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Inside Politics

Trump Jump-Starts 2nd Term With Stunning Slew Of Executive Orders; Trump Pardons Nearly All Jan. 6 Rioters, Including Defendants Convicted Of Attacking Police Officers; Tillis: Trump's Pardons And Commutations Make Capitol Hill Less Safe; Trump Signs Executive Orders Cracking Down On Immigration; Homan: "Targeted Enforcement Operations" Being Today; Trump's Border Czar Details Deportation Enforcement. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired January 21, 2025 - 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: Today on Inside Politics, day two. Exactly 24 hours ago, Donald Trump took the oath of office again. And the actions that he has taken since he's been in office, they've been dizzying. And that's by design.

We're going to break down some of the most consequential changes so far. That includes what he made official. He says, it's an emergency at the southern border. We will bring you my interview with Trump's border czar about the series of massive changes, he says is underway right now.

And all the president's billionaires. Four of the five richest people in the world were only a few feet away from Trump as he took the oath of office. What does that say about how Trump wants to present himself to the country.

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

I want to start by getting straight to CNN's Alayna Treene for what we can expect on Donald Trump's first full day in office. Alayna?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Dana, currently, and you can see that I'm outside the Washington cathedral right now where Donald Trump is indoors, alongside Vice President J. D. Vance and members of both the first and second families. Every single child of Donald Trump's is in there for this service right now.

But then later today, Dana, we know that Donald Trump is expected to meet with congressional leaders at the White House, including Senator -- Senate Majority Leader John Thune, as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson. Later following that meeting, he's expected to meet with other leaders as well from both the House and the Senate.

I just want to stop there for a second, because that's, of course, very notable. We saw Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders yesterday, around 200 or more on a number of different issues and promises that he had made throughout his time on the campaign trail.

However, now is really the hard part about trying to implement those laws, and Congress is going to be so crucial for that sure. He can sign those different orders, but a lot of them, you know, could get caught up in the court. Some of them are going to end up potentially needing congressional approval.

And of course, we know that Donald Trump has a lot that he wants to do as it comes to the budget, to the deficit, that Congress needs to work with him on. So very important meetings today for Donald Trump and these congressional leaderships at the White House.

And then later, as well, we did get this preview from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who laid out that one, she will not be giving her first press briefing today. However, we are expected to hear from Donald Trump speaking publicly for what she called would be a major immigration or -- excuse me, a major infrastructure announcement. So, stay tuned for that, Dana.

BASH: Alayna, thank you so much. Appreciate your reporting. And just hours into his presidency, Donald Trump used his powerful pen to make dramatic changes to agencies and policies across the government that affect millions of Americans lives. But to anyone who listened to what he said on the campaign trail and almost every rally, every podcast appearance, every interview, none of this so far should be a surprise.

Yes, many voters wanted Trump back in office because of frustration about the cost of living, but the actions he already took from dealing with undocumented immigrants to energy, and the environment, regulation, federal workers, those were all campaign promises, and Donald Trump is now following through.

And that does include a dramatic step to continue his quest to try to erase one of the worst days in U.S. history. And that day was January 6, 2021. He granted clemency to more than 1200 people, charged in that attack on the U.S. Capitol, including prisoners who assaulted police officers and threatened to kill lawmakers.

And again, I want to say this, and I will continue to say this. It sounds shocking to some, but no one should be shocked because Donald Trump told us that this is what he was going to do, and he said it over and over again.

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Joining me now to discuss this is a panel of terrific reporters, Marc Caputo of Axios, Axios rather, Laura Barron-Lopez of the PBS NewsHour, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, and NPR's Ayesha Rascoe.

Jeff, I want to start with you. Can you just speak to this because you follow Donald Trump on the campaign trail, we all did. But about what we're seeing now and what it should mean, and how people should be feeling about it, particularly if they were paying attention during the campaign?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, if anyone was paying attention, as you said, I mean President Trump, the time former president and president-elect Trump talked about that he would free the January 6 hostages, in his words. They were not hostages. They are not hostages. They were defendants in criminal cases.

Many people who were at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were not arrested and charged. Those who were arrested and charged were adjudicated and found to be guilty, the ones who were and some are serving sentences. He's been talking about this for a long time.

What I was struck by last night at the White House as I was watching the president sign his executive orders and answering questions about it. It was at the end of a long day where he started on Capitol Hill, and then he was at the Capital One Arena, and he was surrounded by law enforcement officers all day long. There were odes to law enforcement officers.

He stood on the reviewing stand, and there were the color guard from law enforcement academies and the various departments in the night --

BASH: Butler, Pennsylvania, what he was, almost --

ZELENY: Butler, Pennsylvania as well. And then at night, he signed this last pardon. The issue here, there's always been a question. Is he going to delineate between the violent offenders and the non- violent offenders? It turns out that would have taken, actually some work, and he would not have been able to issue those on day one. They would have been able to or had to parse through them. No, a mass -- a mass pardon and the clemency.

But I think what's most striking were the 14th commutations as well of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers. These were not the rank-and-file members, so, but he did telegraph it. There's no doubt about it.

BASH: I want to just start a little bit broad to give some numbers and then get specific. So, he signed a proclamation pardoning nearly 1,270 people convicted in the January 6 attack. It covers about 600 people with felony convictions for assaulting police officers or impeding police during the riot.

Let's just start there. Back the blue, as you said, he talks about law enforcement. A lot of law enforcement, rank-and-file voted for him, supported him. And what he is doing and what he did with the stroke of a pen was, never mind what it meant for democracy. Never mind what it meant for his fellow Democrats and Republicans, fellow Republicans, I should say, who serve on Capitol Hill, their staff, but the people who are trying to protect them.

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, " WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Well, I think what we're seeing here is a massive breaking down of norms. And we've talked about this for a long time, but it's really happening at this moment. And basically, what Trump is saying is that the police are important as long as they are protecting my interests, as long as they are protecting what I'm doing.

If they're trying to protect and allow Biden to be elected, that is not as important to me. And I think when you see a breaking down of systems like that, you see people -- and this is for all sides, the right, the left, the middle, whatever. You see people start to take things in their hands.

For instance, if Jeff was, you know, to be threatening me, say, he going to come to my house and do something, if you wouldn't, but if you did, and I didn't believe the police could do anything, and I didn't believe that systems would stand up for me, then I may have something at my house to be ready when you come. And that's what happens. You get a tit for tat and a back and forth, and that is what we are seeing right now.

BASH: Go ahead.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, PBS NEWSHOUR: There's no accountability. I mean those people who he pardoned that assaulted police officers. That includes people who beat police officers with flag poles. This resulted in police officers also later on taking their life due to the trauma. And so there's no accountability for them.

You know, I was just talking to a former committee staffer on the J6 committee that investigated this, who said that they're also concerned that, you know, Republicans aren't going to stop here. That Donald Trump is not going to want Republicans to stop here, and he's not going to stop with these pardons, that he's going to ask, you know, and that they're going to look to House Republicans to investigate the investigation -- to investigate the investigators.

And these people who were pardoned by Joe Biden, who worked on the committee are concerned that they -- that it's not going to end here, and that the full rewriting of January 6 is going to continue. This revision is history, and that they're going to be called forward to House Republicans in Congress.

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BASH: OK. A couple of things. First of all, Stewart Rhodes. You mentioned leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Stewart Rhodes is the leader of the Oath Keepers. What we're looking at is video of him being released from a Maryland prison. He was serving an 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy and other felony charges.

A couple of other examples of very familiar images that are seared into most Americans' minds, Jacob Chansley. We know him as also the QAnon Shaman. He was inside the Capitol. First of all, he came in and we saw him there in that infamous video of him on the floor of the United States Senate. He pleaded guilty to felony obstruction. He was sentenced to 41 months and finished serving his prison time.

He put out something on social media where he said, I got a pardon, baby. Thank you, President Trump. Now I am going to buy some mother effing guns. Just going to leave it there. I'm going to get back to some more. But Marc, as I come to you, you've covered Donald Trump as we all have, but in particular, you've really kind of been focused on him during the campaign, in this era as well. Even though I said, he's keeping his promises. We weren't sure even up to the day before, what kind of pardons he was going to give for the people who were responsible for January 6, whether it would be sweeping? And the answer is largely, yes.

MARC CAPUTO, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: Yeah. Donald Trump, in part, kind of didn't really know, and he was weighing this. J. D. Vance went out on national television at one point, and said, look, the non-violent people. OK, that's fine, but people who cause police officers, no way. Well, it turned out to be not quite accurate.

In the end, Donald Trump had -- as Jeff said, an opportunity to do a lot of work and spend a lot of time to separate out sort of the wheat from the chaff, or he could have just done a big blanket thing, big stroke of the pen. Donald Trump likes big actions. And in the end, that weighed out over these other considerations.

BASH: And you know the whole concept of what this means, four and two. A lot of the people who were there that day, whose lives were at risk. I mentioned law enforcement. We're going to show something again in a bit.

But you have Republican senators and lawmakers right now on Capitol Hill telling our colleagues that they say, Thom Tillis, for example, Republican Senator from North Carolina says, it makes Capitol Hill less safe.

ZELENY: There's no doubt. It diminishes what the crime was that occurred yesterday, and standing yesterday at the U.S. Capitol, looking at the very windows that were bashed in, it really brought to the fore this whitewashing of history. Those windows are now repaired, the blood stains are largely gone, but this is still something that, you know, pictures don't lie. We saw it ourselves. We, you know, people around the world saw it.

But now what the president did, and one of his first official acts with glee, is to whitewash all of that. And it is serious, but it is done in the context of so many other things. I think the president and the White House are thinking that, you know, people will move on. So, the flooding of the zone, I think, is -- and he didn't do this earlier in the day. I think it would have sort of marred or changed the sort of tone of the entire day. He did it at the very end of the day.

BASH: OK. We have a lot more to talk about, but I just want to show a couple of those images that are seared into everybody's mind. This one, of course, you are looking at Daniel Hodges, getting stuck in a door.

One of those who pleaded guilty to being there and being in part responsible for this is Patrick McCaughey. He was found guilty on nine charges in 2022, including seven felony charges, assaulting Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges with a dangerous weapon. Well, he is -- his sentence is now -- he's now pardoned.

One more, Scott Fairlamb, he swung at an officer outside the Capitol -- swung at an officer outside the Capitol. He was sentenced to three plus years in prison. He too was pardoned yesterday after he pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer and obstructing an official proceeding.

We're going to go -- sneak in a quick break. Up next, President Trump says, immigration raids will start as soon as today. The new White House border czar will be here to explain their plans, including some that could be illegal.

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BASH: With the stroke of a black sharpie, President Trump is drastically changing U.S. immigration policy. The crackdown includes declaring a national emergency at the southern border, deploying the military, deporting illegal immigrants, making it more difficult for people to seek asylum, limiting birthright citizenship. And that's just the beginning.

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CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is tracking all of these developments. Priscilla, what's happening today as these executive actions go into effect?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, sources tell me that they are still pouring over these executive orders in the various departments that will have to implement these parts of Trump's immigration agenda. But we are already seeing some actions come out of all of this. For example, let's start with birthright citizenship. Of course, that was an executive order that seeks to end it. It cannot be done unilaterally, but rather kicks off the process.

Now there's already been legal challenges on that ACLU filing last night, only hours after that executive order was released. And that is the point, Dana. Sources have been telling me that the part of the strategizing here is the legal fight and hoping that this lands before the Supreme Court in due time.

Now, another one is essentially shutting off asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. There was already restrictions in place, but an option that migrants had was applying through a border app to schedule an appointment at a legal port of entry to try to make that claim. Well, that is off the table now and those appointments. Thousands of them that have been made, have now been canceled, which puts the U.S. this extraordinary position, really not having asylum access along the U.S. southern border at this moment.

And coming down the pipeline soon, also suspending refugee admissions for a period of time. Of course, that would affect those who have been in the pipeline, who have been approved to turn that on the seventh day (Ph), slowly starting to see how these executive orders are kicking in.

Now, still awaiting to see the shoring up of Pentagon resources at the U.S. southern border. That was the reason behind the national emergency declaration, also waiting to see what the interior enforcement actions look like and how those are targeted over the course of time.

And I will also tell you, Dana, as we reported last night, that there is personnel moves happening within the department. I was told by sources that four career public servants at the Justice Department's immigration office were fired yesterday. Of course, that is an important office, one that oversees the nation's immigration courts, and the reason we care about those, of course, is because immigration judges decide who stays in the U.S. and who leaves. Dana?

BASH: Priscilla, we are very lucky to have you to continue to report on these really important issues. Thank you so much. And just before the show began, I sat down with the new White House border czar Tom Homan.

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BASH: Tom Homan, thank you so much for joining me. I want to ask with something that you said last night that your deportation operation starts today. Did it?

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: Yeah, ISIS -- ICE, they're other enforcement law out today. And of course, as I've said numerous times, we're concentrating on public safety threats, that will be our priority right out of the gate. So, ICE officers are back to doing their job.

BASH: Where? Where are these -- are they actual raids? And how is it different from what we saw yesterday or the day before?

HOMAN: Well, look, I wouldn't call them raids or target enforcement operations. They know exactly who they're looking for, they know pretty much where they'll find them. So again, these are well planned operations. They're well investigated, so they allow backup information. When they go out there, a whole team goes out for officer safety concerns.

So, this happens throughout the nation. I mean, I'm not going to tell you specific locations out of officer safety concerns, but ICE is back doing their job effective today. They haven't been able to do it for four years.

BASH: Well, I'm going to follow up on that in one second. But who is ICE going after right now? I know that you and others said several times that it is the people who pose the biggest public safety threat to Americans who would be approached and deported first. Is that still the case?

HOMAN: Yes. People in the country illegally, they have a criminal conviction that makes them a public safety threat. That's our priority.

BASH: How are you finding them? HOMAN: Again, these are ICE officers across the country have a non- detained docket. They know who these people are. When they don't show up in court, they fail to leave as ordered by an immigration judge, or they have, you know, NCIC information and someone who is arrested for a violent crime here that's in the country illegally.

They take those leads, they do investigative work and do that work, try to find out where these people may be located. And that's how -- that's the whole investigative piece they do before they go out and actually make an arrest.

BASH: And so, what is happening as we speak is limited to those with criminal records?

HOMAN: That's a target of this operation. But like I said many times, in places like sanctuary cities, where we can't arrest a bad person in the jail. We would like to have access to the jail to arrest a criminal alien in the safety and security of a county jail, which is safer for the community, safer for the officers, safer for the alien.

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But when you release a public safety threat out of a sanctuary jail and they won't give us access to him, that means we got to go to the neighborhood and find him, and we will find him, but when we find him, he may be with others. Others that don't have a criminal conviction are in the country illegally. They will be arrested too because we're not going to strike (Ph).

And this is a difference between the last administration and this administration. ICE is going to enforce the immigration law. There's nothing in the INA, The Immigration and Nationality Act, says you got to be convicted of a serious crime in order to be removed from this country. So, there's going to -- there's going to be more collateral arrests in sanctuary cities because they forced us to go in the community and find -- and find the guy we're looking for.

BASH: Let me just make sure that I understand what you're saying. Because at first, you said that the first targets are those with criminal records, but you are also saying that those who are undocumented in the U.S. also -- who don't have criminal records, people who are working in their communities, maybe even have spouses who are American citizens, they could be swept up with ICE today as well?

HOMAN: What I'm telling you is, when we go find our priority target, which is a criminal alien, if he's with others in the United States illegally, we're going to take enforcement action against him. We're going to force immigration law.

BASH: What happens then? So, the ICE officers gets an individual or a set of individuals, and apprehends them. What next? What do these ICE officers do with them? Because in some cases, and you know this far better than I, they haven't been deported in the past because their country of origin won't take them. HOMAN: Well, what happens after arrest, they're taken to an ICE office, and they're processed and put in detention. While they're in detention, ICE officers work on travel documents. The host country sends travel documents saying, yeah, this is our citizen. This is our national. Then we make flight arrangements. So, they could be in detention from a few days, for a few weeks until their removals made happen.

BASH: What if the host country doesn't want them, as has happened in the recent past, and won't take them?

HOMAN: We have various plans -- we have various plans. Other countries are willing to take them. We have third state country removals. So that's something we're working through. But I think you're going to see less of the recalcitrant countries.

Countries don't take their citizens back under this president, because this president has vowed that these countries will take them back. So, I'll leave that up to the White House, but there will be negotiations with those countries who are pushing back on recalcitrancy, and they will be removed.

BASH: You know, I think that there is some kind of image that people might have given how much we heard President Trump and you in the months, during the campaign and certainly during the transition, talking about what's going to happen of people being rounded up, loaded on busses and dropping them off on the border. Is that how you see this happening?

HOMAN: Well, I don't like the analogy of rounding up. Look again, this is a targeted enforcement operation. The president has been clear on this. We're going to concentrate on public safety threats, but in sanctuary cities where they don't let us take that public safety threat into custody and the safety and security of the jail. We have to go find him.

If he's with others in the country legally, ICE will not turn the blind eye to that. ICE is going to uphold the old they took. They're going to force the laws enacted by Congress and signed by a president, and they're going to do that without apology. I mean, if any sanctuary cities forces in this position, that's exactly what's going to happen.

BASH: How many deportations do you think that you can carry out this year? Last year, for example, the Biden administration did deport about 270,000 people, which is the most since 2014. I know you said, ICE has not been doing its job, but there have been a lot of deportation. What deportations? What's going to happen coming up?

HOMAN: That is not accurate. The Biden administration is hiding the numbers. If you look at those removal numbers, over 80 percent were border patrol apprehensions on the border. They were immediately removed. They weren't ICE removals. If you look at what ICE has done interior the United States, under four years of President Biden, they have the lowest numbers removals in the history of the agency, despite a historic illegal crisis on the southern border. So, they can -- they can claim 277 -- 240,000 whatever removals. That's simply not the fact. And under Trump administration, were there few removals? Yes. And why was that? Because we secured the border. We weren't releasing millions of people the United States have to go find and remove. So, it doesn't matter how many people deported. So, how many people were released in this country, and millions were released into this country by the Biden administration that were not released by the Trump administration.

BASH: I just want to be clear. I'm not obviously getting these numbers out of thin air. They are coming from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. You're saying that they're giving us false information.

HOMAN: The numbers are accurate. I'm talking, where do those removals come from? And they're not -- they're not interior ICE removals. 80 percent of those removals were arrested by borders. So, ICE didn't make the arrest of border patrol did, and they were removed by ICE on the southern border.

BASH: Understood.

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