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Inside Politics

Trump Lashed Out At Zelenskyy, Falsely Calls Him A "Dictator"; Zelenskyy: Trump Living In "Disinformation Space"'; Zelenskyy: "I Would Like Trump's Team To Be More Truthful"; Trump Echoes Putin, Falsely Blames Ukraine For Starting War; Trump, Musk Praise Each Other In Joint Interview; Some GOP Members, Senators Criticize Trump's Cuts. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 19, 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: Today on Inside Politics, lashing out. Just in the last hour, President Trump's criticism of his Ukrainian counterpart got more harsh and more personal as he falsely blames Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the war, one in which Russia invaded his country three years ago. We have the breaking details.

Plus, best friends forever. Donald Trump and Elon Musk sit down for a fawning interview on Fox. Neither can stop praising the other, but we did learn some things from that love fest, and we will explain.

And Trump's deputy attorney general is in New York today to ask a court to let him drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. Now it's up to the judge.

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

We start with the rapidly escalating and frankly, stunning war of words between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is fighting for his country's very survival. This is what Trump posted on Truth Social just within the last few minutes.

Quote, think of it. A modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start. He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. A dictator -- a dictator without elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is going to have -- or he's not going to have, a country left.

Now, just for the record, the number that he gave their $350 billion that's not correct. According to the Kiel Institute, the U.S. has spent about $119 billion to help Ukraine as of the end of 2024. Now, to be clear, that post we just read comes after Trump already blamed Ukraine for starting a war that began, of course, when Russia launched an unprovoked invasion three years ago. And this all prompted the following response from Zelenskyy himself this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE: Unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for the American people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation space.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: We have CNN's Jeff Zeleny, who is with the president in Florida, and Nick Paton Walsh, who is in Kyiv. Jeff, I want to start with you. Obviously, this post that we just read, at least part of it was in response to Zelenskyy claiming that the president is in a disinformation space.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Dana, that post was sent from the president here at his Doral Golf Club. He's been spending an extended Presidents Day weekend here in Florida. He'll be giving a speech here tonight, and yes, it is riddled with false notes.

But one thing is clear. There is no doubt that Volodymyr Zelenskyy now is in the president's at least rhetorical cross hairs, and perhaps more than that, it's been an extraordinary 24 hours. We heard the president yesterday at Mar-a-Lago suggesting, it was Zelenskyy who did not relent, and, in fact, led to the war and now going much further, calling him a dictator, and the fact that he scanned the United States.

Of course, that is not true. All of that aid money was voted on by a bipartisan group of Congress. Of course, President Zelenskyy was back a guest of the U.S. Congress. He has been hailed as a hero to western allies. We cannot overstate how dramatic these developments have been in terms of the U.S., Russia position.

Not only have their relations been reset, starting with that phone call one week ago, but it has gone so much more than that. So, we do expect the president to talk more about that later here today. But Dana, one thing is clear, Trump has not said one negative thing about Vladimir Putin, only several about Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

BASH: Really good point. Thank you so much, Jeff. And Nick, we just heard Jeff say, we cannot overstate how much whip lash we are seeing when it comes to the U.S. relationship with Russia, and of course, in the last even few minutes or 12 hours or so, what the U.S. position is vis a vis Ukraine and its leader. Can you please put that all in context, especially given the fact that you have been covering this war for as long as it's been going on for three years?

[12:05:00]

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. It's hard to know where to start, really. I mean, let's just get down to the reality on the battlefield here. We now have the United States, Ukraine's key main back sounding pretty much like it doesn't even want to see the Ukrainian president still in power, calling him a dictator. Utterly false, obviously.

But that calls into question exactly what the mindset of troops on the front line are where Russia is advancing. There may be less aid, there may be no American aid going forwards. That's all in doubt now, as is the relationship between Washington and Moscow, as is the probably for many Ukrainians here, horrific idea that the world's most powerful man appears to be saying things that the Kremlin have been saying over the past years, that Zelenskyy is not legitimate.

Well, he won an election, and he says he still has polling in the 57 percent area. That's backed up by some independent sources too, certainly not the 4 percent that Trump said last night. And at the same time, we have the fact that Russia and United States had a pretty clear rapprochement in Saudi Arabia, that the rehabilitation of Russia's image in the American public eye is something that Trump is allowing to happen reasonably quickly.

And while Ukraine was at the heart of the peace talks, we've been seeing, it does appear to be part of that agenda now, not necessarily the core of it, particularly after Saudi Arabia. Where does this leave us? Well, we have Trump's envoy Keith Kellogg here in Kyiv, essentially to listen to reset after a rocky week. But that's now overshadowed by this personal spat.

It is clearly, I think personal. I think Zelenskyy this morning, when he talked about Trump living in the different information space, was trying to counter the idea that Zelenskyy himself was illegitimate, that he was unable to maintain a mandate here. But now we've seen this spat escalate, with him being called a dictator.

Look, elections, just let me clarify this here. Russia has meddled in every election I've seen here in the last 22 years. I've been covering Ukraine. They are good at that. They're likely to be good this time round, and that's if the election even manages to get held to international standards. A war is happening here. There's martial law.

What will you do about the millions of Ukrainians living abroad as refugees? How do they vote? How do frontline troops vote? How do you reform the electoral process to modern standards? How would you get international observers in? So many questions to be answered.

And if any doubt over the election results, only feeds into the idea that the presidency here Kyiv is illegitimate. So, Zelenskyy's team, frankly, many here in Kyiv, thinking an idea of elections is simply a non-starter in war time because it would just feed Russia's narrative and political weakness here, and possibly even take troops away from their frontline duties, particularly if it's held during a cease fire.

So, a lot of questions here, but we've ultimately seen in the last week is the president of the United States, I think it's fair to say, turn on Zelenskyy, his Ukrainian counterpart, call into question the continuation of the main supplier of aid here in Europe's largest land war since the 1940s.

And we've also seen the guarantee of America as Europe security guarantor ebbing after comments in Brussels by the Pentagon chief, radical change here and its ultimate Ukraine sovereignty that is now endowed, Dana? BASH: And Nick, each of the things that you just said at the end there would be monumental when it comes to a shift in approach for the last -- almost century, in and of itself, and now we have all of them together, and who knows what is to come. Nick, thank you so much for that.

And I want to turn to my fellow reporters here at the table, Jeff Mason is here from Reuters, Michael Warren of The Dispatch, and CNN's Priscilla Alvarez. Just to underscore what Nick was saying about Russia being giddy about what they are hearing.

Just in the last few minutes, we saw a post on X from the RT, which is the Russian information -- state information. Trump destroys the Zelenskyy, the dictator doing a terrible job, leaving Ukraine shattered with millions dead and 100 billion in U.S. taxpayer money missing. How long can Zelenskyy now last?

JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Well, I mean, that underscores a couple different things. Number one, President Trump is clearly using some talking points from Moscow in his own rhetoric, both with reporters and on Truth Social. And now, Russia is basically thanking him for that and amplifying it more by praising Trump and using that same cycle that has started to underscore the points that it has been making now for a couple years, and they are.

I don't want to say they're working together, but the two things are helping each other out. They're both amplifying each other's messages, and that is a clear shift from decades of U.S. policy and certainly the U.S. position with its allies over the last three years during the war.

BASH: Yeah. And the disinformation campaign, or the world of disinformation, how -- this is what Zelenskyy talked about. This is precisely what he's referring to.

[12:10:00]

MASON: Yeah, absolutely.

BASH: That that Trump is quite literally parroting the talking point from Putin, not only talking about the idea that this is Ukraine's fault when this was a brazen attempt to try to seize Ukraine and put it back and give it back to mother Russia, which is how Vladimir Putin believes that part of the world should look and the list goes on and on and on.

I want to ask about how this is actually being perceived in corners of Donald Trump's party, the Republican Party, because obviously this is not the Republican Party that we all started to cover when we started here in Washington because it was much more hawkish. Now there's very much a populist bent, which is how Donald Trump is where he is.

But the chair of the Armed Services Committee in the United States Senate, a Republican, Roger Wicker, he cannot even hide how disgusted he is with the shift in position. Listen to what he said to our colleague, Manu Raju. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Do you think that Putin can be trusted in these negotiations?

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS): No. Putin is a war criminal and should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Michael?

MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR EDITOR, THE DISPATCH: Look, I mean, I don't want to downplay the importance of the Russian influence here. Remember, there were right wing media figures who were revealed to have been paid by Russia to sort of spout their propaganda, not about a year or so ago.

This is something that ideologically is a part of the sort of rightwing media sphere. So, I don't want to downplay that when I say this has so much to do. And Nick Paton Walsh mentioned this with a sort of personal animus that Donald Trump seems to have as well with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Remember the first impeachment, everybody forgets about the first impeachment. It was about his frustration with Volodymyr Zelenskyy not digging up dirt on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, who Donald Trump perceived as being a likely political opponent in the upcoming 2020 election, that his anger and frustration is very palpable here.

All of that is working together with what I describe this ideological sort of feedback loop with Russian propaganda and certain rightwing media spheres. And it's interesting to hear members of the United States Senate sort of struggle to deal with the fact that this is the reality. This is who their party's leader is. It's not where many of them are and remain where they remain. They are in support of Ukraine's sovereignty. What are they going to do about it is, is I think, the constant question on the Hill.

BASH: Well, on that note, Lindsey Graham, one of the president's biggest supporters on Capitol Hill, one of the biggest support (Technical Difficulty). When it comes to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I blame Putin above all others. Well, let's just start there. That's first sentence. He's trying to push back against President Trump.

Then he goes on, though, to say. If you're looking for American politicians to blame, Biden and Obama are at the top of my list. They were pathetically weak in handling Putin and failed to protect Ukraine from invasion. And then he goes on from there. So, he's trying to split the baby. Mr. President, please don't blame Ukraine, because it was Russia's fault. But then, you know, kind of give a little bit of a carrot, if you will, by also blaming Democrats.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Except for the statement that just was released, was a stick through and through when it came from the president. Now, what we had heard from the senators was prior to this post on Truth Social by President Trump.

But they are trying to have it both ways, both through that statement you read from Graham, but also something that we heard from Cornyn, which is essentially, this is still a priority, but it's also OK for President Trump to push for the end of this war. It's almost a softening of position that has happened against the backdrop of not only what we saw play out in the last 24 hours, but what has happened over the course of days.

Remember Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggesting that concessions would be necessary when it came to NATO, and then every than walking that back a little bit, and then everything that happened there after. So, this is Republicans, to your point, Mike, trying to navigate that this is their leader, that their leader does have personal animus against Zelenskyy, but that they still have deep concerns about Putin.

BASH: Well, they have deep concerns about Putin. The other thing that I don't want to lose sight of is that the American people have deep concerns about the U.S. involvement in the Ukrainian war, and that is very much what Donald Trump is trying to play up.

Just for example, a poll that was taken at the end of 2024 from Marquette Law School, U.S. support for Ukraine. This is just among Republicans. Too much, 62 percent not enough, 38 percent. So, Donald Trump's party in the world, maybe not entirely here in Washington, but in the country is behind him.

[12:15:00]

But my question for you, Jeff Mason, and I also want to remind our viewers that if you kind of go in the way back machine to the first Trump administration, you are the one in Helsinki who asked President Trump whether he trusted Vladimir Putin. So, you have been covering this from the jump, this whole relationship.

So, my question is, could the president, President Trump, be pulling American support back from Ukraine without totally jumping in on team Putin and parroting Vladimir Putin the way he is. Couldn't he have done one without the other?

MASON: Oh, I'm sure that he could have. But that's clear that that's not what he wants. I mean, he's realigning the United States and the U.S. government policy and relationship with Putin to the detriment of allies, to the detriment of the European Union, to the detriment of Ukraine. I mean, he's placing him and that relationship and that country ahead.

What I asked in Helsinki, I think back then, was also, what do you -- do you blame Russia at all for this, to the deterioration in this relationship? And I also asked Putin back then if he had wanted Trump to win. And he said, yes. Well, you can see why.

He -- President Trump back then, and now, he has a lot of respect for autocratic leaders, as we know, and it's almost kind of rich to hear him calling President Zelenskyy a dictator, when you can see how he's treating President Putin. BASH: Yeah. All right, everybody standby. Coming up, the most important relationship in the United States of America right now. That's right, it's President Trump and Elon Musk. They sat for a joint discussion. Let's call it last night. We're going to talk about that friend fest, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BASH: President Trump and Elon Musk sat for their first joint discussion last night on Fox, where they keep praise on one another. They defended DOGE's actions and overall had a great time yukking it up in a really friendly setting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA MOTORS: Well, I love the president. I just want to be clear about that.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST, FOX NEWS: You don't care about that?

MUSK: No, I love the --

HANNITY: You love the president?

MUSK: I think President Trump is a good man.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: He is a leader. He really is a -- he gets it done. You get a lot of tech people, and you have people, they're good with tech, but they -- he gets it done.

You know, I said, in real estate, you had guys that would draw beautiful renderings of a building, and they'd draw the rendering. It would be great, and you'd say, great. When are you starting? But they were never able to get it built. They couldn't get the finances. They couldn't get the approvals. It would never get done. And then you have other guys that are able to get it done, you know, they could just get it done. I was in real estate. Same thing in this. He gets it done.

HANNITY: This is going to be hard. I feel like I'm interviewing, you know, two brothers here.

TRUMP: I wanted to find somebody smarter than him. I searched all over. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't -- I couldn't --

HANNITY: You can really tried hard.

TRUMP: I couldn't find anyone smarter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: My panel is back. Listen, Donald Trump is not wrong. Elon Musk is really, really smart, and he is really, really successful in business and technology, duh. The question is, how he is doing the work that he is doing in the federal government, not why he is doing it, but what he is doing and to have real transparency there.

And that was not what the purpose of this interview was. The purpose of this interview was to show that they actually really get along. And I think if that was what they want people to take away, the goal was reached.

WARREN: Yeah. And look, I think, we did actually learn something, I think, from this interview, which is just --

BASH: We learned a lot.

WARREN: I think, we're just how deep the sort of admiration that Donald Trump has for Elon Musk. I think there was a lot of folks, I would include myself, and then we thought maybe Donald Trump will get bored with Elon Musk after the first couple of weeks, or even a month or two with having him around.

And I think instead, Trump sees a kindred spirit in Elon Musk, somebody who is not concerned with the details, who is not concerned even with necessarily being correct. But for taking action, and whether that action is backed up by facts, whether that action has, you know, needs to be reeled back, as we have seen a lot of DOGE's actions having to be reeled back. You know, we heard about that the nuclear scientist at the Department of Energy, for instance.

I think what Donald Trump sees in Elon Musk is somebody like himself who takes action, who does things, and then, lets other people clean up after him. It's certainly a style, and it's something I think that Trump admires. I don't know how effective it's going to be long term.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, Musk's -- totally Musk's whole approach is, if you don't break it, then you can't fix it. If you don't break the system that you can't create something new. But again, when it comes to the federal government and things that are supposed to be in place by law. There are lots of unanswered questions that Elon Musk still has out there, lots and lots of them. But just going back to the relationship. I want to play a little bit more of what the president said about that.

[12:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Elon called me. He said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart. I said, absolutely. Now they said, we have breaking news. Donald Trump has ceded control of the presidency to Elon Musk. President Musk will be attending a cabinet meeting tonight at eight o'clock. And I say, it's just so obvious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: You know, I thought that moment was so interesting because it's almost like Elon proactively working this with President Trump, someone who we know to be quite prideful. And sort of making him himself smaller and just making it about the work that he's doing, which is barreling through federal government.

So, I thought that was a sort of telling and how Elon is navigating and maybe controlling how this information is getting to the president. Because if you look on X, which is Elon's platform, or if you just hear about the relationship, he is making a lot of decisions that are getting the headlines right now and that is also raising so many questions.

You know, to your point again, I spoke with a FEMA official who is there dealing with this right now with DOGE being in their offices, and they said, there is no room here for context or nuance. It is slash-slash.

And I'll add something to what you said earlier. It is asked for forgiveness, not permission. That is the space that they're operating in, and there is collateral damage and we're seeing that with the rehires, but doesn't matter in the work -- in the work that they are doing, even as there are folks --

BASH: I love that observation that in that interview, Elon Musk tried to make himself look smaller, that he kind of gets the game. He's not known as somebody who picks up on social cues, so I don't know where that came from. But even his shirt, he wore a t-shirt that said tech support. He's trying to send a message to the president, I'm here for you. I'm here not to be you or to be more powerful than you, but you.

Let's talk about the conflicts, though, because there are conflicts. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts and his various businesses. They talked about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUSK: I haven't asked the president for anything ever.

TRUMP: It's true.

HANNITY: And if it comes up, how will you handle it?

TRUMP: Well, he won't be involved.

MUSK: Yeah, I'll recuse myself if it is a conflict.

TRUMP: If there's a conflict, he won't be involved.

MUSK: Yeah.

TRUMP: I mean, I wouldn't want that, and he won't want it.

MUSK: Right. And also, I'm getting a sort of a daily proctology exam here. You now, it's not like I'll be getting away from something in the dead of night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: But he's not. There isn't a proctology exam, metaphorically speaking, at all, because we don't have a lot of the details. Maybe, hopefully, at some point we will, but we're getting the information, drip, drip, drip, from the people who are getting fired and from the people who are getting told, you're not going to get this money because this entire department or agency or line item that Congress passed is now gone.

MASON: Yeah. I mean, he used that same language when he appeared with President Trump in the Oval Office. Last week, I think, it seems like --

BASH: It was just a week.

MASON: At a different universe --

(CROSSTALK)

MASON: Exactly. But that was the first time he had been take -- he took any questions from the press was then with the president. And this interview or discussion is not exactly a hard-hitting accountability driven discussion, that accountability is not what he's been putting himself out for, even though he suggests that he's getting that kind of scrutiny.

BASH: I do want to listen to a few or -- actually, I'm going to read a few quotes from Republicans on Capitol Hill who are starting to hear from their constituents and starting to sort of raise their hand and ask questions in a way that we haven't seen for the past three weeks.

Don Bacon from a very swing district in Nebraska. Before making cuts rationally, the administration should be studying and staffing to see what the consequences are. Measure twice before cutting. Senator Lisa Murkowski, we all want efficiencies. There is a way to do it, and the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Chuck Grassley, it's a tragedy for people that are getting laid off. Congress can't do anything except complain about it.

OK, put a pin in that one. Or do you want to just pick up on that one? That's actually not true.

WARREN: This is -- Congress is supposed to be the -- that have primacy among the three co-equal branches of government. They hold the purse strings. They have the oversight authority on these sorts of things. This has been a big question ever since DOGE.

I mean, we've been asking at the dispatch, every reporter in Washington has been asking these questions about, well, who is in- charge at this particular agency or department? Where is the flow of information and direction? How does it actually work?

I mean, the White House communications office doesn't have really anything to say about what DOGE is doing. And I think it gets to the fundamental misunderstanding of what is valuable when you're talking about government, whether you're talking about building it up or cutting it, which is, you know, accountability and information, which is, in and of itself, inefficient, right?

It's inefficient to try to go out and talk to reporters and bring us in on what's happening, so we can tell readers and viewers what's happening.

[12:30:00]