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Inside Politics

President Macron Arrives at White House To Meet With Trump To Discuss Russian Invasion of Ukraine; Trump Names Far-Right Podcaster As Deputy FBI Director; Health Agencies Reeling From Thousands of Job Cuts While Critical Research Grants Remain On Hold; DOGE Staffers Seek Access to Sensitive Government Data. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 24, 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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[12:32:27]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Moments ago, French President Emmanuel Macron just arrived at the White House for the second time today. He was greeted by President Trump before the two leaders went in, where they are now, to have a meeting to discuss a lot of issues, including and especially the Russian invasion of Ukraine and whether or not there will be a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine to get some of the minerals back.

And then we are going to see -- after we see them in the Oval Office, we're going to see a press conference between these two men later on this afternoon.

Now let's turn to another big decision by the President. The New York Times once named Dan Bongino a, quote, "misinformation super- spreader". But Donald Trump is choosing to name the far-right podcaster Deputy FBI Director, all but guaranteeing a law enforcement agency of his dreams.

Here's what Bongino said in the last hour on his live show.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DAN BONGINO, HOST, THE DAN BONGINO SHOW: President Attorney General Bondi and now director, gosh, that sounds good to say, FBI Director Kash Patel offered this role, a role I expressed an interest in. And ladies and gentlemen, I told you, you see, it's hard for me. I am -- I'm going to accept the role proudly as the deputy director of the number two spot at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: And my panel is back now. Brian Stelter, it's not a job that requires Senate confirmation. Not that given what we have seen with all of the other nominees, it probably wouldn't have been an issue. But the point is, is that he can go right in.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Right. And is. And to call him just a conservative commentator really sugarcoats this story. Dan Bongino used to be a Secret Service agent. They transitioned into this media job. He actually ran for Congress three times and failed.

So he went down this really profitable route of being a right-wing bomb throwing host. He was on Fox News for a while. Then he left Fox and now he's at Cumulus Radio hosting a daily podcast. You know, he hawks gold on the show.

He promotes conspiracy theories. He calls liberals evil. And back in 2020, he played a key role in promoting Trump's big election lies. So this is not someone who's, you know, just out there, you know, gently promoting the Trump agenda. No, he is an incendiary figure, someone as The New York Times said, a misinformation super spreader.

[12:35:07]

And that makes you think about as he comes into the FBI, how will he perform? What reality will he acknowledge? What reality will he recognize in this job?

BASH: It's no small thing. I mean, just think about the sentence you just said, Brian. What reality will he acknowledge while serving as the number two at the largest and most important federal law enforcement agency in the land?

STELTER: And he will share it with Kash Patel. I mean, these are two men who are very much ideological equals. They are, you know, they're kind of -- they are doing this together. And now we know what the team is, what this is going to be.

What we don't know is what kind of pushback there will be, right? We've already heard from one of the FBI unions talking about the idea that normally this job is supposed to be filled by a special agent. That's how it's been for years and years and years.

BASH: Yes. Well, it's supposed to be left the building a long time ago.

As I bring you in, I also just want to show the bigger picture of people who are Fox personalities. Now, I guess we're Fox personalities who are part of the administration in some way, shape or form.

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, this is where Donald Trump has found his talent pool and he has been fairly consistent about that. And I would say in Trump 2.0, even more so than 1.0, he campaigned with these sort of figures on his way into office.

This was not a Donald Trump that brought Nikki Haley along with him to win over voters in Wisconsin. He was bringing RFK Jr. He was bringing Tulsi Gabbard. He made very clear he wanted an FBI that was going to be focused on vengeance and his enemies. That is what he is following through on.

I guess for me, a kind of broader question that happens here is like, you know, like, is there going to be a public care about kind of the way that these standards and roles for these offices have changed? And if that is not true, then Donald Trump didn't just win in November. QAnon won in November. Misinformation won in November. The lack of acknowledgement of reality, I think, is where we are. And so he's going to govern as such because those sort of forces are the ones he has stoked since pre -- he was in office, since he left office the first time and the forces that brought him back to the White House.

LISA LERER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: And it also shows how thoroughly he has conquered Congress and this part of our really important system of checks and balances. Congress is serving no consent role here. Well, they are. They're consenting to everything with no opposition.

So, of course, he would put a bunch --

HERNDON: You know, what's stopping him.

LERER: What's' stopping him. He got everyone else through. So, you know, I think we're seeing this sort of denigration of checks and balances. And we're also seeing, as you said earlier in the show, this denigration of expertise like these jobs are hard. They're complicated. Usually you're putting people in who have some background in the area.

BASH: All right. Well, speaking of that coming up, absolute chaos. That is how one of those experts, actually an epidemiologist, is describing the CDC right now as essential health agencies deal with massive cuts, multiple infectious disease outbreaks. We have some new reporting after the break.

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[12:42:40]

BASH: The U.S. is dealing with the worst flu season in more than 15 years. A historic measles outbreak in Texas and rising bird flu cases. But in just the last 10 days, thousands of people were fired at the federal health agencies tasked with handling these crises.

CNN's Meg Tirrell has new reporting on the impact this is having, with some experts telling her the consequences could be deadly. Meg?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Dana, well, we're hearing that the layoffs amounted to more than 700 each at the CDC and the FDA and more than 1,100 at the National Institutes of Health. Even the people within these agencies weren't sure what the final tallies were. So they're still trying to figure it out.

But this includes people who review medical devices at the FDA, for example, who have very specialized knowledge. People who inspect factories that are making medicines and other crucial products for American consumption. People who oversee food and nutrition policy.

We had the former FDA commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf, on our air this morning warning that if there's something like a salmonella outbreak, for example, if we don't have people who understand how to do food recalls, that could lead to people dying because of these kinds of things.

At the CDC, we learned about training programs that were decimated, including a training program for laboratory scientists that's really heavily involved in tracking changes to things like the bird flu. I talked to one epidemiologist still within the CDC who said that on the inside, quote, "it's absolute chaos". She said the way that this was done, there's been no communication, she said, to help us understand what's happening, which she said is part of the trauma of it all.

She described colleagues losing access to their network emails so quickly that they couldn't transfer any of their work to their colleagues. So not only are they short staffed, but they couldn't do that handover. She also said some people who weren't supposed to be fired came in and they didn't have access to their email, but they couldn't get that fixed right away because there had been layoffs in the I.T. department as well.

And this chaos really continued over the weekend as we started to hear some folks, especially within the FDA, were actually being told that their firings had been rescinded. So they're all just trying to process all of this chaos as Monday starts up again.

BASH: And it's not just the job cuts causing the chaos at these health agencies. It's even more than that?

TIRRELL: It is. I mean, in the earliest days of the Trump administration, a communications pause was put into place across the Department of Health and Human Services. And while aspects of that have started to be lifted, we know that still these really important meetings that happen at the NIH to award new research funding for things like cancer research, for example.

[12:45:09]

They have been canceled on an ongoing basis. We knew that there was one that was supposed to be February 13th that was canceled at the National Cancer Institute. The former director of that institute told me he estimates each one of those awards about $200 million in new funding for cancer research at universities, medical centers, small biotech companies and non-profits.

That, he says, that's being delayed until you can get those folks together again and reschedule that meeting. I also spoke with a Nobel Prize winning scientist who had already been approved to have a new research grant from the government. So that didn't need one of those meetings.

But because they can't communicate the grant, he hasn't started getting the money yet. He hired somebody to try to do the work on this. He said he might have to fire that person if he doesn't get the funding soon.

BASH: I mean, there's disruption and then there is disruption.

Meg, thank you so much for that reporting. Appreciate it.

Speaking of, when we come back, we'll go into the storm.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is it like inside your mind?

ELON MUSK, TESLA CEO: I mean, my mind, there's a storm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

MUSK: So --

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: I'll talk to a WIRED reporter about Elon Musk's tightening grip on government and the looming questions about what the richest man in the world really wants.

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[12:50:42]

BASH: Earlier this month, Leland Dudek was suspended from his mid- level job at the Social Security Administration. The reason for allegedly improperly sharing information with DOGE. But this is Elon Musk's Washington. So instead of suspended, he was actually promoted.

And now he's running the place. It's just one more win for Musk and his crusade to remake the federal government. And it's an effort that has touched thousands of jobs at just about every major federal agency. So the question is, what is it all for?

We're going to dive into that question with Makena Kelly. She is here and a reporter with WIRED, which has been covering all things DOGE tirelessly. It's nice to see you.

MAKENA KELLY, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, WIRED: It's nice to be here.

BASH: Thank you so much for being here. Let's just pick up on the Social Security of it all, but specifically about the -- some of the misinformation that we have heard from Musk on his platform and others about what they are finding. Just, for example, in the Social Security Administration, the thing that maybe went the most viral was 150 year olds cashing Social Security checks.

KELLY: Yes, I think this is really important to point out, because it's not as if the Social Security Administration is going ahead and sending all these checks to people who are dead, or I guess are vampires like Elon Musk has said. Instead, it is the fact that these systems are incredibly archaic.

These -- going back from mainframes all clobbered together to what we have today. And instead of having these birthdates right that are bringing them, you know, placing them at 150 years old, 200 years old, it's the way that these systems default, right. And even looking at some of these specific databases that Elon Musk is pointing out, it's not as if somebody -- it doesn't mean that these people are getting these Social Security checks.

BASH: Right. And that's really the key. Look, just like you said, I mean, the fact that there is a database in the Social Security Administration that doesn't understand how to update to make it so that a person is not 150 years old. Like that is a problem that needs to be addressed. But suggesting that that's waste, fraud and abuse is obviously off.

I want to talk to you about these staffers. They're growing by the day and they're the ones who have been going since really day one of the Trump administration into these agencies. Any vetting of these people as they get access to the most sensitive data of the American people and of the inner workings of the government?

KELLY: Yes. If you talk to Musk's team, it seems as if, right, they're going through the same security protocols that any average government worker would go through. But it's -- we don't -- this gets to the central problem with DOGE, right? Which is that as much as Elon likes to say that the whole thing is extremely transparent, they post everything to X.com.

There's a whole website. As much as he says it's transparent, it's incredibly opaque in the ways that we, you know, as the government has traditionally opened itself up for criticism, whether that is like through freedom of information requests or just even knowing who is leading specific agencies.

BASH: And what is your sense of what he's trying to do here? You can look at the surface and say that he's just trying to fix the federal government. It's run amok. It's bureaucracy just that on steroids. But there are theories about it being more than that.

KELLY: Yes. A lot of people are concerned that this is a huge data grab. When I talk to folks who are some more senior officials who work in information technology at these agencies, the way that they describe what's happening is that they send one DOGE person or two DOGE people and they start looking at contracts, right, which is what, of course, we've discussed.

Contracts and canceling them has always been the first thing to go when DOGE arrives at an agency. But then it turns into what many people are telling me is a data grab.

BASH: Can you be more specific on that? And as you do, I mean, I'm thinking about Walter Isaacson's terrific book about Elon Musk talking over and over about the fact that one of the things that Musk has wanted to do besides go to Mars is to create a large platform that does a whole bunch of things, including to be sort of a financial clearinghouse for people.

[12:55:07]

KELLY: Yes, and that's what X, the everything app is, right? That was the whole -- one of the biggest purposes of Elon Musk buying Twitter in the first place was having an app that is similar to the mega apps that you see in China, where people do just about anything. They can make purchases, they connect with friends, they leave reviews, all in one massive app.

And so Elon has always said that that Chinese system works incredibly well. It's something that he wants to remake. X, of course, has been a name of his that he's used. It's one of his children's names. It's a name from the 90s when he was doing PayPal mafia stuff with Peter Thiel.

This is not something that he came up with over the last year or month now or whatever. This is something that's been in his mind, something that he's wanted to accomplish for a very long time now.

BASH: Well, we hopefully will soon get a better sense of what his endgame is. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. I hope you come back.

KELLY: Of course.

BASH: Some really terrific reporting.

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