Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Musk Shares Post Calling on Trump to Pardon Derek Chauvin; Trump Signs Executive Actions Suspending Tariffs on Mexico and Canada; Trump: Will Hold Frequent Cabinet Meeting with Dusk on DOGE Cuts. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired March 06, 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]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We're following a new reaction today as a push to pardon George Floyd's killer is getting amplified. Elon Musk says pardoning Derek Chauvin is, quote, something to think about. He shared a video with more than 219 million followers of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro calling on Trump to act.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN SHAPIRO, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: President Trump should in fact pardon Derek Chauvin. He should. He should pardon him of his federal charges.

If we are talking about reversing the evils of the last several years in American life, but when it came to BLM, the inciting event for the BLM riots that cost $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America's race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime was in fact the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd. The evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not in fact commit murder of George Floyd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Chauvin, of course, is the former Minneapolis police officer serving two concurrent sentences for state and federal convictions related to Floyd's death. And joining us now is CNN anchor and senior national correspondent Sara Sidner. And Sara, you talked with George Floyd's brother. How's he and his family reacting to this?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR AND SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They're disgusted. They have seen this litigated and relitigated and seen people online like Shapiro relitigating facts that are absolute falsehoods, things he calls facts that have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury in state court. But they say it's very hurtful to see this come up again, and then, more importantly, to see Elon Musk boosting it to his 219 million followers on X, and 19 million of whom have watched this.

It was extremely disturbing to the family. But also, they say, look, if this is being pushed to Donald Trump, which is what Elon Musk has done, he has Donald Trump's ear, if this were to come to fruition, it would set the country back, according to the family, 400 years. Let me let you listen to what Terrence Floyd, one of George Floyd's

brothers, said about this push to try and get Derek Chauvin pardoned for his federal civil rights crimes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERRANCE FLOYD, GEORGE FLOYD'S YOUNGER BROTHER: It's like re-injuring a wound. You know, we had to go through this since 2020. We had to go through the whole trial of seeing his actions over and over and over again, and people claiming that it was the drugs, it was this, it wasn't Chauvin's knee on his neck.

[15:35:00]

You know, we had to go through all of that, all the lies, all the different disgusting stuff on social media, and now to relive it, for them to bring it back up. This is the fifth year. We were supposed to see progress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: And he talks about how so much progress has been stunted, in part because he says this administration has helped push it back. And you're seeing all the responses from all these companies that after George Floyd was murdered, and after they saw the video themselves, they started reaching out, saying, we've got to do something.

We've got to do something with diversity. We've got to talk about this. And so many of those companies are now rolling those DEI efforts back. He says this is definitely setting folks back.

But he says he hopes that the president does not listen to Ben Shapiro or Elon Musk on this issue.

KEILAR: And you also spoke with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. What did he tell you about a possible pardon for Chauvin?

SIDNER: Yes, look, this is Keith Ellison's state. Minnesota was very much involved. He was very much involved with, you know, sort of understanding what was going on and having talks about what was going on in Minneapolis.

And so I asked him what he thought of this push. There's a website, and Shapiro is saying he's going to be talking a lot about this. So believe you me, it will end up in a lot of different places because he's going to keep pushing it and pushing it and trying to get Donald Trump to do something.

Here is what the attorney general said about this push.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEITH ELLISON, (D) MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think that it is sadly another example of blatant disrespect for the law, blatant disrespect for George Floyd and his family and people who remember those very, very ugly days of March 2020 -- May 2020. And I also think that, you know, it does matter. It matters a lot.

But I want listeners to know that his state charges where he got 22 years, 22 and a half years, will remain no matter what Trump does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: That's right, because Donald Trump cannot pardon someone from state court. I do want to just add this in. Derek Chauvin himself pleaded guilty to the federal crimes. A jury found him guilty in the state crimes. But he admitted guilt. And now you have someone trying to push for him to be pardoned after he himself admitted guilt and apologized to the family.

Here we are. This is 2025.

KEILAR: Here we are. Sara Seidner, thank you so much.

Ahead, President Trump delaying tariffs on certain imports from Mexico and Canada. But it may not help farmers who are facing the threat of being cut off from some of their biggest buyers up north. We'll explain right after this.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Breaking news into CNN. We now have a video of President Trump signing off on the delay of tariffs on Mexico and Canada at the White House. This is from moments ago.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump, what's your thought about why the markets are so spooked? Do you think they don't like the tariffs or do they not like the uncertainty with some of the changes and the car mounts?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, a lot of them are globalist countries and companies that won't be doing as well because we're taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago. We've been treated very unfairly as a country. And we protect everybody. We do everything for all these countries. And a lot of these are globalist in nature. You know, if you're outside of the United States, it's going to be a little bit different.

We just weren't treated right. We were ripped off as a country. I've been saying it for a long time.

And I did it to a certain extent in the first administration. But with COVID coming in, we had to focus on that toward the end. But we had the greatest economy in history in the first administration. And I think we'll do even better now.

But this is something that we have to do. There'll always be a little short term interruption. I don't think it's going to be big. But the countries and companies that have been ripping us aren't particularly happy with what I'm doing. But the United States will be very happy.

And, you know, our farmers are going to be very happy. And again, there'll be disruption. But in the end, I said it before with China, we signed an unbelievable deal with China, $50 billion in purchases. And we're doing great.

Biden, however, when he came in, he never -- they never enforced that deal.

So that's the only thing that basically you have globalist companies that have been ripping us off that won't be able to rip us off any longer. I think that's what the big charge is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you been influenced by some of these exemptions that have been announced and some of these temporary delays? Have you been influenced in those decisions because of the market reaction?

TRUMP: Well, there were no delays at all. No, nothing to do with the market. I'm not even looking at the market because long term, the United States will be very strong with what's happening here.

Now, these are countries and companies, foreign companies that have been ripping us off. And no president did anything about it until I came along. And then I did a lot about it.

You know, we took in tariffs from China, $600 billion. Nobody else took in 10 cents from China. They never did.

But when COVID came along, we had to focus on COVID. We did a great job. We got rid of that.

[15:45:00]

We ended up handing over with a market that was higher than it was previous to COVID coming in. But this is very much about companies and countries that have ripped off this country, our country, our beloved USA. And they're not going to be ripping us off anymore.

So, you know, I think that has an impact on the market.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: There you have President Donald Trump signing off on a second one-month extension of tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The president there dismissing losses in the stock market. You see the Dow Jones Industrial Average down roughly 515, now 520 some odd points on the day.

The president saying that that's because of globalist countries and companies that have been ripping us off, saying they will not be happy about tariffs. But this is something the United States has to do, even though he acknowledged there may be some short-term disruption. He called it a short-term interruption, though he says not much. He believes that long-term U.S. farmers will be happy.

We're going to keep tracking the president's remarks and other news coming into CNN NEWS CENTRAL. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: All right let's go back now to President Trump just moments ago talking about a number of things. But including these cuts from the Department of Government Efficiency and convening some bi-weekly cabinet sessions to make them more precise. Here's the moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You spoke today with your cabinet members and Elon Musk.

TRUMP: I did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you tell them in regards to Elon Musk and his authorities to carry out actions?

TRUMP: We had a great meeting. We had Elon and we had some of the representatives for, you know, the business reps. We also had most of the cabinet members. Not all of them. It doesn't really pertain to all of them, but many of them. And I thought it was a really good meeting.

It was about cutting because we have, everybody knows, the country's way out of control in terms of the number of people. We have many people that don't work. We have many people probably that aren't even living that are getting checks.

And we're finding all of that out and it's being reported. We're going to save hundreds of billions.

SANCHEZ: Looks like we're having some technical issues there.

KEILAR: Sometimes, look, full disclosure, this is what happens. They are sometimes rewinding and fast forwarding in the feed out because they go and they shoot this in the Oval Office.

SANCHEZ: It's a process.

KEILAR: You're seeing the sausage being made, to be honest, I think.

SANCHEZ: It's a process. Press availability has taken a select group of people to pool or let into the Oval Office. They ask questions of President Trump.

There he was answering about these now bi-weekly cabinet meetings with Elon Musk and members of his administration, trying to sort out some of these cuts. And when that gets fed back into us, sometimes it glitches. Fortunately, though, I've just learned that the glitch has been fixed. Let's go back to President Trump.

TRUMP: ... saved a lot. And parts of it are contracts that are expired that we're paying on. Many crazy things that, you know, you can see it happening. It shouldn't happen, but you can see it happening. You see a lot of it being put out.

But the other thing I think most important for today, I want the cabinet members to keep good people. I don't want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut. I want the cabinet members to keep the good people and the people that aren't doing a good job that are unreliable, don't show up to work, etc. Those people can be cut.

So I had a meeting and I said, I want the cabinet members go first. Keep all the people you want, everybody that you need. And it would be better if they were there for two years instead of two weeks, because in two years, they'll know the people better. But I want them to do the best job they can.

We have good people. That's precious. That's very important. And we want them to keep the good people. And so we're going to be watching them. And Elon and the group are going to be watching them. And if they can cut, it's better. And if they don't cut, then Elon will do the cutting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, do you think DOGE and Elon Musk have been moving too quickly?

TRUMP: No, no, I think they've done an amazing job. They've done an amazing job. And look at what they found. I read it the other night in the speech.

They found these things where billions of dollars has been poured down the drain to things. That's not about people. That's about contracts where billions and billions of dollars was just thrown out the window.

It's probably got kickbacks. I'm sure there were tremendous kickbacks for the people that authorized those contracts. But no, Elon has been really teaching everybody about the numbers that you can do.

But what I want is I want the numbers. But I also want to keep the good people. We want to get rid of the people that aren't working, that aren't showing up and have a lot of problems.

And so they're working together with Elon. And I think we're doing a really great job. We're cutting it down. We have to for the sake of our country. You can't have that kind of fat. It's bloat like nobody's ever seen before.

Where you need 20,000 and they have 120,000 people. And you just don't need that many. And it happens with companies. And it happens with governments, I guess. You could go to a lot of governments. You'd see the same thing.

But we're trying to get it down. We want to be able, next year, we could balance the budget. I think there's a good chance we could balance the budget next year. We have a lot of good things happening.

[15:55:00]

Plus, we have a lot of revenue things happening, like today with the shipbuilding. And this gentleman behind me is going to create a lot of jobs. And it's about the biggest there is in the world.

We had the biggest chipmaker in the world here a few days ago. He's going to be spending $200 billion on building plans. We're not giving him any money to build it either. You know, it's that chip back is ridiculous, where the Biden thing, where they give billions of dollars to people that have nothing but money. They're not going to spend that money. They're just taking that money.

SANCHEZ: So President Trump there again in the Oval Office announcing these biweekly meetings between Elon Musk and his cabinet. Again, making accusations about corruption and kickbacks that DOGE is discovering. A lot of what DOGE has put forward, claiming that it's waste is largely inaccurate.

They've taken credit for things that have expired before Trump took office. And they've had to correct this list on their website now multiple times. Trump says that he does want to keep good people though, essentially telling his cabinet to perhaps slow down on some of those cuts.

KEILAR: Yes, wanting something to be precise, perhaps an admission that it has not been as precise as it could be. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts after a break.

END