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Trump, Musk Hold Joint Interview as Musk's Position Remains Undefined; Trump Parrots Russian Talking Point that Ukraine Started War. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired February 19, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: It's Wednesday, February 19. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING.
[05:59:35]
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over. I just couldn't do it.
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SCIUTTO: A budding buddy bromance? President Trump's first joint interview of his second term, not with his vice president, but first buddy, Elon Musk.
Plus --
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TRUMP: Oh, 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.
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SCIUTTO: That's Trump speaking to Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia. But Trump blaming Ukraine for the full-scale invasion of their own country.
And later --
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You could see kind of row by row or area by area, people were checking one another out.
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SCIUTTO: Grateful to be alive. Passengers recount the moment -- boy, a scary one -- their plane flipped upside-down during landing, and all survived.
And this --
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GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): I cannot, as a governor of the state, have a knee-jerk, politically motivated reaction.
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SCIUTTO: Ousting the mayor? Top New York officials weighing removing Eric Adams from his post as a judge prepares to consider a motion to dismiss his corruption charges.
Six a.m. here on the East Coast. Live look at the best city in the world: my hometown, New York City.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Jim Sciutto, in again for Kasie Hunt. Great to have you with us.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are signaling they are on the same page. And the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, continues to slash and burn the federal workforce and federal agencies.
Although officially, the White House says Musk is a senior advisor to the president, not the administrator of DOGE. President Trump does not seem too concerned about what -- what Musk's title is.
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TRUMP: Elon is, to me, a patriot. So, you know, you could call him an employee. You could call him a consultant. You could call him whatever you want. But he's a patriot.
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SCIUTTO: Another informal title Musk has given himself: tech support for the president.
The two sitting down for a joint interview on FOX, showing very little daylight between one another as they took turns heaping praise on each other.
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ELON MUSK, ADVISOR TO DONALD TRUMP: I love the president. I just want to be clear about that. I don't care about that. I know -- I love the --
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: You love the president.
MUSK: I think -- I think President Trump is a good man.
TRUMP: Elon called me. He said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart. I said, absolutely.
You know, I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't. HANNITY: You really tried hard.
TRUMP: I couldn't find anyone smarter. Right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: The interview comes as the White House is issuing a new executive order aimed at bringing once independent government agencies firmly under White House control.
The new order puts more political control over agencies such as the FCC, Securities and Exchange Commission, meaning that any draft regulation will now be put under White House review.
Musk says his team is making sure the flurry of executive orders signed by the president are getting followed.
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MUSK: One of the biggest functions of the DOGE team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out. And this is -- I just want to point out, this is a very important thing, because the president is the elected representative of the people, so is representing the will of the people.
TRUMP: He would take that executive order that I signed, and he would have those people go to whatever agency it was. When are you doing it? Get it done, get it done. And some guy that maybe didn't want to do it, all of a sudden, he's signing.
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SCIUTTO: Joining me now to speak about all this: Jonah Goldberg, CNN political commentator, co-founder of "The Dispatch"; Lula Garcia Navarro, CNN contributor, journalist for "The New York Times"; Karen Finney, CNN political commentator, senior adviser to Hillary Clinton's campaign; and Kristen Soltis Anderson, CNN political commentator, Republican strategist and pollster.
Good to have you all here. Lots to talk about this morning.
Karen, I want to ask you what the politics are. Where are the politics on this? Because Elon Musk is, of course, a billionaire with an enormous amount of business himself before this government. Certainly, potential for conflict of interest here.
In terms of him leading these cuts of key government agencies, do Trump and he have the politics right?
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think in terms of cutting agencies, you will always see people say, in general, government needs to be shaken up. We need to cut spending. They'll say that things like foreign aid are top of the list that they want to cut.
But when the rubber meets the road -- SCIUTTO: Yes.
ANDERSON: -- that's when the politics become different.
And I think if right now, what Elon Musk is doing is shaking up Washington, making people in this town agitated, I don't think that hurts him. I think, frankly, that is what voters are looking for.
It's when the effects of that begin to bleed outside this town and affect things --
SCIUTTO: Right.
ANDERSON: -- that hit people in their real lives. And the risk to Trump is that there's going to be a bit of, you break it, you bought it to all of this.
That if Elon Musk is not perceived as tinkering with and improving and making more efficient, but rather going in with a sledgehammer, then all of a sudden when somebody's check arrives late, all of a sudden when that service someone relies upon isn't there right away, or they have trouble accessing it.
LULA GARCIA NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Or when a plane falls out of the sky.
ANDERSON: You can no longer blame someone else --
SCIUTTO: Right.
ANDERSON: -- for something like that.
And even something like this plane crash in Canada that truly has absolutely nothing to do with the United States, the FAA, Donald Trump, what have you.
[06:05:05]
The political risk is that people like Lulu are able to try to blame things like this on Trump more, because he's come in with a sledgehammer. It creates a more politically vulnerable situation.
NAVARRO: By the way, I wasn't blaming.
ANDERSON: I know, you were being -- yes.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: What I'm saying is I've heard this over and over again. I mean, people casually are saying, oh, I don't want to fly any more, because I'm worried about the cuts to the FAA.
KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.
NAVARRO: This bleeds out, actually, to people and their real lives. And this is the issue that I think is coming up more and more. You know, one thing is destroying Twitter. Ultimately, Twitter
disappears. Is that going to really upset the American people? I don't think so.
But if you start affecting people and our nuclear arsenal --
FINNEY: Yes.
NAVARRO: -- if you start affecting how the FBI is run and criminals getting prosecuted; if you start cutting things that actually affect Americans' lives. How we look at bird flu. I mean, there's been discussions about how bird flu has been affected and how the monitoring -- the people that are monitoring --
SCIUTTO: Well, the -- the Department of Energy example is a good example, because I think folks have always misunderstood. A big portion of the DOE's job is to monitor nuclear weapons systems.
It appears that the DOGE folks did not know that either, because they fired the folks overseeing those systems.
NAVARRO: Exactly.
SCIUTTO: And then -- then they had to bring them back.
Karen, sorry.
FINNEY: And there have been a couple of instances like that. There was an instance yesterday. There were some back and forth about some Social Security Administration data that -- that some were saying, well, they don't understand the code. They didn't know what they were looking at.
But here's the other place where I think the politics become, you know, to what Kristen was saying, about the rubber meeting the road.
Then those folks are calling their members' offices. And those folks, members of Congress, they both have to figure out this budget debacle. Right? And it's already a mess between Republicans in the House and Senate.
But they're accountable to the people in a year and a half, in the midterm elections. And so, I think it also creates a wedge where you have members, where their constituents are not happy, potentially with certain cuts, but they're being told, well, if you don't do what we want, guess who? Elon Musk has a PAC that's going to primary you.
I think when we talk about Elon Musk, we can never forget --
SCIUTTO: Yes.
FINNEY: -- he spent $260 million to help the president get elected. He's spending millions of dollars on a very important judge's race in Wisconsin. And he has a PAC. And he has said anybody who doesn't support the president will get primaried. SCIUTTO: And don't -- don't understand the influence of that on
skeptical Republican senators in terms of their confirmation votes, the threat that if you don't --
FINNEY: That's right.
SCIUTTO: -- get on board with RFK, et cetera, I will -- I will destroy you in the primary.
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, I don't disagree with anything people have said, but I think there's another front in the politics that's not getting a lot of attention.
Elon Musk is just making this stuff up as he goes along. Right? And it's sort of -- it's a little, as someone was saying, comparing it to the search for WMDs in Iraq. Right? He's constantly looking for stuff and then declaring he's found something. And it turns out he didn't find what he's declared he's found. Right?
SCIUTTO: Well, the Social Security example.
GOLDBERG: Right.
SCIUTTO: He's claimed that millions of people who are 150 years old, which was a misreading of the data.
FINNEY: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Which, by the way, in the current disinformation environment that we occupy, is repeated as fact, not just by him, but as the -- going back to like the Gaza condoms example.
GOLDBERG: So, my point is, is that right now, anybody who, like, knows anything about public policy can see where he's getting stuff wrong. And eventually, that will become manifest outside, sort of to Kristen's point about this town. Eventually, they're going to start doing stuff that, like, normal people will realize is just wrong.
And it will -- it will take the veneer of expertise off of all this.
At the same time, there is a serious rift on the MAGA right. Steve Bannon, who I am not a fan of, wants a New Deal-style big welfare state kind of government. He's anti-libertarian. He's sort of nativist.
And he sees Musk as basically a globalist libertarian. And those two things are hard to reconcile.
And every day Bannon is saying more and more, this guy is a -- is a fraud and all that kind of stuff. Those tensions are eventually going to play out within Trump's coalition.
NAVARRO: I'm not a --
SCIUTTO: Well, let me quote Steve Bannon.
NAVARRO: I disagree.
SCIUTTO: Just to a point. I'm going to quote Steve Bannon on Elon Musk: "Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions."
That's not a small public disagreement.
NAVARRO: I just don't think Bannon has the influence on this White House. I mean, what we just saw there were, is President Trump and his billionaire backer. It was very touching. You know, they seem absolutely to have a sort of father-son relationship or --
FINNEY: They're like a new couple, though.
NAVARRO: Or something. I mean, if I were Vance, I would be slightly concerned. This is -- this is a -- a very close relationship. I don't think that we are seeing the Bannon wing of the party ascendant.
GOLDBERG: I agree with that. I agree with that entirely. My point -- first of all, if I were Vance, I'd be day-drinking at this point.
But -- but there's going to come a moment where the Musk-Trump show hits the point of diminishing returns. They're going to have some embarrassment. I don't know if it's a -- I don't know, it's going to be fair or unfair; plane falling out of the sky, whatever.
[06:10:04]
And at that moment you're going to see, I think, a section of the MAGA right saying that we backed the wrong horse with this guy. Can we be done with it?
SCIUTTO: Well, we'll see.
ANDERSON: And to the -- about Bannon backing the -- you know, being the more -- how much power does his wing have?
When I test out all of the things Donald Trump has done in this first month in office, among the most popular things are things like some of his more socially conservative executive orders around things like gender --
SCIUTTO: Right.
ANDERSON: -- as well as his efforts to really ramp up deportations and his efforts on illegal immigration.
The DOGE stuff is much further down the list.
SCIUTTO: Is it really?
ANDERSON: It's above taking over Gaza and turning it into beachfront real estate. But it's not the top of the list, that's for sure. And I think that's where this vulnerability really is.
SCIUTTO: OK. We have much more to discuss later this hour.
Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, placing the blame on Ukraine. Ukraine invaded by Russia. President Trump falsely claiming, though, that Ukraine started the war.
Just minutes ago, Ukraine's president reacted to those comments.
Plus, not guilty. The moment that A$AP Rocky learned his fate. That's one of the five things you have to see this morning.
And investigators trying to determine what caused a Delta passenger jet to burn and flip over. Look at that. And yet, everybody survived.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of a sudden, everything just kind of went sideways. And then next thing I know is kind of a blink, and I'm upside down, still strapped in.
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TRUMP: The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.
BILL O'REILLY, FORMER FOX NEWS HOST: Putin's a killer.
TRUMP: A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country's so innocent?
President Putin, he just said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be.
It was the G-8. And, you know, I said, what are you doing, you guys? All you talk about is Russia and you -- they should be sitting at the table. I think Putin would love to be back.
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SCIUTTO: President Donald Trump there, repeatedly echoing Russian talking points about a number of things, including the war in Ukraine.
Just hours after a U.S. delegation sat down with Russian negotiators -- negotiators in Saudi Arabia to discuss plans to end the war in Ukraine without, we should note, any representative from Ukraine, the country that was invaded, in that room, Trump went so far as to falsely claim that somehow, Ukraine and Ukrainians started the war.
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TRUMP: 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.
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SCIUTTO: The talks between the U.S. and Russia lasted for hours. This morning, the Kremlin says talks between Trump and Putin could take place by the end of this month. That's quite soon.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is very much pushing back against Trump's latest comments.
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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (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.
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SCIUTTO: The U.S. president, he says, living in a disinformation space.
Trump's inclination towards Russian President Vladimir Putin is drawing bipartisan criticism. Democrats pushing back against Trump's false claims about the war.
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SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Now, with President Trump saying, well, the Ukrainians shouldn't have started a war. It is shocking to have the leader of the United States of America not know the most fundamental elements of -- of how this crisis came to be.
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SCIUTTO: Republican Senator Roger Wicker also, rightly, called those comments false.
Back to the panel now. Kristen, I'm just going to ask you about the politics, because you -- you have your finger on this, and you test this.
Do Republicans -- do Republican voters like to see the U.S. president endorse Kremlin talking points?
ANDERSON: No. So, Republicans are not, contrary to, I think, those who are on the other side of the aisle -- they're not -- they don't love Vladimir Putin. They don't -- they're not supporting Russia in this conflict.
However, Republicans and, increasingly, Democrats do wonder what's the end game here with the conflict in that region. That they don't necessarily see the possibility of Ukraine taking back all of its territory, and there's a ticker tape parade, and everybody is excited, and they won. But that no longer feels like a possibility.
And so, there's this tension between, on the one hand, very few, if any voters say, yes, I hope Russia prevails in this conflict or yes, I'm sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.
On the other hand, does Trump have a little bit of leeway, because so many voters say, I don't know where this is going. Let's just get us out of this.
SCIUTTO: But that is fundamentally different. Because that is true. And for instance, on the NATO thing, I wrote about this in my book. It was a dirty little secret in Europe and even in the states that -- that Ukraine getting membership in NATO was largely off the table, at least in the near term.
But it is different to have a U.S. president say Ukraine is responsible for Russia's invasion. And it's not entirely new, because this president has never definitively blamed Russia for the invasion.
FINNEY: So, you know, having -- I worked in the Clinton administration, when Leonid Kuchma, the second Democratically elected president of Ukraine, came to the White House. We had a state visit. It was a very big deal. It was important, because we were trying to bolster Ukraine.
We had -- there were -- you know, President Clinton went. The first lady, Hillary Clinton, went.
So, to now see some 20 years, 30 years -- dating myself here -- later, you have our president. So, we were there to support Ukraine. Now, our president is undermining the Ukrainian president and siding with Russia.
[06:20:13]
I mean, I think at a bare minimum, people see that. They may not see the end game.
But also, I wonder, do they see that and say, OK, but what about the problems here in our country? What about California? What about Asheville, North Carolina? What about the fact that, you know, grocery prices are still going up, and inflation is still high? Why are we spending so much time on that? Why -- at some point that -- there's going to be that question, as well.
NAVARRO: I mean, there's, I think a wider issue here about what is Donald Trump's foreign policy? What are we looking at here? Are we looking at a complete change in who our traditional allies are?
This is the question that I keep on asking myself. Who are America's allies now, when you are praising Vladimir Putin and you are offending Canada, the European Union.
SCIUTTO: Denmark over Greenland. NAVARRO: Yes. This becomes the broader question of who is the United States actually allying themselves with, and what does that actually mean for our security in the world?
SCIUTTO: I mean, that is the thing that, Jonah, that came out of Munich, right? Is that this was not just Europe worrying about Trump abandoning Ukraine. It's Europe worried about Trump abandoning Europe.
And by the way, saying so in so many words. Europe, it's up to you right now, which -- which was the worry prior to the election. I heard it frequently. And now this is the reality they're dealing with.
GOLDBERG: Yes. Like, I want to be really clear. I think that Donald Trump has a goldfish's memory of historical, you know --
FINNEY: Fair.
GOLDBERG: -- stuff. But he is very similar to a 19th Century imperial leader. That when you talk about his allies, I think he comes from -- he ascribes organically, instinctually to a 19th Century notion of spheres of influence, where we're the boss of the Americas and Western Europe, and we can boss them around. And we can treat our allies as, really, like underlings, because this is our zone.
Putin has his zone. He's another strong man. Xi has his zone.
And that's one of the things that helps explain why Trump likes to talk, why he heaps praise on dictators and adversaries while heaping scorn on friends, is that he thinks our friends are actually subordinates, right?
SCIUTTO: Right.
GOLDBERG: He thinks NATO is basically a protection racket or a country club, and they're not paying enough dues to him. They're not kicking up to the boss enough.
But he sees Xi and Putin as basically rival crime families, and they deserve respect, because they are equal strongmen.
SCIUTTO: And perhaps a recognition of their own spheres of influence. And the U.S. Then ceding them, which would be --
GOLDBERG: They get Taiwan. They get Ukraine. We get Panama.
SCIUTTO: That would -- it would be a dramatic upset of what had been bipartisan U.S. Policy and approach to the world for 80 years, right.
FINNEY: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Going back to World War 2.
More to discuss. Coming up, New York City's embattled mayor about to find out if a judge will agree to throw out his corruption case.
Plus, a fiery crash in Arizona. One of the five things you have to see this morning.
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[06:27:43]
SCIUTTO: Twenty-seven minutes past the hour now. Five things you have to see this morning.
A lost 12-year-old girl wandering along a highway in Ohio. Look at that picture there. Rescued by a man who was driving by.
Sheriff's deputies say the girl has developmental disabilities, and they were looking for her.
We should say she is now safe and, thankfully, reunited with her family this morning.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not guilty.
(CHEERING)
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SCIUTTO: Hip-hop artist and actor A$AP Rocky celebrating in the arms of his partner, Rihanna, after a California jury found him not guilty of two felony assault charges.
The rapper later thanked the jurors for, quote, "saving my life."
And take a look at bodycam footage of an officer running toward danger to save a driver involved in a fiery crash in Arizona. The officer broke through the window to pull out the driver, trapped in a rolled- over pickup.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is he doing? He's got -- he's got a wedge.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is he doing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One-ninety-nine.
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SCIUTTO: An embarrassing moment for Tiger Woods. The greatest golfer of all time pulling the wrong club from his bag during a TGL match. Not even Tiger can hit a sand wedge 199 yards.
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TIGER WOODS, GOLFER: I heard 99 yards, and so I went out there and hit it 100 yards. And one of the most embarrassing moments in my golfing career just happened.
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SCIUTTO: The shot landed 100 yards short. His Jupiter team got stomped by the New York golf club, 10 to 3.
Indoor golf. We have that now.
And today, the winter storm crushing the central United States is now making its way into the Ohio Valley. This is video from Oklahoma, where snow and ice coated the interstates.
Parts of nearby Missouri recorded nine inches of snow.
Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, just terrifying new video of what it was like inside the Delta jet that crashed and flipped over on the runway there.
Plus, President Trump now repeating Russian talking points, dropping the hammer on Ukraine.
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TRUMP: So, when they're worried about not being seated, you mean somebody that should have gone in and made a deal a long time ago?
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