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The Situation Room

Trump Speaks From White House; Americans' Opinion on Trump and Musk?; Heathrow Airport Shut Down. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired March 21, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: You get the power of 1,500 of the most experienced investigators and all of their partners in the intelligence community.

So, let's start off with the fact that it is unlikely that this is a terrorist attack or that there's foul play, but you want to get to that answer sooner than later. The worst thing you could do is to start it off as a simple arson investigation working with the power company and find out after the fact there's something sinister behind it and play catchup.

So, this is them being proactive.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: So, what are officials up against then in terms of determining if the cause of this fire was criminal in nature?

MILLER: Well, one of the problems with fire investigation is the obvious, which is the evidence tends to burn up with the fire.

But there's a number of critical steps that need to be taken right now. I was speaking to Gus Rodriguez, who was, in the Intelligence Bureau, my lieutenant for critical infrastructure investigations and cyber matters.

And what he said was, look, you start with the video. There's security cameras everywhere. Do you see someone approaching the site, getting around the fence, entering the place who doesn't belong there? The second thing you do is -- and you do all this simultaneously -- is you look at the logs.

The power company has the logs. You want to see, what were the computer logs saying about this facility and its status before the fire, then during the fire, then after the fire?

What you're really looking for is, is there an anomaly within the system that showed an overload? Or is there something more sinister, like somebody who's entered the system and then taken control of something and done something intentional to make it overheat?

And the third thing is, we have seen with groups like the Terrorgram Collective, where members have been indicted, but other members are around the world, where they put out detailed instructions online about how to cause a meltdown in a power plant, a number of instances in the United States where we had sniper attacks hitting critical nodes within these substations that caused them to overheat and melt down and in some cases catch fire.

So all of these possibilities, we should say, in perspective, are unlikely. And, yes, the London Fire Brigade Division of Investigation will be doing their normal fire investigation looking for a point of origin, but they want to cover all the bases and do it right away.

BROWN: Understandably.

John Miller, always great to have you on. Thank you so much.

MILLER: Thanks, Pam.

BROWN: Up next: As the Trump administration continues to cut federal jobs and vows to eliminate entire departments, we will sit down with two radio hosts in our series called "Your Voice" to better understand what their listeners are calling in to discuss.

We will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:37:18]

BROWN: All right, now to our weekly series "Your Voice."

Every Friday, we check in with talk radio hosts across the country to hear what their listeners are thinking and saying about what's going on in Washington.

And, today, we are joined by Jeremy Hobson, who hosts his show out of Salt Lake City, and, from New York, Michelangelo Signorile.

So, gentlemen, thank you both for coming on. I'm looking forward to hearing what your listeners are thinking.

Jeremy, I want to go to you first. You say you're hearing a lot of economic anxiety from listeners of your show. If you would tell us more about who your listeners are and who they're blaming for their economic anxieties.

JEREMY HOBSON, HOST, "THE MIDDLE WITH JEREMY HOBSON": Yes, so our show is about bringing voices of Americans in the geographic, political and philosophical middle into the national conversation, allowing people to meet in the middle, even when they disagree, to hear from different views.

So we have got a broad range of listeners on hundreds of public radio stations across the country and a podcast as well. And one of the things that we're hearing right now, whether it has to do with tariffs, whether it has to do with immigration, whether it has to do with artificial intelligence, is a lot of economic anxiety.

We just did a program out of Denver, and a woman who works in the construction industry came up to me and said: "I don't think people understand what the economic impact of the deportations and the fear because of the deportations are, not just for people who may be undocumented working in construction, working in restaurants, but also for people who feel that they may be swept up even though they have documentation."

So that was one example. On the issue of artificial intelligence, which I know is not getting a lot of attention right now in Washington, a woman called into our show and said, I want to know what my kids can study in college so that they won't be replaced by robots.

So there are so many things right now, changes politically and not politically, that people are worried about.

BROWN: So, Michelangelo, to bring you in on this, tariffs have obviously been a major issue for this White House, a lot of back-and- forth on tariffs. April 2, we're expecting more. Trump's calling it liberation day.

Tell us more about who your listeners are and what you're hearing from them on the economy and tariffs.

MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Well, I'm on Sirius satellite radio, so we go everywhere, all across the country, every -- small town, rural area, big cities, bringing together a lot of people who are like-minded on progressive issues.

We're a progressive channel. A lot of people who are really angry about some of the things they're seeing. And when we're talking about tariffs, we're also hearing from people -- because our listenership is so broad, we have people in every industry. We're hearing from people in the construction industry, to Jeremy's point.

[11:40:04]

We're hearing from people who are maybe even higher up in the industry, project managers, people organizing projects for the future. Everything is on hold. I mean, they tell us the projects are on hold or maybe someone in their family is in the business. They can't move forward. They're afraid of the price of lumber a month from now. They're afraid what the prices are going to be moving forward.

And so some projects have been canceled. They just decided they can't move forward with them. The other issue we're hearing on the issue of the tariffs is from people who are involved in the farming industry or any industry connected to farming, just worried about what's going to happen to agricultural trade as well, and, again, not planning for the future.

That's causing people to pull back on orders. That's causing more anxiety and not spending.

BROWN: Well, that's interesting because you are seeing consumer sentiment going down. Just a recent report came out that said it was down over the last few years. And I'm wondering, Jeremy, the White House has been saying that, look,

when it comes to the tariffs in particular, that this will be great for America. Trump, as I said, is calling it liberation day, that this is going to bring in the golden age for America.

And I'm wondering if your -- some of your listeners, because what it sounds like is that they're from both sides of the spectrum, political spectrum, are they buying that? Do they believe that argument as it comes to the tariffs? And are they willing to be patient to see the potential benefits of them?

HOBSON: I think -- I haven't heard a lot of listeners call in and say, I'm so happy that we have tariffs.

I mean, if you think back to the campaign, I don't think there were a lot of voters who were going to the polls saying, I'm doing this because I want to have tariffs of 25 percent on goods coming from Canada or Mexico, and we were going to do retaliatory tariffs. I don't think that that is something that we have heard a lot of praise from our listeners for.

But there's certainly a lot of anxiety about it. We did a live special that was across the United States and Canada with the Canadian Broadcasting corporation a few weeks ago about not just the tariffs, but Trump saying that Canada should be the 51st state and what people on both sides of the border thought about it.

And I will say 90 percent of our American callers were basically apologizing to the Canadians for what was going on. So I haven't heard a lot of praise for the tariffs.

BROWN: That's interesting.

So, Michelangelo, as you well know, Democrats are facing a lot of backlash, with many Americans demanding that they do more to oppose Trump and his policies. We're seeing that play out in town halls across the country.

What are you hearing about that and what do your listeners want Democrats to do?

SIGNORILE: We had a lot of discussion this week and a lot of passion, a lot of anger, but also I think a lot of great ideas about the Democratic leadership.

People are not happy with the leadership and the way they're fighting. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader and what happened last week with the continuing resolution, that was a flash point. And some people get it, OK, maybe it would have been worse to have a shutdown. There's kind of mixed ideas about that.

But what it created was a real discussion about the style of the leadership. And this isn't about moderates. We have a lot of people across the spectrum of the progressive movement, but also Democrats who are in the middle. We even have a lot of independents and some Republicans. They just want to see a fight. And they want to see the Democrats really speaking forcefully.

And several listeners made the point that Chuck Schumer had been on the talk shows in the last few days, and he sounded more passionate than they have ever seen him about keeping his own job, but not about taking on Donald Trump.

And one listener, one man said it's great seeing him on the talk shows, but he's on the talk shows because he's selling a book. Why aren't they on the talk shows all the time?

So I feel like they see this flood-the-zone strategy from the Trump administration, from Republicans. They want to see that from the Democrats. They want to see the fight. They want to see them on television. They want to see them holding press conferences, and they want to see it on every issue, not just sort of issues they have tested maybe on the economy.

They're very worried about the attack on the Constitution, the judges, the not following judges orders, all of those issues.

BROWN: Jeremy, what about you? What are your listeners saying about that? How -- are they angry by how Democrats are responding to Trump's agenda?

HOBSON: Yes, we haven't -- we try specifically to not go directly to the politics and try to focus on the issue. So I haven't asked them specifically, what do you think about how the Democrats are responding right now?

But I will say this. We did a program this week about the future of American energy. And if you were to go into the halls of Congress, you would probably see that Republicans are all in favor of oil and gas and Democrats are all in favor of renewables. What we found was a lot more nuance on that issue.

[11:45:03]

And I think that is where a lot of Americans across the country are. They're not signing up for every single detail of what the Republicans are doing or the Democrats. They're willing to meet in the middle in many ways or just have more nuance in their thoughts about some of these issues and not get so polarized in the conversation.

BROWN: What about -- just to follow up quickly, I want to hear from both of you on what Elon Musk, what the sense is -- from your listeners now is about him. He was just at the Pentagon today getting a briefing.

To you first on that, Michelangelo.

SIGNORILE: There's enormous anger about Elon Musk, people who voted for Donald Trump calling my program sorry that they voted for Donald Trump because of Elon Musk. It's enormous how polarizing he has become.

They feel they didn't vote for Elon Musk. They're not opposed to the idea of cutting spending here or there, but they feel that the whole thing is being done very haphazardly. They're very worried about this person in their private information, the Social Security Administration, now this meeting with the Pentagon supposedly the Chinese war plan.

People are very, very angry. And this to me is across the spectrum. They don't like this idea of this person was a donor to Donald Trump being brought in and making these decisions and looking at their information.

BROWN: The White House has denied the war plan reporting.

But I just want to go to actually President Trump is speaking live right now. So, I apologize. I have to interrupt and go to him.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's 80,000. It's actually 88,000. It's totally open.

The additional stuff is available later on today. You go over to the offices and you can have it immediately, and you will make a determination.

QUESTION: And on something else, these Tren de Aragua, because of your executive order, they are designated as foreign terrorists.

TRUMP: Yes.

QUESTION: If ISIS or al Qaeda foreign terrorists were operating here in the United States, cops would probably be shooting first and asking questions later. And so what is the difference between terrorists, between somebody like an ISIS or an al Qaeda operative versus a MS-13 or Tren de Aragua?

TRUMP: Well, these are people that focus on destroying people in their homes. They're not as international in that sense. They're a group of thugs.

They come from Venezuela. They come from the prisons of Venezuela. They're very, very dangerous people, but they didn't look so dangerous when the guards took care of the situation from El Salvador. And I want to thank the president. He's a friend of mine. He's done a great job.

But I just can't imagine that the Democrats are taking this issue where they want to have them back. So now they have men playing in women's sports. They have transgender for everyone. They have open borders. They have all of their crazy policies that are, I think, 95- 5, not 90-10, OK?

And their new policy is let's bring Tren de Aragua back into our country. Let's bring the worst -- these are the worst gang members there are. They looked amazingly frail, though, by the way they were handled. It's very amazing. They weren't -- when they were in Colorado, cutting the fingers off a man because he made a phone call to the police, they seemed a lot tougher then than they did when they were having their head shaved and they were in shackles.

They're tough people. They're bad people. We don't want them in our country. We can't let a judge say that he wants them. He didn't run for president. He didn't get much more than 80 million votes. And we just can't let that happen. It'd be so bad for our country.

I won on the basis of getting criminals out of our country that were let in. It was called unforced error. They were let in by Biden, incompetently let in, and let in by the millions, actually, 21 million people. I believe it's 21 million. And that's not even including the got-aways, but these are rough people.

We want them out of our country. And I won the election based at least partly on that. And that's a big part.

Yes?

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: I don't know if you saw this. Tim Walz is now saying about Trump supporters, and forgive me, I'm just reading it a quote from Tim Walz: "I think I could kick most of their ass."

TRUMP: Oh, boy, he'd be in trouble.

QUESTION: Is there any way to know?

TRUMP: Well, he's a loser. I mean, the guy is a loser. He lost an election. He played a part. You know, usually, a vice president doesn't play a part, they say. I think Tim played a part. I think he was so bad that he hurt her. But she hurt herself, and Joe hurt them both.

They didn't have a great group, but I would probably put him at the bottom of the group.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: ... politicians fund-raising and campaigning against your policies?

TRUMP: I hope so. I hope so.

(CROSSTALK)

[11:50:03]

TRUMP: Who are you with?

QUESTION: I'm with (INAUDIBLE) from Argentina.

There are families from some of the people that were on those flights to El Salvador that claim that they're not criminals, they're not members of Tren de Aragua, of MS-13.

What can you tell them and what guarantees can you give them that everyone in those planes were actual criminals, terrorists, as you said?

TRUMP: Yes.

Well, I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process, and that that will also be continuing in El Salvador. And if there's anything like that, we would certainly want to find out. But these were a bad group. This was a bad group, and they were in bad areas, and they were with a lot of other people that were absolutely killers, murderers, and people that were really bad with the worst records you have ever seen.

And -- but we will continue that process, absolutely. We don't want to make that kind of a mistake.

QUESTION: Is the U.S. planning to give up the position of NATO's supreme allied commander, and, if so, why?

TRUMP: NATO is something that I saved. NATO was gone until I came along. In fact, the previous secretary-general, a very good man -- both of them are good. The current man is fantastic.

But both of them have said, if it wasn't for Trump, you wouldn't even have a NATO, because we were paying the cost of almost all of the countries. And now they're paying. I said, we're not going to do this. We're not going to continue. You hurt us on trade. You do bad things on trade. And then on top of it, we're supposed to pay for your military.

And because of what I did, hundreds of billions of dollars flowed into NATO by countries that just weren't paying. They were delinquent. They weren't paying their bills. So NATO is solid. They're strong. But they have to treat us fairly.

QUESTION: Are we going to give up the...

TRUMP: They have to treat -- because, look, without us, NATO is not the same.

QUESTION: And we're giving and -- and we're...

TRUMP: And I can tell you, I have been having very good discussions, as you know, with President Zelenskyy and with President Putin. And President Putin will tell you that, without the United States, he wouldn't be worried.

But he is worried when the United States is involved. And I have to tell you, I have dealt very well with both gentlemen, and we have -- I think we have the confines of a deal. I hope we have the confines of a deal. I'm doing it for two reasons.

Number one, and by far most importantly, thousands of young people, and they're not American people, they're Russian and they're Ukrainian, are being killed every week, thousands a week. And, also, the United States has paid, because of Biden $350 billion on a war that should have never happened. If we had a competent president in this right -- sitting right here,

that war would have never happened. It would have absolutely never happened with me. And it didn't happen. For four years, it didn't happen.

QUESTION: mr. President, do you think you have the authority, the power to round up people, deport them, and then you're under no obligation to a court to show the evidence against them?

TRUMP: Well, that's what the law says, and that's what our country needs, because we were -- unfortunately, they allowed millions of people to come into our country, totally unvetted, totally unchecked.

So, you ought to ask, did he have the authority to allow millions of people? Did Biden have the authority to do something that's unthinkable, have open borders where millions of people poured into our country, totally unvetted and totally unchecked, just as you would say?

And many of those people were criminals. Many of them were from jails and prisons and mental institutions and gang members and drug dealers and very dangerous people. Many were murderers. We have 11,088 that we know of murderers. They murdered. Of that number, at least half killed more than one person. They are in our country. They're in a location near you.

Biden allowed that to happen to our country and his people that really ran the country. And the person that operated the autopen, I think we ought to find out who that was, because I guess that was the real president. So when you asked me if we have the authority, did Biden have the authority to allow millions of people to come into our country, many of these people hardened criminals at the top of the line who have caused tremendous damage in our country?

You see them in New York City fighting with our police, I mean, literally having fistfights in the street with our police. These are tough, hard criminals. Many of them came out of jails, and not just South America, from all over the world. They came out of, from Africa, from the Congo. They came out from Asia, not just South America, but many from South America.

These are hard, tough criminals and we have to get them out. And a judge sitting behind a bench someplace got a nice appointment. You can't take that away from the people that are responsible. Now, in this case, Marco Rubio has a lot of big decisions to make. And he's a fantastic person, a great man. I think he will be our best, I think he has a chance to be our best secretary of state.

[11:55:04]

He's been doing incredible. He worked so hard. He's stopped -- he's gone to so many different countries already. And he's got the authority to get bad people out of our country. And you can't stop that with a judge sitting behind a bench that has no idea what goes on, who happens to be a radical left lunatic.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: You guys today are denying -- you guys are denying this "New York Times" report that Elon Musk was going to be shown a 20-to- 30-page presentation about a theoretical war plan against China. Why not just show it to Elon?

TRUMP: Because I don't want to show it to anybody. You're talking about a potential war with China?

Now, I deal with these people all the time, and I'm dealing with Pete. I'm dealing with these gentlemen on numerous different airplane purchases, and I think they're all going to be great. But I don't want other people saying, anybody seeing potential war with China. We don't want to have a potential war with China. But I can tell you, if we did, we're very well-equipped to handle it.

But I don't want to show that to anybody. But, certainly, you wouldn't show it to a businessman who is helping us so much. He's a great patriot. He's taking -- he's paying a big price for helping us cut costs. And he's doing a great job. He's finding tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse.

But I certainly wouldn't want -- Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible perhaps to that. But it was such a fake story. "The New York Times" is just as fake as CNN and MSDNC. And anybody who read that story, people laughed at that story. Who would do such a thing?

And the first thing I did is, I called Susie and I called Pete. I said, is there any truth to that? And they said, it's ridiculous. No, he's over there to talk about cost. You might want to address that, Pete. But Elon was over there today to address cost, DOGE, a thing called DOGE, which you have heard about.

Pete.

PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: That's exactly right, Mr. President.

You pointed out it was a fake story. We pointed out it was. It was meant to sort of undermine whatever relationship the Pentagon has with Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a patriot. Elon Musk is an innovator. Elon Musk provides a lot of capabilities our government and our military rely on.

And I'm grateful for that. We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about DOGE, to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation. The rest of that reporting was fake. There was no war plans. There was no Chinese war plans. There was no secret plans. That's not what we were doing at the Pentagon.

TRUMP: I might add that I think Elon, if you -- if they ever wanted to do that, I think Elon wouldn't do it. I think he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't want to put himself in that position. But if you read what's out of "The New York Times," it's such a

dishonest newspaper. It's such garbage. It's -- it used to be called all the news that's fit to print. Well, it's all the news that's not fit to print. They have fake sources or they don't have sources. I think they make most of it up.

But this was a made-up story by "The New York Times." I call it the failing. It's a failing newspaper. It's failing. And they shouldn't do that. They really are the enemy of the people.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: We do need honest journalism in this. We have made such big strides over the last two months. But we just need honest journalism. And we don't have it.

When you have a CNN, I watch -- you have to watch these people every once in a while just to see where they're coming from. And it's so dishonest. MSNBC is, I think, probably worse. And they're both doing horribly in the ratings. I think they're going to be turned off. I don't think -- they're not doing any ratings.

You're doing well in the ratings.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) Is there anything that they can do to stop April 2 or to roll back the tariffs that you put on (OFF-MIKE)

TRUMP: Well, we can talk.

But, basically, I call April 2 -- I would have made it April 1, but I didn't want to be April Fools' Day, because then nobody would believe what I said. And they do believe me. April 2 is going to be liberation day for America. We have been ripped off by every country in the world, friend and foe.

We have been ripped off on trade. We have been ripped off on military. We protect people, and they don't do anything for us. We -- it's just so unfair for years and years. And now some of that money is going to be coming back to us in the form of tariffs, I mean, tens of billions. It's going to be numbers like nobody's ever seen.

So, Nvidia announced today, you saw that, hundreds of billions of dollars of investment. The biggest chipmaker in the world announced hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, hundreds of billions, not millions, but billions. And they're all coming here. Apple just announced $500 billion worth.

They're going to build plants here. You know, they built their plants in China. They're going to build them here. And they're starting immediately. We have investment, the likes of which this country has never seen, already announced.

And they all want to have news conferences. I don't have enough time to have that many news conferences.