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Trump Fills Out Cabinet, Turns Attention To Confirmation Battles; Gabbard, Hegseth, RFK Jr. Expected To Face Bumpy Confirmations; Poll: Nearly 60 Percent Approve Of Trump Handling Of Transition; Trump Picks Labor Secretary Who's Been Embraced By Unions; Trump's Pick To Oversee U.S. Intelligence Services Faces Scrutiny; Trump Picks Project 2025 Co-Author To Lead WH Budget Office; Trump Hires Authors Of Project 2025 Agenda To Top Positions. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 25, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, you're hired. The president-elect has picked a cabinet of loyalists to carry out his MAGA agenda. But now comes the hard part. We have new reporting on how team Trump is preparing for multiple contentious confirmation battles.

Plus, rejection to affection. After disavowing project 2025 on the trail, Donald Trump is tapping an architect to the far-right plan for a critical post in the White House. And pardon the tradition. A lame duck just spared 240-pound turkeys from the kitchen table. We'll tell you how peach and blossom rode the gravy train all the way to the White House.

I'm Manu Raju in for Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headline at Inside Politics.

We start at Mar-a-Lago. Team -- Trump transition team is shifting its focus with the president-elect's cabinet now filled out. The next step is Senate confirmation. Some like Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, are expected to fly right through it, but several others are facing big questions over their character and qualifications.

CNN's Alayna Treene is in West Palm Beach, right by Mar-a-Lago. So, Alayna, what are you hearing about how team Trump is preparing for these major battles?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. Well, Manu, there's no question that Donald Trump moved very swiftly to fill out that core cabinet. He has just a few cabinet positions left, but really a lot of the attention now within the transition team is turning toward how they're going to get these people confirmed.

And part of that is trying to feel out, what are these different, particularly the more controversial picks. What are their key vulnerabilities? We know that RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, that are all people that we're hearing some consternation from on Capitol Hill. Consternation that I know the Trump transition team is picking up on, and some of it they've already been aware of when they were selecting these different people to fill these certain roles.

Now, a part of this is we're going to see these different candidates going to Capitol Hill, meeting one-on-one with senators behind closed doors, like we saw Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz do last week alongside VP-elect J. D. Vance.

And really, it's in those meetings that they're trying to get a sense of, OK, what do you need to hear from us in order to make this confirmation process go more smoothly. And really, I think that's the key focus now with people at Mar-a-Lago is back channeling with people on the Hill, trying to get a sense of how they can assuage those concerns before really we see these confirmation battles play out in public.

RAJU: So, Alayna, we're also learning about how the president-elect's team has been foregoing those traditional background checks as typically happens when you put forward a cabinet nominee. What's been going on?

TREENE: Right. So -- that is right. So essentially, Donald Trump's team has kind of missed some key deadlines, known as you know, for signing on to these formal agreements with the Biden administration. They're called memoranda of understanding, also known as MOUs.

And part of that because they have not done that and missed some of these deadlines, we are not seeing the traditional processes be followed, that includes FBI background checks on some of these candidates, which is normally required by many in the Senate in order to move forward with their confirmation process.

Now, when I talk to the Trump team about this, they say that they have not -- you know, they've made no promise not to sign them. They say they still might, they still may go through this. But as of now, the vetting that we are seeing conducted of these different nominees are happening by a private firm and different research firms helping with that.

And so, I think we've seen a lot of, you know -- and you've seen this as well, Manu, people like Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar saying, they want to see these background checks from the FBI before feeling they are comfortable to move forward with this process. But all of that is playing out now as we look ahead to before these people get confirmed and really go through this process, Manu.

RAJU: Yeah, I know. Republicans and Democrats alike want to the background check process to happen, so we'll see how that ultimately plays out. Alayna Treene in Florida, thank you so much. I want to bring in some great reporters here to break this all down for us and is Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, CNN's Kayla Tausche, and John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News. Good to see you all. Thanks for being here.

[12:05:00] So, some new numbers that are out this morning about how the American public sees the Trump transition, how it's going so far. Positive numbers so far for Trump, 59 percent to 41 percent. A lot of voters still have that really totally tuned in here, but still good. You'd be hardened for that if you were the Trump team.

Kayla, as you look at the picture of the Cabinet nominees that Trump is trying to paint here. What do you -- what are they trying? What messages are trying to send with these nominees?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're trying to respond to voters who in their view overwhelmingly voted for change in disruption to the status quo, with not only delivering the battleground states for Trump, but also the electoral college and the popular vote as well as the majorities that they now have in Congress. Even though, as some Democrats have pointed out, they're slimmer than perhaps they were when they flipped under Obama.

But all that to say, I think the general theme of the picks that Trump has selected is this idea that he likes to assemble a marketplace of ideas. We can call it the Agora approach. He wants people from different backgrounds with a spectrum of ideologies. They are not dogmatic. They're not monoliths, and he wants them to present him a menu of options, which -- from which he selects the way that he wants to proceed on any number of types of policies.

The problem is that that is what led to infighting in his first term, and that's what all has already started to lead to infighting among some of these folks, even during the transition because they have such a wide variety of views and such strong beliefs about which direction the administration should go in.

There is also another interesting trend that has continued from the first term of Trump to now the second transition. And that is he's really enamored with the fact that Democrats still want to serve for him. In the first term, he had Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin, and his son in law Jared Kushner, you know, all sort of reformed Democrats.

This time around is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has Tulsi Gabbard. He has a Scott Bessent, all of these folks who essentially converted from the Democratic Party to him. And in the words of one aide, he's really enamored by the action.

RAJU: Yeah. I mean there's different -- there you go. They step on the --

TAUSCHE: That's a direct quote. That's a direct quote.

RAJU: He told that. But it kind of goes into different camps, right? There're some people who are sort of the disruptors you talk about. People are -- but there are people who are seeking out, seeking revenge. I mean, that's part of his whole thing too. The Justice Department, people like Pam Bondi, who has said that they should go after the prosecutors, meaning the people who prosecuted Donald Trump.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Without question. And I think above all, in addition to everything that Kayla said, it's loyalty to him. I mean, there is -- are very few surprises in the cabinet. If you looked at who were sort of the warm-up acts in his campaign trail appearances, virtually every single person who's been appointed to a cabinet, a position I really can't think of one exception was in the run up to many of his rallies. They were in his team already.

So yes, he does want a different point of view, perhaps, but one overarching theme is loyalty to him. That's one of his biggest regrets from the first term. He was sort of open to these outsiders who didn't know that well. And his biggest regret is Jeff Sessions. He did know Jeff Sessions, well of course. He was the first Republican senator to endorse him, and then he, in Trump's views, betrayed him by recusing himself from the Russian --

RAJU: By doing, what he kind of had to do under the rules?

ZELENY: Exactly. And he was following the rules, but not the rules of Trump. So, the rules of Trump are loyalty above all -- and television, that's what is one through line for all of these. He was watching his one of the ways he's picking his cabinet is watching people on television, and that's what is really a central theme of every single cabinet member.

Now, in terms of the confirmation, I think most will be confirmed, obviously, because it's the president's prerogative, but there are a couple that are going to face tough questions. And just talking to some Republican staffers this morning and over the weekend, Tulsi Gabbard is at the top of that list. There's no doubt about it

So, the Senate Intelligence Committee, it's one of those rare places that still -- you know, there's bipartisan agreement that they want someone serious in that. Now she's not the head of the CIA that would be much in the words of one Republican a Senate staffer, that would be a deal breaker. They don't view the office of a national intelligence as much as a key position. But she is going to have a challenge. There's no doubt about it.

RAJU: Yeah. I mean, because she met with the Syrian leader, Bashar al- Assad, right, the dictator, and said that he was not an enemy of the United States after she returned from that trip. This is how the Republican senators, both from Oklahoma were talked about the grab Gabbard nomination just yesterday.

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SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): We'll have lots of questions. She met with Bashar al-Assad. We want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was. As a member of Congress, who want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she's made and get them into full context. So sure, there's comments that are floating out there, but we want to be able to know the rest of the story.

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SEN. MARKWAYNE MULLIN (R-OK): What she did as a member of Congress was not outlined for her to do that. She's went through classified briefings since then. So, there's no document. There's no background there for her to see, for anyone to see. She is a true patriot of the United States.

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BASH: Different views from two Republican senators from the same delegation, laying for those on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will take the first crack at reviewing her nomination. You're talking to Republican senators all the time. How likely is it that she gets confirmed, or is this one that could potentially go down?

JOHN BRESNAHAN, CO-FOUNDER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: I think this is a close call right now. So, Tom Cotton will take over the intelligence committee, and that's a big deal. Tom Cotton is a very loyal Trump supporter. He was in line, and they talked about him possibly for defense secretary --

RAJU: And his views are much different than Tulsi Gabbard.

BRESNAHAN: And he's in Republican leadership, but he's a hawk. There's a couple hawks there, Jim Risch, another one who's on Intel would not he was asked over the weekend. He was at a Halifax security conference. He would not endorse Gabbard. He would not endorse Pete Hegseth.

So, there are very serious questions about her. The intelligence committee process is a little different than other ones. It's very rigorous. I mean, they will look at her. I do think this is difficult. I mean, I covered in 2017, you know, I was reporting on this when Gabbard went to Syria. She didn't tell anybody, and she -- I remember trying to interview her about what she did, who paid for it, why she went, how to came about. It was. It was -- how do you say it? I'm not going to say fishy, but it was questionable.

RAJU: It was sponsored by an Ohio based Arab American economic group.

BRESNAHAN: Yeah, exactly. But the time, she didn't tell us that. And she -- and she would not answer questions, and she wouldn't answer questions about how she interacted with Assad. I do think there's a lot of stuff there. I do think her and Hegseth are the ones -- I think Hegseth probably will be confirmed, but I do think Gabbard is the one that stands out right now. I think it's going to be a tough time for them.

RAJU: Just in terms of what the American public sees in these not what they want are these Cabinet nominees. This is from the same CBS News / YouGov poll about the important qualities for cabinet picks. Most of them want them to disagree with Trump. 89 percent. Yes, they also want experience in that field, and agency, something that some of these nominees simply don't have.

JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: Yeah. I mean, I think it's fascinating to juxtapose that we'll disagree with Trump versus that we're actually happy with the cabinet. Because I think if you look at the cabinet, these are who likely will not be disagreeing with Trump, maybe not all of them, but certainly a majority of them.

And honestly, they were picked not just because of loyalty because they have an appetite to take on the system in a way that Donald Trump feels that the system was not just unhelpful to him, but actively targeted him.

Now, when I talk to people close to Trump, they say that he and others around him believe that they have a large mandate, a large roadway to kind of institute what they want to do with the government because of their decisive win, even though it's getting smaller kind of by the days go on.

But because of their decisive win, I think what they really have is the opportunity to show the American public that they can do well in the economy. And then after that, they can kind of put into place, or they have that really large roadway to do everything else that they want.

But the economy is going to be important here, because if people feel like they are not bringing down prices, which I think is why a huge portion of why Trump won so decisively. They're going to be in trouble for all the other places that they want to implement changes in the government.

But for the Trump campaign and for the transition, they feel that they have a lot of ability to do a lot of things when it comes down to tearing down these key parts of the government that have been in place for decades.

RAJU: But as we -- as we mentioned here, there's a whole band of different people here. One of them is Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer. She is a -- from a swing district in Oregon. She lost her race here. She's got more liberal views on the issue of labor. She was picked as labor secretary.

And you see the Republican chairman who's going to lead the key committee overseeing it was very critical, I would say, for Republican words, very critical. I will need to get a better understanding of her support for Democrat legislation in Congress that would strip away Louisiana's ability to be a right to work state. It's interesting because there are Democrats like John Fetterman who are praising this nomination. This is one in which Trump is not going but the MAGA round.

TAUSCHE: No. And he's choosing someone that is inherently different from the person that he chose the first time around when he chose decidedly anti-labor candidates to run that agency. But this is sort of a nod to the fact that the working class, and specifically the non- college voter delivered the election for him this time around.

I mean thinking about the conversation that you had without going Senator Sherrod Brown, where he talked about Democrats failed to message appropriately to the working class to remind them what Democrats had done for that party.

Trump, I think in talking to people who have knowledge of the way that his mindset worked around this pick doesn't want someone who's going to come in and sort of reverse some of the things that the Biden administration has done, or to perhaps go against his policies on tips and on wages that he has promised on the --

RAJU: Or maybe she falls at line with whatever Trump wants.

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WRIGHT: Yeah. Because ultimately, Trump is a president, so he dictates the mandate. Now, of course, maybe there isn't two years some really large scuffle that we hear only about in reporting, and then she's out of a job. But frankly, these people are put in place because they, I assume, have told Donald Trump that they would be willing to do what he asked, not in the way that other people in 2016 to 2020 didn't do what he asked in favor of the constitution.

RAJU: All right. We have more to discuss. I know you want to jump in. The only president, plenty to discuss. Coming up next. Democrats warned about it. Trump disavowed it. But now some of the big names been Project 2025. A conservative blueprint to reshape America will be front and center in the new administration.

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RAJU: Donald Trump tapped another Project 2025 influencer for a key role in his administration. The president-elect named Russell Vought as his White House budget director. Vought, who served in the same position during the first Trump term, was a key figure behind the 900- page blueprint for a Republican presidency.

Now, Democrats sought to tie Trump to the controversial and unpopular ideas inside it. Trump disavowed the plan and the group behind it. And yet, he's been hiring its authors to staff his administration. Besides Vought, there's Tom Homan. The supporters are John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, Brendan Carr, FCC chair, Pete Hoekstra, ambassador to Canada.

Now listen to what vote previewed in these priorities in an interview with Tucker Carlson just last week.

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RUSSELL VOUGHT, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE BUDGET DIRECTOR & CO-AUTHOR, PROJECT 2025: We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy and have the president take control of the executive branch. So, my belief for anyone who wants to listen is that you have to -- the president has to move executively as fast and as aggressively as possible with a radical constitutional perspective to be able to dismantle that bureaucracy in their power centers.

And I think there are a couple of ways to do it. Number one is going after the whole notion of independence. There are no independent agencies.

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RAJU: My panel is back. I mean, people outside of Washington may not be as familiar with the White House Office of Management and Budget. But it is a hugely significant post to have this role, basically what the federal government decides to do on the regulation side, goes through him, and you heard what he wants to do.

BRESNAHAN: Oh, yeah. I mean, I watched this. I wrote on today for Punchbowl News and I watched this speech or this interview. Then I read everything he's written on this. He sees -- and it goes back, I think, to the Trump nominees. Trump is -- they're going to try and run everything from the White House. Not only what the White House normally runs, they're going to run every agency from the White House, every department is going to run from the White House.

Now we've seen this --

RAJU: As he has basically said, there's no independent.

BRESNAHAN: There's no independent, but he's going to -- and he's going to run it all from the White House. And this is the kind of person you need to do that. That what also struck me is, like -- this is a young guy, Stephen Miller's a young guy. These guys have very, very strong views of the power of the presidency.

He -- if you read what he talks about OMB, and he was very technical, but OMB will be involved in every decision, and that will come right from Trump. And this -- I mean, I think this is -- it goes with the cabinet picks, because they don't have their own kind of franchise.

They're not -- they all come. They flow from Trump. And he'll use them to execute his agenda and all these agencies. And there's not going to be any standup agencies that don't come under his thumb. So, I think it's all plays in one piece.

ZELENY: And this is probably Exhibit A of how the second time around -- both the president and people work for him know exactly what they want to accomplish and what they're doing. There is no learning curve here. Russell Vought obviously came from the Hill, so it's kind of ironic that many people on the Hill will not take kindly Republicans and Democrats to, you know the idea of so much power in the executive branch.

But over the last couple of decades, the presidency and the executive branch has amassed considerable power, much, much, much more than it was in the Reagan era or the first Bush or the second one. I mean, it has grown every time. Of course, if it's a Democratic administration, Republicans on the Hill complain about the czars and things. I mean, that is out the window, but this is going to be --

RAJU: Yeah. Having more than Obama, they were criticizing Obama for that. The Republicans were.

ZELENY: For sure they were. And I think, you know, Democrats will criticize Republicans. But the reality is, I mean, elections have consequences. This is Exhibit A of that, and he knows exactly what he's doing at OMB. So very, very powerful person who all decisions basically will go through his office is so important.

RAJU: Yeah. It absolutely is. And there's a reason why Trump decided to distance himself, to say the least about Project 2025. We'll see they're actually able to implement some of these ideas. But just an idea of what -- why he was running away from this, that Russell Vought was involved with this overall project.

This is one of the things, cutting abortion access as part of the proposals. That is part of this blueprint here, advocating for mass deportations, widespread firings of federal workers. That's a big priority of Russell Vought. Tricking social safety nets was also within the proposal, and also rolling back trans rights. We heard that throughout the course of the campaign.

But when Trump was asked about this during the campaign, or when he was -- when this came up because the Democrats tried to hammer him on this. This is what he said.

[12:25:00]

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL- ELECT: I have nothing to do with Project 2025. That's out there. I haven't read it. I don't want to read it purposely. I'm not going to read it. Project 2025, I've said hundred times, I know nothing about it. I had nothing to do. I've totally disavowed it. A group of people went in, and I don't know what they did. I have no idea what Project 2025 is. I never read it. And I never will. And they keep talking about Project 2025. And I said, I don't know about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: We probably could have went on for a little bit longer -- but I wonder, do you think that they can actually implement some of these ideas?

WRIGHT: I mean, I think that they basically have two years to implement all these ideas, of course, then the midterm comes, and people will have a referendum on how they like the first few years in office. But I think as long as the economy is doing OK, they have basically two years to implement a lot of these changes.

Now, whether some of them get caught up in the courts. I think a lot of them will, but certainly some of them might actually exist. I also think that when you think about Vought, right, he is even in terms of the spectrum of Trump advisers. He is really far to the right, and he really wants to tear down a lot of these systems.

And as Jeff said, he's going to have a lot of power to do it. The question is whether or not the people in two years will say that they've had enough of it, whether it's because of the rumors of infighting, whether it's because of things are just working the way that they don't want to. And so, I think that that's going to be a big question.

But I think that they're going to be able to get a sizable amount done, because Russell Vought and other folks that are going to be inside of the administration, have been planning to do this for two years. And I think we're going to hear a lot of Democrats say, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, because it comes into fruition.

RAJU: But also, you're running into the bureaucracy. There's a bureaucracy they don't have to deal with. Yes, they can try to implement this stuff. Yeah, you have Congress, you have the courts, and you have sort of the protocols within a federal agency.

TAUSCHE: Yes. And the fact of the matter is, it's 900 pages. It's a conservative wish list. They're going to be drawing from it, but it is not in its entirety, going to be lifted to become the president's budget. I believe Trump that he hasn't read it. He does not fancy himself with the fine print.

But you know, these ideas have been talked about at length within his camp, about which of these are viable and which are not. But when I talk to Trump advisers, they say, pay less attention to Project 2025 and more attention to what's been published by the America First Policy Institute, which basically is borrowing from Project 2025 and figuring out what from that is passable, and what of that aligns with what the president has done.

Many of the people from AFPI, which essentially has been like, you know, that Trump farm team for the last four years, many of those people are now going to be in the administration alongside Russell Vought.

And so, while he singularly has very clear views about what he wants to do, and having served in that exact role before, he knows where all the plumbing is, you know, he knows exactly how to do it. But there are other priorities and others in the administration, especially those who came from AFPI, who might say, this is a priority. We need to elevate this. We can't waste political capital on that. And that's going to be a real debate that happens.

RAJU: Yeah. We'll see they're able to implement. All right, coming up. Donald Trump promised the largest deportation U.S. history. Turns out, it's a popular idea, at least when they're asked in polls. We'll talk more about that, next.

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