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U.S., Russia Hold First High-Level Talks Since Ukraine Invasion; Rubio: "Concessions" Will Have To Be Made By "All Sides"; Trump's Rush For A Deal With Putin Leaves Ukraine, Europe Scrambling; Zelenskyy: "I Told Trump That Putin Is Afraid Of Him"; Delta Flight Crashes In Toronto, All 80 Passengers Survive; 21 Passengers Injured After Delta Plane Catches Fire, Flips Upside Down; Trump Makes Cuts To FAA Amid String Of Plane Accidents; Toronto Airport Officials Hold Briefing On Delta Plane Crash. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 18, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, President Trump's top diplomats wrapped up high level talks with the Russian counter parts. The big question is whether they can end the war against Ukraine without giving Vladimir Putin everything he wants.

Plus, we are standing by for a news conference in Toronto about yesterday's plane crash, that jet flipping over. Miraculously, no one was killed. But the question now here in Washington is whether President Trump and Elon Musk could think twice about the cuts they have already ordered at the FAA.

And yet another day of upheaval for the Justice Department. A top prosecutor in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office is out. And CNN has brand new reporting on how she resigned after being told to investigate the Biden administration.

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

There's no deal, but the fact that they held talks at all is a big deal. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was in Saudi Arabia today to meet with Russian foreign minister. Three years almost to the day, since Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion of his neighbor, Ukraine.

President Trump has been crystal clear that he wants this war to end, even if Ukraine has to make major concessions to end it. So, what happens now? That is still very unclear, especially since the Ukrainians weren't invited to today's summit, but the Americans and the Russians presented optimistic takes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: The goal of today's meeting was to follow up on the phone call the president had a week ago and begin to establish those lines of communication. The work remains. Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey. SERGEY LAVROV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: The meeting was very useful. We didn't just listen to each other. We heard each other. And I think the American side certainly started to understand our side of the argument.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Get straight to CNN's Alex Marquardt, who is in Saudi Arabia. Alex, what are you hearing from your sources about what happened in that room?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, essentially today, the agreement was to keep the conversation going, to keep having talks. This was to get the discussions between the Russians and the Americans unstuck after the relationship had been frozen for the past few years.

They wanted to start talking about Ukraine and other issues. There were no concrete decisions. Nothing was decided about Ukraine that they are walking away with. This is the beginning, as Rubio just said, of a process. The state department laid out essentially four broad subjects that they agreed to.

The first was to reestablish firmer diplomatic ties through the embassies. Both embassies in Washington and Moscow essentially have been gutted for the past three years because diplomats and intelligence officials have been kicked out.

And then specifically to Ukraine, Dana, both sides said that they would name high level officials to negotiate about Ukraine. And then looking past Ukraine, this is really interesting. They said that once the war in Ukraine ends, that they should work towards cooperation on geopolitical issues and what they called historic economic and investment opportunities. And then, just more broadly, the five men at the table there, agreeing to continue talking as they did today here in Riyadh.

Now, we did hear an angry President Zelenskyy earlier today. He has canceled the trip now to Saudi Arabia. He did not want to give the appearance of coming here to continue negotiations. He says that there are no negotiations unless Ukraine is involved. There's been a lot of discussion about why the Ukrainians aren't at the table, why the Europeans aren't at the table. The National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz address this issue of the U.S. not talking to his friends. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE WALTZ, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: We are absolutely talking to both sides. The secretary of state just met with President Zelenskyy days ago, along with the vice president, seven Cabinet members in Europe. At the same time, really showing the importance of engaging our allies. I think we'll -- the facts will continue to push back on this notion that our allies haven't been consulted.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MARQUARDT: So, Walt also pointing out that the president spoke with the French president yesterday, and the British prime minister is in town next week, so they are discussing all of this with the allies on a daily basis.

[12:05:00]

There was a big question about when presidents Trump and Putin might meet. There was some speculation might happen as early as next week, right here in Saudi Arabia. Dana, we are told by both sides that is very unlikely and that a date has not been set. Dana?

BASH: Thank you so much for that reporting. Alex, appreciate it. Here at the table, we have a terrific group of reporters. Nia-Malika Henderson of CNN and Bloomberg, Eli Stokols of POLITICO and Olivia Beavers from the Wall Street Journal. Hello, everybody.

Eli, you cover the White House and more broadly foreign affairs for your publication. And I know you've been talking to some of your sources about really what's going on and what's driving this behind the scenes.

ELI STOKOLS, WHITE HOUSE & FOREIGN POLICY CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: I think they say, take the president at his word when he says he really wants to end this war. I think why Europe and people in Kyiv are pushing the panic button right now is because he wants to end the war. It seems like no matter what, without regard for --

BASH: He President Trump.

STOKOLS: -- without regard for the consequences of, you know, a deal that brings Russia back into the mainstream diplomatically. I mean, he is talking about -- I mean, Russia is getting this meeting with him. They're getting -- Putin got the phone call with him, and they have done nothing. They have changed -- they are doing this as they are bombarding Kyiv hour by hour.

And so, there are a lot of people who sit there and see the president eager to normalize relations with Russia, eager to talk to the bigger country, and kind of sidelining the smaller country, even his, you know, initial ask the pitch for an economic deal with Ukraine.

You know, President Zelenskyy looked at that and said, this looks colonial. This looks like paying the U.S. reparations for aid that has already been given to them --

BASH: Can you just explain what you're taking about --

STOKOLS: -- and not necessarily including security guarantees. The Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went to Kyiv and met with Zelenskyy last week and presented a proposal from the president, and this was a proposal for economic cooperation. Trump, you've heard him talk about rare earths. We got to have the rare earths.

Well, Ukraine does have these rare earth mineral deposits that are very valuable in making semiconductors and all kinds of technological products. And Trump has gotten interested in Ukraine because of that.

Zelenskyy trying to, kind of, you know, come up with something that will keep Trump and the U.S. in the fold has said, you've given us a lot of aid. You deserve to have access to our rare earth. But the deal that the White House initially presented Zelenskyy was so one sided.

It was really shocking to people in Ukraine because it struck them as sort of like, similar to the Versailles deal that Germany cut after World War I. The amounts of reparations that Germans had to pay, it did not look like something that was about protecting Ukraine going forward after the war.

BASH: And for those not that familiar with global history as they should be, that didn't go well for the world, because we ended up with Adolf Hitler and a whole other world war. I just want to read the take of our friend Stephen Collinson, because he said the following. Trump wants a deal, just along the lines of what you're saying, Eli, perhaps any deal.

Quote, the war often seems a distraction from what Trump really wants, the chance to sit down with Putin, one of the global strongmen he admires. So that's kind of another layer of what Eli's talking about, which is not just a deal to sort of get the goods inside Ukraine, but also to appear a deal maker. Maybe even, you know, he's -- we know that he is not somebody who would say no to a Nobel Peace Prize. There's no question that that's part of what's in his mind --

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST & POLITICS AND POLICY COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG: That's right. Yeah. And to stand shoulder to shoulder with a strongman, I mean, this idea, it kind of evokes images of the, you know, last centuries, right, where colonialism was the rule of the day, imperialism was the rule of the day, and the stronger nations were essentially carving up the world in taking and extracting resources as they saw fit. I mean, that is what Trump's idea of being a president is.

If you hearken back to his inaugural, he talks about this, the whole idea of Manifest Destiny. One of his favorite presidents is William McKinley. He favored tariffs, but he also expanded the territory. It's what Donald Trump talked about in his inaugural, this idea of expanding territories. Why he's talking about Canada? It's why he's talking about Greenland and the Panama Canal. And so, this is part of it.

And obviously, America was part of building this post-World War II -- world where this idea that stronger nations can just pick on weaker nations is not something that the United States certainly wants or certainly model that behavior. And so, this is a real break in the world war.

BASH: Treaty of Versailles and president, we've got some deep cuts on history today, and I'm loving it. I want to bring you in Olivia, but I do want to play some bits of what we heard from Mike Waltz, the president's National Security Adviser, and Marco Rubio earlier today in Saudi Arabia.

[12:10:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALTZ: President Trump has shifted the entire global conversation from not if the war is going to end, but just how it's going to end, and only President Trump can do that.

RUBIO: He's the only leader in the world who can make this happen, who can even bring people together to begin to talk about it in a serious way, is President Trump. President Trump is the only one that can do it. He's the only leader in the world that could have started a process that we saw here today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Back to that audience.

OLIVIA BEAVERS, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes. And I mean, it's a tough theory or thesis to prove or disprove. But with President Trump, he is a pretty transactional person. And I've been talking to Republicans who want aid to Ukraine to keep coming from the U.S., and they're a dwindling group.

But some of them were telling me that they hope that Trump is actually trying to find a way with the base, which is doing the 50 percent rare minerals deal, or some sort of where he gets something back.

And one of them also told me that while Trump might be afraid to change with his base because he has been hitting it on the campaign trail for as long as I think all of us can remember, since the war started. He told me that -- one Republican member told me that he did polling in his district. And if he voted for raising taxes, the numbers of popularity were way lower.

But if Donald Trump said he wanted to raise taxes, the support group, because the base believes, at least the conservative base believes that Trump is doing the right thing for them. So, they will take it, and he was using that to explain Ukraine. If Trump decides he wants to do a deal with Ukraine, then they will, probably a group of them will get behind it.

BASH: We need to go to break, but as we go to break, I just want to play something that I hope didn't get lost from Christiane Amanpour, my colleague here. And the Ukrainian president over the weekend, where it looked like, Zelenskyy was trying to make clear. He understands the Trump psyche as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Did you tell, as was reported, President Trump, that Putin is only doing this and agreeing to talks because he's afraid of Trump. Did you tell him that?

PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE: Yes. I told Trump that Putin afraid of him. Yes, and he heard me, and now Putin knows.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: OK. Coming up, we're going to get reaction to the talks in Saudi Arabia from more -- from today, from the Ukrainian president. CNN is on the ground in Kyiv. We're also standing by in Toronto, where we are expecting a news conference at any moment on yesterday's crash, where, miraculously, no one was killed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: Any minute now, Toronto airport officials will hold a briefing. This comes after terrifying new video shows the moment a Delta plane crashes on the runway at the Toronto airport on Monday.

You can see there the plane is engulfed in flames before it rolls onto its side and eventually comes to a stop upside down. Remarkably, all 80 people on board survived. 21 passengers were injured. What you're looking at there is what one passenger filmed as they escaped crouching through that emergency exit door on to the snowy runway.

CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean is here to try to make sense of what happened. Pete?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Dana, the good news, and let's start with that. Of those 21 injured according to Delta Air Lines with their latest update, 19 of them have been released from Toronto area hospitals, meaning all but two remain in the hospital now. The big thing now is the video, which is so telling and so revealing, and this will be key to investigators.

Let's punch it back up because you can watch the approach here of Delta 4819, as it's coming into land on runway two-three at Toronto, Pearson International Airport. The approach looks relatively stable until the touchdown, when the right wing shears off almost right away and the fuselage tumbles there, across the runway and off to the right.

What is really telling here is the impact and what you see and what you do not see. The flight tracking data shows that this plane was on a relatively stable descent, pretty normal, about 800 feet a minute until this moment.

This is the point where the right main landing gear, at least from what I can see in the video, touch the runway first with a lot of force, which caused the right wing to shear off, and then the airplane to essentially turn into a fireball as it tumbles down the runway here.

What we do not see is what is called a round out and flare that takes the airplane from the descending portion of the approach. And you will have to excuse my model here. This is a 727, not a CRJ, like what was in this crash, but from the descending portion of the approach to the flare and cushioning the descent and stopping the sink rate, usually that causes a change in attitude of the nose.

[12:20:00] Pilots pick up the nose to stop the sink and really kiss the runway is the goal. Usually do that about 20 to 30 feet above ground level. Essentially this airplane stayed in the same attitude all the way to the ground with a pretty big impact, and that is what investigators will really look at. Why is the big question?

And there are so many factors here. Airplane pilot and environment are what the investigators of the transport safety board in Canada will look at. And really, the environment is the big one. We know that the wind was pretty strong at the time, gusting to about 40 miles per hour, a quarter in cross wind coming out of the right side. Did that cause any wind shear? Did that cause any sudden sinking of the airplane? It was the wind there, and was it suddenly not there?

And we also know there was blowing snow across the runway. Did that impact the pilots' ability to see the runway and really calculate? And it takes a coordinated mark two eyeball to figure out when exactly to flare. Were they able to -- were they able to see the runway? Were they not able to see the runway? A lot of big questions now, as this investigation is only in its very beginning stages.

BASH: And then the obvious question. I just want to remind our viewers, I'm sure they don't need a lot of reminding. There have been now a series of deadly aviation accident, accidents in North America, just in the past month. We're showing some of them on the screen. What everybody is asking you probably everywhere you go, including the hallways here, Pete, is it safe to fly?

MUNTEAN: You know, I would say yes. You have about a one in 11 million chance, even considering the crashes of late, of dying on a commercial airliner in the United States. I actually think that estimate is a bit overblown. It's probably even better than that. You have a better chance of being struck and killed by light.

The big thing here is that we're talking about a crash where everybody pretty much walked away when only 20 days ago, 67 people were killed in the midair collision over the Potomac, the worst air disaster in the U.S. since 2009. There is no real common thread here among these crashes, although there is a bit of coincidence in that these are happening so frequently.

Why now? And the warning signs were there with the Potomac crash, we've covered, near miss after near miss of midair collisions on or near the runway at commercial airports. This may be something where extreme weather may become a factor. And we know that the winds were a big thing. A big low-pressure system moved through, is very windy up and down the east coast, causing a lot of flight diversions. That may be more of a thread as climate change sets in more and more.

BASH: Pete, thank you. We're extremely lucky to have you with us. Explain everything to us. Talk to you soon.

MUNTEAN: Thank You. BASH: I'm back here with our fantastic panel. Let's broaden it out a little bit to talk about what is going on here in Washington. As he said, there's no thread between all of those, except the obvious, which is that planes are crashing, which is frightening. But this is happening against the backdrop of massive cuts across the federal government, including at the FAA.

Just going to put some up on the screen, hundreds of FAA employees have been laid off as part of Elon Musk going through all the federal agencies. And then beyond the FAA, we have 10 percent of the CDC work force, 3400 at the U.S. Forest Service, 2200 and at the interior department, 2000 at the department of energy, a 1000 at the VA.

HENDERSON: Yeah, listen. And so far, at least, if you kind of look at how Americans Trump voters in particular are reacting, so far, this is something that they haven't really been affected by. You do hear from some GOP senators who are in some of these states where there, you know, public parks, for instance, raising some alarms.

But so far, these cuts because they are directed at federal workers who the right has been expert at demonizing as lazy, as working from home, as costing too much, because they have been demonized. A lot of Americans say, too bad, so sad, that they're being x. We'll see how long that lasts. We'll see if there is any trickledown effect for average Americans.

BASH: Just want to read what Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said. I'm thankful that everyone in the flight incident in Toronto that took off from Minneapolis is safe, but we keep seeing these incidents day after day. Meanwhile, Trump is doing massive layoffs at the FAA, including safety specialists and making our skies less and less safe. Democrats are fighting to protect the flying public.

BEAVERS: It sounds like we're going to have Democrats very quickly blaming if there's anything with investigations pointing that the president's cuts, the DOGE cuts, led to the FAA having problems with flights. But it's going to be broader than that. I think within the USDA, there were 25 percent cuts in the office that works on studying animal born illnesses like the avian bird flu.

[12:25:00]

And so, you're going to probably see this become the battle cry of Democrats. And some Democratic members have told me that they have been getting calls off the hook from their voters who say that they are so freaked out that this man who wasn't elected, Elon Musk, is going into the government, accessing classified information and making these cuts.

Republicans, on the other hand, especially in the House. I've heard very few, especially with centrist Republicans, expressing concerns. Some are saying that while there are some good programs that are being impacted, they will call the White House, and the White House will fix it. STOKOLS: Republicans -- like the Trump White House, they like how this is going. There's almost a sense like we're baiting Democrats into going out and having protests defending bigger government. I mean, they think the politics in the main, you know, are favoring them.

But I think that -- well, I mean, I have talked to a couple very senior Democrats who have said, privately, look, could the department of education be shrunk down? Has there been some bureaucracy creep over the years? Yes. But it's the way that they are going about doing it, and it's empowering Elon Musk and a bunch of 20 something tech bros to go in and sort of before they even know what's what, just slashing systems.

It's when that is the story, on one hand, and then there are other things playing out. You go to the store, there's no eggs in the fridge. You know, you see planes crashing left and right. You hear about a bird flu. And you hear, on the other hand, about scientists being fired at NIH, you know, at some point, people may connect the dots.

And they may come to blame this administration, this government, if they have just bulldozed their way through government, taken out a lot of expertise, because people don't really know what government does or is until it's doing something for them, or until it's not there.

BASH: Speaking of that, let's go now to Toronto airport officials are giving a briefing on that plane crash.

DEBORAH FLINT, PRESIDENT & CEO, TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: No loss of life or life threatening injuries in yesterday's accident. You know, every time you board a flight, you are greeted by flight attendants and by flight crew often. It's their job to make us comfortable and confident about the flight ahead, and they do an incredible job with that. But we saw the most important role that they play in action yesterday.

The crew of Delta flight 4819, heroically led passengers to safety, evacuating a jet that had overturned on the runway, on landing that was amid smoke and fire. I thank each and every one of these heroes, every flight attendant and crew member on Delta flight 4819. I also thank every flight attendant and crew member across the industry. Thank you for all that you do every day and every night in service of safe air travel.

In regards to the accident yesterday, at approximately 2:15 pm Delta Air Lines flight 4819 from Minneapolis to Toronto, operated by subsidiary Endeavor Air was involved in a single aircraft accident upon landing at Toronto, Pearson. The plane was carrying four crew and 76 passengers, among them, 22 Canadians, flight attendants, flight crews and airport emergency workers and responders mounted a textbook response, reaching the site within minutes and quickly evacuating the passengers.

At the time, there were 21 injured passengers, ranging from minor -- minor to critical, but not life-threatening injuries. A total of 19 passengers went to the local hospitals, with two more going to hospitals in the time period after.

At this time, Delta Air Lines has reported that 19 of those passengers have been released, and two remain hospitalized. Our thoughts go out to all of the passengers impacted and their families. We have taken great time and care to extend care to each of the passengers that were here after the accident, that includes comfort as well as support in their emotional wellbeing in the hours since the crash. We have completed the reunification process for all of the remaining passengers. We will continue to care for them during this extended time.

I will now give you more information about the operations at Pearson yesterday and what to expect in the days ahead. From last Thursday to Sunday, Toronto, Pearson saw extreme conditions, two separate snowstorms. On Thursday and Sunday, we got more than 20 inches, 50 centimeters of accumulated snow.

That is actually not typical. In fact, it is more snow within that time window than we received in all of last winter. There were many delays and cancelations across this part of Canada and the U.S. northeast during this time, creating numerous flight delays and back logs. At Toronto, Pearson, 221 of 974 scheduled flights were canceled on Thursday. 75 of 1012 flights, scheduled flights were canceled on Friday. 128 of 937 schedule flights were canceled on Saturday.

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