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CNN Live Event/Special

The Inauguration Of Donald Trump. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 20, 2025 - 11:00   ET

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


[11:00:00]

BY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR & SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: -- industry. But it is at such a crucial time when the government has to play a role in deciding what this looks like going forward and whether or not there are going to be any guardrails on the power that they're able --

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: There is Bill Clinton, former president of the United States and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who obviously ran for president in 2016 and lost to Donald Trump. Once again, another sign, symbol, important moment celebrating American democracy, celebrating -- celebrating the peaceful transfer of power, the fact that the former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is here to attend his inaugural. She was at his first inaugural as well.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I -- I would -- and you're using celebration in a very generic sense.

TAPPER: There is George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush. They're here as well. Again, a cel -- celebration of American democracy and honoring --

BASH: Obligation also. I mean, and maybe not for them, but I -- I think for Hillary Clinton it's --

TAPPER: But I'm -- I'm not talking about a celebration of any man. I'm talking about a celebration of -- of the idea of America --

BASH: Yes. It makes sense.

TAPPER: -- and the democracy. There's a -- I think that's Laura Trump, Eric Trump's wife --

BASH: Yes.

TAPPER: -- and their children. There was some talk for a while about maybe her replacing Marco Rubio in the Senate, but she withdrew her name from consideration.

BASH: And those -- those are the Trump grandchildren in that, look, there's President Obama.

TAPPER: Barack Obama.

BASH: Solo, flying solo. TAPPER: Michelle Obama not attending today. She also did not attend the -- the Carter funeral saying that she would prefer not to.

BASH: So obviously she said she preferred not to.

TAPPER: I mean she didn't actually literally say for sure.

BASH: Well, I mean, OK. No, I know. I mean, but that -- that's her -- that her absence is certainly suggesting and you can still see from now from a wider shot, those tech CEOs. One of the things that I also want to mention is that they're not alone. You could see on the -- on the left there, that was Lauren Sanchez. Oh, there's Tim Cook. It's not just them. They have their spouses and their significant others. And these are some prime seats.

PHILLIP: I'm going to see in an environment in which every single seat is accounted for, it -- it really is something that they are in the room for this. I mean, not a lot of people can get seats to this. You've got 535 members of Congress who are guaranteed seats. Everybody else has to earn one. And -- and these people, men, all of them, were able to get seats because of their -- their cultivation of a relationship with Donald Trump for the most part, which all happened after the election.

BASH: I don't even think the cabinet nominees have plus ones in there, I can see.

TAPPER: So we are expecting the U.S. Supreme Court to come in at any moment. You see there at the back of your screen in the white coat with the black scarf that Susie Wiles, the incoming White House chief of staff. Kaitlan Collins, what are we expecting to hear from President-elect Trump as he delivers his inaugural address?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: And there's Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of Trump's biggest allies on the Hill. Jake, obviously this speech, I have been told, is going to be about restoring confidence in the United States. Trump obviously is not going to speak very highly of Biden's tenure. He may not go as far as he did at his rally last night. But I want to know what we're looking at here with Jeff Bezos talking to the person standing by, the CEO of Google. That's Howard Lutnick. He is Trump's pick to be the Commerce Secretary. He doesn't have a lot of opposition, so he seems like he'll be confirmed. He ran the transition.

He will be in charge of imposing Trump's tariffs, though, that he has threatened here. That will affect all of those executives that you're looking at who are standing right there in the back of the room. So just speaking to why they have these good seats and why they wanted these prime seats is because those are directly the people who are going to be making huge decisions that affect their businesses in a massive way.

And -- and another person who is in the room is the CEO of TikTok, who in a few hours is going to be getting an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, one that was still being finalized yesterday to save his business in the United States and essentially rebuff a bipartisan law that was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court. But I also saw Senator Tom Cotton sitting right there in the center of the lawmakers. He's actually in the chair. He's not up on the stage where all the cabinet officials are that you're looking at here, including Pete Hegseth on the phone.

Senator Tom Cotton has broken with Trump on the TikTok executive order and said that the law should stand if they can't sell and divest from their parent company, ByteDance, that they should not be able to be used inside the United States. He's a rare Republican, and even some Democrats have changed their tune on this, Jake. And it just speaks to the different dynamics that are all at play in this rotunda that you're seeing here, all waiting on Trump to give this speech and also to see what he is going to be doing once he has the powers of the presidency again.

[11:05:00]

TAPPER: We see there Elise Stefanik in the reddish plumish dress. She is Trump's nominee to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. In the blue dress, Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota, nominee to be Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. And again, Abby Phillip, I don't sense that any of these nominees are really in trouble in terms of their confirmation. Marco Rubio, we expect, will be confirmed overwhelmingly today. But beyond that, the ones that are supposedly controversial, Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense, Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

I don't know that there aren't the votes for confirmation. Here is the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts. Second there was Brett Kavanaugh. They're not in order of seniority, obviously, because Brett Kavanaugh, oh, we have a former Supreme Court Justice Breyer at the end there. Brett Kavanaugh is second there because he will be administering the oath office to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. You see Clarence Thomas and Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett --

PHILLIP: Ketanji Brown --

TAPPER: Ketanji Brown Jackson. And there is, as I said, bringing up the rear is a former U.S. Supreme Court justice, Justice Breyer.

PHILLIP: And as you were saying earlier, I mean, it -- it might be true that none of them now are in jeopardy. Matt Gaetz did have to withdraw his nomination for Attorney General. We also have to see some hearings for RFK Jr. that will come up at some point. Kash Patel as well. So there are some folks who are still fairly controversial, but Donald Trump has pretty successfully kept Republicans pretty much in line on most of these nominations. And there's even the prospect that someone like RFK Jr. could get maybe one or two Democratic votes despite his advocacy of vaccine or anti-vaccine messages, some of which are just patently false.

But this is the -- this is the dynamic of the new Washington. And I think Democrats now in the minority, they can't really do anything about it.

BASH: I would also caution that it's not entirely a done deal that Tulsi Gabbard is going to get confirmed.

PHILLIP: Yes. That's right.

BASH: And I'm saying that because of reporting from Republican senators.

PHILLIP: Yes, yes. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard of course, was once a Democrat. So there's some tension there, I think, inherently in -- in what she's said and done in the past.

BASH: We've been reporting what I've been hearing, and I --

PHILLIP: Yes.

BASH: -- think you guys have as well, is concern based on private meetings about her readiness to be Director of National Intelligence. But -- but yet, look, I mean, again, what we're looking at is what will ultimately likely be Donald Trump's Cabinet and the people who are going to --

TAPPER: Right. It's possible that a couple -- a couple might not make it through. I -- I have yet to see evidence that will happen, but it is possible a couple might not make it through. But as a general rule, we do expect them overwhelmingly to be confirmed. I think the --

BASH: They're sitting in front. I'm sorry, I just want to say one thing. Sorry to interrupt, but some of these tech giants and their spouses are sitting in front of members of the Cabinet. They've better seats than people who are going to actually serve in Donald Trump's administration. And knowing how much he pays attention to details, I can't imagine that the President-elect was not involved in that. There is his children.

TAPPER: The adult chil -- the adult children of President-elect Trump, Ivanka, Don Jr., Tiffany, Eric, and then Barron bringing up the rear. Barron, who was 10 when his father first entered the White House in 2017. He's now a college freshman at New York University.

PHILLIP: And Tiffany --

TAPPER: -- looks so much like his dad.

PHILLIP: Yes. And he's very tall. And Tiffany is -- is expecting. She just recently got married. And President Trump appointed her father- in-law to an official position. You know, with Donald Trump, it's already become clear that the cabinet is going to be important, but more important are going to be the people inside of the White House. And perhaps even more important still are the people outside of the government entirely.

We were just looking at Elon Musk there, who have Donald Trump's ear. Trump is a businessperson, first and foremost. And he incredibly values the -- the opinion, the esteem of wealthy business titans. And those voices are going to be very important. That's why I'm not surprised to see them sitting where they are because in -- in Trump's world, there's the government and then there is the almost kitchen cabinet of sorts of people on the outside who are going to be around him on speed dial, the recipients of text messages and other things constantly over the next four years. And that's why when we talk about this stuff, you can't just focus on people who have official titles when it comes to Donald Trump.

[11:10:22]

TAPPER: Oh, not at all.

PHILLIP: You heard that very well.

TAPPER: And we should -- we've been making the point. But these tech CEOs are not just in Donald Trump's construct geniuses. He's talked about Elon Musk. We don't have that many geniuses. We have to honor and -- and support our geniuses. They're not just business people with tens of billions of dollars of -- of value. They are individuals who control the flow of information throughout the world, which also includes the flow of information that can be dangerous, such as information that might cite or, you know, incite a riot, information that's false. Sometimes false information results in the deaths of individuals. I'm talking about worldwide now. And that's the challenge for this information age.

PHILLIP: Yes.

TAPPER: How does one avoid censorship while also maintaining a healthy attitude towards facts and truth? That's a real balancing act. And how they -- how these tech CEOs meet, that is going to be the challenge of our age.

PHILLIP: And can I offer one other thing? I mean, this is going to be an economy that is going to be shaped by artificial intelligence. All of those people are involved in that. That's -- when we talk about that, we're talking about American jobs, we're talking about what the economy looks like, who is going to be able to work, what kinds of jobs they're going to be able to have. These are going to be pivotal decisions that these people are going to be making as they -- as they develop this technology.

So they have an enormous amount of power, and it's going to affect the lives of every single person, even if you never touch a social media platform in your life.

TAPPER: Here are the -- the in laws of -- of the adult Trump children. You see Lara Trump. You see Jared Kushner, whose father has been nominated to be ambassador to France. In the first Trump administration, he got a pardon. In the second Trump administration, he's getting an ambassadorship. Kaitlan Collins, tell us what you're seeing from Emancipation Hall.

COLLINS: Well, Jake, remarkable to see the family dynamics playing out here. Jared Kushner obviously had a huge role in Trump's first term. He was a senior adviser inside the West Wing, as was Ivanka Trump. Neither of them are expected to get those blue passes. The White House staffers have to have to -- to walk around the White House grounds or office space inside the West Wing this time around. They still have influence. And I don't -- I think it would be wrong to -- to minimize it, but certainly not to the level that we saw the first time.

Jared Kushner has his own private fund. He has said that's part of the reason he's not going in. Ivanka Trump has also cited their children. And instead, we've seen how the influence of has grown in the four years Trump has been out office. Donald Trump Jr. is one of those. I was told he was someone who -- who stayed close to Trump after he left office in January 2021. And let's listen in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- the former Vice President, the Honorable Dan Quayle accompanied by Mrs. Marilyn Quayle and the Honorable Michael Pence.

COLLINS: And others. This comes after Trump posted in recent days that, no, they cannot hire anyone who works for Mike Pence in this administration.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the 42nd President of the United States, the Honorable William J. Clinton accompanied by the Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton.

BASH: He also looked a little --

[11:15:02]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, the 43rd President of the United States, the Honorable George W. Bush, accompanied by Mrs. Laura Bush.

Ladies and gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States, the Honorable Barack H. Obama.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Chief Justice of the United States, the Honorable John G. Roberts, Jr. and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

TAPPER: And here is Dr. Jill Biden, the outgoing First Lady, and Doug Emhoff, the outgoing Second Gentleman. We're told that Doug Emhoff had a roughly 45-minute conversation with his replacement, Usha Vance. Here are the adult Trump children being formally introduced. Tiffany Trump, Eric Trump, Barron Trump.

The woman in the red there is Beverly Aikins. That is the mother of J.D. Vance, the incoming Vice President. And it's good to see her. She had some health issues. In December she posted about on Facebook and had some health issues and heart issues rather, and hernia surgery. She was hospitalized briefly in December. It's good to see that she's here celebrating her son's great achievements. For those of you who haven't read "Hillbilly Elegy," Beverly Aikins is -- is in that book and it is good to see her up and about.

[11:20:14]

Yes, he's very tall.

BASH: Oh, he is, Barron Trump.

TAPPER: Dana Bash, just looking at Barron Trump, I think he's like 6'5, something like that.

BASH: At least. At least. He's got -- he's got two very tall parents.

TAPPER: 6'9, I'm told. And he -- and obviously throughout the room are various Trump grandchildren in addition to the Trump adult children as well. They're right behind --

BASH: And I believe that's -- that's Barron's grandfather, Melania Trump's father next to him. She of course lost her mother.

TAPPER: Where? Which one are you referring to?

BASH: To the left of --

TAPPER: Next to -- next to J.D. Vance's mom?

BASH: In between J.D. Vance's mother and -- and Barron Trump.

PHILLIP: Yes.

TAPPER: It is just really striking seeing all these first family and second family members and all the incoming cabinet members, assuming they get con -- confirmed and then just scattered throughout are these tech CEOs.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean the exclusivity of this room is incredible. I mean there are governors and high level elected officials who are in the overflow. But these folks, we should also remind people they paid money into the Donald Trump inaugural fund. Mark Zuckerberg and Meta --

TAPPER: There's Senator Tom Cotton, Cory Booker and Chuck Grassley that we just showed there. Sorry.

PHILLIP: They wrote million dollar checks and a million dollar check I suppose gets you in the room where it happens.

BASH: I agree with you, Abby. But this is about as mutually beneficial as it gets because as -- I think you said earlier, Donald Trump is the ultimate producer and he understands branding and marketing and imagery as well as or better than most. And the fact that he has all of these multi hundred billionaires who do run the control and control information in the United States, so prominent there. It's very good for him in his mind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- of the Joint Congressional Committee on inaugural ceremonies, Ms. Emily Leviner, the Senate Secretary for the Minority, the Honorable Gary Myrick, the House of Representatives Chief Administrative Officer, the Honorable Katherine Spindor and Mr. Bruce Fischer.

PHILLIP: As we're watching, these are, I guess Bruce Fisher is the spouse of Senator Deb Fischer.

TAPPER: Yes.

PHILLIP: And some of these are members of the Inaugural Committee as well.

TAPPER: Senator Deb Fischer and Senator Amy Klobuchar are the co- chairs of the Inaugural Committee. So here is the outgoing First Lady and the outgoing Second Gentleman coming in. And then next will be the outgoing President and Vice President as well. It is tough to -- for those two to be standing there smiling. Doug Emhoff, who had hoped he would be about to be the first gentleman with his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, being the first woman president. That did not happen. And then obviously Dr. Jill Biden, the outgoing First Lady, not a fan of the incoming president and not a fan of how everything went down with her husband stepping down as a, well, as Democratic presidential nominee.

PHILLIP: Yes. But they're there because this is -- this is the process of transferring power in this country. And I do think that because of the tumult of the last eight years, sometimes people forget that. That -- that you are supposed to lose, even if you don't like it. And when you lose, you still show up. And the fact that they showed up and they have a bit of a smile --

BASH: Yes.

PHILLIP: -- a bit of a smile on the -- on their faces is being the bigger person, but it's also being having fidelity to this country and its traditions.

BASH: You know, I -- and you see Doug Emhoff smiling and -- and -- and the -- the First Lady smiling, you can also see them really taking it all in and -- and imagine what's going through their minds about this moment and what might have been and what could have been had a lot of things gone differently.

TAPPER: Indeed. And again, you know, we were, as a country, denied this full tradition four years ago because the outgoing administration then, which is the incoming administration now, or the outgoing first couple then, which is the incoming first couple now, would not concede defeat and would not attend the ceremony. And it is an important part of this tradition to have the peaceful transfer of power, which is also to signal to one supporters that it is OK that you lost, that the country endures and we are still one United States. And that is such an important part of -- of what's going on today.

[11:25:11]

PHILLIP: The -- the seating arrangement is so much tighter this time around than it was eight years ago, which was the last time we had a sort of truly bipartisan --

BASH: Oh, wow. That is a moment.

PHILLIP: Little hug from Doug Emhoff. BASH: Doug Emhoff just hugged -- just hugged the First Lady.

PHILLIP: -- Jill Biden.

BASH: She put her head on his shoulder.

PHILLIP: I mean, these families really have gotten close over the last four years, the -- the Emhoffs and the Bidens. And I -- I know that after the election there was some suggestion of tension between the two. But -- but remember, just a week ago, President Biden gave his last address in the Oval Office. And the First Lady, Doug Emhoff, the First Gentleman -- the Second Gentleman, and the Vice President all sat in a row. And at -- at one of the moments, they all clasped hands in the corner of the room. It's politics. It gets rough. It gets tough, even with your own allies. But at the end of the day, they're actually sharing this experience of what this loss means to them. And I think you saw a moment of that just now.

TAPPER: Yes, I mean, there -- there was real tension --

PHILLIP: Yes.

TAPPER: -- between President Biden and Vice President Harris after he suggested that he could have won.

PHILLIP: Yes.

TAPPER: If he had been the nominee. He had said it to "USA Today," and he -- she was not happy that he had said that. Don Jr. and Ivanka Trump, Don -- Donald Trump Jr. playing more of a political role with his father this time than Ivanka, who really, with Jared Kushner, when they actually had official roles at the White House, there -- they were -- their security clearances were waived by the President.

PHILLIP: And I would argue, Don Jr. has always been actually more political than any of the children. He has been really the keeper of the flame in terms of what MAGA is and what it means. He's very connected to the core base that Donald Trump spent four years when he was not in office cultivating. And Ivanka, when she was in the White House, she kind of saw herself as focusing on, you know, these key policy issues that were important to her and working in those lanes.

And so when she virtually disappeared, frankly, for this last election, it's kind of in keeping with her reticence to be a part of the sort of rough and tumble politics that her father practices. It'll be interesting to see what role she decides to play publicly, but for now, they're staying out of the White House. She maintains, obviously, a relationship with her father, but the question will be, does she do anything beyond that?

BASH: It's Elon Musk. I mean, talk about somebody who sent a tweet on his own platform right after Donald Trump was shot at and it was an assassination attempt on his life over the summer in Butler, Pennsylvania, saying that he endorsed Donald Trump and Elon Musk never looked back.

TAPPER: Kaitlan Collins is right outside the Rotunda in Emancipation Hall. Kaitlan?

COLLINS: Yes. Obviously, Elon Musk has become closer than almost anyone in Trump's orbit in the last two months, surprising even some people around him. He's virtually living at Mar-a-Lago these last few months. He's been sitting in for interviews. And despite not coming into the federal government in an official capacity, we are told as of this moment, he is going to have an office space inside the White House we are told. It's not clear where on the White House grounds that will be. Obviously, it's -- it's quite a big space. But that'll be something to watch in terms of the influence.

But this time around, people on the outside will still have a lot of influence on Trump. They always have but it may be more so here with Donald Trump Jr. also not expected to come into the White House in an official capacity like his sister, Ivanka Trump, did. But he has played a key role in the hiring as well. He often serves as really a back channel to his father, often being able to tell people, here's how -- how my father is feeling about this, or the likelihood of -- of him hiring this person. And there have been people who have been angling to get positions that have used the Donald Trump Jr. backchannel to -- to try to do so.

And that speaks to, you know, just this whole process and how this looks in terms of -- of how this is going to play out with the axis of influence around Trump, from Elon Musk to Donald Trump Jr. It's very different than it was when he was in office the last time. One question that some of my sources have posed to me is what a West Wing without an Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner looks like in terms of the moderating influence they had on Trump.

[11:29:42]

They were seen as the two people in the West Wing that he could not fire, in addition to the vice president at the time, which obviously later he did not run again with him. And so people would often go to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to try to either help Trump change his mind on something or to go consult privately with him. There is Melania Trump, of course, I should -- Melania Trump walking in, being escorted into the Rotunda.