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Tonight: President Trump Addresses Joint Session Of Congress; Zelenskyy: "Nobody Wants Peace More Than Ukrainians"; Trump Prepares For Highly Anticipated Address The Nation; House GOP Propose Bills To Put Trump On Money, Mt. Rushmore. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 04, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:31:30]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: I am back with my panel. Jeff Zeleny, what's your takeaway from what we heard from the Senate Majority Leader?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I think that is really one of the last gasps of the pre-Trump Republican Party, someone who is trying to kind of extend as a bridge from what has been the common Republican orthodoxy to the Trump era. I thought one thing he said was very interesting about Elon Musk.

He said that, yes, people out in the country like the idea of cutting things. But he said these are real people, they need to be treated that way. And I think when -- this is kind of a NIMBY situation. When people are getting to know, you know, the forest service person in their town who makes 40 grand a year, the other person who makes whatever, I mean, people are seeing these cuts in a personal way, and I think that that was interesting, and we've never heard the president say that.

BASH: Stephen?

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: You know, to your point, everything that the majority has said made him come across as a classic internationalist, conservative, fiscal Republican, and he was very eloquently trying to make that bridge towards Trumpism.

But I think what he was also implicitly warning was that some of the positions that the president has taken, some of the chaos that he has incited, this could end up being politically damaging to the people that Thune represents, and that's his membership, and to Republicans in the midterm elections. There seemed to be an implicit warning under there.

BASH: And the people Thune represents are very much Trump voters. I do want to talk about Ukraine, and we can bring in what the Senate Majority Leader said as well. But since we have spoken, Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted the following, and I want to read it because it's very interesting.

"Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump's strong leadership to get a peace that lasts."

He went on to say, "Our meeting in Washington at the White House on Friday did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive".

Really, really interesting. And I'll just add this postscript. Lindsey Graham, who right after that meeting, said that Zelenskyy should potentially resign, said, thumbs up emoji, "Better days are ahead". And my understanding is that he advised on Zelenskyy's statement.

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly both sides of the Atlantic are looking toward this statement. I was just getting some text from Ukrainian officials saying, let's see how the Trump administration responds to this. It was seen that the ball was in Zelenskyy's court, that the next move and the next statement was going to need to be his to figure out exactly whether he could make these amends with the Trump administration.

And, you know, b, essentially the change agent that they need him to be in this situation or that they've expressed that they want him to be. You heard the Senate majority leader saying that he does not want America to be isolationist.

Clearly, he is trying to project that view onto a party that has not necessarily embraced that in their own way. But he also said there is still a deal to be had. And there is the belief that even in the face of the way that the very strong sense of the Trump administration has taken, that there is still potentially a deal to be had.

Perhaps there's a portion of this that is bluster. That is, I think, some of the hope that people are holding out, at least on the foreign policy establishment side.

[12:35:02]

AYESHA RASCOE, NPR HOST, "WEEKEND EDITION SUNDAY" AND "UP FIRST": Well, and that's what Republicans have been saying since this happened. You know, I interviewed Representative Lawler, and he's a Republican, very supportive of Ukraine.

And all of them keep saying is we need to get the minerals deals done so that the U.S. will have some sort of stake in this and that, you know -- and it's an acknowledgement that people are frustrated with money from the U.S. going overseas. They want to feel like, especially when they feel like they're struggling at home.

There is an acknowledgement of that. There is also an acknowledgement that all of this is really on Zelenskyy to offer what the U.S. needs. They're not really asking much of Putin at this point. And so I keep trying to wait to see what does Putin have to give in all this. And I think that's the question.

COLLINSON: Yes, the word regrettable is interesting because that's -- BASH: Zelenskyy's word?

COLLINSON: Yes.

BASH: Yes.

COLLINSON: That's the word you use in diplomacy when you want to say I apologize --

BASH: Sorry.

COLLINSON: -- but you don't want to say I'm apologizing. The question is, will that give the president sufficient cover tonight to stand up and say that the minerals deal is still a possibility, this can be a big win for the United States. Does it give him the latitude to do that?

But the wider question, as you were saying, the real problem here is not necessarily whether the Ukrainians will sit down to talk peace. It's whether the Russians will because they have less incentive because everything's going their way. So the administration, as you say, isn't really addressing that more vital question.

ZELENY: And it makes Trump very vulnerable on that, I think, because if Putin does decide to sense weakness on Zelenskyy's part and extend the war, that really puts the U.S. in a very precarious position. But I think you're right, regrettable means apology. That's what the White House indicated it wanted.

BASH: Which is interesting. You use the phrase projects weakness. I was talking to Alexander Vindman yesterday, and he said that obviously he knows Ukraine incredibly well in the politics there, and he said that one of the reasons why Zelenskyy couldn't just sort of sit there and take it when he got berated in the Oval Office is because he doesn't just have to project strength back home, which everybody has their politics back home, but so that Putin sees that he's not just going to roll over.

ZELENY: Absolutely. And we'll see if this message, what, four days later, how that makes him look. Because he didn't look all that strong on Friday when he was trying to get back into the president, and the president effectively threw him out the building.

BASH: Yes. All right, everybody stand by.

Coming up, we're going to talk about what to expect tonight from President Trump. And who will be sitting in the first lady's box? We'll tell you. Stick around.

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[12:42:10]

BASH: We're just hours away from President Trump's first joint address to Congress of his second term. There is a lot at stake. My panel is back with me. And Jeff Zeleny, you have a great piece this morning out with our colleagues Alayna Treene and Kevin Liptak saying that it will be an attempt to explain his fast-paced first days in office.

And you write, "One Trump adviser said a goal of the president's speech would be connecting his rapid-pace action so far to average Americans who may not yet comprehend the motives behind them. So, too, is Trump likely to address his plan for lowering prices".

Let's start with the first part of that. How is he going to connect the chaos to everyday Americans?

ZELENY: I think one of the ways is through DOGE and the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk. He will point to Elon Musk. We're told he's going to be in the House chamber and say, look at all these things we have cut. We are moving at a breakneck pace. We are disrupting the government.

That may have sounded better a few weeks ago because once people get to know the actual details they're not sure about them. But writ large there's no doubt, people want Washington to be a disrupted that's why they elected him. So look for the president to remind people he won the popular vote.

He won all of these battleground states of course. But I'm just struck by how much more difficult the argument is tonight than it was just a couple days ago when this speech was actually starting to be written. This is actually acutely going to affect and people can see it in their daily lives in Michigan.

And Elissa Slotkin, the freshman senator from Michigan is giving the Democratic response. Boy talk about some easy lines here in terms of reacting directly to what the president is doing. But look, he was elected with the popular vote. He is still popular among Republicans. Among Independents? Not so much.

But I think that it'll be a long speech, I'm told. It will be a valedictory in some respects. And we will see how much of the arrest is in there. But cuts he will say that he's disrupting Washington like people wanted him to.

BASH: Yes. And then just on Elon Musk who again will be in the chamber, the Quinnipiac poll that came out a couple of weeks ago, the question is whether or not Elon Musk has too much power. Fifty five percent say yes. The right amount, only 36 percent.

And again you heard John Thune, the Senate majority leader say that he has to remember that these are human beings involved.

RASCOE: Yes, I mean, I think that, you know, we don't know what will happen in the future. But I wonder will there be a point when people look back and they say, was it really smart to spend the first days of your administration focused not on putting more money in people's pockets but on firing people and laying people off. And yes, people support, you know, cutting back on government spending, but that can be a bit abstract, right? Like is that the message -- and I think that's the big thing for tonight. How do you connect that to how is this helping you?

[12:45:07]

I'm cutting the Forest Service. I'm cutting the weather people. How is that helping you in your day to day? So I think that's something that they have to do. But I also think he will kind of play into some of those issues that have been very good for him. Immigration --

BASH: (INAUDIBLE).

RASCOE: -- being anti-trans issues. I think those are some things that he will focus on that -- the polling has been much better for him.

BASH: Well, and, you know, it's really hard to bring prices up --

RASCOE: Yes.

BASH: -- for any president because the president doesn't really have total control over that. No president does. So perhaps that is part of why the president hasn't talked about it a lot.

TAUSCHE: Yes, it's incredibly difficult which is why they've been so stubbornly high. But that being said it's undeniable that you have a lot of Canadian companies that refine oil and gas and ship it into the United States at 12:01 a.m. increase their prices by at least 10 percent.

So there is expected to be an immediate hit to some of these prices that are tied directly back to these tariffs which is why it's going to be such low hanging fruit for some of these Democrats to respond to Trump in an area where messaging has been very hard for them to hang their hat on.

But there are a few challenges for Trump tonight and that is, on one hand, you know, he's faced with this challenge of suggesting what the end game is. It's not chaos for chaos's sake but what is he going to try to do. But inherently in doing that then setting a benchmark for himself that he would then potentially have to meet.

BASH: And we've been talking rightly so a lot about the economy. He -- his wife, the first lady, is going to have people in her box. I mean we always know since the Reagan administration then they started to bring a guest and put them in the first lady's box. What the message is that they want to get across by who they choose to put in that box.

And what we're hearing from the White House is they're going to have guests who try to link the president's immigration agenda to the crime narrative that he pushed almost as hard as the economy during the campaign.

COLLINSON: Yes. And this is the other stool if you like of his second term. The issues that he's based his second presidency upon and he knows that even if he's in trouble with the economy, he can always go back to the immigration question because that was really the foundation of his entire political careers going back to 2015.

But presidents have to tell a story. Good politicians are good teachers. And I think there may be a sense and this may come hard to Trump but if prices are going to go up in the short term because of these tariffs, he has to explain to people why this is worth it to get to the future that he's predicting.

You know, ultimately, he'll have two legacies. He'll have the legacy with a magnet movement and he'll have the legacy with the country more broadly.

BASH: All right. And as we go to break, I just want to put on the screen part of your excellent analysis today, Stephen. "Donald Trump just took the biggest gamble of his young presidency. His hammer-blow tariffs dealt a fresh shock to an economy showing alarming signs of slowing growth and rising inflation, a perilous mix for any president."

And that is the backdrop of what we're going to see tonight.

Coming up, Mount Rushmore, the $100 bill Dulles Airport. What do those things have in common? Well, some Republicans say they want Donald Trump's face on them. That story is next.

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[12:52:54]

BASH: Congressional Republicans have an ambitious agenda to reshape the tax system, the federal government, border policy, the list goes on and on, on substance. But there is also this, a slate of bills that may be inspired by President Trump's long career of putting his own name on things.

House members have introduced bills to put Donald Trump on the $100 bill, the $250 bill which does not exist right now. They want to add his name to Mount Rushmore, make his birthday a federal holiday, rename Dulles Airport for Trump and most notably, change the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term.

This is not us. These are his fellow Republicans coming up with these. And just for example, let's just start with Mount Rushmore because why not? Let's put the picture up. That was in the press release by Congresswoman Luna and, I mean, let's see, where do we start here?

RASCOE: Well, he has like this --

BASH: First of all, why is he not wearing a tie? He always wears a tie.

RASCOE: He's not wearing a tie. Yes, but he has the shirt and he has more than everyone else it seems.

BASH: Yes. He's very prominent there. RASCOE: He's in front (ph).

BASH: Yes. This seems like a very important piece of business that the American people need.

ZELENY: Congresswoman from Florida obviously imposing this. Look, every time someone introduces a bill like this, my guess is the first thing that they do is send it to the White House --

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: -- to make sure the president saw it. That's what this is about. I think the thing at the very bottom there, allow him to serve a third term --

BASH: Yes, no.

ZELENY: -- we sort of like laugh at it. That would take a constitutional amendment.

BASH: We should have laugh at it.

ZELENY: There absolutely will be a discussion in state legislatures. I'm sure that this will be a thing. I think the reality is the outcome of all the other things we've been talking about the whole show will indicate that.

TAUSCHE: I think no one would disagree that perhaps Dulles needs a rebranding, at least those of us in the Washington area, although --

BASH: It needs a reboot.

TAUSCHE: Reboot.

BASH: I don't care what it's called.

TAUSCHE: A facelift, anything. The people mover needs to go, but whether this is the right direction --

COLLINSON: I mean, that would be the ultimate insult to Europeans and Canadians who have to fly into Trump Airport.

TAUSCHE: Yes, perhaps.

BASH: That's a really good point.

[12:55:00]

Can we just look at these pieces of money, the mock-ups of the money? First of all, the mugshot on the -- is that the $251 or the -- that's $100. The mugshot on the $100 bill. There's a lot to mine there.

RASCOE: Well, and you know, I mean back in the day, you remember there used to be a lot of bills about naming stuff for Reagan, and we do have a Reagan at airport. I mean, I guess I'm just kind of aging myself, but I remember when the Republican Party, it was all about Reagan. Now it's all about Trump.

TAUSCHE: Although it might be more fitting here to have the Trump trillion dollar coin as they're staring down a potential debt default in a few weeks.

RASCOE: Well, we got crypto coins already, so we can already get that.

TAUSCHE (?): Yes.

BASH: but just remember, these are just pieces of legislation that Republicans have introduced, obviously with the hope that it gets the president's attention. We don't think this is actually going to happen, except we do have to watch that last one.

ZELENY: He's very much alive, though. I think that's one problem he would have with a lot of this, because usually these are done --

BASH: Yes.

ZELENY: -- posthumously.

BASH: You know what? He likes to break norms, Jeff.

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