is going to affect. Federal probationary employment, as you see there, typically, lasts one year. It can be extended to two or three years, but by and large, the employees that are potentially going to be fired have been in their job for about a year, and therefore they have less protections and they have less of an ability to appeal their firing.

So essentially, it is a lot easier to do away and fire these employees than other employees who have been there longer. And that is likely the point, right?

And so, it's unclear just how many are going to be impacted by this. The Department of Defense has approximately 950,000 civilian employees currently working for the DoD. Servicemembers, members of the military who are currently active duty, they are exempt from this broad attempt by the Trump administration to fire a large swath of federal employees.

But still, civilian employees, throughout the entire Department of Defense, they hold extremely critical national security jobs in many instances. And so, what the Department has had to do and the combatant commands, which are the major military commands across the globe are trying to do right now, is figure out which employees could potentially be exempt from this order because they carry out such crucial National Security functions, including intelligence, cyber security.

So, that is what they're trying to do right now. But by the end of this week, we could see major swaths of people terminated across the Department of Defense -- John.

BERMAN: Interesting, in some cases, I've been reading about Elon Musk's team firing people and then having to bring them back on after they realize they went too far. I'd be curious to see if that happens here.

Natasha Bertrand in Washington, thank you very much -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, just ahead, Brazilian officials say they've uncovered evidence of an attempted coup at its center, the Brazil's former president, Jair Bolsonaro.

And plus, his ratings have tanked with Independents and Democrats, but with Republicans, President Trump never more popular than ever.

We will discuss the numbers, still ahead. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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