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Musk Demands Federal Workers Justify their Jobs by 11:59 P.M. ET; Musk: Failure to Respond to Email will be "Taken as a Resignation"; GOP Senator Curtis to Musk: "Put a Dose of Compassion in This"; Macron Arrives at White House for Ukraine War Talks; Hegseth on What Started the War: "It's a very Complicated Situation". Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired February 24, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, what did you do at work last week? The seemingly almighty, albeit unelected, Elon Musk says millions of federal employees have just hours left to answer that question or lose their jobs, but even some of the most MAGA Trump cabinet members are telling Musk to back off.

Plus, three deadly years Ukraine marks a grim milestone as Donald Trump seems to side with the man responsible for brutally invading a sovereign democracy. We're standing by for the president's meeting with a key U.S. ally on the future of the war.

And cementing a legion of loyalists Donald Trump names a right-wing podcaster known for pushing wild conspiracy as second in command at the FBI after purging the U.S. military's senior leadership late Friday night. I'm Dana Bash, let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

We start with the mass confusion among federal employees across the country, should they listen to Elon Musk, who is demanding they email five things they accomplished on the job last week. Do that by midnight tonight, or risk termination or ignore him, like their unions and multiple agency chiefs are instructing?

Well, this morning a group of unions challenging those DOGE firings is telling a federal court that Musk's demand is unlawful. Musk wrote this on X. He said a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all.

In some cases, we believe non-existent people or identities of dead people are being used to collect pay checks. In other words, there is outright fraud. Of course, there's no evidence to back that up. That is very important to underscore here, as I go to Rene Marsh, who has been following all of this, talking to your sources, Renee?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, I have been speaking to employees at multiple agencies, and there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of confusion and a lot of fear, quite frankly. Now so far, six agencies, including the Department of Defense and the FBI have told employees not to respond to this request from Elon Musk due to the sensitive nature of the work that they do.

Trump ally FBI Director Kash Patel telling his work force in a very clear email that the FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all the review processes. So, for now, they should all pause on any responses. Elon Musk, keep in mind is not an elected official, not Senate confirmed to run any agency, and is asking employees to report outside of their chain of command clearly not something that some agency heads are willing to go along with.

Meanwhile, this morning, several agencies still have not given any guidance on how to deal with this email asking them to list out the five things that they've done or accomplished last week. I spoke with employees at the EPA, the Labor Department, IRS, and they tell me that there's a great deal of uncertainty because the agency hasn't given any guidance on how they should handle this.

And keep in mind Dana just the mental anguish of this all. They got this email on a weekend. Federal workers are not required to check their emails on the weekend. They're dealing with thousands of layoffs of their colleagues. Many people have been placed on paid administrative leave.

As one person said, it's enough to break you mentally and in some ways, that might just be what Musk wants to make it easier for this goal of thinning out the federal workforce, Dana.

And one other thing, just to add on top of all of this, he also tweeted again this morning, telling employees, if they don't return to the office by this week, and there you see the tweet there this morning, if they fail to return, they will be placed on administrative leave. So just hammering away, really at these federal workers, Dana.

BASH: Yeah, and again, begs the question whether or not he has the authority to do all of this, even including what you just put on the screen? On that note, what are lawyers who are representing these federal workers telling you about the legality of these demands?

MARSH: Well, there are real questions about whether they even have to respond to this email?

[12:05:00]

And we are seeing the legal pushback already this morning in what appears to be the first court case today to address this. Unions had first sued in California a federal court in California last week in an attempt to block Donald Trump's firing federal employees? Well, they've updated that lawsuit to now also include this Elon Musk request that was made over the weekend to explain what they accomplished.

And their argument is that there is no regulation that requires federal workers to have to report outside of their chain of command what they have accomplished, and that is the argument that they're making here. We've even heard from some Republican lawmakers who question the legality of this request, Dana.

BASH: Yeah, we sure have starting to hear more and more. Rene, thank you so much for that reporting, as always, particularly on this topic. I'm joined for by three other amazing reporters here, Astead Herndon of "The New York Times", Lisa Lerer, also of "The New York Times" and CNN's very own Brian Stelter. Well, happy Monday to everybody, to those who celebrate.

Lisa, I want to start with you on the big picture of what we mean. We could go down a million rabbit holes here, but let's just talk about what we have seen with this email and the goal here, which we know he's the king of disruption by he this time, I mean Elon Musk. But you can also say the same thing about Donald Trump.

And I'm going to get Brian to talk about this in a second as well. Anybody who has spent five minutes looking at the way Elon Musk carries himself out on at his start-ups, and eventually at his big businesses. This is the way he operates.

LISA LERER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yeah, he smashes first, and then, you know, makes decisions later. I think Washington is not one of his businesses. And as you well know, Washington runs on one central currency, which is power. Who has it and who doesn't.

And I think what was so interesting to me about this weekend is we started to see the tiniest glimmers of some sort of power wrangling and fighting within the MAGA world, within Trump's administration, when you had these agency heads who were, of course, appointed and selected by Trump, telling their workers at their agencies not to reply to this Musk email.

And we have heard some quiet concerns from people in Trump's orbit that maybe Musk has grown too powerful, that maybe they want to have jurisdiction over their own agencies and the ability to make these complicated decisions about who to cut and how to trim.

So, you know, we may it's hard to say, because we're in such unprecedented territory and all these things, but we may be starting to see some a little bit of a backlash to where Musk is going. And certainly, we're seeing that in the polling, his numbers, he's not very popular among the broader American public, among independents, and his numbers have even dropped among Republicans.

BASH: So just the way that Elon Musk approaches this, which, again, is very typical. It's the kind of humor, I guess you would say that he uses with a lot of things in his life. He posted something. It was a meme with SpongeBob, and then Donald Trump reposted it.

You know, kind of making fun of people who are upset about the fact that he is -- he is firing people and claiming that these federal workers really don't work. But on what Lisa was saying on that note, John Curtis, who is a new Republican Senator from Utah, listen to what he said over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN CURITS (R-UT): If I could say one thing that Elon Musk, it's like, please put a dose of compassion in this. These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. We -- it's a false narrative to say we have to cut and you have to be cruel to do it as well. We can do both.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: The starting point here is that it makes a lot of sense in theory, to go and ask all the employees what they're doing, right? Elon Musk would say that's common sense. He did this to the then CEO of Twitter, before forcing out the CEO of Twitter and taking over Twitter a couple years ago.

And I think we should recognize to a lot of Americans, this makes perfect sense, right? Tell us what you did last week. What are your accomplishments? Lots of people are used to doing that in their jobs. Of course, it gets really complicated really quickly when you're dealing with classified information or if we're not checking your work email over the weekend.

So, I understand it's not the common sense that he claims it is, but I think we should understand why people -- this appeals to people? Why the memes appeal to a lot of people, right? It's actually nonsense, but it sounds like common sense.

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And I think even if we look back to the again, the comparison with Twitter, there was a lot of assumptions when Musk was doing that disruption, that the app wouldn't work, that it was the kind of follow on his part, I think largely, he's fine with how that has turned off.

It allows him to shift culture and narrative. It's become a kind of free speech Bastion, and the kind of conservative spin on it that he really desired when he took that over, that influence play has worked. I think, though, the Lisa's point, it's a little different when we're talking about government, because...

STELTER: -- it seems different. More than this is, I think what Musk is doing exposes that the kind of Trump view on this point, it's about more than fraud or waste. It's about attacking expertise in general.

[12:10:00]

It's about attacking the federal government. And actually, I think making a broader point, pushing back against, I would really say science. I would say, you know, people who are...

HERNDON: -- reality...

STELTER: -- share reality.

BASH: And --

LERER: And stand that left of authority and lanes, right? It's not clear. Musk could do this at Twitter because he was in charge of Twitter. He is not in charge. There are questions about whether he has, and that's what some of these agencies are, right? So, the authority to do this at all.

BASH: OK. So, let's put some meat on these bones. If you have gone too far for Kash Patel, you probably have gone too far. So, let's see what Kash Patel had to say about this to his employees. The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures when and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses for now, please pause any responses.

And then, as you kind of digest that, there's something else that our team put together, and I think that this is really critical for people to understand. Look at this map. That is a map of where federal workers are who are living in the States that Trump won. Look at that number. It's almost a million people.

So yes, its own Washington drain the swamp all the things. But the reason why we are starting to see and hear more concern and even backlash around the country and even from Republican House members and Senators is because these are their constituents.

LERER: Correct. And I think there's a broader political question here, which is, do people -- does the American public at large care about these federal workers? They -- most people probably don't know someone certainly, if you're outside of Washington, D.C., that's been impacted by this. So that's the first question. How much do they care about these workers getting there, getting laid off and all of that?

But there's another question too, which is how people feel about Musk running what appears to be a little bit rampant across the federal government, and we have some indication in polling that people aren't so happy with that, that they are relatively happy with Trump, but they are not as happy with Musk, and so this becomes a big power struggle, and it will become a test of how much power he is given by the president to do this.

STELTER: Well, it did start over the weekend with the president. The president, saying, I want Musk to be more aggressive. So, I think that is really important context for what Musk is tweeting now, asking people to tell what they've done, saying they're going to go back to work or they're going to be fired.

It's interesting also how Musk has tried to reframe this in the last 24 hours this in the last 24 hours? He said, I'm just trying to do a pulse check. I'm just trying to save y'all are alive, right? He's claiming there's dead people on the payroll. So, he's walked it back a little bit, but he was told by Trump be in all caps --

BASH: He was told...

LERER: -- also a convenient situation for Trump to have someone else being the...

BASH: Exactly. That's exactly what --

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LERER: -- seen a long history of Trump using other people as sort of becoming his fall guy for things that become unpopular.

BASH: I just want to get one other point in here, which is how the Democrats have reacted over the weekend. A lot of Democratic Senators have posted the five things that they did last week as a way to kind of take a jab at Musk.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota successfully asked you to rehire 300 nuclear and avian flu workers. Pressed you to pay attention to rising household costs. Stood up for vets, fought against your tax cuts for the rich, stood with Ukraine. And then there is her colleague from Minnesota who is clearly out the door.

She said she was not going to run again. Tina Smith, check this out. This is the ultimate "D Boss Move from Musk", except he isn't even the boss. He's just a D. We're just going to leave it there. Coming up any moment from now, the French President will return to the White House to meet with Donald Trump. Will he be able to convince Trump not to side with Putin? Stay with us.

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BASH: Today marks three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and right now we're waiting for French President Emmanuel Macron to arrive at the White House to meet with President Trump to discuss U.S. support for Ukraine moving forward.

This morning, Macron joined Trump on a call with other G7 Leaders, where they heard from the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent, Jeff Zeleny is at the White House. So, Jeff, we just saw a readout from Trump himself on his social media post. What exactly is he saying happened in that call and what are his immediate goals? And I see the flags going behind you. It looks like the arrival will probably happen soon.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, you can see the honor guard taking their place here. This happens every time a foreign leader visits the White House. And this meeting is certainly an important one in terms of the future of Ukraine. And it's the beginning. It's the beginning of a book, end of meetings this week.

The French President visiting today, the U.K. Prime Minister, Keir Starmer visiting on Thursday. So, think of that, I'm told, as a bit of a book end the European allies are trying to bolster the U.S. as the president is indeed trying to make a deal with Vladimir Putin all over Ukraine. So, on this third anniversary of the war that is so important.

[12:20:00]

And you mentioned that phone call, this one with G7 Leaders, the French President Emmanuel Macron left the Blair House, which, as you know, is just right across from the White House, walked over and had that meeting in person with the president. Actually, he was driven over, and he walked back on this beautiful February Day here.

But so interesting that Emmanuel Macron wanted to be in the Oval Office with the president as he was having his first conversation with G7 Leaders about Ukraine. European allies are really trying to pressure the American President into holding up their end of the deal, not giving too much away to Russia, as this negotiation works its way forward.

And a readout from the French President just a short time ago, he once again underscored that Russia was the aggressor in Ukraine. Those are words that the President Donald Trump has not yet said. So, there is a divide there. There is no question at all, but the European leaders are coming here to Washington to try and bolster the U.S., to hold Russia more accountable and to get more security guarantees.

And French President Emmanuel Macron has a long-standing relationship with the American President. He invited him to Paris during his first year in office, they have had long conversations and things. So, he's hoping that relationship can kind of keep him in line, if you will. But there will be a bilateral meeting here, a lunch and then a joint press conference this afternoon, but all about Ukraine, all about protecting Europeans interest, Dana.

BASH: Thank you so much, Jeff. Appreciate that. And my -- at the table, and I just want to say, just picking up on where Jeff left off, about the U.S. position when it comes to how this war even started three years ago today? This just happened at the United Nations, and it certainly is a moment in the whole discussion of where the U.S. is right now, vis a vis the European allies and Ukraine.

There was a resolution that passed at the United Nations marking the three years of the war. And the U.S. did not vote yes. The U.S. voted no. And among the other countries that voted no were North Korea, Russia, Hungary and Belarus, and the list goes on.

And what this resolution said was that Russia invaded Ukraine, and also did have language in there that suggested that Russia should leave Ukraine and it should go back to the borders before Russia invaded. This is really amazing that the U.S. is now on record in the United Nations, on the side of North Korea and Russia when it comes to language, no, it's just a resolution marking it.

STELTER: The American resolution. This was a U.S. drafted resolution that did not identify Russia as the aggressor.

BASH: That was a separate one that they tried, which didn't, which didn't pass. You're right. There was a separate resolution.

STELTER: But as the language is upgraded, the U.S. says we're not going to --

BASH: That's exactly right.

STELTER: We're not going to call Russia...

BASH: Which is why they voting, no?

STELTER: At the U.N. yeah.

LERER: But I think when you take that in conjunction with Vance's remarks at the Munich Security Conference, which is, of course, a very important sort of international event where he really focused on sort of these cultural issues and laid into Europe quite strongly, what it seems like we're seeing is a repositioning of the United States away from the nation's traditional allies in Europe and towards Russia. And it's just, it's very it's remarkable.

BASH: Yeah. And I think -- I think that's totally right, when you look at the big picture in the immediate term, what Trump is trying to do is get a deal.

HERNDON: Yeah.

BASH: Is get a deal to end the war, which he did -- can't -- to be fair, he did campaign on but the way he's approaching it is going all in on Russian language, frankly, Russian propaganda. And it almost reminds me of back after January 6th, where it's like what you saw, what actually happened didn't really happen in order to get what he wants.

HERNDON: It's a kind of Jedi mind trick to get you to...

BASH: Right.

HERNDON: -- forget the facts that when we all kind of saw ahead of us that obviously showed Russia's aggression leading to this conflict. I think Lisa is right on the big picture. It is a repositioning, but it's a repositioning which the Trump Administration has sought to do because that kind of transactional nature.

We don't know who's our friend? Who's our foe? It can change day to day. Is what he sees as his negotiating power, but I think what the larger kind of world sees as just Donald Trump's personality, right? Like the flattery works, the -- that he make have him turn against others.

But he's been fairly consistent in terms of parroting Russian language, as you've said, which has caused alarms, I think even within his own party. The only thing I would add, though, is if I remember back to the electorate, and last year, there was a big turn against foreign aid.

[12:25:00]

BASH: Yeah.

HERNDON: -- against investing in Ukraine. And I think even the framing of that as European interest, rather than an American interest, is one that Donald Trump has seized on to be able to create a wedge between his kind of portion of the electorate, which I don't think it's just a MAGA base, but I think it's kind of a cross demographic, one that has not seen this in the biggest priority.

BASH: I think that's a really important point, and I don't think it's something that we can lose sight of. That you know, America first, whatever that means, if you depending on what flavour of it, you're talking about, does have support beyond the base...

HERNDON: -- distinction matters about does Ukraine feel like an American interest, right?

BASH: Right.

HERNDON: Can America First can lead you to invest in support...

BASH: Right.

HERNDON: -- but that's not what they've done.

BASH: But is there a way to follow up on those campaign promises, pull back from Ukraine and not be falling all over himself?

HERNDON: For sure...

BASH: -- to parrot Russia, just listen to what -- listen to what Steve Witkoff said. Well, actually, first, let's listen to what Pete Hegseth followed by Steve Witkoff, who's the president's Envoy to the Middle East, but he's involved in these issues.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fair to say, Russia attacked unprovoked into Ukraine three years ago tomorrow.

PETE HEGSETH, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Fair to say it's a very complicated situation.

STEVE WITKOFF, U.S. MIDDLE EAST ENVOY: The war didn't need to happen. It was provoked. It doesn't necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians. There were all kinds of conversations back then about Ukraine joining NATO, the president has spoken about this. That didn't need to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That's what I'm talking about.

STELTER: Right. It's giving away the game entirely. And at least it is pretty explicit. At least it's pretty obvious what's happening. Obvious what's happening. Some of this, I fear, is about illiteracy on the part of the voters, not knowing, for example, about the spending that's going to Ukraine, that's actually funding American technology, right, funding American manufacturing plants. And by the time you do learn those facts, it's too late.

LERER: But I do think look not to out us here, Dana, but you and I are both old enough to remember when Mitt Romney got up and said Russia was the central -- you know enemy of the United States. STELTER: I remember...

LERER: You remember that -- I'm adding everybody at the table.

BASH: Brian is right about it in the history.

LERER: Yes. And so, to see the silence from so many, the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, people who have been such staunch like foreign policy hawks for so long who have raised alarms for about Russia for over a decade, is just unbelievably striking.

BASH: All right. Up next, Donald Trump picks a far-right podcaster and election denier to be his Deputy FBI Director.

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