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Inside Politics

Trump Holds Cabinet Meeting After U.S. GDP Shrinks; Secretary of State Rubio Has Been in Touch With Salvadoran President About Abrego Garcia as Per Sources; New CNN Polls Show Deportations to Salvadoran Prison Only Backed by 29 Percent of Voters; Trump Praises Democratic Governor Whitmer at Michigan Air Base; CNN Poll Shows Two- Thirds of Democrats Disapprove of Party Leaders. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 30, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': -- of course, Abrego Garcia's lawyers deny. But it is about whether or not he got a hearing. And the answer is no, he didn't. And so, on the politics of it, we are hearing even, and especially what the president said at the beginning of his cabinet meeting today, the leaning into the border and the fact that he's now saying like 99.99999 percent of border crossings have stopped. I don't know if it's that number, but it's high. And the border crossing situation is a very big positive for the Trump administration, but it is being clouded by what they're doing with the people who are already in the United States illegally.

And let me just show one bit of polling that captures what we're talking about. The question about his immigration actions -- Revoking student visas over speech beliefs in association, 55 percent oppose that. Deporting directly to Salvadoran prison, 51 percent oppose that. And then stationing troops at the southern border, people are fine with that. War-time authority to deport quickly, less fine with that.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: The divergence on the issue that President Trump has long considered his strongest politically, and I think he's been born out is his strongest politically, but certainly in 2024, comes with tactics, not necessarily outcome, right? The people support him and his goals as it comes to the border from a 30,000-foot degree perspective.

What we have seen start to kind of shoot up a little bit in the polling is very significant concern about how he's going about doing it in some cases. And I think that's the thing that is important to keep in mind here. The issues that people seem to have paused on, including those who support him on this issue writ large, are issues that they don't necessarily have to pursue in order to achieve their goals as it relates to the border.

What they're doing with students, what they're doing with transferring prisoners or transferring undocumented migrants to El Salvador, these are not having massive effects on the overall numbers of crossings. Now there's a deterrent effect, certainly, that is very important to a number of officials within their team, but they're doing it to do it, to make a point, to push the boundaries because they plan to push the boundaries and wanted to make that point.

And yes, deterrence is a piece of that, but what's so striking is they probably don't have to, and if you count by numbers, it's nowhere near the number that have been stopped by the other measures that they've taken as it relates specifically to the border, and yet they're doing it anyway and it's having an effect on public opinion.

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: I mean, just quickly, I agree with that, but I would say that look, that policy is not really just the point here. This isn't about like, some technocratic immigration policy and oh my, there's a regrettable case where we've erred, OK? This is actually very much in keeping with Donald Trump's mode of shock and awe governance.

And in fact, one of the running themes that you've seen so far, and this case crystallizes it, but it's not alone, it's not an outlier, is a direct Donald Trump frontal assault on institutions and the rule of law across the board. They want to be and are picking fights with judges. My conclusion about them wanting to be in fights with judges is because they're the ones who are picking fights with judges on a number of fronts.

So, it strikes me that if we talk about this purely in the lens of immigration policy, we're missing kind of the point about why this is happening.

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: That's what he is going for.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, BLOOMBERG POLITICAL AND POLICY COLUMNIST: Yeah.

(LAUGH)

BASH: What everybody said, all things are true. All of it, all of it. All of the above. When we come back, Governor Gretchen Whitmer's big policy win for the state of Michigan came with risky political imagery. Will the hug haunt her in a few years? We'll discuss after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:38:15]

BASH: Governor Gretchen Whitmer has spent years trying to secure federal funding to expand Selfridge Air National Guard Base. Yesterday, she got it. It came with this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: So, I want to thank Governor Gretchen Whitmer for bringing it also to our attention very strongly. And I'm not supposed to do that, she's a Democrat. They say, don't do that. Don't have her here. I said, no, she's going to be here and she's done a very good job. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That's a lot of praise. And then she got an invitation to speak, which she accepted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER, (D-MI): Well, I hadn't planned to speak, but I am -- on behalf of all the military men and women who serve our country and serve so honorably on behalf of the state of Michigan, I am really damn happy we're here to celebrate this recapitalization at Selfridge. So thank you. I'm so grateful that this announcement is made today and I appreciate all the work. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And then, she also, as the president was arriving, you see she got a welcome hug on the tarmac. Those are images sparking a debate, let's just say, among Democrats. And it comes at a moment when the party remains very unpopular with its own voters and divided on what the message and the approach should be towards President Trump.

My panel is back now, Nia?

HENDERSON: Yeah. Listen, she's delivering for her state. It's an important state. It's obviously a state that Donald Trump has now won twice. I think in isolation, this isn't terrible. I think people are still having reactions to her binders in the Oval Office moment, right, when she was there and she thought she could disappear, I guess, if she put binders over her face.

[12:40:00]

And so yeah, you did see a lot of reaction online around this. There is a divide and it's not even old versus young. It's about tactics. It's -- are you a fighter in this moment? Or are you someone who sends a sternly worded letter to the president, as Schumer did over the Harvard thing, as he said in your interview. So that is what's happening. You see grassroots Democrats wanting a replay of the resistance, really, and that isn't working. It's a different time.

And so somebody like Gretchen Whitmer, who people think could have been maybe the nominee last go round (ph), could be the nominee going forward. She isn't fitting what people want to see, a lot of the grassroots folks.

BASH: Let's look at what the American people think of the Democratic leaders in this Congress, back here to Washington, and this is among Democrats and people who say that they lean Democrat. 61 percent say that they disapprove of their own Democratic leaders. That is something that they're trying to change. You mentioned Chuck Schumer. He's going out on television more and he and his fellow Democrats were on the Senate floor late into the evening last night, trying to make the point that they are standing up and criticizing President Trump's agenda.

You see some of that right now on the floor. And then today, on the House side, Hakeem Jeffries had an event. Listen to part of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES, (D) HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Over these next 100 days, House Democrats are going to lay out a blueprint for a better America, and you'll see a vision for this country's future that isn't about Donald Trump. It's all about you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: A blueprint is coming.

(LAUGH)

GLASSER: Yeah. I mean, along with a cover letter to America.

(LAUGH)

GLASSER: Dear America, listen, right now, offering a campaign plan for an election that's two or four years away is probably not an effective way to speak to an unfolding crisis. We began the show today talking about an economy that unexpectedly has its GDP shrinking, that is poised on the knife's edge of a recession. A recession caused in -- unique in my experience, a recession that if it happens will be caused largely because of the actions of one man.

And so, there's two issues facing Democrats. One, they have limited tools --

BASH: Yes.

GLASSER: -- to stand against it. But two, are they putting their partisan interests in terms of the outcome of an election two or four years away from now against the question of what can they do right now to counter it? I would like to know, for example, putting aside it's great for Whitmer to congratulate investment in her state. What are she and other Democrats doing in Michigan to help the auto companies? They just received a partial reprieve. What about the crisis in the relationship with Canada? Michigan is right there on the border with Canada.

I'd like to know what role Governor Whitmer and other members of the Michigan Delegation Democrats are doing to work with their neighbors and partners across the border to find ways of stopping what, by all accounts, would be a devastating trade war between the United States and Canada as the United States abrogates a trade deal that Donald Trump negotiated in his first term in office and is now repudiating.

BASH: And I do think that Governor Whitmer, the Congressional delegation, they're talking about trying to get to the president on these tariffs, trying to communicate with their sort of friends, what -- people used to be trading partners across the aisle. But it goes back to the question that you asked, which is what can they do about it? And Phil, we've all covered lots of times during a presidency where the opposing party kind of tries to plot out how they win in the first midterms. And in fairness to Hakeem Jeffries, for the Democrats in particular, they don't put a blueprint out on what they're going to do until right before the election, if then, they make it about the policies of the current sitting president. And that is a winning strategy.

MATTINGLY: And that's what's so confounding about -- look, I understand Democratic anxiety based on the fact that they lost to Donald Trump for the second time, that he was probably the candidate above all other candidates that they didn't want to lose to once, let alone twice. And trying to figure out how to ensure something like that doesn't happen and they get the party back is certainly front of mind.

But Dana, at this point in 2009, not that the past matters anymore, or there's any historical analogs to what this moment is, if you would've told John Boehner and Mitch McConnell that they were going to have a sweeping red wave victory --

[12:45:00]

BASH: Yeah.

MATTINGLY: -- just a year and a half later --

BASH: They wouldn't have believed it.

MATTINGLY: -- and knock out a super majority in the Senate, a significant majority in the House, and the most popular transformative once-in-a-generation, to quote the people that watched him, president in history, they probably would've laughed at you.

MATTINGLY: You know, Phil, that's such an important point. There -- I don't think that their numbers were as bad as Chuck Schumer's and Jeffries' much more so on Schumer. I spoke to him on Sunday. He went again on CNN last night with Kaitlan Collins. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Look, the polls come and go. OK? I've been through all the years and I've seen them. I pay attention to doing the right thing. And when you do the right thing, things work out all right. And so, I am fighting, fighting every day in every way. And wherever I go in New York, I'm getting applauded, not just from Democrats, not just even from independents, but from Republicans as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Really, really interesting to hear from Chuck Schumer, to hear from Hakeem Jeffries. This is one of the big political stories of our time, and we'll keep following it. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:50:34]

BASH: Your position as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council is terminated effective immediately. That was the email the White House sent to several Biden-era appointees yesterday. Among those who were dismissed from the Holocaust Museum Board, former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish. In response, Emhoff wrote, "Let me be clear, Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous and it dishonors the memory of 6 million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve."

Our panel is back now and let me just say what Karoline Leavitt at the White House said about this decision. "President Trump looks forward to appointing new individuals who will not only continue to honor the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, but who are steadfast supporters of the state of Israel. It wasn't just Emhoff. If you look, we have a list of -- it's not a total list, but the key figures who were dismissed yesterday. In addition to Doug Emhoff, it was Anthony Bernal, Ron Klain, Jennifer Klein, and Susan Rice.

What they all have in common is that they were part of the Biden White House. This is the president's prerogative. It is highly unusual.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Absolutely, highly unusual.

BASH: I don't know if it has ever happened.

TREENE: Well, and of course, the White House is trying to really push back on any semblance of that. I saw Steven Cheung, one of the White House's Communications Directors today say, when Former President Biden came in, he fired a lot of people from different boards too. This is not the same. This is making something that is very much not political, inadvertently very political in how they are doing this.

And look, this is something that they were always going to do. I mean, I remember when I was talking to then Trump advisers around the transition before he even came into office, that they wanted to do this. They wanted to purge anyone who had anything to do with Biden. You're seeing it happen now, with what DOGE is doing by trying to get rid of career officials. They want to surround everything touching the president with people who are more aligned with the president.

BASH: This is akin to what we saw at the Kennedy Center.

HENDERSON: Exactly.

GLASSER: Exactly.

BASH: Which is, it is the president's prerogative. It's any president's prerogative the way that this is sort of chartered, but it is highly unusual and they're doing this to make a point. Never mind the rest of the people who worked in the White House, to get rid of the highest ranking Jewish person ever in the history of America, the Second Gentleman of the United States, from the board of the Holocaust Museum.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

BASH: I mean, this is retribution on steroids.

HENDERSON: It is. And listen, if you look at a lot of the data on this, Americans by and large think this is a president who is doing too much. Right? His hands are in too many things. He has expanded executive power in a way that Americans don't quite like. And to your point, in this particular instance, it is petty, it is small. It's beneath the dignity, I think, of the office to target Doug Emhoff given his history, given who he is, given what his heritage is.

But this is a White House who does things like that and sort of takes pride in it, sort of likes that we're going to be talking about it in this way on this panel.

MATTINGLY: It's the statement, not the action. The statement about the implication of we're going to be replacing them with strong supporters of the state of Israel is egregious. It's -- and it's also pretty offensive, I think, to those individuals. That's the thing. Look, Sergio Gore on like day one, who was running the personnel shop, was knocking off people in the most obscure boards that even I hadn't heard of and we've all been here for way too long. And you know, I like weird stuff, stuff like random people on random boards.

(LAUGH)

MATTINGLY: They were very clearly prepared to do this. It's the statement. I don't understand this.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: And the implication is he's not the right kind of Jew, right? I mean, I hate to say it that way, but that is what the statement is implying.

GLASSER: Well, he's got us talking about it. OK? So that's part of why they do outrageous and provocative things, is in order to politicize that which has not been previously politicized. And I think you're seeing actually, this particular example, it's a convergence of the big two themes of what Trump is doing to our government. One, taking us back to a late 19th century before the progressive era, the notion of a spoil system. To the victor goes to spoils.

[12:55:00]

Forget about things like, that there are non-partisan offices in the government, that there are independent agencies within the executive branch. Donald Trump has an expansive view that if you win, you win everything. And then you combine that with his view of politicizing even that which is not previously politicized, like who knew that there was a partisan Republican view of what musicals the Kennedy Center should put on, right?

Donald Trump finds a way to push politics into parts of American life where they have been absent from, mercifully, in many of our views. So spoil system, making everything partisan, and revenge.

BASH: On that happy note, thank you so much for joining "Inside Politics" today. "CNN News Central" starts after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)