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Inside Politics
Rubio: I Am The Acting Director Of USAID; Trump: USAID Run By " A Bunch Of Radical Lunatics"; Trump Tariffs On Canada Still Loom, After Mexico Negotiates Pause; DOJ Officials Demand FBI Agents Explain Their Roles In Trump Probes; GOP Sen. Cassidy, Key Swing Vote, Spoke Yesterday With Kennedy. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired February 03, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:33:03]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news out of El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is speaking to reporters there and he says he is now the acting director of USAID.
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MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm the acting director of USAID. I've delegated that authority to someone but I stay in touch with him. And again, our goal was to go in and align our foreign aid to the national interest. But if you go to mission after mission and embassy after embassy around the world, you will often find that in many cases, USAID is involved in programs that run counter to what we're trying to do in our national strategy with that country or with that region.
That cannot continue. USAID is not --
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: To help us make sense of this and everything else we've talked about so far is our very own Fareed Zakaria, host of "Fareed Zakaria GPS" and author of "Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present". You're going to have to update that book pretty soon, Fareed.
Let's start with the news out of El Salvador and what the Secretary of State said. And if you can just explain, if I'm tuning in and I hear USAID and DOJ and this sort of alphabet soup of federal agencies, particularly on this decision to move USAID underneath the Secretary of State, why does that matter? Why is this significant?
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS: Well, I think what is going on is that Donald Trump is launching a kind of frontal attack on what he calls the deep state, the administrative state. And what they're trying to do, which is very interesting, is to do it with as little congressional involvement as possible.
Most of this stuff could be done. Congress can rewrite the laws. They can make USAID part of the State Department. It used to be part of the State Department once. They can take it out. They could take the Consumer Protection Bureau out or inside Treasury.
[12:35:03]
But what Trump is doing here is using executive authority. So he is essentially appointing Marco Rubio, the director of USAID, because usually this -- the legislation has a clause which says if you don't have somebody, you can have an acting director who is already Senate confirmed. They've done the same thing with Scott Bessent.
So the idea is basically to do an end run around Congress. And the fascinating thing is Congress is just rolling over. Congress is refusing to assert its institutional prerogative as a check on executive authority.
BASH: It's remarkable. I mean, I covered Congress on and off for 20 years. I have never heard a sound of silence so deafening from those people who on vote. Well, let's be honest, mostly Republicans who are aligned with Donald Trump and who have the same voters as Donald Trump and need them to get re-elected.
Just sticking with USAID and the mission of that organization. You just heard Rubio say that part of the reason that they want it underneath the State Department is because they don't believe that some of what USAID does is aligned with what Donald Trump and his philosophy globally. Can you explain that, parse that?
ZAKARIA: It's a little hard to because there were no specifics in it. Look, I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's fraud and waste and mismanagement in -- at USAID. It's quite possible, the federal government is not the world's most efficient place. But, you know, as far as we can tell, this is all being done without any specifics.
It's largely being done by Elon Musk. I don't know how, you know, deeply he has gotten involved in the issue. And, you know, one does know that there are a lot of ongoing programs that do seem to be very good.
You know, in the USAID funds schools for girls in Afghanistan and frankly schools for girls in lots of places in the world where there is deep, deep anti-female education culture and even laws. USAID provides things like life-saving drugs to people in Africa.
And, you know, the prospect of the richest country in the history of the world denying life-saving medicines to literally the poorest people in the world because there is concerns about corruption just seems to me there's got to be a better way to do this.
I mean, you could certainly review every one of these programs. But do you really have to shut down so many of these programs? You have to -- you know, the chaos seems performative. It's a desire to show to own the libs in some way or the other.
BASH: That's really interesting. I want to even go up a few more thousand feet in our discussion. And I was thinking about asking you about what we're seeing right now in the following way. Imagine if you were looking at a democratically elected leader in another country doing what Donald Trump has done in the first two weeks of his administration.
You can add Elon Musk into that equation, a billionaire, the richest person in the world who spent more than $200 million to help get said Democratic leader elected. What would be the take on that if we could just take ourselves out of the U.S.?
ZAKARIA: Well, the Musk thing is completely unprecedented as far as I know, in any place, anywhere. If you look at it, you know, step back. The radicalness of Trump's policies is actually not so unusual.
Look, in a legislative parliamentary democracy, you have governments come in like Margaret Thatcher's government came in and completely change all public policy. You have labor governments come in and they can completely, you know, change all public policy. What's unusual here is to begin with -- there was an enormous amount of performance. So, you know, ending birthright citizenship.
Even the immigration moves are actually not that dramatic. I mean, I would be very surprised if Donald Trump will get up to Barack Obama's levels of deportation this year. Barack Obama deported 3.5 million people, right? So a lot of this is performance, but it's performance aimed at rewarding your allies, undermining the rule of law, the January 6th pardons.
So that's the part that's unusual. There is an enormous amount of performative moves to say we're in charge and we're going to break this whole federal government apart.
BASH: Yes, that's such a good point. And so much of the performance, I mean, let's just take what we're seeing right now with the Mexican terrorists, which we didn't get into, and I'm sorry about that. Please come back.
[12:40:10]
Just the threat allowed for a conversation that at least delayed that for a month. Who knows what's going to happen by the day's end with Canada?
ZAKARIA: Right. And you could have had a conversation with the Mexicans easily without the threat. The idea that the Mexicans have not been willing to talk about fentanyl is absurd. And with the Canadians, I mean, Canada represents less than half a percent of all the fentanyl that comes into the United States.
Canada represents 5 percent of all the undocumented migrants that come into the United States. So the argument for the tariffs on Canada are frankly totally bizarre. But, again, it's the performance.
BASH: Yes.
ZAKARIA: You know, this is all -- you know, if you think about it, it's all about signaling that there's a big, bad sheriff in town. And then when you scratch beneath the surface, I'm not sure you're seeing as much there other than, as I say, the erosion of congressional power and the erosion of the rule of law with things like the January 6th pardons. Those are probably the most dramatic legacies of what Trump has done.
BASH: So far.
Fareed, please come back. So great to talk to you. You always make us all smarter. Appreciate it.
And up next, the Trump Justice Department wants the name of every FBI agent who had anything to do with the investigations into January 6th and into President Trump. It could lead to the purge of thousands of FBI workers. We'll talk about that after a break.
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[12:46:17]
BASH: The fate of thousands of FBI officials remains in the balance as the Justice Department is demanding they fill out a questionnaire about any involvement in investigating President Trump and the January 6th Capitol riot. The questionnaire went out late yesterday and many employees see it as a means to gather information ahead of mass firings.
Evan Perez has some new reporting about this. Evan, what are you learning?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, we're expecting that in the next couple of hours, those questionnaires are due in to the Justice Department. The deadline was this afternoon. And then by tomorrow, the supervisors of the FBI are required, under a memo that was issued by the Justice Department on Friday, that they need to -- all the supervisors need to provide the names of all of employees, all of agents and analysts, who did January 6th related cases, as well as a case involving the leadership of Hamas.
Now, it was -- it all began with a memo on Friday that was listed -- that was the subject line was terminations. And according to the FBI, we're talking about thousands of employees across the country that could be affected because the January 6th case, of course, Dana, you'll remember, is the largest investigation in Justice Department history.
1,600 people were prosecuted in the end before, obviously, Donald Trump decided to pardon everybody and or commute sentences. And so, now, everyone is bracing for what happens next because we know, behind the scenes, people associated with this effort have already been making some of these lists. And so this effort that is due today and tomorrow is really a way to refine some of the names that could be affected by firings.
BASH: And real quick, we're not just talking about leaders of investigations, we're talking about rank and file FBI agents who were told go do this or go do that. PEREZ: Right. They don't have a choice on which investigations to do.
BASH: That's really key (ph).
PEREZ: They are assigned investigations. And I should note, by the way, that there has been some pushback. We have the leader of the field office in New York who said he and others are going to dig in. We'll see whether that actually happens.
And we know that the Agents Association has already advised employees that, you know, you should not resign or offer to resign. They also said, while we would not advocate for physical noncompliance, you need to make sure that people know your removal is not voluntary. Dana?
BASH: Evan, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Coming up, will RFK Jr. be confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services? Manu Raju is still here. He's got some new reporting to share with us next.
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[12:53:15]
BASH: Robert Kennedy Jr.'s fate as the nation's health secretary is on the line tomorrow, and it is far from certain what will happen. He cannot afford to lose a single Republican vote when the Senate Finance Committee decides whether or not they will approve his nomination and send it to the full Senate.
Manu Raju is still here. Manu, I know you've got some new reporting on the conversations that are being had. Before you get to that, I just want to set the table by showing our viewers an exchange that Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, Republican, had or at least tried to have with RFK Jr. during one of the hearings last week.
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SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R), LOUISIANA: My concern is that if there's any false note, any undermining of Obama's trust in vaccines, another person will die from a vaccine preventable disease. And that is why I've been struggling with your nomination.
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BASH: So open about it. You have new reporting about it.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, yesterday we know now know from our sources that Cassidy and Kennedy spoke. They spoke -- it sounds like more than once. This is not unusual for the Trump team. Remember how Pete Hegseth one ultimately got the vote.
They reached out to Senator Thom Tillis, who was wavering at the time. They spoke for two hours in the day that Tillis ultimately came on board. Cassidy clearly has concerns. He wanted Kennedy to simply say that vaccines do not cause childhood autism. Kennedy could not say that. Senator (ph) said, I need to see the evidence. If you have the evidence, I can --
BASH: He was like, please let me get to yes.
RAJU: Yes.
BASH: Give me cover.
RAJU: There have been decades of evidence --
BASH: Right.
RAJU: -- that showed, debunked that notion that there's any link for Cassidy. The complication is this. He could defeat this nomination tomorrow, but he also is up for re-election next year. He's already facing a primary challenge.
[12:55:02]
He's also invited also the anti-Trump wing or the pro-Trump wing to come against him. He was one of the votes to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. The politics are very complicated for Cassidy, which is why it's uncertain how he's going to come down.
BASH: Real quick, Tulsi Gabbard tomorrow as well.
RAJU: Yes, another key vote. The Senate Intelligence Committee, similar split. One Republican senator could break ranks and defeat this nomination. There are at least three that have not said how they will vote. Senator Susan Collins, swing vote on virtually everything.
Senator Todd Young, someone who didn't support Trump in the last go- round. He also was not satisfied with how she addressed the Edward Snowden question. James Lankford, too, was concerned about her not calling him a traitor, Snowden a traitor, during that testimony.
Gabbard over the weekend tried to clean it up. She put out an op-ed saying that she didn't want to call -- label him a name, just deal with the facts, not with the actual name-calling and the like. Is that enough to win over those Republicans? A big question, because there are some concerns about other senators who are now on the committee if it does advance to the floor.
BASH: You are going to have one of many busy days tomorrow, Manu. Thank you so much for that reporting.
Thank you for watching Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after the break.