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In Lengthy Press Conference, Trump Weighs In On Special Counsel Probe, January 6 Pardons, Ukraine and Gaza, Renaming Gulf of Mexico. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 07, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- and 5 cents on the dollar.

[12:30:03]

And you know, what they were doing? They were calling us up and saying, we'll sell it back to you at 200 cents. In other words, double what we paid for it.

So they were going to buy it from this guy for 5 cents on the dollar. They were making deals. And fortunately, we had a very smart judge that stopped it cold. I think he called for an investigation too, and he should.

But think of it, they were selling the wall. That was exactly the wall that the Border Patrol wanted, that was designed by them -- steel, concrete, rebar, exactly as they want. Very, very heavy steel, very powerful steel, hard to cut, very, very heavy 7,000 pound concrete, which is a very strong concrete.

Everything was top of the line, very expensive. Would be double what we paid for it then six years ago.

But let me just tell you, they were selling it for 5 cents on the dollar to people. And those people were calling us, asking us to pay them 200 cents because it's a good deal, because we can have it immediately. And you know what immediately is? Just leave it in place.

No, no, the -- the papers have been written that though. You know, that deal is like all the other things that these people are doing, these people either hate our country or they're very stupid. And I don't believe they're stupid because nobody can cheat on elections like they cheat and be stupid. They either hate our country or they're stupid.

So remember what I said because nobody wants to report it. They were selling the wall for 5 cents on the dollar and trying to resell it back to us for 200 cents or less, but for 200 cents on the dollar. That's a -- that's a nice return.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: -- announced it will be stopping fact checks on posts on its website and -- TRUMP: Say it? Say it?

REPORTER: Meta said today it would stop putting fact checks on its website and instead allow community --

TRUMP: Well, I watched their news conference and I thought it was a very good news conference. I think they've -- honestly I think they've come a long way -- Meta, Facebook. I think they've come a long way.

I watched it, the man was very impressive. I watched it, actually, I watched it on Fox. I'm not allowed to say that. Say it?

REPORTER: Do you think he's directly responding to the threats that you have made to him in the past with these actions?

TRUMP: Yeah, probably.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: The last time you were -- the last time you were here, you were asked a question about the U.S. possibly launching a preemptive strike on Iran. You said you wouldn't answer that question.

TRUMP: On who?

REPORTER: Obviously -- on Iran, the U.S. launch a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

TRUMP: And I said, I don't -- I don't talk about it. It's a military strategy.

REPORTER: But it is a legitimate question. It's something --

REPORTER: Well, it's not really because only a stupid person would answer it.

TRUMP: Look, it's a military strategy, and I'm not answering your questions on military strategy.

All right, one more. Brian, go ahead. Brian?

REPORTER: Would you -- could you give us a preview of what you might be talking to leaders of Congress who expected to come here in the next couple of days, and you've got a very supportive Congress behind you?

TRUMP: Yeah, they're great.

So we have a wonderful Republican Congress. We have a leader that have a lot of confidence in. I think he's going to be hopefully a great leader, a great speaker. And we have a leader, by the way, in the Senate, I think has been great. John Thune has been doing a fantastic job.

But it goes through the House first. And the question is whether or not we do the two bills, the one bill. And, you know, look, I can live either way. I like the idea of the one big bill, but I can live either way.

But they'll be coming down. The senators also will be coming down. And then ultimately we'll be meeting in the White House in a few weeks. But right now, this is the winter season.

You know, they sort of call this the winter White House. It was built. I don't know if you know this, Marjorie Merriweather Post and E.F. Hutton built this. It was the greatest of all the estates in our country. And I saved it. And I got a lot of credit for saving it.

Most of these big, great houses have been knocked down in Palm Beach. Just about all of them, actually. And they, you know, you build ten mansions on one site, but we saved it.

But this was built as the southern White House, and she gave it to the government. And by the way, Jimmy Carter gave it back. He said it's too expensive for the United States. So I didn't -- I didn't realize that.

REPORTER: I was just -- I was just told --

TRUMP: Actually, Jimmy Carter -- Nixon was through Watergate. He came down. He -- Nixon came here once and he thought it was incredible.

But he had a thing called Watergate if anybody remembers that. And so he had other things on his mind, to put it mildly. And Jimmy Carter felt that it was too extravagant for the country. So fortunately for me, he gave it back to the foundation, and I bought it from the foundation.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: On reconciliation, some Republicans saying in trade for a massive bill that you and they share the interest in, they want to see big spending cuts. Do you agree with that? And what --

TRUMP: Well, I'm okay with spending cuts. I like spending cuts. Just -- I'm on the record for spending cuts.

And the debt ceiling was given to us. It shouldn't have been, but it was put in our lap. And what I want in terms of debt ceiling isn't the ceiling.

[12:35:03]

I just don't want to see a default. That's all I want.

I never talked about spending more money necessarily, than all I want to see is no default, because nobody knows what would happen if there was a default. It could be 1929 and it could be nothing. But that was put into default, because nobody knows what would happen default, because nobody knows what would happen if there was a default.

It could be 1929 and it could be nothing. But that was put into our lap and it shouldn't have been, but it was. And so we'll handle it. But debt ceiling is not about raising a lot of money. It's really just about extending it. I just want to see an extension.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: Mr. President, on immigration, sir, on immigration.

How much can you do by executive order? Are you planning to do on executive order when it comes to immigration? And how much do you want Congress to tackle this issue? And also on day one --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, I had the safest border in the history of our country by far. You remember the famous chart that I brought down. I love that chart very much for a lot of reasons, but I have the safest border by far in the history of our country, and when I took it over, it was a mess.

Nothing like it is now. This is ten times worse. When I got elected because of the border the first time, and I think I got elected largely because of the border the third time, and the second time I did equally well. Well, not as well as the last time, but I did very well.

And I will say this was too big to rig, you know, you know the expression? Too big to rig. They couldn't do it. They tried, but they couldn't do it.

I didn't get very much from Congress at all. I just said that we're being invaded, and I took the money out of the military. Much of the wall I built 500 -- over 500 miles of wall. Much of that wall was built through money that had put into the military. We took it out because we couldn't get things from Congress in those days, and we took it out, and that wall was built largely with money coming from the military.

So, very simple. I went to the military -- I said, our country is being invaded by very similar. Nothing like what's invading our country now. They weren't releasing prisoners into our country and they weren't releasing mental institutions in. But some -- some bad dudes were coming in, right?

And I said, our country is being invaded. And I took that money largely from the military. I was sued nine times by the Democrats in Congress, and I won all those suits and we built five -- we ended up building 571 miles of wall.

Once that wall was built, they start going around it. So we're going to add another 200 that would have been up in three weeks. And then we had a very unfortunate election result. And they said we don't want to put it up. We'll sell it.

And they started selling it for 5 cents on the dollar. What a -- what a --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: So we'll do this again. I just want to thank everybody very much.

I'm just telling you, this will be the golden age of America. This is the golden age of America. We're going to have a great country again. We're a country right now under siege.

We have so many different problems and nobody respects us overseas. But now they do. The Italian prime minister, as you know, came here the other night, just flew in and flew out. She wanted to -- she wanted to see me and great respect is being shown.

When I went to the cathedral in France, great respect was shown by the prime minister, the president, by everybody. France was -- and by the way, I have to say they did a great job in the cathedral.

But great respect is being shown to our country again, and we have a great country, but we have to run it properly. It's going to be run properly. We want to get back those hostages for Israel and for us.

You know, we do have people that are hostages being held. And I'll just say it again, if this deal is not done with the people representing our nation, by the time I get to office, all hell is going to break out.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

REPORTER: -- Ukraine, Russia, war before you take office?

REPORTER: Can you clarify what you mean by military?

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS.

That was over an hour of Donald Trump giving a news conference, answering questions and giving us some new information about what he intends to do, or at the very least, is not ruling out when he takes office, including not ruling out a military invasion to conquer Greenland, the Panama Canal and perhaps the annexation of the country of Canada.

There is a lot more to discuss. We have a terrific panel here.

Kaitlan Collins, you are our chief White House correspondent, in addition to all of your other titles.

(LAUGHTER)

BASH: What's that?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thirteen more days to go.

BASH: Yeah. Okay, okay. But you obviously have been covering Donald Trump for a very long time. Before I get to you, I do want to play David Sanger, our friend at "The New York Times". His question about the Panama Canal and on Greenland and Donald Trump's response before you respond.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: No, I can't assure you on either of those two. But I can say this: we need them for economic security.

[12:40:05]

The Panama Canal was built for our military.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

TRUMP: I'm not going to commit to that now. It might -- it might be that you'll have to do something.

Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It's being operated by China. China.

And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn't give it to China. And they've abused it. They've abused that gift.

It should have never been made, by the way, it was -- giving the Panama Canal is why Jimmy Carter lost the election, in my opinion, more so maybe than the hostages. The hostages were a big deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Okay. So the question is, Kaitlan, how much of this is Donald Trump being trying to negotiate and posturing and warning them? And how much do you really think he means it, particularly given the fact that a big part of his consistent campaign message for eight years has been, I'm going to get us out of wars.

COLLINS: Well, I mean, it was an extraordinary moment, one of the most extraordinary moments of that press conference where he was refusing to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, something that he himself brought up. I should note in this press conference, when a reporter later asked, why are you bringing this up?

Obviously, it's a signature achievement of Jimmy Carter. He's about to be lying in state here in Washington, Trump said he was asked about it, but Trump brought it up in his opening remarks. It's something that he's been quite fixated on behind the scenes, from what I've heard from -- from sources in the past few weeks on this issue, complaining about Chinese influence.

Obviously, this was a signature achievement of Jimmy Carter's. He believed it improved relations with Latin America for the United States, and still, it's one of his biggest accomplishments that people talk about.

But Trump there saying that he would not rule out using military force to retake it, is not something that should be treated as with bluster. I mean, Trump is coming into this White House and is intentionally staffing his administration with aides who will not block what he wants to do or what he ultimately seeks. There were many instances in his first term where he wanted to do

something, but advisers either convinced him not to or Republican lawmakers did. That is not going to be the same Washington that we are encountering in 13 days from now when Trump takes office. So I would treat everything he said there quite seriously.

I mean, moments after he said he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying that she's going to advocate for that.

But I do want to say one of the biggest things that stood out to me from that press conference, from moments when Trump got out there before he even started taking questions, is the level of anger.

BASH: He's really agitated.

COLLINS: Well, we know why. He made it quite clear a few moments, and its two things. It's his legal issues overall, but it's -- it's the sentencing that he is facing on Friday that so far is still Judge Merchan has denied efforts to delay it. His attorneys are still working to do so.

And two, it's this report by Jack Smith that we are told is imminent and is going to come out. Trump was informed during that that Judge Cannon down in Florida has tried to temporarily block that. Well, it's not a settled matter. We'll see if it's successful.

But his level of anger over that is unmistakable. He has not been this angry since he won the election.

BASH: And, John, I wanted to intentionally start a little bit micro on Panama and on -- and on Greenland, particularly since his son is in Greenland as we speak. But I do want to sort of open it up a little and talk big picture about your takeaway from, as Kaitlan just said.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is remarkable. Somebody who is two weeks from resuming the presidency of the United States, who whether you voted for him or not, whether you like him or not, just engineered a remarkable historical political comeback, is so whiny and so full of grievances. Now, that is Donald Trump's trademark.

That has been his trademark since he came down that escalator. He uses grievance to keep his people together, to keep his base together, and to keep his team loyal. But he came out clearly -- his lawyers had access to the Jack Smith report at a private meeting here in Washington, D.C. They have briefed him on it. He is going to now try to use every legal power he can to prevent its release. You could see how angry he was about it.

There's the sentencing on Friday. He was beating up on Joe Biden, who, yes, is using his powers on the way out to sign executive orders to do things that Donald Trump fundamentally disagrees with.

COLLINS: Trump also did.

KING: Welcome to it -- as Trump also did. Welcome to American politics.

But talking about how he's inheriting a mess, he's inheriting the strongest economy in the world. It has troubles. It has potholes, it has issues. But he's inheriting the strongest economy in the world.

And the Biden team is working with him as Donald Trump's own negotiator acknowledged on the very difficult issues about in the Middle East, about hostage releasing and about trying to finally bring about a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

His negotiator was very polite and respectful of the Biden administration. Trump was quite scornful and not factual.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Can I just say I thought that was like a bookend to the interview Susie Wiles did, who was also very respectful when she talked to "Axios" about Jeff Zients, the current White House chief of staff. So you have Steve Witkoff on one end talking about working so well with the Biden team in tandem on an issue as fraught as trying to get these hostages out. You had Susie Wiles on the front end two days ago yesterday saying that the chief of staff, the current Biden chief of staff, is doing everything very kind.

[12:45:03]

And yet in the middle of all that, you have Donald Trump trying to gin up this notion to your point about grievance, saying that they're throwing everything at this to make this a very difficult transition.

KING: Everybody's still out to get him. He just won an election. And then he questioned the election again, too. It was too big to rig, he said.

He won the election. He won the popular vote. He should be celebrating. He should be coming into Washington.

Yes. He has very narrow majorities in the House and the Senate. It's going to be difficult to get things done, but this should be someone who is upbeat and happy to come in.

But he is still full of grievances because it is his organizing principle. But there are a lot of lies in there. That was a trailer -- that was an hour long trailer for the next four years, in that he tells a lot of lies. He hedges, he exaggerates and hypes a lot of things, but he also made a ton of news there.

You're right. You're right about the idea that it's posturing, but the idea that he couldn't rule out econ -- using either economic leverage or military force to take Greenland and the Panama Canal, he says he's going to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Canada, our closest friend in the world, our neighbor to the north, a giant economic partner, is in the middle of a political crisis right now. And he just poured kerosene on the fire.

BASH: That's why he did it. CHALIAN: Military action there.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Well, he did.

CHALIAN: He did actually --

KING: He said he would, but he said he would use economic leverage.

BASH: He did. He said, I will use economic force because Canada and -- well, actually, let's listen to what --

KING: Your neighbor's house is on fire and you don't call the fire department and you pour kerosene on it.

BASH: Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Are you also considering military force to annex and acquire?

TRUMP: No economic force, because Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security.

Why are we supporting a country $200 billion plus a year? Our military is at their disposal. All of these other things, they should be a state. That's why I told Trudeau when he came down, I said, what would happen if we didn't do it? He said Canada would dissolve.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, if anybody has moved since Trump was elected to Canada, they're going to be looking down from the north to the south saying, okay, is this going to happen? But no, but in all seriousness, John, you said that he's pouring gasoline on a fire. Excuse me, while Canada is having trouble.

But the reality is that part of why Canada is having trouble, why Trudeau resigned yesterday is because of these threats. It's also because there's anti-incumbent fever globally and has been all year. The fact that they are in such turmoil, he believes -- Trump believes that he has maximum leverage right now with Canada.

CHALIAN: Precisely. Yeah. And you hear this -- he keeps talking about this $200 billion trade deficit, which he sees as a giveaway to Canada. And there's no doubt he sees this. In fact, he was asked about the election, if he might be able to work better.

And he said, well, that guy, the conservative, may not even win. Or, you know, he didn't want to get in there because he did want to use this moment for maximum leverage. I will say just two other things that I think it's worth noting in the press conference. One, he continued, just because were a day after January 6th, to say

that pardons are coming, as he has said --

BASH: And he said, I'm making major parties.

CHALIAN: Making major pardons as it relates to January 6th, though not a clear blanket pardon for everyone involved. But clearly that is still on very much front of mind for him. And I do think you -- you heard in the press conference him at times he was asked about prices and his comments to "Time Magazine" about sort of expectations, setting that getting prices down is tough.

He understands, you see there that he won this election on the economy and on immigration. He -- he said that as much. And so it was interesting to hear him reassert what he said at the time, which is like, oh, prices are going to come down, but it is tough to get prices down. He -- he wants to have that both ways.

BASH: I don't want to lose sight. We're going to -- Daniel Dale is getting ready to do a fact check on what he said about January 6th. And, who was killed and what the sort of what actually happened that day.

But before we get to that, before this press conference and what we heard about Panama and the Panama Canal and Greenland and Canada and a whole host of other things, by far the biggest news story was Mark Zuckerberg saying this morning that they are totally changing their rules. They're getting rid of third party fact checkers, effectively saying exactly what -- what X is doing, what Elon Musk is doing and what Donald Trump and MAGA world have been asking for, for a very long time.

Our Steve Contorno asked whether or not he believes that these changes, capitulations are a direct response to Trump's threat, and Trump just said one word: probably.

COLLINS: Well, I mean, the value to listening to Trump and to airing these press conferences is that he often says what he really thinks.

[12:50:02]

And he just had dinner with Mark Zuckerberg --

BASH: Exactly.

COLLINS: -- at Mar-a-Lago not that long ago, not far from where he was standing.

And that is how the Trump team views this big announcement. There's a reason it was announced on Fox News today. Trump was watching it as it came out and had an idea that this was coming.

And so, certainly, I mean, we're seeing a lot of big tech companies and big tech founders making the trip down to Mar-a-Lago. Now, Facebook and Meta are part of that. And so we're seeing all of that part of this. That is also what I'm saying about how we should be taking what Trump

is saying seriously, in the sense of he is coming into an area where big tech and big business are trying to appease him and listening to him, and certainly trying to make sure that Elon Musk isn't the only person who has major contracts that he's able to secure with the federal government.

But what he's saying about Greenland there and saying not ruling out military force to David Sanger is notable. But then he said that he believes the U.S. needs Greenland for national security reasons.

This has been something he has been thinking for eight years. It was brought up by "The Wall Street Journal" when they first reported it during his first term. But he also threatened economic coercion against Denmark, saying that he could level tariffs against them if they do not refuse to -- to provide it or sell it to the United States.

That is certainly going to be an avenue. I mean, Trump's national security aides, secretary of state, incoming, potentially, Marco Rubio, the national security advisor, Michael Waltz, those are all comments that Trump is going to be committing to and keeping up with when he takes office.

BASH: Go ahead.

KING: And one other quick one we haven't mentioned because there was so much there is there's going to be a lot of reverberations throughout NATO and Ukraine.

BASH: Yeah, that was the other thing I was just going to point out --

KING: Because he took Vladimir Putin's side about Ukraine and NATO, saying, I understand why Russia would be mad that some country on its doorstep would join NATO. And he said he was frustrated. He thought it was inappropriate that he talked to Putin before he's actually inaugurated.

BASH: Can we just stop right there, John?

KING: Yeah.

BASH: Just that quote alone.

KING: Yeah, Russia is mad. And I understand that.

BASH: That Russia invaded a democracy --

KING: A democratic nation within Europe.

BASH: -- and he understands why Russia.

KING: He understands why Russia -- well, he understands why Russia is mad. Let's be careful and let's be fair to President Trump.

BASH: That's fair. KING: President-elect Trump. He says Russia is mad that NATO -- would be considered for NATO membership because it's on his doorstep. Ukraine is a democracy within Europe, and there's a process to apply to NATO. There has been for quite some time.

The fact that the president of the United States, the leading superpower in the NATO alliance, would say, I understand that.

BASH: And he also said --

CHALIAN: He also suggested there was some deal. He thought that was in place, that Ukraine would not -- is suggesting that Ukraine would not look for NATO membership, and said his understanding was that it was written in stone for Russia, that Ukraine would not seek entrance into NATO.

COLLINS: They also said Russia wasn't in Ukraine when he was in office. Obviously, they had illegally annexed Crimea when Obama was in office. They were fighting in Ukraine.

CHALIAN: Yes, indeed.

KING: And he said -- you know, again, we have one president at a time, which can be those lines get blurred a lot. But he did say he thought it was unfortunate he couldn't speak to Putin now, but he did say that he would speak with him as soon as possible.

He gave --

BASH: I think the question was meet with him.

KING: Somebody said, would it take six months? Meet with him, meet with him.

Now, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has met with Putin. He was the first one because German. I don't want to get into German politics right now. They're complicated as well.

The global politics are complicated. He finally did -- no other western leader since Putin invaded Ukraine, has met with him for the president-elect of the United States said, lets do this. To do this as soon as possible is big international news that's going to cause a lot of reverberations around Europe.

BASH: Okay. Daniel Dale has been waiting patiently.

Daniel, we were talking about the president-elect's comments about January 6th. I know that there were a number of statements that are not accurate. Can you tell us what happened?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: There are.

So listen to what he said about one prominent rioter and the presence of guns at the Capitol that day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Ashli Babbitt was killed. She was shot. She had never been shot. She was shot for no reason whatsoever. In fact, they say that she was trying to hold back the crowd, and the crowd was made up of a lot of different people. So we'll see.

But I will tell you this, the person that was -- was killed was Ashli Babbitt. This would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun. Okay?

And let me tell you, the people that you're talking about have a lot of guns in their home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DALE: This not one gun thing, Dana, has been debunked for three and a half years now, if not more. It is an out and out lie.

Now, we'll never get a complete inventory of the number of guns brought by people to the Capitol that day, because most of them were permitted to leave before later being arrested. But there have been numerous cases in which people carried guns on Capitol grounds and were convicted for it.

I have a list in front of me. Mark Mazza, two loaded handguns on Capitol grounds, five years in prison. Guy Reffitt, more than seven years in prison carried a handgun on Capitol grounds.

Christopher Alberts had a pistol during the riot. Seven years in prison.

Jerod Bargar pleaded guilty, had a pistol there.

John Banuelos charged for allegedly twice firing a pistol in the air on Capitol grounds.

Roger Preacher, pistol in his waistband.

Mario Morris of Texas convicted of having a pistol in his waistband at the Capitol.

So, the not one gun thing is out and out false.

Now, on the Ashli Babbitt case -- look, it's subjective of whether she should have been shot. I can't fact check that, but the president- elect is certainly leaving out some pertinent facts here, specifically that Ms. Babbitt was a rioter who was trying to enter a shattered window of the House speaker's lobby had been warned not to do so, was carrying a knife.

So, certainly, not just wandering around aimlessly or something of that sort.

BASH: All right. Daniel, thank you so much for that. Appreciate it.

And staying on the sort of broader topic or the related topic to January 6th, I don't want to lose sight of what he said about Jack Smith, calling him deranged and worse, which is, I know, not new. He called him mean and nasty, but also what happened while this press conference was going on, which is that Judge Aileen Cannon, a judge who actually he said that he had never met, even though he obviously had a very important case before her, and he appointed her to the federal bench. She ruled that this report that Jack Smith put together will remain sealed.

COLLINS: And she's not the final say I should note. We'll wait to see, because obviously the Justice Department is going to respond to this, I would presume basically this report from our understanding, and we learned a lot from a filing that came out last night. Trump's attorneys and the attorneys of his allies/co-defendants in Florida reviewed this over the weekend. They got to go to the DOJ, go into a conference room and actually look at this report.

The understanding is, as they laid it out in this filing, is that it's two parts. On the election interference case and the classified documents case. They were arguing, in part, that the classified documents case shouldn't come out because of the Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira. They still have charges pending against them.

But Trump's attorneys signed on saying none of this should be able to come out because Jack Smith's not supposed to be special counsel, which is Judge Cannon's findings as well, which is why the classified documents case is no more.

Trump found out during that that she says right now, temporarily, this report cannot be released. They can't. The Jack Smith can't even transmit it to the Justice Department, is what she's arguing.

We'll see if that holds. Obviously, there will be appeals. We're told it could come out really any day now, potentially by the end of this week. But they are fighting very hard. And he is very angry that even part of this could come out.

What I've heard from people over the last few weeks is that a lot of this has to do with the Mueller report coming out and how Trump felt about that, because it went into details about his aides and whatnot.

So we'll see if it ultimately comes out. But I mean, he came out and I think so much of what we heard was there was this underlying level of anger about this and the sentencing in New York.

BASH: But I agree with that. I believe, because he talked about the "injustice department", quote, unquote, many, many times. The whole beginning of this news conference was also about the series of executive orders that Joe Biden has issued relating to land -- relating to oil and gas. And that kind of prompted a lot of what he said, said yesterday on Truth Social.

And again, at this press conference about the fact that he doesn't think Biden is giving him a proper transition, which Susie Wiles his incoming chief of staff, explicitly said the opposite. But I don't -- I don't want to gloss over some of the interesting things that we heard. We heard things before about windmills and so forth.

But --

KING: Don't forget about water in your dishwasher.

BASH: He went off about and we've actually heard a little bit about that before, believe it or not. But he went off about, his anger about gas stoves and gas heat in particular, and the fact that the Biden administration wants to be more electric and that he said, you know, people know that if you have electric heat in your apartment, in your house, you get the itch.

CHALIAN: I mean, he has guys this -- he's talked about these kinds of things, these environmentally tangential pieces of your everyday home life. He gets obsessed with them.

BASH: Yes.

CHALIAN: But as I listen to Kaitlan talk about the anger that was on display here, I do think it is important to note how much that is in contrast to what we've seen since the election in November from him.

That is a -- this was a more familiar Trump to anyone who paid attention to the four years where he felt completely under siege all the time when he was in the White House. That's not how he felt. He -- I mean, he's given voice to this when he said, you know, everyone used to attack me, and now everyone's being a friend of mine.

That's part of his sort of lighter feeling about this moment and becoming the 47th president again, different than he felt becoming the 45th president. And this was a return -- to your point about the trailer, I just wonder if America knew we were going to get sort of this kind of repeat performance.

BASH: I'm sure --

KING: It's just a fascinating glimpse of his mindset, the artificial line separating the United States and Canada. I know that's an internationally recognized border, as is the sovereignty of Greenland, as is the treaty where Jimmy Carter signed over the Panama Canal, as is when you pull out a map. I use maps every now and then where it says the Gulf of Mexico.

That's been there for a while. Donald Trump thinks if I wanted to be, it shall be. It's just a fascinating glimpse at his mindset. And, you know, in 13 days, he becomes president of United States again. And we will -- we will watch how much again, she knows better than anyone at this table.

A lot of what he says is for negotiating purposes and purposes, to get some percentage of what he really says is what he wants. But here it comes.

BASH: They say you should live in interesting times. These are those times.

Thank you all for getting us through that. I appreciate it.

Thank you for watching INSIDE POLITICS.

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