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All 11 Biden-To-Trump Voters In Arizona Focus Group Say They Approve Of Trump's First Weeks In Office; Mayor Adams Rejects Calls To Quit: "I Am Going Nowhere"; Young Generation Of Veterans Lead Trump Foreign Policy. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 17, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DAVE WEIGEL, POLITICAL REPORTER, SEMAFOR: When I talk about what Democrats are trying to focus on, what they think the media might catch on to, what voters might catch on to, they are worried about the foreign aid component. If it looks like they're complaining about money going elsewhere, or they're -- or getting into the gender and sports stuff, it looks like Democrats are too concerned with --

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

WEIGEL: -- one of those issues. Their default is, well, Trump is acting because these guys were too weak to do what I believed in the first place.

BASH: What we are seeing right now is what Donald Trump campaigned on.

WEIGEL: Right.

BASH: We've said that umpteen times now in the past four weeks. What he didn't campaign on was the Elon Musk of it all. That Elon Musk would be going in, and the person with his team doing this, and doing this at the pace with which they are moving.

I want you to listen to what Jonas G., he is one of those Biden-to- Trump voters, said about that. Doesn't seem that concerned.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONAS G., ARIZONA BIDEN-TO-TRUMP VOTER: He's moving fast to dismantle the corruption, which there's so much of it. Everywhere he turns, there's stuff that they have to take out. One to one agency, and what, 80 percent, 90 percent of that agency's been spending stuff that nobody would approve of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want you to talk about that, Isaac, but then just that last part, 80 percent to 90 percent of the agency spending stuff nobody would approve of. We don't know that, because there's no accountability. Maybe at the end of the day, once we can actually look at it, perhaps that's going to be right. We have no idea, which also speaks to the fact that there is such a fractured media consumption environment that it's getting even more so. We don't know.

I mean, Jona G -- Jonas G is listening to, they said at the beginning, some mainstream media, but who knows where this information is coming from.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, and that's part of the problem that we're dealing with the current information ecosystem going on. But the problem that those who are fighting back against these cuts, including Democrats, have is that I would say many people -- maybe an overwhelming majority of people around this country, have some sense that government is at least a little bit bloated, that there's extra spending, things that can be cut.

There are all sorts of stories that come up all across the spectrum. And what they are -- what happened here is that Elon Musk moved quickly. And so you're asking voters to say, the thing that you think should be dealt with as a problem is being dealt with quickly.

The question, again, as we were saying earlier, is how these cuts are going -- are being made, who's making them, and what the actual --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- effect of them will be. But, look, I -- for Democrats, this is really hard because they're also, in addition to the stuff that David was talking about, they're struggling with the fact that they're saying constitutional crisis.

You asked Amy Klobuchar, constitutional crisis. There is a constitutional issue --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- of the executive taking power, right? But that seems like in the weeds --

BASH: Well, except, yes, it does, except you brought me to my next voter, which thank you very much for that. Courtney L. was asked about the question of whether or not it's OK for this guy she voted for to defy the courts.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

COURTNEY L., ARIZONA BIDEN-TO-TRUMP VOTER: I'm very torn on this because at the end of the day, I agree we need the constitution and we need rules and procedures. But at the same time, how are we going to make big changes if someone like Trump being unconventional, like we need him to be doing these things, to be having -- making these executive orders, making these big changes for big changes to happen. So I'm very torn on the issue.

(END VIDEOCLIP) AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST":

Well, I mean, and this is what is, you know, driving the Trump administration right now. They are hearing these voters who are like, move fast, you know, and the whole tech sector thing, move fast, break things.

The problem with that is that when you break things, eventually, you know, you'll step on some glass or something like that. Like the thing that they're doing right now, and I do agree that there is this lag, right? Like you don't know what's going to impact people.

You can drive 100 miles a mile per hour on the highway and you can do that many times and get there faster, but eventually there may be a wreck, right? Like, and that is what we're dealing with. Like, is there going to be a wreck? You know, I'm not a psychic --

BASH: Yes.

RASCOE: -- but there could be a wreck.

BASH: I want to just play one more because it speaks to what you were mentioning earlier about flooding the zone, seeing the president --

WEIGEL: Yes.

BASH: -- all the time, every day, multiple times a day, which is -- could not be more different from Joe Biden. And the question is whether that's -- what these voters wanted.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

ANN B., ARIZONA BIDEN-TO-TRUMP VOTER: He said he was going to do this, this, this, and this, and this is what he's starting to get done.

MELVIN G., ARIZONA BIDEN-TO-TRUMP: And he only has four years to do it. It's not like he can run again. He already did his first term. So some of these things are, you can't fix overnight. So he has to get started early on. He has four years and he made promises in his campaign. He won because of those promises. So he's getting to work.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

[12:35:04]

WEIGEL: Yes. And I was also struck in other clips and I've heard this as voters of the term transparency to describe Donald Trump and Elon Musk going on camera and talking. Somebody might be looking at their statements and say, but what he just said, wasn't true. We've fact- checked it.

He's counter something that his own administration said an hour earlier. It doesn't matter if the president's saying it sounds transparent. The other word I'm not hearing is Congress. And there is this assumption in these focus groups.

The Congress that you're not hearing from isn't able to act. I've heard Democrats in the top of the constitutional crisis say, come to Congress, pass a bill. And that just seems so yesterday for the voters that we're hearing about that assume -- one assume Congress want to act, two, listen to Mike Johnson and they can tell they're supine and they don't want to act.

DOVERE: I had -- I have a story up on our site yesterday about what Democrats are doing. And I asked Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic leader in the House in reporting it last week, I said, what do you say to Democrats who have given up hope?

WEIGEL: Yes.

DOVERE: And he said, keep hope alive. Listen, the courts are ruling against him. His polls are going down, not up. And he's going to have to deal with Congress.

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: The courts have started to rule against him in some ways, but also some toward him. His polls are not going down, right?

WEIGEL: Right.

DOVERE: And that is the thing that all the Trump opponents have to run up against. It may change when they get to this budget showdown next month. But for the moment, that -- because of the honeymoon, because of all these other things, there is not the kind of resistance to Trump and what he's doing that a lot of Democrats were hoping there would be.

BASH: That's one of the -- you're very prolific. That's one of the stories you have on CNN.com.

Up next, we're going to talk about another story that Isaac has been reporting on and that is the New York City mayor's race, Eric Adams. Can he survive with increasingly antagonistic democratic colleagues up there? What about Andrew Cuomo? Will he jump in? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:41:20]

BASH: Eric Adams, the embattled New York City mayor has an emphatic message for his rattled constituency, I'm not going anywhere.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS (D), NEW YORK CITY: They're dancing on my grave right now, every news headline, every report, I'm not going to step down. I'm going to step up.

CROWD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right. That's right.

ADAMS: I've got a mission to finish. CROWD: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

ADAMS: And I want you to be clear, you're going to hear so many rumors, so many things, you're going to read so much. I am going nowhere.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Now, Adams is resisting mounting calls to resign after the Trump Justice Department moved to dismiss federal bribery and corruption charges against him. The top prosecutor in the case resigned in protest and accused the mayor's lawyers of negotiating a dismissal in exchange for helping the president with his immigration crackdown.

I asked the White House border czar Tom Homan about that allegation yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: It sounds like the DOJ dropped the case against Adams and in exchange, he let you into Rikers. Is that what happened?

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: No, I think that's ridiculous.

BASH: Just looking at the series of events, sir, the fact that you didn't get what you wanted, didn't you came away not sure why he wasn't doing what you wanted him to do, particularly with opening Rikers. The Department of Justice gets rid of the charges against him and then poof, he agrees.

HOMAN: Look, the first meeting, if you look at my interview after the first meeting, I said to the whole world, I've called that mayor out for a couple of years because I didn't think he was doing the right thing as far as public safety threats. And that first meeting back in December, I said to everybody, interview me, for the first time, I saw the cop in him.

BASH: If he doesn't do the things that you want him to do, would you be OK with DOJ reopening its investigation into him? Should they do that?

HOMAN: That's out of my lane.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Panel is back now. And as we mentioned before the break, Isaac has written a great story that everybody should check out on CNN.com, "Eric Adams' embrace of Trump unites Democrats against the New York City mayor".

DOVERE: The political timeline is happening here on top of all these other things. There is a June primary for what Adams was hoping would be his second term, still is hoping would be a second term. And there is a race underway. The people who are looking at this as Democrats in New York City, one of the bluest cities in this country, cannot believe that there is any credible way for Adams to survive here. Whether he resigns or doesn't resign, that's a separate question. Whether he's removed by the governor, also a separate question, although that's part of the swirl, too.

But can this mayor, with the situation that he's in, with the corruption charges he faced, with the deal that seems to have been at least talked about, according to a lot of people, with the Trump administration, with then the larger questions of can he manage the city under this cloud? Is he going to win over Democratic voters? It strains credulity to a lot of the people involved.

And I will tell you that what they're saying publicly is pretty intense. Privately, it's even more intense. But this is Ritchie Torres, who's a congressman from the Bronx, he said to me that Eric Adams is a zombie mayor and he's a Vichy Democrat, allowing one of the bluest cities in America to be occupied by a far-right administration. That's not exactly what you put on the --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- brochures that --

BASH: Yes, a Vichy Democrat referring to Vichy France during World War II, not exactly an endorsement.

[12:45:01]

So you mentioned there are -- first of all, you didn't mention Andrew Cuomo, who's waiting in the wings and might not be waiting very long, which we can talk about. But then there's a mechanism that the governor has, a unique one, which is she can just remove him.

Let's listen to what Laura Gillen, who is a congresswoman from New York, said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Do you think that your governor, Kathy Hochul, should remove Mayor Adams from his job?

REP. LAURA GILLEN (D), NEW YORK: I think Mayor Adams is not above the law. I think that he's distracted, he's worrying about what's going on, and I think she should remove him, yes.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

RASCOE: Well, I mean, look, I mean, the calls against Adams are so intense and, you know, but it is a different day, right? Like I think that, you know, politicians have learned from Trump and others, you don't resign, you don't step down, you make people do whatever -- if you make them put you out, you don't go out on your own.

WEIGEL: Yes, go back to 2021 when Eric Adams win, he had a very powerful argument, which was that a lot of Democrats were in hock to the left that said to fund the police, he didn't, he was his own man. That is completely inverted.

No one looking at Eric Adams today thinks that he operates on his own principles. They look at that interview with Tom Homan on Fox News, literal metaphor about putting his hand in his anatomy to control him. That's been the issue, and that's why it's so easy for someone from Long Island, who -- their position has for a while been that Adams should go if you're a Long Island Democrat.

You just can't as a Democrat defend somebody this compromised, even if you want the next mayor to continue a lot of the policies that were reversal of what Democrats and progressives were doing. That is the Cuomo offer.

I'm into Andrew Cuomo, I've gone through everything, nobody owns me. Look at this guy who is completely owned by the Trump administration.

BASH: We have to take a break, but yes or no, Andrew Cuomo, he's in.

DOVERE: I don't think that anybody believes there's a chance he is not running. He is running, but for everything he's doing, he -- you said yes or no, but including, he released a thank you to an open letter from a guy named Carl McCall, who was the state comptroller. But more importantly than that, they had a bitter race against each other in 2002. And it's very Andrew Cuomo to get that put away --

BASH: Yes.

DOVERE: -- right before he launches a campaign here. He's making it very clear.

BASH: Love New York City politics. Thank you so much.

Everybody don't go anywhere because up next, it has been a quarter century since 9/11 and the veterans of the global war on terror. And the Iraq war are now running America's foreign policy. We have some great reporting on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:50]

BASH: If the first month of Donald Trump's second term has taught us anything, it is that it is very different from the administration the first time around. The president now is surrounded by a cohort of increasingly unapologetic and loyal officials.

And if you look specifically at his national security team, the roles once filled by retired three and four star generals who at times pushed back against Donald Trump's demands are now occupied by younger veterans who had deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. And those deployments in many cases fueled a level of skepticism and isolationism that President Trump embraces.

Our Katie Bo Lillis puts it this way in a story on CNN.com, "A collection of grunts, foot soldiers and young officers who carried out rather than planned America's so-called global war on terror are among Trump's top advisers and officials".

And Katie Bo joins me now with more. So it's Afghanistan and the fact that it went on and on and on, obviously, but it's also what I'm somewhat obsessed with is the Iraq of it all. Because going into Iraq was based on something that wasn't true and they had to go out and carry it out. And they are now trying to change the institutions that led them to that place.

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN REPORTER: Well, we're talking about -- that's exactly right, Dana. And we're talking about this cohort of veterans that were really beginning their military careers in the post 9/11 wars. And in particular, as you mentioned, Iraq.

This is not the sort of three and four star generals of the first administration who were really Gulf War veterans who were in leadership positions during those wars. And this sort of particular set of veterans, look, we can't stereotype all veterans are different.

They have different experiences. They have different ways that they think about their service. But even amongst themselves, the so-called GWOT veterans are really known for being skeptical of institutions. They are known for being a little bit disillusioned with authority, with politicians, with the kind of strategy that comes out of Washington.

And, in fact, you -- if you look at Pew research, it shows that the majority of veterans of these wars think that they weren't even worth fighting. And so it's really a worldview that maps very neatly onto Trump's messaging of not just institutions can't be trusted, sort of corrupt governance, right, but also onto this sense that he has that using U.S. troops overseas is something that should maybe be avoided, right?

He has sought to kind of withdraw troops over both his first administration. And now we are sort of seeing some of the same skepticism about the use of American troops overseas abroad in the second administration.

There's a real sort of sense that, like, we don't want to use American foreign troops -- American troops overseas in this way. And then --

BASH: And that's based on their experience.

LILLIS: And that seems to come from this same experience.

BASH: But there are officials who are criticizing the idea that these have been lower level military ranks, that they came from the lower level of military ranks as opposed to the generals. By the way, Trump loved having the generals.

[12:55:06]

By the way, Trump loved having the generals. I mean, one of the reasons he loved Jim Mattis, who became his defense secretary, is because his nickname was Mad Dog.

LILLIS: Right. Right. Although Mattis himself actually didn't love that nickname.

BASH: No, he did not. He did not.

LILLIS: And used it himself. But that's exactly right. I mean, traditionally, these are roles that have been filled by people who have had experience running some of the sort of larger strategic organizations within the U.S. military as opposed to what we're seeing now, which is, I think, Gabbard is perhaps the most senior of this cohort. She's a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves.

They have gotten a lot of criticism, particularly Gabbard and also the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who retired as a major, for lacking some of that kind of strategic experience or experience running a large organization like the Defense Department, for example.

I spoke to one person close to the Trump orbit who pointed out that might be part of the appeal for Trump, this go-round, who is really looking for officials who are going to carry out this kind of maximalist --

BASH: Yes.

LILLIS: -- worldview that he (INAUDIBLE) felt very stymied by Mattis and the others. And so I'll share with that.

BASH: I think we might be out of time.

LILLIS: Yes.

BASH: I do want people to get more information from your terrific piece, go on CNN.com. Thank you, Katie Bo. Thanks for being here.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.