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Trump Hard-Core MAGA Cabinet Picks Stun Congress; Trump Ally: "People Being In A State Of Shock Was The Goal"; Republicans Divided Over Whether Gaetz Will Be Confirmed; DOJ Staffers React To Gaetz Pick As Attorney General; Ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard Picked For Director Of National Intelligence. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 14, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, new reality setting in here in Washington. Donald Trump is sending a clear message on what his government will look like and what it will prioritize when he takes over in just 67 days.

Plus, a GOP trifecta with control of both chambers of Congress. Donald Trump may have a clear runway to enact his agenda. We have new reporting on a potential pocket of resistance. And the shadow president, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world has been attached at the hip to Donald Trump for weeks now. We'll get some new insight into what Musk may do with his newfound power.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

Shocked, stunned and audible gasp among some Republicans. That has been the reaction to Donald Trump's pick of now former congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general. It's just one of the picks that seems to be really concerning people over the past 48 hours, along with choices of Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth to run the intelligence community and the Pentagon.

Here's the thing, though. No one should be surprised by any of this because Donald Trump told us, over and over what he would do in his second term and the kind of people he wanted to do it. And now we're seeing it.

CNN's Steve Contorno is in St. Petersburg, Florida. Steve, I know you've been doing some excellent reporting on the developments inside Mar-a-Lago and beyond.

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Dana, that's right. And heading into the middle this week, Donald Trump had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the Orthodox list of names. He was interviewing for defense secretary and attorney general, which he views as two of the most important jobs in his new administration. And that's when he decided to take that left turn and name Pete Hegseth the Fox News his defense secretary, and Matt Gaetz as attorney general. As one person close to Trump told CNN, people being in a state of shock was the goal. That's exactly what MAGA wants. And Donald Trump believes that he has a mandate to act on what he campaigned on during the last two years, which as you said, he didn't necessarily hide. I went to dozens of rallies where he talked about dismantling the Justice Department, kneecapping military leaders and rooting out the deep state.

Take a listen to just a few of those examples.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL- ELECT: The FBI and the DOJ used to capture people before anything happened. In current days, the upper echelon of the FBI is all talk, while they focus on the sitting president's political opponents.

We have the fake, woke generals that did so poorly in Afghanistan. Should have all been fired. They leaked all the information about the way that Israel is going to fight, and how they're going to fight, and where they're going to go. And somebody who did that. Can you imagine somebody doing that? That's the enemy. I guess that maybe is the enemy from within.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: So, he carried out this mission for Donald Trump. He didn't turn to season administrators or Capitol Hill veterans. Instead, he chose loyalists and people he believed were aligned with him on that mission. And that's how he ended up with Hegseth and Gabbard and Matt Gaetz.

Now the question is, can those individuals get 51 votes in the U.S. Senate to get confirmed. We know that several of his choices earlier in the week, from more of a traditional path, like Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state have a pretty good chance of reaching that. I'm sure your panel will discuss whether these new names can get to 51 though. Dana?

BASH: Yeah. There are lots of questions and whether that will even be necessary, if there will just be what's known as a recess appointment. Such great reporting. Thank you so much for reminding us of those things that Donald Trump said over and over again. It's very important for people to hear and be reminded.

With me to get some insight and some new reporting on all of this. PBS NewsHour's Laura Barron-Lopez, the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru and CNN's Lauren Fox. I'm going to start with you. And just kind of to get your big picture thoughts on what we have seen in the last 24 hours.

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RAMESH PONNURU, EDITOR, NATIONAL REVIEW: Donald Trump made one group of Republicans very happy with the nominee of Matt Gaetz. And that is most House Republicans who are very happy to see no more Gaetz as a colleague.

But a lot of other people, including strong supporters of Trump are dismayed by this. They don't see the political logic of it. They don't even see the Senate vote logic of it. They had some concerns about some of the other nominations, particularly Gabbard and Hegseth for ODNI and the Pentagon respectively. But the Gaetz pick in particular just has people completely flummoxed.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR & CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, ultimately, this comes down to for Donald Trump again, loyalty, and it is about the fact that I was talking to this -- talking to this Trump World source yesterday who said that last go around, Donald Trump listened much more to establishment Republicans, to mainstream Republicans, when he picked his -- who was a part of his administration.

This time around he's not. This time around, he is very much making these decisions with the people closest to him and who he ultimately wants and who he thinks will listen to him and not go against him or say no to him.

And he believes that Matt Gaetz and others like Hegseth, will do what he campaigned on, which is to shrink the overall size of government, to gut and get rid of people that he thinks shouldn't be a part of government anymore. And so, he views them as ones that will do that. And he ultimately wants these people confirmed.

BASH: And I think that is such an important point to not lose sight of, which is, yes, of course, it's about loyalty. These people, for the most part have been sort of parked at Mar-a-Lago. Have been with him, kind of every step of the way. But it's about what he wants to happen in these agencies.

And I have had the word hammer used in private conversations with me more than any other word that that's what he wants to do. So, when people say, well, is such and such person even qualified. Take the Fox News host. Maybe not, but qualified in the traditional sense, no, but perhaps qualified to do exactly what he wants, which is to dismantle a lot of the way these organizations have been run. And it is what he ran on. And now, if they get confirmed, or if they end up in their some way shape or form, we'll see.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And I think this is a huge question for Republicans who are in the Senate right now. How much oversight do they believe they deserve and have over the president's choices? Because you are hearing from a lot of Republicans who may be nervous about the likes of Matt Gaetz or others, but they do believe that the president has a lot of authority in who he gets to pick for his cabinet.

I mean, I just talked to Todd Young this morning and was asking this question. And he made clear that he was going to give Gaetz a very fair shake. This is not someone who has been close to Donald Trump. This is someone who was saying that he wasn't going to support Donald Trump for the presidency. And yet, he's saying that he is now going to become the president, and he wants to give every nominee a very clear look and make sure that he gets the answers from them that he needs. But he believes that the cabinet should be Trump's election.

BASH: And go ahead.

PONNURU: Yeah. And presidents do deserve a certain amount of deference, and it's reasonable for them to want a certain amount of loyalty in their cabinet selections. But the senators were independently elected, and they do have a constitutional role of advice and consented. And if they simply rubber stamp these selections, then you have to wonder, what are they there for if they've neutered themselves.

BASH: Our team on Capitol Hill has gotten some fresh reaction from some Republican lawmakers. Let's listen.

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SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): That at the end of the day, you got to have the votes, and you better have the resume.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): He chose Matt Gaetz. Matt will come before the committee, and he will be asked hard questions, and we'll see how he does.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): The president is entitled to choose his cabinet, and I presume I'll support them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's premature to be talking about recession.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Let's talk about that a little bit. Well, first of all, just sort of to sum up, what we just heard is, they believe that these nominees will go through the regular process, and that is a vet committee questionnaire, public hearings before the appropriate committees' vote, never mind the full U.S. Senate.

But let's just kind of fast forward a little bit because I want you to explain to our viewers the whole recess appointment thing. And it became a thing yesterday or two days ago, when this was something that Donald Trump said that he wanted as a promise from whomever the new senate majority leader would be.

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And the idea being that if he can't get through his nominees, then he would be able to do it when Congress goes into recess. Because it's Republicans in charge of the House and the Senate, John Thune and Speaker Johnson would have to agree to formally recess in order to let him do it, which would mean that they would be complicit in getting around the constitutional duty of Congress of the Senate, in particular that you were talking about. FOX: Yeah. They have to pass a concurrent resolution to adjourn both houses of Congress. And if they do that, and it takes just a simple majority in the United States Senate, then that really opens up this possibility of recess appointments.

And you know, I was talking to a lot of experts this morning who are very familiar with Senate rules. And the argument that I got repeatedly was, there's not a lot Democrats could do to slow this process down. This is not debatable. It is amendable. So, they could have sort of a vote, a Rama (Ph) style amendment process to try to slow it down. But that can't go on forever. That would not block Trump's nominations for moving forward forever. So, one thing to keep -- go ahead.

BASH: Meaning, so they could go to recess. They would --

FOX: Absolutely.

BASH: This would be a regular vote to go to recess. They would recess, and then Trump can put in whomever he wants without confirmation.

FOX: And Democrats can't do a lot. I will say Republicans would have to have the votes to do that. We're going to be looking at people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and others to see, would they be willing to cede that power? And I think that is a huge question still.

PONNURU: Which raises the question. If you have 51 votes, who are willing to go to that that route to get Gaetz into the attorney general position, why don't you have 51 votes to just confirm him?

BASH: Right. Well, right now, from everything I've heard, there aren't 51 votes to confirm him, but they're saying that they want to wait to hear what happens in the process. I don't want to lose sight of another thing, because this is coming at us fast and furious. Welcome back to Trump's Washington.

The fact that Gaetz resigned yesterday. And he resigned yesterday ahead of a House Ethics Committee report that was expected to come out from the last Congress. And when somebody is no longer a member of Congress, for the most part, the ethics investigations go away.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, and this is pertaining to sexual assault allegations. And you're hearing from some Democrats and some Republicans that they want to review this report, that they want to be able to see it. And so, the question is, are they going to be able to release it? Are they be going to be able to share it with the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, so they can review it?

Because that's something that obviously, every piece of a nominee's background pertains to whether or not they are qualified for the appointment, the nomination that they've received. We saw it with Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. We've seen it with other positions.

And of course, one of the questions that this also raises a report like this is whether or not, oftentimes in a position like Justice Department, attorney general, head of DoD, head of intelligence, can things like that be used against the person that is in that position of power by foreign adversaries, information like that. So that's a question I think the senators are going to have.

FOX: And it's a question that's going to divide House and Senate power, right? Because the senators may request that information, but is the House Ethics Committee going to give it? And you said a new precedent where all of a sudden, all the information from the Ethics Committee is able to be getting -- gotten by the Senate.

PONNURU: But there the fact that Gaetz does not have great relations with a lot of Republicans into play.

BASH: Yeah. OK. Before we go to break, the control room, don't get mad. I just -- I want to play this sound bite to remind people what Kevin McCarthy said April 9 about Matt Gaetz, who led the charge to push him out of a speaker's chair.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN MCCARTHY, (R) FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: I'll give you the truth, why I'm not speaker. It's because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old. An ethics complaint that started before I ever became speaker. And that's illegal, and I'm not going to get in the middle. Did he do it or not? I don't know, but an ethics is looking at it. There's other people in jail because of it. And he wanted me to influence it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: For the record, Matt Gaetz denies that allegation, but that is the kind of thing that you're hearing from Matt Gaetz's former colleagues now. Up next, MAGA acolyte, conspiracy theorist, Putin apologist, Director of National Intelligence, John Miller, will be here to tell us what the intelligence professionals are saying about the potential for Tulsi Gabbard to be their new boss.

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BASH: Welcome back. Now, let's go inside the agencies that Donald Trump is trying to change with his controversial cabinet picks. So far, CNN's chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid. Hi, Paula, you've been talking to your sources inside the DOJ about their new potential leader, Matt Gaetz. What are they telling you?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, Dana, I've spoken to dozens of people since Gaetz was announced as the pick for attorney general. And the only person who had anything really positive to say about it was someone who works in an agency that takes lawyers from government and places them in the private sector. Saying that this announcement has made their job.

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Now, in addition to the negative reaction inside DOJ. I also reached out to people who worked in the Trump Justice Department. So, people who are ideologically aligned with the president elect about this pick, and universally they believe that this was not a good idea, that he is not qualified.

One of them is, quote, praying, that the other people who will lead the Justice Department. So, the people who will run the individual components inside DOJ, the criminal division, the antitrust division, the civil division. They're hoping that those will be more mainstream people who are more qualified and have relevant experience.

I also reached out to people who are close to the congressman that I've gotten to know in reporting on his criminal investigations, asking them if they see a reason that he's uniquely qualified, or asking what he'll bring to this. And across the board, Dana, they told me that they do not believe that this is a good idea. Of course, there's also the issue of this House Ethics Committee report hanging out there.

And how -- if that is released, that could impact his ability, not only to get confirmed, there's obviously work arounds there, but also to do this job with credibility. Not only have some lawmakers called for this to be released, but we're also hearing from the lawyer for the underage girl at the center a sex trafficking investigation. They are also calling for this report to be released.

BASH: Wow. The idea that people inside the DOJ who are upset about Matt Gaetz. As I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, if Donald Trump is watching you, he's probably saying, see, this is why I want him in there, because I want to get rid of all of those people. The members of the House. We just -- we're just talking about this here at the table. Who know Matt Gaetz the best, served with him. He's not the most popular. Let's leave it. Let's put it that way.

One of that -- one example is Republican Mike Simpson, who said to POLITICO, when asked if Matt Gaetz has the experience and character to be attorney general. He said, are you -- can I say this now? Are you shitting me, that you asked that question? No. But you'll print that and now I'm going to be investigated. So, there could have been some tongue in cheek there, but maybe not. So, what powers would Gaetz actually have? We'll go after political opponents or people who cross him.

REID: He's going to be the nation's top law enforcement officers. So that does come with enormous power. There are checks on that, but he will have the power to oversee investigations, and president-elect Trump has made it clear. He wants to use the Department of Justice to go after his political adversaries. People who didn't take him at his word, when he said that repeatedly on the campaign trail, are now seeing that he meant it. And he believes former congressman Gaetz is the person that will do that.

Now again, he can oversee criminal investigations. He can also appoint special counsels to conduct their own investigations. There are some checks on him, though, the primary check is going to be the judiciary. If he, for example, wants a search warrant, they're going to have to go to a judge for that, seeking indictment. So, one way to do that is through a grand jury.

So, the judiciary is going to be one of the primary checks on the Attorney General Gaetz, if he wants him being the attorney general. But again, it's an enormous power to be able to open a criminal investigation into someone that can really ruin someone's career or life, even if they are not ultimately charged.

But that's something that the congressman will likely be very unsympathetic to, because, of course, he has been the subject of a criminal investigation that went on for several years is very well known, even though he was never charged.

BASH: Thank you so much for that, Paula. Now let's talk about what people in the intelligence community are saying about Tulsi Gabbard, a potential DNI head. She has been known for echoing Kremlin propaganda, including claims like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TULSI GABBARD, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Here are the undeniable facts. There are 25 to 30 U.S. funded bio labs in Ukraine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now Gabbard denied that she was actually supporting those theories. She said she was just raising questions and accused critics of trying to censor her. I want to bring in CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller. John, what are you hearing from members of the intelligence community about the Gabbard pick?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, there's a lot of concern. And I say that as a former deputy assistant director at the Director of National Intelligence, where you have a collective of people who come from multiple intelligence agencies who work there.

One of the things is, they are scratching their heads over how are we going to go forward in a situation where the person sitting at the head of the table and leading the organization forward is the one at the table who literally knows the least about intelligence, the intelligence community, the threat stream that faces the world.

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And sure, this has happened before, where they've had political appointees that have come in with a learning curve, but never anything this steep. So, questions they're asking based on former statements she's made. Where she comes from politically is, sure she's political, sure she's partisan. But is she a serious person?

And then what do you do as the leader of the intelligence community? If your boss says, this is what we're doing. We're going to deprioritize Russia and Putin. We're going to increase resources to China and Xi. That's -- that's -- that's a lot of what the kind of fear and loathing atmosphere is worried about today.

BASH: Which, again, if anybody listened to Donald Trump, why wouldn't she do that? The fear is -- is, and the discussion through the whole campaign has been about China, which, you know, I think even Democrats would say that that's legit. But to sort of move resources away from, say, a Russia, that's the point that you're getting at, and that is the concern. Say something you said?

MILLER: Right. Which is clearly a hypothetical. But also, you know, you look at the CIA appointment, OK, John Ratcliffe is definitely political, definitely partisan, but he's considered a serious person with the gravitas to step into a role like that.

The Tulsi Gabbard example, which essentially puts her over the CIA, the NSA, The DIA, the NGA, all 18 intelligence agencies is a short time in Congress, no particular foreign policy experience, no particular intelligence experience, time in the military, and she should be lauded for her service. But how does that get you from that to the leader of intelligence collection and dissemination policy and being the preparer, and disseminator of the president's daily briefing.

BASH: And just real quick, because we're out of time, John. On that last point, you in your life have been involved in preparing what the president sees when it comes to intelligence threats. How critical is that role and why?

MILLER: Well, basically you're controlling, you know, the president and the senior people around him who get the PDB their view of the world threat condition. And you would rely on that person, principally the DNI and the CIA people who prepare it to say, this is going to be an unbiased straight down the middle. Call them like you see him document. The question is, when the people who are controlling that are so political and outspoken, is that what you're going to get.

BASH: John Miller, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

MILLER: Thanks, Dana.

BASH: Coming up. He's worth more than $300 billion and now he has an all-access pass to the president-elect. What does Elon Musk want? That's next.

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