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Netanyahu Calls Hamas's Failure To Return The Body Of Shiri Bibas A "Brazen Violation" Of Their Agreement; Israeli Military Rejects Claim That Bibas Children Were Killed In Airstrike; Israel Confirms Receiving List Of Hostages To Be Freed Tomorrow; Dem Divisions Deepen Amid Disconnect With Voters. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired February 21, 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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[12:34:12]
DANA BASH, CNN HOST: The outrage and anguish over Israeli hostages has risen even more today. It's at a new level after one of four bodies returned by Hamas yesterday was not who they said it was.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translation): The cruelty of Hamas's monsters don't have any limit. Not only they kidnapped the father, Yarden Bibas, the young mother Shiri, and their two little babies. In an unimaginable cynical move, they didn't return Shiri by her little children, the little angels and put the body of a Gazan woman inside a casket.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Nic Robertson is in Jerusalem. Nic?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, the prime minister is vowing to get justice for the people who perpetrated these murders. And it's been very clear. His office has been reinforcing that to me today.
[12:35:09]
You know, what is particularly striking about this situation, it's not only that Shiri Bibas' body, wasn't her body, although there was propaganda around it when Hamas was releasing it yesterday, all the pain of the country because they've experienced her suffering.
And I've gone through this rollercoaster of emotion while she's been held. But to find out that it's not her body, that's just such a huge, huge blow. But then you add into the top of that, Hamas said, well, it was a mix up that she might have been in an apartment with other -- with Palestinians when there was a bomb strike that killed them all.
Hamas' narrative is that it was an Israeli bomb strike. But what we've learned from the forensics of the two young boys, nine-year-old -- nine-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel, is the IDF saying very, very clearly they were not killed in an Israeli airstrike, that Hamas murdered them with their own hands.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
LT. COL. DANIEL HAGARI, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES SPOKESMAN: Contrary to Hamas' lies, Ariel and Kfir were not killed in an airstrike. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered by terrorists in cold blood. The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys. They killed them with their bare hands. Afterwards, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
ROBERTSON: So this is a double blow, if you will. But it's also striking that the Bibas family, who rarely speak publicly, the aunt of Kfir and Ariel spoke today, and she spoke rather than revenge about making sure that the other hostages get released. This is what she said.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
OFRI BIBAS LEVY, SISTER OF YARDEN BIBAS (through translation): For Ariel and Kfir's sake and for Yarden's sake, we are not seeking revenge right now. We are asking for Shiri. Their cruelty only emphasizes the urgent need to bring Shiri back to us, save the lives of the living hostages and return all the fallen for burial.
President Trump, I'm asking you, please assist Israel and our family in completing this important mission.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
ROBERTSON: So there's six living hostages expected to be released tomorrow, Saturday. It's hard to see, though, how this can continue with all the tensions that just seem to be growing right now, Dana.
BASH: Yes, but hopefully those hostages, the living hostages will be released tomorrow. And to hear Yarden's sister say what she's saying, knowing that Yarden, the husband of Shiri and the father of those two babies, was released, so he is, you know, sort of the survivor trying to make sense of this all, is really hard to bear.
Nic, thank you so much for your terrific reporting as always.
Coming up, a constitutional crisis, that's the latest rallying cry from some Democrats. The question is, will it resonate? And what are they doing about it? We'll discuss after a break.
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[12:42:58]
BASH: Democrats are scrambling to strike a unified and effective response to President Trump and the Republican trifecta running government. Some, like Congressman Seth Moulton, are calling for the party to simmer down with the outrage.
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REP. SETH MOULTON (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I don't think we should be so focused on the outrage at what he's doing, because guess what? People elected him, a majority of Americans elected him to do what he's doing.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Others, like Senator Angus King, are sounding the alarm.
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SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: This is a constitutional crisis. It's the most serious assault on our Constitution in the history of this country. What's it going to take for us to wake up, and when I say us, I mean this entire body, to wake up to what's going on here? Is it going to be too late? Is it going to be when the president has accreted all this power and the Congress is an afterthought?
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BASH: My panel is back with me. This is going to be a story that is going to evolve and take twists and turns. And by story, I, of course, mean how the Democrats are going to figure this out. This being the message and this being the actual response and pushback to things that they fundamentally believe.
Certainly in the case of Angus King, who's technically an independent, he caucuses with the Democrats, fundamentally believes that this is hurting democracy. When it comes to the message, let's look at some of the headlines this week.
The Hill, "Democrats lack a message and a messenger". The New York Times, "Democrats fear they are missing the moment to remake the party". Politico, "Dems concede Republicans running circles around them online". And then our own headline, "Democrats confront their powerlessness as Trump flexes authority".
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I think you're seeing these two different sides of the party really struggle to figure out which one is going to win out. On one hand, you have the younger Democrats, like Congressman Casar and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, who are saying we need to fight everywhere, everything all at once.
[12:45:08]
And they are trying to go after everything, acknowledging that this new media environment is very different than even during the first Trump administration. And also, they're battling with someone like Elon Musk, to Hans' point earlier, who has a platform that he's able to manipulate the algorithm for, boost his own messaging for.
The White House, in some cases, is only putting out messages on X. Some branches of the federal bureaucracy are, not anywhere else. So there really -- there are some that are saying that they need to be everywhere and attacking everything. BASH: Yes.
BARRON-LOPEZ: And then you see the others who are questioning whether or not they should even use their leverage. For the -- in the one instance, they may only have their leverage, which is when government funding expires on March 14.
BASH: And then the -- then there's the message on the billionaires. And you said Bernie Sanders is doing a whole tour, speaking out against what he calls the oligarchy. You have a great story talking about Chuck Schumer, the top Democrats, looking to jam Republicans and Musk on billionaires. He huddled with Hakeem Jeffries last week for a strategy session, maybe picking a couple of issues, cuts to Medicare, tax breaks for the wealthy, to recreate what you call the magic of 2018.
HANS NICHOLS, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yes, that's the strategy. For -- and the challenge for Democrats is how to keep their raucous conference and caucus together when they're outraged about everything, and focusing on issues that they think they can actually win at the polls at and convince voters.
And they clearly think that is on tax cuts for billionaires and the cuts that Republicans are talking about to Medicaid, to some extent a little Medicare, but mostly Medicaid. That is the sort of two-shot message that the leaders want to deliver. Their challenge, and it's up to them, is to get everyone on the same page.
And as you know from your time on Capitol Hill, herding senators is like herding cats. It's very difficult.
BASH: Real quick.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The -- also, while you're going back and forth about deciding what to swing at, you risk also not swinging at anything and coming off as passive. The Democrats are already not in power at this point, and coming off as passive while Trump is upending the federal government, there's a real risk to that as well.
BASH: All right. A quick correction, earlier when we were talking about Elon Musk at CPAC, we had a banner up on the bottom of the screen, quoting him as saying it was a chainsaw for democracy. That was a mistake. Musk said he had a chainsaw for, quote, "bureaucracy". Accuracy is very important to us. We wanted to correct that.
Inside Politics will be right back.
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[12:51:58]
BASH: There is an election in 2025 this year that will be both extremely expensive and contentious. It's going to draw millions of dollars from billionaire donors' pockets. It will determine the fate of an abortion ban. It will serve as an early swing state test of Donald Trump's presidency. And guess what? It's the fight for one single seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.
Arlette Saenz has a terrific story out right now about all this on CNN.com. And she joins me now.
Hello. Nice to see you. This is really fascinating. Let's start with the basics. The judges who are vying for this role, who are they and why are these mega donors vying for what happens in the seat?
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this Wisconsin Supreme Court race will really determine whether the court is maintaining its liberal majority or if it will turn to conservative control. You have Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford facing -- who is a liberal, facing off against Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, who's the conservative in this race.
This is a nonpartisan race, but there are plenty of political actors who are getting involved. Perhaps the most prominent this week was Trump ally Elon Musk, who has recently posted on social media encouraging people to vote Republican in this race and also pouring in a lot of money. There's one group that's allied with him that's airing $1.6 million in TV ads that started this week.
And another group that he's tied to is spending about $1 million on field operations and canvassing. But it's not just the conservative and Republican side getting involved. You also have mega donors like George Soros and even Illinois Governor JB Pritzker sending money to the Democratic Party in Wisconsin, which can then dole out some campaign money to Susan Crawford.
You also have Vice President Kamala Harris's fundraising outlet sending an email to donors saying to get involved in this race. This will really be a key test of enthusiasm for both Republicans and Democrats in Wisconsin. Of course, Democrats are facing this rebuilding period.
You have the state party chair, Ben Wikler, who told our colleague Fredreka Schouten that this will show whether Democrats have found their fighting spirit. And on the Republican side, they're hoping that those gains that Trump made with the electorate could also extend to this conservative candidate in what's really shaping up to be the first major race of the Trump era.
BASH: Susan Crawford, you mentioned that name. She's the Democrat.
SAENZ: She's --
BASH: Or she's --
SAENZ: She's the liberal.
BASH: She's a liberal.
SAENZ: Yes. BASH: I know.
SAENZ: Yes.
BASH: They're not -- because they're on the Supreme Court. They're not technically D's and R's, but that's an important distinction. The issue that we're talking about abortion, you mentioned that briefly, but the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin is really powerful when it comes to the question of abortion and the availability of abortion in that state.
SAENZ: And this is an issue that we've seen really play out across the country. And it's an issue that the Wisconsin Supreme Court could make a decision on, specifically looking at a law that was implemented back in 1849 to determine whether that law can be enforced.
[12:55:03]
Keeping that liberal majority may very well tilt this in one direction versus having a conservative on the court would send this in another matter. But there's also other issues besides abortion that could get decided. There is a major collective bargaining case regarding that Scott Walker law back from the early 2010s, 2011s that could be decided.
And then there's the issue of congressional maps, which is really something that could have not just implications in the state, but also on the national level.
BASH: Yes, such an interesting story. I hope everybody goes to CNN.com and reads more about what you just reported here.
Thank you so much, Arlette.
SAENZ: Yes.
BASH: And thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after the break.
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