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CNN This Morning
Macron Fact-Checks Trump In Real Time During News Conference; Podcast, Ex-Secret Service Agent Bongino Named FBI Deputy Director; North Korean Hackers Stole $1.5 Billion, Crypto Firm Says. Aired 5:30- 6a ET
Aired February 25, 2025 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:32:28]
KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN ANCHOR: Five thirty-two a.m. here on the East Coast. You are looking at a rainy Seattle, Washington where it is 2:32 a.m. Pacific. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kayla Tausche in for Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
Long before running for office Donald Trump built a brand and public persona off his business acumen, specifically dealmaking. You might remember a book called "The Art of the Deal." And once more Trump is trying to bring those tactics to the world stage as he looks to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine.
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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think Russia, likewise -- I've spoken to President Putin and my people are dealing with him constantly and his people, in particular, and they want to do something. I mean, that's what I do -- I do deals. My whole life is deals. That's all I know is deals. And I know when somebody wants to make and when somebody doesn't.
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TAUSCHE: But it might not be so simple. French President Emmanuel Macron appeared alongside President Trump at a joint press conference yesterday. He agreed peace is the goal. But at the same time, Macron warned against Russia's poor track record with keeping promises, stressing the importance of security guarantees.
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EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT (through translator): The president has shown this over the past few days, and he said so a moment ago. We want peace; he wants peace. We want peace swiftly, but we don't want an agreement that is weak.
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TAUSHCE: Joining me now, Jackie Kucinich, Washington bureau chief for The Boston Globe.
Jackie, Macron had a very -- had a diplomatic tightrope to walk here. He's done it before with President Trump both in his first term and this term but clearly, he's got some experience under his belt now.
How did he do?
JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE BOSTON GLOBE: I mean, you could tell, right, he had -- he had a very king of jocular rapport with the president, and you saw them do their -- you know, the signature handshake where one tries to just kind of best the other one.
But still, when you -- when you looked at the two of them and the conversation, they had he was very agreeable with the president, but he also was firm in that when President Trump was saying that Europe was paying less for Ukraine's security Macron was quick to jump in and say well, actually, that's not right. We've actually paid real money as well.
So you saw that give-and-take throughout. You saw it when he was talking about whether -- about Ukraine -- Ukraine's role in the world. You just really -- you saw him very gently but firmly push back against the president.
[05:35:05]
TAUSCHE: It was a remarkable moment that you bring up where Macron essentially fact-checked Trump --
KUCINICH: Yeah.
TAUSCHE: -- in real time when Trump claimed that Europe was going to be paid back for its support of Ukraine.
Here is that moment.
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TRUMP: Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back.
MACRON: No. In fact, to be -- to be frank, we paid. We paid 60 percent of the total effort, and it was through, like the U.S., loans, guaranteed grants, and we provided real money, to be clear. This is my wish.
TRUMP: If you believe that it's OK with me.
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TAUSCHE: "We provided real money, to be clear."
I mean, this is a leader in Europe who has tried to reopen factories to produce weapons on the continent where they didn't before and tried to marshal support among his allies to get some of that aid to Ukraine and to usher tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine. It's still less than the United States has sent but clearly, Macron's trying to make a point there.
KUCINICH: Well, exactly. And, I mean, one of the reasons that he was there to begin with was to ensure that the United States -- that the United States doesn't walk away from Ukraine. Doesn't walk away from their solidarity with Europe, which is a real question in the European capitals right now.
TAUSCHE: Stephen Collinson wrote a pretty incredible analysis in response to some of these comments, and he talked about the idea of Donald Trump's dealmaking prowess and how he's trying to apply it to this situation not only with Trump's own acumen but also with his close friend Steve Witkoff who is in part leading some of these negotiations.
He said, "Peacemaking involves human lives, history's animosities and complex calculations, including the existential question of whether Ukraine will survive and what a Putin 'win' would mean for future European security. There's no comparison," Collinson writes, "to the branding deals and acquisitions that Trump swung for casinos, golf clubs, and skyscrapers during this checkered career as a property developer."
That being said, Trump does equate these. So do we expect him to get results here?
KUCINICH: One of the things that they're trying to extract from Ukraine is an agreement to receive profits from their rare earth minerals. It's not something Zelenskyy has been ready to sign but it's a -- it's something that Trump has said is imminent. Whether or not that actually happens I think -- I think Bessent, the treasury secretary, has said they were almost there. We'll have to see. I think we'll know in the coming days but it's really up in the air at this point.
TAUSCHE: Yeah. Witkoff said that perhaps that deal gets signed this week. Maybe that was a way to try to nudge Zelenskyy --
KUCINICH: Exactly.
TAUSCHE: -- toward the deal.
KUCINICH: Is that a negotiating tactic?
TAUSCHE: We will see.
Jackie Kucinich, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.
KUCINICH: Thank you.
TAUSCHE: President Trump, meanwhile, naming Dan Bongino as the next deputy FBI director. It's a role normally held by career FBI agents, but it is now in the hands of a Secret Service agent turned right-wing podcaster who has blasted the agency in the past.
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DAN BONGINO, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FBI, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: The FBI is lost. It's broken. Irredeemably corrupt at this point. But what the FBI did to Donald Trump, that wasn't law enforcement; it was tyranny.
Owning the libs is a lifestyle. You must own the libs repeatedly. You can't just own the libs once. It has to happen every day.
That is all that matters. No it doesn't, Dan. We have a system of checks and balances. That's a good one.
We need to set up a courtroom. Donald Trump can sit there. He can even wear, like, the wigs they wear in the -- in the U.K. court system and he can just start making judicial decisions.
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TAUSCHE: CNN's Brian Todd has more on President Trump's latest controversial pick.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): President Trump now has two of his most loyal MAGA champions heading the FBI, Kash Patel as director and now 50-year-old Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent turned right-wing podcaster as deputy director.
BONGINO: I got a call from the president, and he couldn't have -- he couldn't have been nicer. Folks, it's a lot to walk away from.
TODD (voiceover): And a lot to walk into, according to former FBI officials who spoke to CNN who believe the hiring of Bongino will be controversial.
STEVE MOORE, RETIRED FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: And putting somebody in who has never been an FBI agent is potentially troublesome. I have no problems with Dan Bongino's intelligence or his -- the fact that he had served with the Secret Service is a bonus. But this is -- this is going way out of the line of what the FBI has done in the past.
TODD (voiceover): That's partly because Bongino has spent considerable time on the air slamming the FBI for its investigations of Donald Trump.
BONGINO: Folks, the FBI is lost. It's broken. Irredeemably corrupt at this point.
TODD (voiceover): Bongino, who served as a New York City police officer in the 1990s, later joined the Secret Service and served on President Barack Obama's protective detail.
[05:40:00] I interviewed Bongino when he left the Secret Service in 2011 to run for the Senate as a Republican from Maryland, asking him about his newly revealed political loyalty on the opposite side from the president he had guarded with his life.
BONGINO: I want to say personally that I have enormous respect for him, but I just disagree with the ideology. It's a simple ideological play -- that's it. The country's going on the wrong path.
TODD (voiceover): Since that failed bid for the Senate, Bongino's media profile has skyrocketed, becoming a star and a regular on Fox News and hosting his own hugely popular radio shows and podcasts.
While he did scold the January 6 rioters, he's also supported President Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
BONGINO: We had an election with unbelievably suspect behavior.
TODD (voiceover): All the while earning admiration from President Trump.
TRUMP: Bongino -- how about Dan Bongino?
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Bongino has been promoting far-right views on his podcast promising retribution. Saying that Trump is going to get revenge against his enemies and saying that Trump should just ignore court decisions that he doesn't like.
TODD (voiceover): Now, as the hands-on official handling the bureau's daily operations, Bongino has a unique challenge.
MOORE: The one thing you do not want to do day one is lose the loyalty of the FBI. When they see their own management appearing to go off the rail you lost 'em.
TODD: As for how the FBI's rank-and-file feels about Dan Bongino, according to a mass email obtained by CNN that was sent to its members just before Donald Trump posted the Bongino had been selected as deputy director, the FBI Agents Association representing thousands of agents said it had been told by Kash Patel that the new deputy director would come from within the ranks of the FBI. Contacted by CNN, the Agents Association declined to comment on the appointment of Bongino.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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TAUSCHE: Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING the devastating news that may have led a gunman to shoot and kill a police officer in a deadly standoff this weekend.
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[05:46:33] TAUSCHE: New details about the suspected gunman who killed a police officer and wounded five others after a deadly standoff at a Pennsylvania hospital this weekend. Court records show the alleged shooter had previously been charged with harassment and driving with a suspended license. According to sources, he was also grieving after receiving a devastating health update on his wife in that same hospital.
CNN's Gloria Pazmino tracks how this tragedy unfolded.
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GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): An officer slain and medical staff taken hostage after police say a man entered an intensive care unit inside a Pennsylvania hospital armed with zip ties and a gun.
TIM BARKER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, YORK COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA: He went straight to the ICU and in the ICU this individual went and held hostage members of the UPMC staff.
PAZMINO (voiceover): CNN has learned that the gunman, Diogenes Archangel Ortiz, was removed from that hospital Friday night after becoming irate and emotionally distraught after learning there was no other treatment available for his wife who was on life support, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
Ortiz fired his weapon multiple times, killing West York Borough Police Department Officer Andrew Duarte and injuring five others.
Video captured from inside the hospital shows police arriving as the hostage situation unfolded. Meanwhile, inside, police attempted to negotiate.
BARKER: Mr. Diogenes Archangel Ortiz came out holding at gunpoint a member of the UPMC staff who was -- also had her hands tied with the aforementioned zip ties. Holding her at gunpoint coming out into the hallway the officers left with no recourse did open fire and did shoot and kill Diogenes Archangel Ortiz.
PAZMINO (voiceover): Lester Mendoza, a physician assistant at UPMC, says he tried to comfort Ortiz, writing on Facebook, "I was there when we delivered the worst news imaginable to him that his loved one was gone. I saw his devastation firsthand. In that moment, I truly did not see a monster. He was simply broken."
Mendoza went on to write, "We are working in a system that is stretched too thin, the medicines and supplies are too expensive, insurance companies more relentless than ever, unsustainable staffing and turnover."
First responders honored Duarte in a procession as his body was moved to Lehigh Valley. Duarte joined the department in 2022. He previously served in the Denver Police Department where he received an award for his work in impaired driving enforcement.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It will never be easy to know that one of your close colleagues and a friend is not here with you anymore.
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TAUSCHE: Gloria Pazmino. Gloria, thank you.
In a matter of minutes North Korean hackers pulled off what security experts are calling the largest known crypto hack in history, stealing more than a billion dollars in cryptocurrency. The hackers already laundering about $160 million of the stolen money through accounts connected to North Korean operatives, according to one crypto tracing firm. In this one hack North Korea has nearly doubled what they stole in crypto for all of last year.
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It underscores the volatile nature of crypto but that hasn't stopped President Trump from leaning into the industry -- even signing an executive order aimed at promoting digital assets.
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TRUMP: Bitcoin has set multiple all-time record highs because everyone knows that I'm committed to making America the crypto capital. We want to stay -- we want to stay at the forefront of everything.
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TAUSHCE: Joining me now is former FBI intelligence analyst Nick Carlsen. Nick, thank you for joining us here this morning.
How does a hack like this even happen to begin with?
NICK CARLSEN, , GLOBAL INVESTIGATIONS, TRM LABS, FORMER FBI INTELLENCE ANALYST (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah. I mean, the North Koreans -- they are professional at this and they were probably on these computers weeks or months ago preparing this hack.
TAUSCHE: Who is the money stolen from? Is it stolen from the exchange where the money had been sitting, or was it stolen from everyday investors that were invested in crypto?
CARLSEN: Yeah. I mean, it's basically like a cold storage wall that this exchange had that was hacked. So this is kind of reserve money for the exchange. But ultimately this does affect customers. But the exchange was able to get a bridge loan to cover the losses, so nobody's been able -- or unable to withdraw yet.
TAUSHCE: So are other crypto assets at risk? Is this something that investors should generally be worried about happening going forward?
CARLSEN: I mean, it's always risky in crypto, right, especially if you have a lot of money on hand. You're going to be a target for hackers like this. But for the most part this is something that the North Koreans are targeting against large companies. They're not going after small individual holders. TAUSCHE: As you mentioned, North Korea is a repeat offender in this space repeatedly hacking financial accounts that are funding its nuclear program. The amounts that it's accessing are getting bigger. Here's a sampling of just what they did in recent years.
Does the U.S. or big companies -- do they have any recourse here?
CARLSEN: Yeah. I mean, you know, the current strategy -- basically it's been pursued as really defensive basically in unloading the responsibility on the victims. And I think going forward that can't be sustainable. The government needs to do more to actually interdict and disrupt these hackers before they hack and after. And so we need to go on offense. We can't just keep playing a defensive game like we have been.
TAUSCHE: Your firm that you work for is the firm that traced the $160 million that is currently being laundered from this most recent hack. Do we know what it's going toward? What it's going to fund? Can you connect dots to its nuclear program at this stage?
CARLSEN: Yeah. So we can trace it basically as far as it is still crypto. But the end of this road is going to be the North Koreans offloading these assets.
They don't actually use crypto to buy the components for their nuclear program, for example. So what they need to do is turn this into cash. It's going to be Chinese currency or U.S. dollars and those are going to be in bank accounts. It's going to be in, like, prepaid cards in China. It's going to be cash.
And that then enters a completely separate network -- this kind of traditional trade-based money laundering system and that's how the North Koreans end up spending it.
So we can trace it as far as the crypto goes but after that it's kind of a dark hole for private firms.
TAUSCHE: Yeah. And to that end the Biden administration in 2023 issued a report suggesting that half of North Korea's nuclear program was funded through cyber theft.
In terms of what the current administration is doing, Nick, President Trump has promoted digital assets. He's promote cryptocurrency.
Are you aware of any actions that the administration is taking to then safeguard those assets?
CARLSEN: Yeah. I mean, I think this new administration is probably going to be a lot more forward leaning and that's going to be forward defense or maybe, hopefully, an offense. So I have a lot of hope that we can kind of turn this ship around and go at the North Koreans and actually gets some of these assets back for the victims.
TAUSCHE: This is just eye-popping numbers, and we will see exactly what happens next in this situation.
Nick Carlsen, we appreciate your time and your expertise this morning. Thank you.
CARLSEN: Yeah. Thank you for having me on.
TAUSCHE: Ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, President Trump's move away from Ukraine and closer to Russia as he refuses to call Vladimir Putin a dictator.
Plus, Elon Musk doubles down on his ultimatum for federal workers to justice their jobs. We'll speak live with Democratic Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski.
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STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, CBS "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": If people aren't checking their work email it doesn't mean they're not working. It means they respect themselves enough not to do on Microsoft Outlook. You know their slogan: "Microsoft Outlook: Every button archives that thing you need."
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[05:59:15]
TAUSCHE: It's Tuesday, February 25. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING --
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TRUMP: If you don't respond, we assume you're not around -- and you're not getting paid anymore, too.
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TAUSCHE: Do I still have a job? Many federal workers waking up asking that question this morning as Elon Musk's deadline for federal workers passes overnight.
Plus this.
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BONGINO: The FBI is lost. It's broken. Irredeemably corrupt at this point.
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TAUSCHE: Two Republican firebrands heading up the FBI. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino plan to shake things up at the bureau. What impact will it have, if any, on our national security?
Then later --
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TRUMP: I do deals. My whole life is deals. That's all I know is deals.
SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): This is like the art of the bad deal.
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TAUSCHE: President Trump touting his dealmaking ability as the U.S. aligns with Russia and North Korea at the United Nations.
