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Erin Burnett Outfront
Trump's Claims Of Dismantling Education Department Face Reality Check; Pentagon Searched "First," "History" In Rushed DEI Purge; Declared Dead Amid Government Cuts; What's Going On With Governor Newsom?. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired March 20, 2025 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:41]
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:
The breaking news, Trump's big show claiming to eliminate the Department of Education, fulfilling a campaign promise. What does executive order, though, really do?
Plus, one man declared dead. Social Security erased amid Musk's government cuts. Money pulled out of his bank account. The problem is he's alive and well, and we'll speak to him.
And what in god's name is going on with Gavin Newsom? That is a real headline. And there are more where it came from. Tonight, our KFILE uncovers Newsom, in his own words, championing the very things that he is now turning his back on.
Let's go OUTFRONT.
(MUSIC)
BURNETT: Good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.
OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news, Trump's wrecking ball meeting reality. President Trump signing an executive order today to dismantle the Department of Education.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will sign an executive order to begin eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: And then he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to be returning education very simply back to the states where it belongs.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: All right. As always, it's worth checking back in with the facts. And right now, at this very moment, before any executive order takes effect, before any cuts to the federal DOE, American states are in charge of curriculum textbooks. What's taught in science, history, social studies, or anything else, what teachers are hired, what they are paid, what standards students must hit, every single one of those things is done by states and local school boards, every single one.
In other words, this, quote/unquote, return to the states line is false. The federal Department of Education, though, does do something, though. It is the backbone of funding for special education programs. If any of these mean anything to you, ADHD, ADD, dyslexia, autism, IEP, 504 plan, the DOE is what provides the funding and grants for children needing any of those things, having any of those disabilities, special education.
It also distributes over $18 billion to help schools that serve lower income communities, and it's crucial to helping students obtain financial aid for college. So that's what the DOE does. Those things do matter to millions and millions and millions of kids.
But here's the thing Trump needs Congress to shut down the federal DOE because he needs a 60-vote majority to do it. And he does not have that without Democrats. He's obviously not going to get Democrats on this.
And it's hard to imagine even all the Republicans going along with it. Just take a look at this. Eliminating the Department of Education will hurt states that voted for Trump.
I mean, look at this chart, the states that rely on federal funding the most, okay, so you can see that from left to right, ironically, the ones in red are the ones that cast their ballot for Trump, and they rely more on those DOE funds than the blue states, which means that today's announcement, complete with kids surrounding Trump, was really a show and Trump knows it -- which is maybe why today, after his big announcement of cuts, he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The department's useful functions and such as -- they're in charge of them, Pell grants, Title I funding, resources for children with disabilities and special needs will be preserved, fully preserved. They're all going to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So ADHD and dyslexia, autism, IEP, 504, he's not going to touch those?
All right. If your head is spinning because you're thinking wait, Trump just signed an EO cutting the dough, and then said he wasn't cutting the actual things that the DOE does. And you're saying I mean literally head spinning -- yes, that is what he said. Maybe he said it because not only does he know he does not have the votes to actually end the DOE, but he actually doesn't want to end it because it would hurt the states that sent him to the White House, as we just showed.
This dog and pony show of an EO shows that words and actions, you know, almost never go together with Trump.
After all, remember these words?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The next Trump economic boom will begin on November 5th, 2024. It's going to be a boom like no other.
If I'm president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.
On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So let's take those one by one.
[19:05:01]
Trump's deportation numbers right now are no higher than Biden's. They lag far behind Obama's. The war is not over.
And as for the economic boom like no other, the markets in correction territory. Consumer confidence is down, all because of -- well, there's two words that begin with T, but one comes from the other. They're down because of Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs. Tariffs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: That's the head of the Federal Reserve yesterday in a press conference you heard the word. We didn't put it on repeat. We added up all the times he said it.
But President Trump does have a history of course as everyone knows of talking big and taking what appears to be big action only to sort out the details later. The thing is, in some cases, the damage is already done by the time he reverses course, changes his mind, or hits a legislative or legal wall.
Take USAID, Trump shut it down shortly after day one, of course, and it has had a devastating effect already on some kids in developing countries, according to Nicholas Kristof of "The New York Times".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICHOLAS KRISTOF, OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I had been reporting actually in south Sudan for about two hours before I had the names of two children who had died because of the USAID shutdown overseen by Elon Musk.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: And tonight, we have more details about Trump's purge at the Pentagon. We're now learning that the military is trying to carry out Trump's orders there. One official telling CNN that units are using keywords like racism, ethnicity, history and first, when searching their websites for content to delete part of the DEI.
So, Oren Liebermann is OUTFRONT, live in Washington.
Oren, pretty incredible that we would be looking for the word first to take anything out that was first because to celebrate such a thing could be bad. I don't know how else to look at this. You broke this story. What more are you learning?
OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Erin, this is a look inside the massive effort instructed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to remove anything that he considers so-called DEI or woke from the Department of Defense website, as well as from DVIDs, which is the repository of imagery as well as videos.
And according to the officials we spoke with and we spoke with many of them, the order was or the instruction rather, was to interpret that the effort to remove die content, not as narrowly as possible, not to remove as little as possible. Instead, officials told us it was to interpret it as broadly as possible.
In this effort to purge, frankly, history from the Department of Defense web page and other Department of Defense information systems, it was done as broadly as possible. Now, because of the tight deadline that Hegseth put in place in February, this effectively had to be automated and keywords were used. According to the officials we spoke with, some of those keywords include racism, ethnicity, history, first, justice, privilege, values, belonging, opportunity, and many, many more to try to sweep up as much content as possible.
We were wondering in our reporting yesterday, how is it that stories about 9/11 survivors, how is it that stories about the Holocaust were either deleted or marked for deletion? And this is how you get a sense of that, because they were essentially trying to hover up as much as possible in an effort to try to meet the instruction from the defense secretary.
BURNETT: It is really stunning, Oren, just to go through all of this.
All right. Thank you very much.
All right. So, Oren Liebermann with that exclusive and first reporting there.
Ryan Goodman here OUTFRONT, former Department of Defense special counsel.
So, Ryan, Oren's reporting -- I'm not laughing again because it's funny. I'm sort of stunned that they really used key words history, justice first to find articles to remove or so, so, so literally, literally erasing history.
Is there anything legally that can be done about this?
RYAN GOODMAN, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL AT DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE: So it's an -- it's also its laughable in many ways. And even, you know, Pete Hegseth is a first of his kind in a certain sense of secretary of defense. But it's -- it's hard to know how somebody would have standing to bring a case, because they'd have to show some kind of injury to themselves in a sense. So that's one aspect of it that would be difficult.
But on the other hand, there are several cases now working their way through the courts about how amorphous the government's definition is of DEI. So grants that are being denied to schools, part of the argument by the plaintiffs are, we don't even know what you mean by DEI, because it's so ambiguous, and it's not putting us on any kind of notice in the ways in which you're interpreting it.
This is a very good example for those plaintiffs of the kind of oddity of their definitions that nobody would have expected. This is what it meant.
BURNETT: No, no. And also, I mean, obviously there is subjectivity in whatever is put on websites. We understand that. Of course that is true.
But -- but -- but this is a little disturbing, right, that you could just take keywords like that and erase literally erase history.
[19:10:02]
I mean, the word history is in there.
All right. The context here also minutes ago, the president just spoke here as we were getting ready for the show, he urged the Supreme Court to act against judges who are ruling against him and his administration.
All right. Partly, he said, unlawful, nationwide injunctions by radical left judges, could very well lead to the destruction of our country. These people are lunatics. If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation, immediately, our country is in very serious trouble.
Obviously, Roberts had rebuked Trump just the other day for calling on impeaching judges who that that ruled against him.
What do you make of Trump's comments here, though? I mean, he's -- he's -- he puts Justice Roberts in here by name on purpose.
GOODMAN: Yes. So at one level, this is a the goose and gander where when a Democratic president is in office then conservative litigation against that president often seeks out particular judges to get a nationwide injunction.
Now, President Trump is in office and then litigation by a certain groups will try to find their particular judge and then get a nationwide injunction. So they've done it back and forth, and that's what he's upset about.
But the good part in some respects is that at the end of his irate truth social post, he does say the Supreme Court and Justice -- Chief Justice Roberts has to settle this. Otherwise, we'll be in a bad shape and which is actually good in a certain respect, because he understands that it is for the Supreme Court to decide, not for him to decide, because otherwise we might wonder, what he say at the end of the day --
BURNETT: There's the silver lining.
GOODMAN: -- I won't to listen to it.
BURNETT: There's a silver lining. Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
BURNETT: All right. Ryan Goodman, thank you very much.
All right. As we try to understand what these executive orders, mass firings and cuts actually mean, you know, what's -- what's rhetoric, what's real, what's bluster, Alvaro Bedoya is OUTFRONT. He was an FTC commissioner, and Trump fired him.
So here you are, Alvaro, and I appreciate your time.
So, Commissioner, were you given any specific reasoning, right, as -- you know, as in it was A, B, or C as to why you were fired?
ALVARO BEDOYA, FORMER FTC COMMISSIONER: None whatsoever. And that's why I'm confident that this was illegal, because the law says in the Supreme Court has ratified this needs to be done for cause. It can't just be because the president doesn't like what I think. It has to be done for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance. And they allege none of those things.
BURNETT: Okay, so the FTC right now is doing a few things, enforcing a settlement against X, obviously run by Elon Musk and Elon Musk is, you know, Trump's side. He's ubiquitous. He's deputy.
The FTC cases against Meta and Amazon. CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos were with Musk front and center at the inauguration. Do you think any of this, right, the FTC's involvement with those companies and those individuals, or at least the individual, in the case of Elon Musk, was related to your firing?
BEDOYA: So I don't want to speculate, but I can tell you what one of the last public statements I made before the president tried to fire me, I called out Jeff Bezos for the way he was treating his warehouse workers. His warehouse workers are injured at twice the rate of other warehouses, comparable warehouses.
Their employees are forced to work so fast, so hard and so hard, their hands stop working, their wrists break the disc in their back bulge and break. So much so that Amazon actually has to put vending machines on their warehouse floor that dispense painkillers rather than potato chips or something like that. That was one of the last things I said beforehand.
And I will note after sending, I think, roughly a little under $30 million towards the president, his inauguration, and the first lady in a sweetheart deal cut with Amazon, guess who has been nominated to fill the head of Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA? An Amazon executive.
And so I don't think it is wrong to worry that we're headed to a world of corruption and corporate handouts headed towards the FTC.
BURNETT: Okay, so then you get fired, you say, after the last thing you speak about is the Amazon case. The White House says now that they're prepared to fight your case all the way to the Supreme Court. It sounds like you are, too.
BEDOYA: I'll see them there.
BURNETT: So where does -- what happens now?
BEDOYA: What happens right now is total chaos. Here's another case that I was sitting as a judge on. The FTC staff is alleging that these entities called pharmacy middlemen, known as PBMs, were illegally jacking up the price of insulin. In other words, they were competing not to lower the price of insulin for diabetics, but to raise it.
And so they filed a lawsuit. The commission approved it, and me and Commissioner Slaughter, the other commissioner, who is the president trying to legally fire, are sitting as judges in that matter.
No one has any idea, Erin, what's going to happen to this case, because this has never happened before. Will it go away? Will it stay? I don't know, but if you ask who, it helps to try to fire me. It's not people trying to pay for insulin. I think it's the kind of billionaires that were behind the president's shoulder at the inauguration.
[19:15:01]
BURNETT: All right. Well, Alvaro, I appreciate your time, and thank you very much.
BEDOYA: Thanks for having me.
BURNETT: All right. Next, you're going to meet a man who was declared dead after Elon Musk got into Social Security. The government actually tried to claw back his Social Security checks. Well guess what? He's alive. He's well, and he's about to speak with us.
Plus, Gavin Newsom's extreme makeover.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D), CALIFORNIA: By the way, not one person ever in my office has ever used the word Latinx.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Well, KFILE checked into that, and there was a person definitely in his office who used that term. Well, because it was Newsom.
And Putin taking aim at southern Ukraine, despite telling Trump he'd stop the attacks. So what is Putin doing? I'm going to speak to a man who knows him very well, worked with him, worked with him closely. He's former deputy minister of energy for Putin.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:20:14]
BURNETT: Breaking news, Elon Musk blocked a federal judge has just ruled that Elon Musk and the DOGE team are blocked from accessing sensitive Social Security data. Of course, this may be a case of Pandora's box, but the judge is ordering Musk's team to delete any personally identifiable information that they have already acquired, writing, quote, the DOGE team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA in search of a fraud epidemic based on little more than suspicion.
Well, to that effect, this issue of fraud, we are speaking to a man who was declared dead and taken off Social Security, as part of all this, amid all the chaotic cuts at the agency. They cut him off, thought he was dead.
His name is Ned Johnson. He's 82 years old. He lives in Seattle. He is alive and well.
And our Nick Watt spoke with him for this report that you'll see first, OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Glad you're alive.
NED JOHNSON, 82 YEARS OLD: Yeah, so am I.
WATT: He's living, he's breathing. But 82-year-old Ned Johnson was declared dead.
The first you heard was this letter, February 19th, from the bank saying we recently received notification of Ned's passing. We offer our sincerest condolences.
PAM JOHNSON, HUSBAND DECLARED DEAD BY SOCIAL SECURITY: Well, it was a little weird because he was sitting next to me drinking coffee.
WATT: Is there a connection to the cost cutter in chief?
TRUMP: There is one person on Social Security who's 360 years old. WATT: And his dogged DOGE lieutenant, claiming tens of millions of
dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security checks. They're not. No matter.
TRUMP: We're going to find out where that money is going, and it's not going to be pretty.
WATT: February 13th, the DOGE employee began working within the Social Security administration, analyzing improper payments and the death master file. February 18th, Ned's dead.
You were declared dead just a few days after DOGE started working in the death data at Social Security.
N. JOHNSON: There is a curious coincidence.
P. JOHNSON: It is. So, there's a lot of unanswered questions, but I think that maybe we'll never know.
WATT: Ned was among the 73 million Americans receiving monthly Social Security checks. He says not only did his checks stop, but they also clawed back all his payments since his alleged last day on Earth, November 23rd last year.
Social Security told the bank the dollar amount they wanted back.
N. JOHNSON: Take this amount out of the -- out of this account and they said, okay.
P. JOHNSON: They just take it without permission. But apparently they can do that because they have gotten this form from whatever hospital or.
WATT: Right, write the form that no one can say where it came from or actually what it is.
P. JOHNSON: Yeah.
WATT: This is not a new phenomenon. Roughly 9000 people are mistakenly declared dead by the SSA each year. And --
It's down to you to prove you're not dead, right?
N. JOHNSON: Somebody disabled, they can't get out of a wheelchair or whatever, and they live 100 miles from the nearest Social Security office, what are they going to do?
WATT: Ned says he waited eight hours at this federal building in Seattle to prove he's alive. Now, this building appears to be earmarked for closure.
I presume you've asked Social Security, how -- why this happened?
P. JOHNSON: No answer. And we have really no way of communicating with them again.
WATT: An apology?
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WATT (on camera): But since Ned went public with his resurrection, he has managed to get his money back.
But here's the thing, in future, it might be even harder to prove you're alive if you're mistakenly killed off. And here's why -- part of President Trump's war on alleged fraud means that they're going to limit what Social Security recipients can do online or over the phone, which means a lot more than thousands more are going to have to go into offices. But at the same time, they're closing a bunch of offices and reducing the staff of the SSA by about 12 percent.
They claim that's going to actually increase efficiency. Let's see how it pans out -- Erin.
BURNETT: Nick, thank you very much, just important reporting. You see, this is all about individuals and faces across this country. Thank you, Nick.
And Ross Gerber is with me now, president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki, long time major Tesla investor now calling on Elon Musk to give up his job in the Trump administration, or step down from Tesla.
So, Ross, I mean, obviously, that report is a part of what came out of DOGE Social Security and Musk, you were one of his earliest supporters. Okay. So and you've finally reached this point, how have you come to this point at this time, asking him to, you know, to name a new CEO, given his other job?
ROSS GERBER, TESLA INVESTOR CALLING ON MUSK TO STEP DOWN: Well, it's people like Ned who are now, you know, keying Teslas and -- and protesting in front of the showrooms because they're so unhappy with the decisions he's making in government and all the divisive Nazi rhetoric that he keeps spewing.
[19:25:08]
So there isn't more that Elon could do to turn off customers from Tesla. I really don't think there's more he could do. So if he's going to work in the government, I'm all for it, working the government. He's obviously doing a great job, right?
And -- and if he's going to work at Tesla, then work at Tesla. But there's some other CEO that runs Twitter. Linda Yaccarino has done a great job dealing with Elon and running Twitter. And then we have Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX.
So, so why isn't somebody running Tesla?
BURNETT: Can I ask you, though? Because and obviously he's got you mentioned twitter. There's Neuralink, SpaceX, the Boring Company. You know all of those don't necessarily publicly trade. And -- but Tesla is something that touches every American right?
SpaceX does not touch every American. Every American can take a vote on Tesla, whether they buy a car or not. Does it matter whether he's the CEO or not?
I mean, it is. It is just so inextricably tied to him, right? This is not an issue of and maybe. Okay. And I'll ask you in a second if it is an issue of how it's being run, but it's really an issue of his face and the Tesla brand being together.
GERBER: Right? That's the biggest issue. Along with the continued missteps within the operations of the company, which aren't as big of an issue as the image and marketing problem that the company now has, which in my mind is in a crisis at this point with literally terrorist attacks on Tesla's showrooms, you know, people burning the most environmentally friendly vehicle ever made is clearly like the worst thing that could possibly happen to the company.
So, so -- yeah, it's Elon. And I think, you know, I warned about this a year ago that we Tesla needed to work to separate itself from Elon. And Elon is worried about Elon. He's not worried about Tesla.
And now it's really come back to roost in a negative way. And I don't know if we can separate the brand now from Elon. It might be too late.
BURNETT: Well, that's the question here. And also this would go well beyond him. I mean, I don't know if you would blame him for all of this, but, you know, the whole Cybertruck situation, putting aside, right, the crisis for sales that they have for Tesla and Cybertruck, but they're recalling a majority of the Cybertruck because exterior panels are peeling away and could potentially fall off while you're driving. It is the eighth recall Ross issued on the Cybertruck.
I mean, I don't need to tell you, but I mean, I know you're well aware. Eighth one, he called it, remember? Indestructible, bulletproof. And this is the eighth recall.
I mean, that is terrible, right? Nobody no car company would be proud of that. So. So what -- that -- that -- that seems to be bigger than Elon.
GERBER: Right. And that's the other side of the rub is not only is he destroying the marketing, but the operational, you know, performance has been mediocre at best. And, you know, its not uncommon for cars to have recalls, especially highly advanced new vehicles like a Cybertruck. I drive the Cybertruck every day, and i, I personally really like it.
But, you know, there were missed opportunities with the Cybertruck and flaws, but there's been flaws with every Tesla that's come out. So don't -- don't think that this is not a new thing for Tesla, even when Elon was there full time. It's just part of the way they do things. They're much better at software than hardware.
BURNETT: So Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, was publicly recommended people buy Tesla stock. He went on Fox News. GERBER: Yeah.
BURNETT: Yeah. He said, if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla. Okay. So --
GERBER: The commerce secretary is recommending stocks, Erin.
BURNETT: Yeah.
GERBERG: This is a problem, don't you think?
BURNETT: It's not appropriate. But -- but -- but, you know, you can say that as an investor though. But how much does that bother you that this sort of thing is happening and it just sort of blase. Okay. Commerce secretary went on a business show and recommended people buy a stock. Oh, the stock of the guy who sits with the president every day.
GERBER: Well, how about the president of the United States who doesn't drive doing a car ad when he hates EVs and then picking the old model S instead of the Cybertruck? It's literally like opposite advertising. So I don't think -- they're looking so desperate. I don't think this helps them at all.
BURNETT: All right. Well, Ross, I appreciate your time.
GERBER: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
BURNETT: All right. Good to talk to you.
GERBER: Yeah. And hope for the better.
BURNETT: And next -- yeah, Gavin Newsom trying to rewrite history when it comes to transgender athletes competing in women's sports.
(BEGIN VDIEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: It is an issue of fairness, and I think Democrats have lost that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: But our KFILE has gone through this, and Newsom once felt very differently on this issue.
Plus, the Trump administration still taking Putin at his word when it comes to Ukraine. So, we're going to talk to somebody who knows Putin well, worked with him closely. His former deputy energy secretary, and say what he's seen tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:34:24]
BURNETT: Tonight, quote, what in gods name is going on with Gavin Newsom? That's a headline, and there's headline after headline asking that sort of question as the country is trying to figure out how he went from progressive hero and governor of the most liberal state in the country to interviewing and spending time with MAGA favorites like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk on his new podcast.
Tonight, our KFILE looked into that, finding that Newsom -- well, he's really completely changed his tune on some of the most hot button issues for Democrats.
KFILE's Andrew Kaczynski joins me now.
And, Andrew, I mean, just going through some of these, you know, he's got this podcast and the concept was he wanted to talk to the other side, right?
[19:35:02]
He was going to go into the lions den and remember back in the day when he did that debate with DeSantis, right? This is consistent.
ANDREW KACZYNSKI, CNN KFILE SENIOR EDITOR: Yeah.
BURNETT: So his first time though, he goes out and he backs away from some unpopular progressive policies, even ones that he's championed. So let's talk about the word Latinx.
Just two weeks ago, here's what he said about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: By the way, not one person ever in my office has ever used the word Latinx.
CHARLIE KIRK, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: So can we finally put that to bed? We agree. But where did that even go? No more Latinx, everybody.
NEWSOM: Well, just didn't even know where it came from. I'm like, what are people talking about?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: But there was a person who used Latinx. It was actually a really important person. It was him, right?
KACZYNSKI: Yeah. That's right. And look, these aren't minor shifts. These are progressive issues that Gavin Newsom used to champion until fairly recently. And now, he's not just walking away from them. He's sort of acting like they were never legitimate with that clip, talking about Latinx in the first place.
But let's just -- let's take Latinx. We did find somebody who used it repeatedly in his office. Let's take a listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: I hope we can really paint a picture in terms of our consciousness, of how impactful this has been on the Latinx community. Latinx community.
The Latinx and Black community.
You've got politicians that are banning, not assault rifles, but the word Latinx. Theyre not even serious.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KACZYNSKI: And look, Erin, those aren't the only times that we found that he used that. He also used it a lot on social media. Look at a few of these right here -- you see there, that is a lot of use of Latinx by him. For somebody who said that nobody in his office has ever used that phrase.
BURNETT: Right, right. So that was put upon him.
All right. So he's also rewriting history a bit on his stance on transgender issues, which he had had a point of view on, on his podcast, again, just two weeks ago. Here's where he is now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: It turns out in 2014, years before I was governor, there was a law established that established the legal principles that allow the allow trans athletes and women's sports. But the issue of fairness is completely legit. It is an issue of fairness. And I think Democrats have lost.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Now, he didn't always feel that way.
KACZYNSKI: No. That's right. And look, in that statement, he's kind of making it sound like he wasn't involved in this at all. He's like, oh, was in 2014 years before I was governor. Like, you mean when you were the lieutenant governor, when you actively defended and praised that law?
And one of the videos that we found was actually him praising not just the governor at the time, Jerry Brown, but the California state legislature for putting that in place at the time. Take a listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: Thank you for what you did on civil rights for students in our schools, transgender rights in this state.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: I mean, okay, so then there's that. Then there's transgender issues, right? Transgender policies. The governor referenced your own reporting on Kamala Harris's support for those taxpayer funded sex change operations for detained migrants, right. Remember here when we had that conversation? Okay. It shifted the presidential campaign, right? That moment here.
So here he is talking about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWSOM: Trump's for you. She's for they, them.
KIRK: And --
NEWSOM: Devastating.
KIRK: -- again --
NEWSOM: Devastating, devastating.
KIRK: Devastating.
NEWSOM: And she didn't even react to it which was even more devastating.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So he's referring to the ad that they put out using the clip from when -- when you were here. Only a handful of years ago, though, he agreed with Kamala Harris on this very issue?
KACZYNSKI: Yeah. And it has been the law in California to allow gender -- transition care for prisoners since 2017. Gavin Newsom didn't speak out or say anything about it until now, five years later, when it became a political liability. And in fact, he signed a landmark trans or transgender rights bill for prisoners that affirmed their right to have this type of care.
And he approved a state Medicaid expansion that also extended gender- affirming care to undocumented immigrants. So his record on this is really not matching the rhetoric that he was putting out in that podcast.
BURNETT: Podcast.
All right. So what's he saying tonight about all this?
KACZYNSKI: So we reached out to their spokespeople. They declined to comment on the record. They sent us on background comments that said that he's worked to protect transgender youth. They said, quote, Latinx is not a term that is regularly used by the administration. And they did not clarify his comments on transgender prisoners at all, saying only that the governor's comments speak for themselves.
BURNETT: All right. Well, I guess they do.
Andrew, thank you very much, KFILE.
And next, breaking news, Russia launching a wave of new attacks right now tonight in Ukraine. Putin's intention on ending the war, at least, you know, if you go with actions and words, the actions are speaking quite loudly. Someone who knows him well, former deputy minister of energy for Putin is next.
Plus, police now having to be called in to some town halls as voters are refusing to back down.
[19:40:04]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are the most soulless piece of crap I've ever seen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Breaking news, fires raging now in Ukraine's southern port city of Odesa. Almost every district is on fire right now after a brutal Russian drone attack. Russia also hitting Zaporizhzhia tonight.
[19:45:01]
Fires engulfing residential buildings, shopping centers and stores.
Russia and Ukraine, the war continues despite the agreement to a limited ceasefire in a phone call with President Trump that Putin had agreed to, Ukraine hitting back striking a Russian military airfield in the past 24 hours, that incredible explosion caught on camera. Many of Russia's long range strategic bombers were housed there.
The blast also wrecking a nearby hospital in Russia, comes as Putin tonight is giving Ukrainians an occupied territories an ultimatum, take a Russian passport or get out, saying they have until September 10th, making it clear where he sees these peace talks going, annexation. Next round of peace talks is on Monday.
An OUTFRONT now, Vladimir Milov. He is a former deputy minister of energy in Russia, served under Vladimir Putin before resigning.
And Vladimir, I really appreciate your time. I mean, you know, Putin, there are so few who truly do who have worked with him in any sort of a setting. You worked for him. You saw him up close.
So at this moment, when you see Putin in his public appearances, you see his body language, his facial expressions, you hear the readouts from Trump. On what he says Putin is saying. What do you actually see?
VLADIMIR MILOV, FORMER RUSSIAN DEPUTY MINISTER OF ENERGY: Oh, hello. Great to be with you again.
And I think it's very clear that Putin is more self-confident and more brazen than ever. He's been really emboldened by this past couple of months of Donald Trump's presidency, because there's been a new factor which did not exist before, a very serious pressure on Ukraine. So that Ukraine accepts some of his demands.
This is a totally new factor. Putin obviously is very happy to hear all this happening. And if you if you just listen to what Russian officials are saying, including Putin himself, they are elevating their demands, they are putting forward new demands which did not exist before starting from transfer of control of territories of Ukraine, which they failed to occupy militarily, to control over nuclear power facilities or the port of Odesa, to essentially NATO troops moving beyond the 1990 perimeter.
So, by -- by this brazen rhetoric, you see that Trump's arrival at the White House brought Putin to a new level of self-confidence.
BURNETT: I mean, it's pretty stunning the way you describe it. I mean, do you think Putin has any -- any trepidation or any uncertainty or feels any pressure from Trump or literally he has perceived it as full steam ahead?
MILOV: Putin is a very, very experienced guy. He's been in power in a, you know, very difficult quarter of a century. He saw this permanent rotation of American and Western leaders, sorry to say, he knows how to cook them. He's -- he's seen this movie before many times. Basically, he arrived in power as a skilled KGB officer who was specialized in recruitment of saying to people what they exactly want to hear to achieve his goals.
So he can play Trump. I'm pretty sure that he's extremely confident and that this is exactly what -- what he is doing right now.
BURNETT: It's interesting the way you use the word cooked.
So, one of Trump's principal negotiators is this man named Steve Witkoff, as you know. He just met with Putin. And so he was asked if Russia kept its word not to attack Ukraine's energy infrastructure, even though obviously they did that. But they were -- they were mincing. They were playing with rhetoric.
And here's what Witkoff said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE WITKOFF, U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE MIDDLE EAST: I tend to believe that President Putin is operating in good faith. He said that he was going to be operating in good faith to the president yesterday. And I take him at his word.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So when you hear a U.S. official say of Putin, he's operating in good faith, I take him at his word. What would you say to Mr. Witkoff?
MILOV: Putin has a very, very, very long track record of, you know, keeping or not keeping his various international commitments. I mean, any kind of agreements from climate change to WTO and international trade, to human rights conventions, to arms control, what have you, he always walked away from any of his commitments and never kept his word. Whenever he felt like it. So he has long proven track record. I can show if Mr. Witkoff is not
familiar with that, I can basically show you like a thick volume of commitments that Putin has violated, including internationally ratified legal agreements, still nominally valid today, which Putin simply walked away from, so much for his very valuable word.
[19:50:02]
I think, listen, I'm in international politics for quite some time already, I have never seen anybody who really speaks out in public, some confident and delicate details of a very difficult negotiations the way Mr. Witkoff does. This is something really very unusual, because usually in complicated negotiations and talks like that, you keep details hidden until you reach certain agreement.
Now, this gentleman is out there talking some sensitive issues and details. I think really this kind of negotiator is truly a gift for Putin.
BURNETT: Truly a gift for Putin. Wow.
All right, Vladimir, thank you very much. We all appreciate your time.
MILOV: Thank you. Thank you.
BURNETT: Vladimir Milov, as we said, former deputy energy secretary for Putin. Thank you.
And next, breaking news, voters making it crystal clear how they feel at one town hall tonight. We're going to take you there next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:55:42]
BURNETT: Tonight, Democrats and Republicans facing furious crowds, relentlessly heckled and booed by angry constituents. Town halls across this country descending into chaos, one so contentious that the police had to shut it down last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are the most soulless piece of crap I've ever seen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's' your opinion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Soulless, soulless.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, get off! Sir! Sir! Get off! Sir, get off the stage right now! Get off the stage right now! Sir!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You should be ashamed of yourself.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, sir, get off --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Putting my hands up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, get off the stage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You want to talk?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get off the stage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Danny Freeman is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fury at Washington on display from coast to coast this week.
Here in deep red Wyoming, constituents blasted Republican Congresswoman Harriet Hageman over federal cuts made by the Trump administration and Elon Musk's DOGE.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Which is it's so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with federal government. But -- but here's the thing.
(CHANTING)
FREEMAN: Here in Illinois, some protesters aggressively confronted Democratic Congressman Sean Casten about U.S. support of Israel in the war in Gaza.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you're saying is, I'm not going to get my way when my people are being slaughtered.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, get off -- sir, get off the stage right now! Get off the stage right now, sir.
FREEMAN: Republicans and Democrats alike fending off anger on a wide range of issues like Medicare and Medicaid here in battleground Arizona.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We want you to be straight with us. How do we go to the next level to fight this?
FREEMAN: And reining in DOGE here in deep blue Maryland.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are not interested in hearing that you are in the minority. We know that.
FREEMAN: But while there's been no shortage of loud frustration, even quieter constituents want answers.
What's the main thing that you want to ask the congressman if you get a chance to?
MARY O'HARE, NEBRASKA DEMOCRAT: Well, I want to ask him, what are you doing? FREEMAN: Democrat Mary O'Hare drove an hour and a half to be one of
the first in line for Tuesdays town hall with her congressman, Nebraska Republican Mike Flood. She's worried DOGE cuts will hurt Nebraskans.
O'HARE: A lot of this is going to, like, really impact farmers and people in nursing homes and, children who don't get health care and elderly and people with disabilities. It's going to go all over.
FREEMAN: But Republican Steve Champlin told us he cant get enough of DOGE and wants flood and President Trump to hold strong.
STEVE CHAMPLIN, NEBRASKA REPUBLICAN: If we need to cut. We need to cut. We got to cut the spending down. We're just too far in debt. I don't want to become another third world nation.
FREEMAN: Republican Carol Moseman voted for Congressman Flood, but she came hoping her representative will check the administration.
CAROL MOSEMAN, REPUBLICAN: I want to hear that he's going to stand up, that he and other Republicans are going to stand up for democracy, that they're going to not let Mr. Trump take over using executive powers.
FREEMAN: Earlier this month, Speaker Mike Johnson encouraged fellow Republicans to stop doing town halls altogether, claiming they attract paid or professional protesters. But folks we spoke with pushed back.
Are you paid to be here? Do you belong with any groups who are financing you coming up here today?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, just my personal conviction about what's right.
FREEMAN: And like other town halls, personal convictions quickly became public.
REP. MIKE FLOOD (R-NE): I get it, there's a lot of people in this room that don't support what DOGE is doing. But for the first time, we are making some progress identifying places that we can reduce the budget.
FREEMAN: After it all, Congressman Flood, though, told us he looks forward to his next town hall.
FLOOD: I think this just comes with a job, and I think a lot more members are going to be having town halls. And you know what? There's some -- there's probably some people here that didn't agree with my position on a lot of things, but they went home with the satisfaction of knowing they let their representative know how they felt.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: Danny, it's amazing. So much frustration right now behind you. I know you're at a town hall in Virginia. This is a Democratic town hall, and now you've been across the country seeing these. What are you seeing where you are now? Does it does it dovetail with
everything else?
FREEMAN: You know, it's interesting, Erin, I'd say that this particular town hall in Virginia's 10th congressional district is perhaps the exception to the rule. We're here listening to Congressman Suhas Subramanyam. He's a Democrat, as I noted.
Make no mistake, there's a lot of anger and frustration at the Trump administration and DOGE here behind me tonight. But they like what the congressman is saying here. He's been saying things like, the American people want us to fight. They want us to be bold and we can take risks.
That's the kind of answer that a lot of these frustrated Democrats really want to hear -- Erin.
BURNETT: Danny, thank you so much.
And thanks so much to all of you.
"AC360" starts now.
