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Inside Politics

Trump Attacks Canada Moments Before Meeting with Prime Minister; Trump, Carney Expected to Take Questions in Oval Office; Trump Meeting With New Canadian PM Amid Historic Tensions; Canadian PM: "There are Some Places that are Never for Sale"; Trump: U.S. Will Meet With China on Trade "At the Right Time". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 06, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on "Inside Politics", a frenemy forum, after months of threats, insults and of course, tariffs, President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are meeting face to face for the first time. As we speak, we're going to take you live to the Oval Office when they start answering questions.

Plus calling in favors. Sources tell CNN that the president is trying to whip up support for Ed Martin, his highly controversial nominee to be the top prosecutor here in Washington. But the top Senate Republican now concedes there may not be a path forward for his nomination.

And the world's most powerful unelected bureaucrat is wrapping up his government cost cutting crusade. But what did Elon Musk actually accomplish with DOGE? I'll speak to someone who's been digging through the receipts. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and "Inside Politics".

And we will start at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Trump is welcoming the United States' northern neighbor, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, just arrived at the White House amid historic tensions between the once ironclad allies. Perhaps making matters even more uncomfortable, the president took a jab at Canada while waiting for Carney's motorcade.

The president wrote on social media, in part, why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year in addition to giving them free military protection and many other things. We don't need their cars. We don't need their energy. We don't need their lumber. We don't need anything they have other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain.

They, on the other hand, need everything from us. Let's start off with a group of terrific reporters here at the table. CNN's David Chalian, CNN's Kristen Holmes, in her first time on "Inside Politics" as a mom of two and as Senior White House Correspondent and Akayla Gardner of Bloomberg. Hello everybody.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Hello.

BASH: So nice to see you again.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thanks for having me.

BASH: Welcome back, mom. Let's start with you. You covered Donald Trump, you know as closer, closer, maybe, than anybody. Yes, they were smiling when the new Prime Minister of Canada walked in into the White House. But what's really going on underneath that is very tense?

HOLMES: Well, and this is also Donald Trump setting it up to be contentious, right? He doesn't want to go into a room where then the cameras come out, and they're doing a bilateral, any kind of conversation, and it looks as though Carney is coming after Trump. Trump wants to not be on the defensive, so of course, what he does is he comes out swinging on the offensive.

That way he knows going into this, he said, well, I already set the tone for this meeting, because we have known what Carney has said publicly, which is that he's going to be much tougher with Donald Trump in America than Trudeau was. He has this line he's not going to cross. But obviously Donald Trump himself was preparing for this.

BASH: And let's be clear, the only reason why Mark Carney is Prime Minister is because of Donald Trump.

CHALIAN: Yes. But also look at the Truth Social posts. You just read that the president posted a half hour ago. The cast may have changed, but the lyrics and the notes are exactly the same as his litany of complaints when Trudeau was Prime Minister but he showed some restraint. He didn't do the 51st state thing in this Truth Social post. But --

BASH: I think about grading on a curve --

CHALIAN: No, I'm just saying this -- these concerns, the $200 billion the -- they need everything from us. We don't need anything from them. We don't need their -- This has been a refrain of Donald Trump on Canada, irrespective of who the prime minister is. And so, as Kristen said, sort of just like setting the framework again, reasserting these points that he's made before.

[12:05:00]

Now he just has a different counterpart to work within and now we'll see, hopefully, the inner dynamics between these two world leaders that are forming a new relationship.

AKAYLA GARDNER, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT OF BLOOMBERG: Well, I think for Carney, this is really about just not going left. There's huge pressure on him to have this moment and to really just leave with, again, some sort of friendly relationship, some sort of positive statements from either of these two sides, because again, these two leaders have never met before. And there's huge pressure on him to one, have an acceptance of an invitation to the G7 and also show some signs that there is a negotiation. But I think the real question is, Trump has these deeply held beliefs about trade for decades. Is there a real chance for a deal? There are some people who believe there is and there's others who believe, at the end of the day, all of these countries are still going to see a tariff.

BASH: And just going back to what I mentioned about Mark Carney, almost certainly only being prime minister because of Donald Trump. Prior to the Canadian elections, it was the Conservative Party of which he is not a part, that was expected to do well and win. And the whole dynamic inside Canada changed when they united against Donald Trump and against maybe his ilk of politician, and that was more conservative.

Let's -- we saw the Truth Social post, but let's listen a little bit more to the dynamics between these two men in the days leading up to this meeting they having right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: If Canada was a state, it wouldn't cost us. It would be great. It would be such a great we -- it would be a cherished state.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you rule out military force to take Canada?

TRUMP: Well, I think we're not going to ever get to that point.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- Canada?

TRUMP: I think it's highly unlikely. I don't see it with Canada.

MARK CARNEY, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. President Trump is trying to break us, so that America can own us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: It takes a lot, unless maybe they're watching hockey to make Canadians as mad as they are, particularly at the United States. I mean, just anecdotally, I was up in New Hampshire this past weekend, Northern New Hampshire, and I was at a B&B, and they were saying that their business has really been hurt because much of it was from Canadians, and they're boycotting the United States.

CHALIAN: Kathy Hochul was on our air yesterday talking about this, obviously upstate New York has a lot of relations with Canada. And she said that that was a very real thing that she saw New York State experiencing as well. I mean, I'm glad you played the tape back and forth. I do think things have a way of shifting when two people in positions of leading their nations are sitting side by side.

I'm not sure that's exactly that back and forth is what we will hear today. We have seen already in this Trump term, before Carney took office as prime minister. The Trump tariff threat, getting something that he could call a win, and then backing off when it came to autos, initially, right?

So, we have seen some of this, and we'll see if there's something here that Carney has arrived with to let Trump have a little victory.

HOLMES: Well --

BASH: Let's go -- I'm sorry, Kristen. I just want to go to the Oval Office. They're starting to speak.

TRUMP: I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him, but I can't take a vote. They were -- his party was losing by a lot, and he ended up winning. So, I really want to congratulate him. Was one of the -- probably one of the greatest comebacks in the history of politics, maybe even greater than mine.

But I want to just congratulate you. That was a great election, actually. We were watching it with interest, and I think Canada chose a very talented person, a very good person, as we spoke before the election quite a few times. And it's an honor to have you at the White House and the Oval Office.

You see the new and improved Oval Office as it becomes more and more beautiful with love. You know, we handle it with great love and 24 karat gold. That always helps too. But it's been a lot of fun going over some of the beautiful pictures that were stored in the vaults that were for many, many years, in some cases over 100 years.

They were stored in vaults of the great presidents who are almost great presidents, all having a reason for being up, every one of them. So, it's very interesting, but I just want to congratulate you, and we're in a really great race. I watched the debate. I thought you were excellent. And I think we have a lot of things in common.

We have some tough, tough points to go over, and that will be fine. We're going to also be discussing Ukraine, Russia, the war, because Mark wants it ended as quickly as I do. I think it has to end. We had some very good news last night. The Houthis have announced that they are not or they've announced to us, at least, that they don't want to fight anymore.

[12:10:00]

They just don't want to fight, and we will honor that, and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated, but more importantly, they -- we will take their word they say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that's what the purpose of what we were doing. So that's just news we just found out about that.

So, I think that's very, very positive. They were knocking out a lot of ships going, as you know, sailing beautifully down the various seas. It wasn't just a canal, it was a lot of other places, and I will accept their word, and we are going to stop the bombing of the Houthis effective immediately.

And Marco, you'll let everybody know that. OK, do you have something to say about that, by the way, big announcement?

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: Yeah, this was always a freedom of navigation mission. These guys, these are band of individuals with advanced weaponry that were threatening global shipping. And the job was to get that to stop, and if it's going to stop, then we can stop. And so, it's -- I think it's an important development.

TRUMP: And we're have maybe before we're going to, as you know, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, we're going to UAE and Qatar. And that'll be, I guess Monday night, some of you are coming with us. I think before then, we're going to have a very, very big announcement to make, like, as big as it gets, and I won't tell you on what, but it's going to -- and it's very positive.

I'd also, I tell you if it was negative or positive, I can't keep that up. It is really, really positive. And that announcement will be made either Thursday or Friday or Monday before we leave, but it will be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject, very important subject. So, you'll all be here, Mark, would you like to say a few words?

CARNEY: Thank you, Mr. President. I'm on the edge of my seat, actually -- but thank you for your hospitality and above all, for your leadership. You're a transformational president. Focus on the economy, with a relentless focus on the American worker, securing your borders, providing ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids, and in securing the world.

And I've been elected with my colleagues here, with the help of my colleagues here, I'm going to spread the credit, to transform Canada with a similar focus on the economy, securing our borders.

TRUMP: Yeah.

CARNEY: Again, on fentanyl, much greater focus on defense and security, securing the Arctic and developing the Arctic. And you know, the history of Canada and the U.S. is we're stronger when we work together. And there's many opportunities to work together. And I look forward to, you know, addressing some of those issues that we have, but also finding those areas of mutual cooperation so we can go forward.

TRUMP: Very nice. Thank you very much. Very nice statement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- there?

TRUMP: No, it was actually very effective, and it's still very effective, but people have to follow it. So, you know, that's been a problem. People haven't followed it, but it's a -- it was a transitional step a little bit. And as you know, it terminates fairly shortly. It gets renegotiated very shortly.

But I thought it was a very positive step from NAFTA. NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history of our country, probably in the history of the world, and this was a transitional deal, and we'll see what happens. You know, we'll -- we're going to be start -- starting to possibly renegotiate that if it's even necessary.

I don't know that it's necessary anymore, but it served a very good purpose, and the biggest purpose it served as we got rid of NAFTA. NAFTA was a very unfair deal for the United States, very, very terrible deal. It should have never been made. It was made many years ago, but it should have never been made.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- Canada and the United States. Would you like to see a first trade deal be with Canada --

TRUMP: I would -- I would love that. Look, I have a lot of respect for this man, and I watched him come up, in a sense, through the ranks when he wasn't given much of a chance. And he did. He ran a really great campaign. He did a really great debate. I think that debate was very helpful.

I was going to raise my hand -- I don't know if that's good or bad. I shouldn't say that might hurt you. But no, he ran a really great election, I thought. And, yeah, something could happen. Something could happen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- you --

TRUMP: Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- concession --

TRUMP: Concession?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Friendship.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- concession --

TRUMP: Oh, just -- I just, we're going to be friends with Canada.

[12:15:00]

Regardless of anything, we're going to be friends with Canada. Canada is a very special place to -- I know so many people that live in Canada. My parents had relatives that lived in Canada. My mother in particular, and now I love Canada a lot of -- I have a lot of respect for the Canadians, Wayne Gretzky.

I mean, how good the great one. You happen to have a very, very good hockey player right here on the capitals who I have a -- He is a big, tough cookie too. Just broke the record, and he's a great guy. And, you know, we had the -- we had the team here, and I got to know a lot of the players, but now Canada is a very special place. Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, I'd like to get your response to this too. Mr. President, you have said that Canada should become the 51st state --

TRUMP: Yeah. No, no. Well, I still believe that, but, you know, takes two to tango, right? But, no, I do. I mean, I believe it would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens. You get free military, get tremendous medical cares and other things. There would be a lot of advantages, but it would be -- it would be a massive tax cut.

And it's also a beautiful, you know, as a real estate developer, you know, I'm a real estate developer at heart, when you get rid of that artificially drawn line, somebody drew that line many years ago with like a ruler, just a straight line right across the top of the country. When you look at that beautiful formation, when it's together, I'm a very artistic person, but when I looked at that beautiful I said, that's the way it was meant to be.

But you know, it's -- I just -- I do feel it's much better for Canada, but we're not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it. I think that there are tremendous benefits to the Canadian citizens, tremendously lower taxes, free military, which honestly, we give you essentially anyway, because we're protecting Canada.

If you ever had a problem. But I think you know, it's -- it would really be a wonderful marriage, because it's two places that get along very well. They like each other a lot.

CARNEY: Well, if I may, as you know, from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale.

TRUMP: That's true.

CARNEY: We're sitting in one right now. You know, Buckingham Palace you visited as well.

TRUMP: That's true.

CARNEY: And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months. It's not for sale, won't be for sale ever, but the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together. And we have done that in the past, and part of that, as the president just said, is with respect to our own security.

And my government is committed for a step change in our investment in Canadian security and our partnership. And I'll say this as well, that the president has revitalized international security, revitalized NATO.

TRUMP: That's true.

CARNEY: And us playing our full weight in NATO, and that will be part --

TRUMP: That's true -- and they have. I must say, Canada is stepping up the military participation because Mark knew, you know, they were low, and now they're stepping it up. And that's a very important thing. But never say never. Never say never.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- the tariffs off of Canada. TRUMP: Well, we'll be talking about different things.

CARNEY: Yeah.

TRUMP: You know, we want to protect our automobile business, and so does Mark. But we want to protect, we want to make the automobiles, and we want to, you know, we have a tremendous abundance of energy, more than any country we have, just in Alaska alone, UNRWA has been reopened now. UNRWA is probably the largest find anywhere in the world.

They say it's larger than Saudi Arabia. I don't know, but it's a lot. But we have tremendous amounts of energy other countries, don't. We're both lucky in that way. They have energy. We have energy. We have more than we can ever use and more than we could ever sell, actually. And you have the same thing.

So, with two countries that are very lucky, if you look at China, they don't have that. You know, it's a big disadvantage, other countries, most countries don't have, you know, most countries don't have that. So, Canada and us, we have a lot of -- a lot of advantages over other places.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- Are you considerable what Mr. Carney just said, that Canada is not for sale? Does this make the discussion a little more difficult to start on?

TRUMP: No, not at all. No, not at all. No -- time will tell its only time. But I say never say never. I've had many, many things that were not doable, and they ended up being doable, and only doable in a very friendly way, but if it's to everybody's benefit, you know, Canada loves us, and we love Canada, that's, I think, the number one thing that's important, but we'll see, I mean, over time, we'll see what happens.

[12:20:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- the --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- Secretary Bessent said that there have been no negotiations yet, but China, you have said something different --

TRUMP: They want to meet, and they're doing no business right now. And those ships are turning around in the Pacific Ocean. Big turn, those are big ships. Those ships take about 10 miles to turn. And you know, we lost a trillion dollars to China on trade because of an incompetent president that we had who preceded me, grossly incompetent.

You finding it out more and more now. And by not trading, we're losing nothing. So, we're saving a trillion dollars. It's a lot, but they want to negotiate, and they want to have a meeting. And we'll be meeting with them at the right time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you met with them? TRUMP: I have not met with them. Of course, you would know if I met, I tell you they want to meet. But you know we are right now. Look, they're suffering greatly. Their economy is suffering greatly because they're not doing trade with the U.S. and they made most of their money off the U.S.

Don't, kid yourself. They don't make the money off other countries like this. And they were making we had a trade imbalance, we had a deficit, or they had a surplus. Another way of saying it of more than a trillion dollars. Think of it, more than a trillion dollars. And because of 145 percent that's the only reason.

But because of they have now 145 percent tariff. There's no trading. You can't trade with 145 percent. We are therefore making in a certain way, I guess, $1.1 trillion in other words, we're not losing $1.1 trillion a deficit is much better. When I started, I say we were losing billions of dollars a day on trade.

That's rapidly turning around. We looked at numbers this morning. So, we were losing the United States during Biden was losing more than -- I won't even give you numbers because they're so embarrassing, but billions of dollars a day on trade. Those numbers are rapidly turning between the tariffs.

So, forget, we're now getting 25 percent on cars, 25 percent on aluminum, 25 percent on steel, and maybe more importantly, massive numbers of companies are moving into the United States. Honda, we have tremendous the car companies are moving in at levels we've never seen before.

The biggest investment ever made in the United States is being made right now, trillions of dollars. I would say we could be at 9, $9 trillion. you could go back to other presidents. They haven't had $1 trillion for their entire term. Look at Biden. He had bad numbers. People were leaving.

They weren't coming in. They were leaving with Biden, and he didn't know the difference. The only thing he knew is people coming in. You know who they were, illegal immigrants, OK, from prisons, from mental institutions, from all sorts of places that weren't good, from gangs from Venezuela.

They were coming in, and they were criminals and murderers. 11,888 people that murdered, and at least half of them murdered more than one person. This is what Biden led into our country. I'm bringing in big companies. We have Apple, is investing $500 billion we have Jensen, as you know, is going to be 500 biggest chip maker, or chip thinker. I call him.

He's really a thinker more than a maker. But we also have the maker, Mr. Way. I get to know him all in the last it was a cram course, but they're all moving into America because of the tariffs and the -- I don't think people have appreciated it. Some people do. Some of the smart people do.

So, we have more money coming in. It's truly an amazing thing. We have more money being invested in the United States now than at any time ever before in our history and it's not even close. And I think the real number could be 9 or 10 trillion. We don't know everybody that's doing it.

We have many. I just heard about a plant that's being built right now, very, very top of the line company, and they didn't come to the White House. They're just doing it because they're making it because if they build here, there are no tariffs. And this is the big market. This is the market that sets us apart from it.

This is the market where everyone wants to be. Now, if I didn't come here and do this all of a sudden, we wouldn't be the market where everyone wants to be. So, we're able to do it in time, but we're going to have a great announcement. And I'm not necessarily saying it's on trade going to the beginning.

We're going to have a great announcement over the next few days, announcement that will be so incredible, so positive. And I'm not saying, I don't want you to think it's necessarily on trade. Just to finish, we also have a situation, because everyone says, when, when, when are you going to sign deals?

We don't have to sign deals. We could sign 25 deals right now Howard, if we want it, we don't have to sign deal. They have to sign deals with us.

[12:25:00]

They want a piece of our market. We don't care about their market. They want a piece of our market. So, we can just sit down and I'll do this at some point over the next two weeks, and I'll sit with Howard and Scott and with our great vice president, who has done a really good job.

We have some good news to report on a lot of fronts, but JD will be there and Marco, and we're going to sit down and we're going to put very fair numbers down, and we're going to say, here's what this country what we want. And congratulations, we have a deal. And they'll either say great, and they'll start shopping, or they'll say, not good.

We're not going to do it. I said that's OK. You don't have to shop. Now we may think, well, they have a right, you know, that maybe we were a little bit wrong. So, we'll adjust it. And then you people say, oh, it's so chaotic. Now we're flexible, but we'll sit down and we'll at some point, in some cases, will sign some deals.

It's much less important than what I'm talking about. For the most part, we're just going to put down a number and say, this is what you're going to pay to shop. And it's going to be a very fair number. It will be a low number. We're not looking to hurt countries. We want to help countries.

We want to be friendly with countries. But you keep writing about deals, deals. When are we going to sign one? It's very simple. We're going to say, in some cases we want you to open up your country. In some cases, we want you to drop your tariffs. I mean, India, as an example, is one of the highest tariffs in the world.

We're not going to put up with that, and they've agreed already to drop it. They'll drop it to nothing. They've already agreed. They would have never done that for anybody else but me. So, we're going to put down some numbers, and we're going to say our country is open for business, and they're going to come in and they're going to pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America.

It's very simple. It's very simple. So, I wish they'd keep you know, stop asking, how many deals are you signing this week? Because one day we'll come and we'll give you 100 deals, and they don't have to sign. All they have to do is say, oh, we'll start sending our ships right now to pick up whatever we want or to bring whatever we want.

It's very, very simple, and I think my people haven't made it clear we will sign some deals. But much bigger than that is we're going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States. Think of us as a super luxury store. A store that has the goods.

You're going to come and you're going to pay a price, and we're going to give you a very good price, we're going to make very good deals. And in some cases, we'll adjust, but that's where it is, and we've been ripped off by everybody for 50 years, for 50 years, and we're just not going to do that anymore. We can't do that and we can't let any country do that to us. We're just not going to do it anymore.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- Can you tell us a bit more about the deal that you've reached with the Houthis.

TRUMP: No, it's not a deal. They've said, please don't bomb us anymore, and we're not going to attack your ships.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And where did you hear about that?

TRUMP: It doesn't matter where I hear the very good source, I could tell very, very good source. Would you say Marco, I would say pretty good, right? JD, a very good source.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- is --

TRUMP: No, they don't want to be -- they don't want to be -- they don't want to be bombed anymore. You know, sort of thought that would happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- is --

TRUMP: No -- behind you, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- is U.S. prepared to walk away from that pact?

TRUMP: For what pact?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USMCA.

TRUMP: No, not. No, no, no. It's fine. It's there. It's good. We use it for certain things. It's there. We have the USMCA is a good deal for everybody. I won't say this about, Mark, but I didn't like his predecessor. I didn't like a person that worked. She was terrible, actually. She was a terrible person.

And she really hurt that deal very badly because she tried to take advantage of the deal, and she didn't get away with it, you know, I'm talking about, but so, you know, I had a -- we had a bad -- we had a bad relationship having to do with the fact that we disagreed with the way they viewed the deal, and we ended it, you know, we ended that relationship, pretty much.

The USMCA is great for all countries. It's good for all countries. We do have a negotiation coming up over the next year or so to adjust it or terminate it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- Mr. President --

CARNEY: I'll just say -- I'll say a word on USMCA, if I may, Mr. President, it is a basis for a broader negotiation. Some things about it are going to have to change, and part of the way you've conducted these tariffs has taken advantage of existing aspects of USMCA. So, it's going to have to change. There are other elements that have come and that's part of what we're going to discuss.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- during the campaign

[12:30:00]