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Inside Politics
Trump Says He'll Pause Tariffs On Mexico For One Month; Trump Admits Tariffs May Cause "A Little Pain" For Americans; Trump Says He'll Speak Again With Canadian PM This Afternoon; Musk Team Gains Access To System That Writes America's Checks; Trump, Allies Pulling Levers Of Power That Few Knew Existed; Secretary Of State Rubio Says He Is Acting Director Of USAID. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired February 03, 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, Trump makes a deal. This morning, the president agreed to delay a 25 percent tariff on Mexico after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said, her country would harden its border with the United States, but major new tariffs on Canada and China are still set to go into effect in just 12 hours.
Plus, seizing control. The Trump administration spent the weekend, taking a wrecking ball to the federal government. Yes, that is generally what Donald Trump ran on. But how he's doing it and who is doing it, i.e., Elon Musk, seizing control of the entire federal government payment system this weekend is next level disruption, and it's clearly just the beginning.
And there's no one better to weigh in on all of this than our friend Fareed Zakaria. He will be here to help put President Trump's first two weeks into contest.
I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.
First up, President Trump is backing off at least some of the tariffs he threatened this weekend on two of America's closest allies, that 25percent levy he planned to slap on Mexico, now it's delayed. The tariff on goods from Canada, that is still TBD. But he did speak this morning to the Canadian prime minister and will speak to him again this afternoon. So, read into that what you will. A separate 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods is still expected to take effect tonight.
Jeff Zeleny is at the White House. Jeff, this is happening fast and furious, which I guess is just standard operating procedure from here on and for the next four years.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, certainly that trade war that was looming now it only appears that a partial trade war is looming. Let's start with Mexico first. In a phone call earlier today, a couple hours or so ago, a rather lengthy phone call, the president of the United States and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, reached an agreement at least for a month to delay the threat of a tariff that Donald Trump has been talking about for a very long time.
We got word of this through a Truth Social post as well as a press conference that the Mexican president had in Mexico. The president offered a bit of detail, but not much detail. We're learning more. He said, I just spoke with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico.
We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one-month period. And that is in exchange for the Mexican president agreeing to send some 10,000 troops to the border to help stop the flow of illegal migrants as well as fentanyl. But it's unclear if there's any more than that.
We do know that obviously many here at the White House and throughout the government had been concerned about the fallout of a trade war on the prices of common goods being passed along to the American consumer. The president has not expressed much concern. He said there could be short term pain here, but it could be worth it. But at this hour, it is still unclear if the other parts of that, Canada in particular, will be included.
We know that the president and the prime minister will be speaking this afternoon. We shall see if that changes. But 25 percent tariff, which is a tax on imports passed along to consumers, will have a dramatic effect with the U.S., relations with Canada and costs as well. So, we shall see as this day goes on. But the deadline for midnight tonight, at least at this very moment, is still on, Dana.
BASH: Sure is. Jeff, thank you so much for that reporting. I'm joined here by three additional terrific reporters, CNN's Manu Raju, NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, and Jeff Mason of Reuters. Happy Monday to one and all.
Let's just start with where we are right now. And Jeff, you covered the White House now. You covered it -- covered it for a long time, but you covered Trump 1.0 and now 2.0. And given what you're hearing from your sources at the White House, your extensive understanding of how Trump operates, particularly on the world stage, obviously ultimately, he didn't want to have tariffs. He doesn't want to have tariffs.
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He uses the -- well, I shouldn't say that. I think he does -- maybe he does want them for China. But he likes to use this as a weapon to get what he wants on various things, at least, in the short term for Mexico, if there's a month for him to work that out. But what does it tell you that he agreed at least to that one-month delay in Mexico?
JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Well, it tells me that he's comfortable with whiplash, which we knew, and we're seeing that whiplash just in terms of how quickly this story has moved, but also in the markets. I mean, he referenced having some short-term pain over the weekend.
You saw short term pain on the Dow Jones this morning when it dropped 500 points, and then after he said, he would agree to negotiate with Mexico, it's come back up quite a bit. And you know, that is a metric that he cares about too. It's not one that Joe Biden said he cared about, but it's certainly one that President Trump does.
So, I think that's something he's watching. It certainly tells me that. And yet, he's also comfortable with the threat hanging over our closest allies, Canada and Mexico, depending on what kind of negotiations lead to with this favorite word of his, which is tariffs.
So, he's -- I think you're right, that he would like to be able to say, I've got a deal, and he's clearly open to some negotiation with our partners on the southern with the U.S. partners on the southern border. But the threat is not going away.
BASH: So, let's just look, before we get into more of the politics of it, about the issue, the things that people will be paying more for in the United States; food, beer and alcohol, fuel and energy, cars and car parts, steel, lumber and furniture, electronics, home appliances and toys, just to name a few.
AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Well, I mean, this is the thing, right? I don't know if Trump doesn't want tears. He's talking about him a lot, and it seems like he wants to be seen as very tough, and he did talk about short term pain, and we'll see what happens with Canada.
But the problem is, and I think, for the politics of this, is the idea that Americans would be willing to accept short term pain is not the America I know, OK. You know, at the end of the day, when people elected Trump, they would talk about, they want to lower the cost of goods. They thought he would be great for the economy.
And it seems like right now, with everything that he's doing, nothing is talking about lowering costs, nothing is talking about helping the economy. It's all about tariffs and DEI and all of this stuff. And it seems like he's getting away from what people actually elected him to do.
And I think that's why you see him pulling back a little bit because there will be a cost, especially if the price of gasoline and these price points, food, groceries, if that goes up, he will have to face some repercussions.
BASH: And I stopped myself from saying he doesn't like tariffs because anybody who paid attention to him 30 years ago, 40 years ago, he talked as a businessperson about using tariffs, but using them as a negotiating tactic, which is clearly doing right now. I saved you for last in this first round here, because I do want to play Mitch McConnell. He was on 60 minutes last night, and here's what he says about the notion of tariffs,
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SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): It will drive the cost of everything up. In other words, it'll be paid for by American consumers. I mean, why would you want to get in a fight with your allies over this?
(END VIDEO CLIP) MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Look, you know, it's also interesting. His successor, the Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has not said anything about these tariffs that are -- that Trump has threatened on Canada and delaying on Mexico, apparently. And why? Perhaps because Thune represents a big ag state and that a lot of his farmers --
BASH: And pretty close to the northern border.
RAJU: -- absolutely. And they would get hammered, potentially by a 25 percent tariff going into effect on Canada. So, we'll see what Thune has to say when he comes back the Senate this afternoon. You can be sure we'll be asking him about that. But other Republicans have fallen in line.
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has gushed about this, has said that the revenue coming into the government could potentially help pay for their big agenda that they want to push through Congress. But there are so many Republicans in the Mitch McConnell camp, many of them who are quiet because they don't want to speak out against Donald Trump. They've been free traders for most of their career. Trump is completely opposite on that key position, but there are some concerns.
We've heard from Susan Collins, a key swing vote, raising concerns. Maine, of course, relies heavily on Canada, particularly with issues of home heating oil. Chuck Grassley is concerned about how farmers will be hurt in Iowa by this trade war. So, the concerns aren't over yet, even with this one month.
BASH: Yeah. I mean, you talked about -- and how about -- just the products and the goods that come from ruby red states that elected Donald Trump and elected some of the Republicans in the House and the Senate. We're talking about Florida orange juice, Tennessee whiskey, not to mention Kentucky whiskey, peanut butter.
And it goes on and on, which leads me to a big question that is going to be a standard one that we can ask throughout the show and probably the next four years, which is, how much are they going to be -- they, meaning Republicans in Congress, going to be willing to go along to get along with Trump and the Trump base. And when are they going to raise their hand and say, maybe this is a little too far?
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RAJU: You know, I think you'll -- as we get closer to the midterms, they're going to be louder, raise more concerns --
BASH: That is still honeymooning.
RAJU: We're still honeymooning at the moment. But what's some constituents, I'm not sure, as Jeff was saying. How much pain they're really willing to take if they're having -- they're getting hammered on a whole wide range of issues. Then they're going to start complaining to their members, and those members will start pushing back. So, it's going to take some time, but I'm sure that pressure point will emerge. RASCOE: And Republicans used to fundamentally understand, no, Americans do not want to pay more to get some long-term goal because it would be Democrats arguing, we need to pay more at the pump to help with climate change. People don't like that. It's not popular, right? Like they -- and Republicans understood that, and they called it a tax, right, a climate tax.
Well, this could be called what, a tariff tax, right? Like people don't want to do that, and it used to be very understood by Republicans. Anytime you talk about raising prices for some long-term goal, Americans aren't with it.
MASON: Watch the polls.
RASCOE: Yeah.
MASON: Reuters had a poll this last week that showed President Trump's approval ratings coming down just a little bit since its inauguration. It's only been two weeks but watch that and if that -- if his popularity goes down, you're going to start seeing more resistance from Republicans on the Hill.
BASH: OK. Coming up. The president did a lot more this weekend, a lot more than announced those new tariffs we've been talking about. He is launching a broad assault on big parts of the U.S. government and giving Elon Musk, the world's richest man, access to really sensitive data about every American.
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BASH: I do hope you spent your weekend relaxing and spending time with family and friends, but if you were checked out of the news this weekend, you missed President Trump's most significant efforts so far to bring the federal government to heel.
His billionaire benefactor is taking the lead. Elon Musk is combining his genius mind, his lifelong determination to disrupt and what appears to be unchecked power to find and take over the nooks and crannies of the government that have a major impact on people's lives.
For example, there's an office inside the treasury department that processes the checks to pay America's bills. Elon Musk wanted access. And this weekend, he got it, over the objections of the treasury department's top career official, who then resigned. Now what will Musk do with his access? We don't know, but he's already threatening to stop payment on checks he doesn't approve of.
And here's some more of what happened over the past 72 hours. The election denier who is running the U.S. attorney's office in Washington fired more than a dozen January 6 prosecutors. Trump's former personal lawyer who is currently running the Justice Department ordered senior FBI officials to resign or be fired and demanded the names of every FBI agent who had anything to do with the criminal investigations into the president or his supporters.
The president moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, and two top officials there were suspended for refusing to give Musk deputies access to sensitive systems. Thousands of government websites went dark, including statistics from the CDC and the Census Bureau.
The Pentagon kicked the New York Times, NBC, NPR and POLITICO out of their Pentagon office space and replaced them with far-right outlets like One America News. Trump fired the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and threatened, quote, something very powerful is going to happen unless Panama gives him control of the Panama Canal. And of course, let's not forget the tariffs that we spoke about before the break.
I'm back with my panel, and Teddy Schleifer of the New York Times is joining us. Thank you all for indulging because we were talking this morning, just to give transparency that there is so many things that we see all these little individual, not so little individual moves, and it's easy to get lost in that, in looking at all the trees. But we want to make sure that our viewers and the American people see the forest.
You've been covering Elon Musk. I think you have another story coming up very shortly, and how he is systematically going agency by agency. Can you explain what you believe based on your conversations he is trying to do at the behest of, or maybe even independent of Donald Trump, what Donald Trump knows?
TEDDY SCHLEIFER, REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Elon Musk is going to be doing this every day of the week, maybe for all four years, if it lasts that long, agency by agency. You know, the rationale that Elon developed over the course of the presidential transition whether he needed to focus first, at least on personnel, and then he could also then focus on money and kind of the mechanics and the plumbing of getting the dollars out the door.
But, you know, I think what Elon Musk take on things like the education department next. You know, we're hearing some murmurs about HHS as another department that Musk really cares about. But the reason why he's getting so involved, and frankly, like the most boring parts of the federal government is because he sees that as easiest. It's complicated.
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You know, we're talking about this obscure office in the treasury department that most people haven't heard of before, or, you know, an agency called the Office of Personnel Management. No one, no one cares about this stuff. And so, it's politically easier to go after these places.
Musk has also has a ton of kind of AIDS, or, you know, the detractors, they would see these as his henchmen. Who are, you know, 1922, 24 years old. Who -- you know, they're not famous. They're not -- no one elected them. I mean, no one elected Elon. No one certainly elected these kind of engineers who are working for Department Of Government Efficiency. These people have extraordinary power. You know, they're basically --
BASH: Be specific.
SCHLEIFER: Yeah.
BASH: So, what just, I mean, just keeping on the treasury department. This is a place inside the government, inside the treasury department, specifically that they're responsible for cutting all the checks, all the checks that have been appropriated by the United States Congress, which is constitutionally their job and even beyond.
So, the fact that he and his aides, henchmen to the detractors, have access. Is he trying to get -- I mean, there are a lot of things to look at. One, is just the access and what he can do with that access, people's information. Two, his own personal govern -- I mean, his own personal systems, the company that he runs, getting his systems in there. And three, just basic disruption, which we all know, that's how he became the richest man in the world.
SCHLEIFER: Yeah. I mean, the point of him taking on this role at treasury is because he sees it as an effective kind of cut around to overseeing all federal spending. Now, there are obviously tons of legal questions here about whether, to say the least, to understate this, Dana. I mean, to the extent to which Elon now has power over, you know, overcutting this check or that check.
There's some dispute in the Musk, and frankly, even with the White House about whether or not the Elon team has read only capabilities, effectively, meaning they can see, get full visibility, all checks that are being cut. Or if the Musk -- and the Musk team has its way, maybe they would want to be able to just say, not yes on this one, we'll prove that one, because obviously that's the job of Congress --
BASH: But that's what he basically saying that he wants to do, whether or not he can do it, but you know, we'll see. Jeff, we covered the White House together, 20 something years ago. You've been covering the White House a long time is what we're trying to say. So, you do it day to day, and then you are able to be reflective on any given year or administration.
MASON: Yeah.
BASH: Put this into context, what we are seeing.
MASON: Well, I haven't seen anything like it in the three White Houses, three plus White Houses that I've covered, in terms of one man having so much power, who is an aide to some extent, to president to the --
BASH: And that man's not the president. You're talking about Elon Musk?
MASON: I am talking about Elon Musk, yeah. And I think a couple things to think about. A is, does he at some point go too far, for either Trump's taste, or back to our conversation earlier in the program, to Republicans taste on the Hill, or does he just continue to have this unchecked power, essentially, largely because of the influence that he has purchased with President Trump through his support for his campaign, politically.
It's unprecedented. It's also not. I mean, I can see the argument certainly from the Republican side that you are, and you referred to him being brilliant in your intro, like this is a man who has gotten to the point in his life that he has because of his skills at cost cutting, at innovation, et cetera. But it is -- he's using that right now in such an unprecedented way that it's bound to raise a bunch of red flags.
BASH: It's one thing to do in private business, it's another thing in federal government.
RAJU: You know, but you're talking about people on the Hill. I mean, there's really been a peep from Republicans about the power grab of Elon Musk. I mean, you talk about USAID. This is an agency that actually has significant bipartisan support. There are a lot of Republicans who believe strongly in providing foreign aid, believe in what they're doing, and would say that what the talk about dissolving USAID. You can't just do that --
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BASH: While you're talking, I just want to say. I was just told Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, just said, while traveling in South America, I am now the acting director of USAID.
RAJU: Oh, wow.
BASH: So -- so yeah, and so continue this because I want -- I want our viewers to understand. They're hearing like alphabet soup of agencies, USAID, DOGE, whatever. Why this is so significant, particularly given what you were just saying about Donald Trump's fellow Republicans, Marco Rubio being one of them, until he was -- he became secretary of state. On Capitol Hill, who are huge advocates for these foreign aid programs.
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RAJU: Yeah. Because as it provides money to different countries that are dealing with poverty, dealing with issues with our own country, try to promote U.S. interests abroad. Sure, there are perhaps things that are spent that can be pulled back. Perhaps, there's some wasteful spending, perhaps there's some oversight.
But the idea of completely dissolving the agency has very, very tiny support within on Capitol Hill. But one perhaps reason why we're not hearing many Republicans speaking out is just because of the power of Elon Musk, the megaphone that he has, the tens of millions of followers that he has on X. And he would not, of course, not be afraid to go after you on social media and Republicans, guess what we don't want --
BASH: I do want to play what woody Elon Musk said early this morning, very early this morning about USAID.
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ELON MUSK, HEAD, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY (voiceover): As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. And so, it's a point at which, you don't really -- like, if you've got an apple that's got a worm in it, maybe you can take the worm out. But if you've got actually just a ball of worms, it's hopeless. And USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, you've just got to basically get rid of the whole thing.
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RASCOE: And we should be clear, you know, this is someone who is unelected. He was not, you know, confirmed by Congress. I don't know. Does he have to give his financial statements or whatever --
RAJU: Certainly not.
RASCOE: He has no accountability, right? Like this is someone -- and yes, you know, he turned around or with Twitter, he fight a whole lot of people and turned it into X and all. But, you know, no one's dying because of that. And I know he has SpaceX and he has Tesla. But at the end of the day, the federal government is like a whole, you know, you would talk about an apple. This is a whole barrel apples, right, that you don't know anything about.
And when you start dealing with foreign policy and things of that nature, things can happen, right? Because you took away funding, and now this terrorist group has come up, and they're doing this and there's a thought --
BASH: And I just -- yeah, but I just want to be careful to say all things can be true. It can be true that there are checks that go out to agencies or organizations that shouldn't, it's a huge federal government. It can be true that USAID is, you know, has some problems. It can also be true that these agencies really do help. Just real quick, you know, about him, can he see the difference? He seems to be a hatchet guy, not a scalpel.
SCHLEIFER: Sure. I mean his entire strategy to cost cutting all of his companies, as you know, you basically do the cuts first and then live with the consequences. So, you know, yeah, you can throw out the apple and, you know, maybe I think Elon's approach, at least in these businesses, is. Well, we'll figure out if we needed that, you know, couple million bucks in a couple years. But you know, right, who knows what happens over the intervening months or days?
BASH: OK. Well, we could be talking about this the entire hour, and we will have lots more days and weeks to do it. Thank you so much for coming on. Don't go away. Up next. If what happens here? What we're seeing, what we just described, what's happening in another democracy? How would Americans describe it? Well, I'm going to ask Fareed Zakaria about that after a break.
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