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The Source with Kaitlan Collins
Elon Musk Joins A Call Between Trump And Ukrainian President; Elon Musk Playing Key Role In Staffing Trump's Administration; ND Gov. Doug Burgum Under Consideration For Energy Czar. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired November 08, 2024 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- went through four Chiefs of Staff. So, although she is anti-chaos, it seems, we'll see how it plays this time around here.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Randy Kaye, thanks so much.
That's it for us. The news continues. Hope you have a great weekend. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now. See you on Monday.
KAITLAN COLLINS, ANCHOR, THE SOURCE WITH KAITLAN COLLINS: Straight from The Source tonight, I have new reporting on the aggressive race to staff a new Trump administration, and how Elon Musk is fitting into all of that. The world's richest man joined in when Donald Trump, the President-elect now, had his first official call with President Zelenskyy, and I'm learning that's not all. Also tonight, Nancy Pelosi is now openly pointing the finger at President Biden for her party's crushing defeat on Tuesday night, what she says would have been a better way. And Jack Smith is signaling the beginning of the end for his prosecutions of Donald Trump. But, does he plan to issue a public report, ala Robert Mueller? We'll ask our experts.
I'm Kaitlan Collins, and this is The Source.
Judging by the pace of the transition underway right now at Mar-a- Lago, the names for the top positions in a second Trump term could drop at any moment. Instead of staring at the Trump Tower elevator bank, like we were doing about this time in 2016, tonight, instead, we're keeping a close eye on the comings and goings at Trump's South Florida club, given who gets a job is often determined by the last influence that Trump heard from.
One person who has been seen there constantly since Tuesday is not someone that we expect to take a formal job inside the administration, but it is someone who is expected to have a lot of influence. Tonight, I have new reporting that not only was Elon Musk on the President- elect's first call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, he has also joined other key calls that Trump has had since he won Tuesday night. Musk has been present for conversations where Trump has been mulling over staff decisions, both of these instances showcasing how important Musk could be during the incoming administration. Now, sources have described Trump is enamored with Musk, which is really, if you listen to what he is saying publicly, something that he has made quite clear himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL- ELECT: To me, every day is a good endorsement from Elon. Nobody is smarter than Elon. But, he is character. He is a special guy. He is a super genius.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: A super genius, and of course, that is someone who was on that call with Trump and Zelenskyy yesterday. We're told during that the Ukrainian leader was thanking Musk for providing the Starlink satellite communications on the Ukrainian battlefield. We are told that no policy was discussed during that conversation that Musk was a part of, though, of course, tonight, a major question how Trump is going to handle Russia's war in Ukraine is still a big one tonight.
Now, all of this is coming as the North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has also been seen at Mar-a-Lago this week. Trump and Burgum developed a close relationship on the campaign trail after Burgum was running against him and then dropped out of the race. And I'm hearing tonight that Burgum is under consideration for a role as energy czar. Now, it remains to be seen what exactly that profile looks like, or what that job would be, if Burgum does get it, but this comes as, we know, Trump wanted Burgum to be his energy secretary, something I'm told the North Dakota governor has maintained to the President-elect. He is not interested in it and more interested in other positions.
Now, to top off this entire job search, and what we're learning tonight, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who is a member of House leadership and one of Donald Trump's biggest defenders, of course, is also under consideration to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
A lot of moving parts tonight. My inside source is CNN's Political Analyst and Senior Political Correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman. And Maggie, what else have you been hearing from sources? Because you were reporting on this call with Zelenskyy that Musk was on. What are you hearing from people about how this went down?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, & SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NY TIMES: So, they were together. Zelenskyy apparently called Trump to congratulate him, and Trump, literally, at some point early on in this conversation, hands the phone to Elon Musk, and encourages Zelenskyy to talk to Musk. There is some discussion between Musk and Zelenskyy about the communications apparatus that Elon Musk's company, Starlink, is providing in Ukraine. We're not sure what other details were discussed. But, it's a little reminiscent, Kaitlan, of when Trump won in 2016 and he had his daughter Ivanka next to him when he was having foreign leader calls, and he would put her on the phone with people. In this case, it's the richest man in the world who has business with government, and it's slightly different, but it's pretty in keeping with Trump's character. COLLINS: Yeah. I just wonder how people are looking at this, because
he is a major defense contractor, but -- and he does have a national security --
HABERMAN: Yeah.
COLLINS: -- clearance, Musk does. But, for him to be on this call, obviously, I mean, just interesting, given, it speaks to, one, how much Trump kind of likes Musk and being around him and almost how much he trusts him that he wants him on a phone call, as key as this one.
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HABERMAN: Yeah. I think it's -- I think it is a trust thing. I also just think it is that the Trump likes to impress other people, and Elon Musk is the richest man in the world, and that's one way of showing off for Zelenskyy. I also think it's something of a dominance play. Musk has a relationship with Vladimir Putin. There has been a lot of reporting about that in The Wall Street Journal, and I don't think that that is completely out of Donald Trump's head when he is doing this. So yes, I mean, this call attracted a lot of attention for a variety of reasons. Musk's various connections to the government and interest in government approvals and government contracts and so forth is going to be a big discussion in the coming months.
COLLINS: Yeah. And his Starlink contract with the federal government was extended a few months ago. It expires, actually, at the end of this month, on November 30th.
HABERMAN: Right.
COLLINS: I just wonder, judging from how Trump has brought in billionaires before, or how he views them, how much influence do you think Elon Musk is going to have on what a second Trump term could look like, at least the first year or so?
HABERMAN: I think a lot. I mean, he is -- as you said, he is down there at Mar-a-Lago. He has been for various points during this week. President Erdogan of Turkey said that Musk was at dinner with Trump. When Erdogan spoke to Trump, he was in a family photo that Tiffany Trump posted on X. He has been talking about transition with a number of people. He is going to have opinions on who should be in what jobs. And so, I do think that he will be influential. Does it mean he is going to influence every single thing? No. But, he is certainly going to leave his imprint, even if he never actually formally joins the government.
COLLINS: Yeah. And can we just talk about the scene that's playing out at Mar-a-Lago right now? I mean, we were both just down there in Florida and came back today. Can you just kind of set the scene for people as far as, it's moving very, very quickly, from what we're gleaning from people, it seems to be the case?
HABERMAN: Yeah. So, a couple of things. Number one, there was a huge push by a number of people to make sure that the Chief of Staff role was announced quickly because the rest of the transition process couldn't really begin until that happened, Susie Wiles, who is -- who most people around Trump, and I'm talking about a broad group of people, wanted to have in that job, was given it yesterday, announced by Trump. She is the first female White House Chief of Staff. I think she was the first female Chief of Staff to Jacksonville Mayor previously. But -- so, she brings with her a certain core group, and that fills a number of roles. This then turns to now cabinet appointments and what that ends up looking like.
There is, as you said, this jockeying. There are a lot of people who are trying to have influence on the process. There are a lot of wealthy people who are trying to be in Trump's ear, not just Elon Musk, members of Mar-a-Lago who he talks to, other donors who he talks to. There is the RFK component. There is Tulsi Gabbard, and what happens with her. There is J.D. Vance's group, and there are various groups that may have some overlap in some cases, but they are trying to influence appointments. The goal is to try to have a bunch of this done in the coming days.
COLLINS: Well, that's what's kind of amazing about this process, is obviously every incoming President has a transition, and what that means is there are people who are in charge of kind of lining up candidates for big jobs going into it. But, with Trump, he can have three candidates for Secretary of State before him, but if he picks one of them and mentions it to maybe a donor or a member and they don't like it or kind of mock the notion of it, that can change his mind on how he is viewing it.
HABERMAN: Yeah, absolutely. Look, he is -- he operates on whims, on staff. He is going to be given a bunch of options for various jobs that the transition team that's in place has been working on for some time. They've done a lot of vetting to try to come up with flags, and they have tried to make sure that with an inevitable collision after Election Day that the various pieces fit together in ways that really didn't happen after the 2016 election, where you had all of these people sort of both jockeying for position and then arguing with each other. There is certainly a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, some of it playing out pretty publicly.
There are some campaigns on social media to try to knock off certain candidates like Mike Pompeo, for instance. There has been a lot of pushback on him rejoining the government as the Secretary of Defense. But, I think that Trump has a number of options that he will be looking at, and there will be efforts to make sure, as you say, that people are the last ones in the room with him before announcements are made.
COLLINS: Well, the Mike Pompeo thing is interesting, because it is something that seems to be kind of gaining steam tonight, which is some people are saying he shouldn't get it. He was obviously CIA director under Trump before, and Secretary of State, because he was critical of Trump after the classified documents.
HABERMAN: Right.
COLLINS: I think even if saying critical, it was lightly critical.
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But, he was somewhat critical of Trump after the classified document stuff was coming to light.
HABERMAN: He was mildly critical of it. Trump does like Mike Pompeo. They did have a good relationship. When Pompeo was in his cabinet, Pompeo was widely seen as knowing how to manage Trump and deal with Trump in a way that other cabinet secretaries simply were not. The criticisms about Pompeo have been that he is supportive of aid to Ukraine, and this is the argument made on X. I'm not saying this necessarily comports with reality, but that he would favor an expansion of NATO, and that's what some of Trump's allies, who he has been listening to at various points in this campaign, are saying publicly. We will see where that ends up. But, I would have to imagine that Trump is listening to it.
COLLINS: Yeah. I'm curious what you're hearing on the Doug Burgum thing, just not even specific to him, but he is under consideration to this kind of -- it's still to be defined role of energy czar. But, I wonder if you're hearing anything or what you're reading into. Maybe there are these potential candidates who would rather have their prioritizing access to Trump, maybe being in the West Wing, having an office there over into the more traditional bureaucratic secretary position, where you're in a totally separate building than Donald Trump, and of course, access to him is everything.
HABERMAN: I think a couple of things. In the case of Burgum, he made very clear, when Trump was considering him for VP, that he wanted VP or nothing else, and that really did not help him in that process. So, it's not a surprise that that's where he is still. I've also heard his name for Energy Secretary. The assumption of people around Trump is he'll take it if it's offered to him. I don't know if that's true. That is their assumption is that people don't generally turn down cabinet positions.
However, there are a lot of people who are not putting their hands up to be in cabinet positions in this second Trump administration for a number of reasons. Either they have personal issues, they don't want to digest from their businesses, or even if they're not saying this out loud, they watched him fire people by tweet over and over and over last time, and a lot of people don't want to go through that and don't think it would help them for their future careers.
COLLINS: Yeah. And speaking of that environment and what that looks like, making people maybe hesitant to come back, not just because of that, but also the scrutiny that obviously comes with any taxpayer funded West Wing role. When Trump came on stage to give his victory speech the other night, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were up there. They are not expected to take on formal roles, certainly not Ivanka Trump, TBD on Jared Kushner, though. Obviously he has a fund, and that would create problems there. I just wonder, what does the West Wing look like without the two of them, who are two people who kind of were unfireable (ph) before?
HABERMAN: It's a good question. Trump has made clear to a number of people, he does not expect any members of his family to come into the administration in jobs. I, at the moment, anticipate that's the case. Jared Kushner has a fund that has a lot of Saudi money in it, among other Mideast sovereign wealth investments, and it would be very difficult to disentangle himself and also could really impact his own personal bottom line. So, there is that.
It will look like other people have more authority, and it will, frankly, create clearer lanes, because the presence of these sort of super staffers who are also family members was very complicated for people working in the White House. However, I don't think that's going to change Donald Trump's habit of asking two people to serve in the same role, or at least perform the same functions. He likes, as you know, pitting people against each other and seeing them argue. We saw some of that toward the end of his campaign. Susie Wiles, the incoming Chief of Staff, is the only campaign official who has survived an attempted ouster. But, we will see what this looks like when he is back in government.
COLLINS: Yeah. I was remembering how he named Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon together in 2016 --
HABERMAN: Right.
COLLINS: -- obviously two like --
HABERMAN: Right.
COLLINS: -- totally different --
HABERMAN: Right.
COLLINS: -- people who then went on to feud in the White House.
Maggie Haberman, it's going to be an interesting four years. Thank you for that reporting tonight.
HABERMAN: Indeed.
COLLINS: Up next, Nancy Pelosi is giving a searing election post mortem tonight. You're going to want to hear these quotes from her. She is squarely blaming President Biden and his timing for that crushing defeat on Tuesday. Plus, tonight, we have breaking developments on the foiled Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump before the election. There are two arrests, but tonight, another suspect is still at large.
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COLLINS: One of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Party is putting the blame for Tuesday's historic loss on President Biden. This is in an interview with The New York Times. Listen to Pelosi.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VOICE OF REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Had the President gotten out
sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race. The anticipation was that -- that -- if there -- if the President were to step aside, that there would be an open primary. And as I say, Kamala may have -- I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But, we don't know that. That didn't happen. We live with what happened. And because the President endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.
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COLLINS: That is Pelosi's view of the race, as she told to CNN contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro. It's worth noting that in the fall of 2022 when typically there was going to be a primary process and one that would have taken shape, Pelosi was arguing this publicly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS ANCHOR: Do you think President Biden should run again?
PELOSI: Yes, I do. I mean, President Biden has been a great President for our country. He has accomplished so much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: My political sources are here at the table tonight, former Harris Communications Director Jamal Simmons, former Communications Aide for Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo, also the VP of Push Digital Group, T.W. Arrighi, and Puck Senior Political Correspondent Tara Palmeri. It's great to have you all here.
Jamal, how do you think President Biden hears a comment like, if it had been much earlier, it would have been different?
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, & FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR VP HARRIS: Yeah. I'm sure he thinks probably something close to what I think, which is that she is wrong. I don't often think that Nancy Pelosi is wrong, but I do think she is wrong here.
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Listen, I don't think Joe Biden had a lot of great options. First of all, think of what life was like in November of 2022. He had just won midterm for the most part. He is the only person who has ever beaten Donald Trump in an election. He was probably feeling much more healthy than he felt probably this year. And he was kind of a political powerhouse. He had passed a bunch of legislation, and nobody thought he would be able to pass. Why pull yourself out of the game then?
Point number two, let's say you had a competitive primary. Everybody ran. Kamala Harris gets in the race. She doesn't win the Democratic nomination. Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, Joe Biden, every single white guy who was Democratic Vice President got to be nominated President, and the first time the Democratic Party wouldn't do it would be for the black and South Asian woman. Imagine that ad Donald Trump would have ran in African American communities, and that would have really gotten to African American women who would have been much more supportive of Harris, and you might have seen an even greater drop off in black support.
COLLINS: Yeah.
SIMMONS: There were no great options.
COLLINS: It's just a striking comment. I don't know that they have not spoken, but the last we had checked a few weeks ago, Pelosi and Biden still had not spoken, since she very clearly was behind the push to get him out of the race. And Jim Clyburn was asked about her comments today. Listen to what he had to say, T.W.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): I just think finger-pointing, the blame shifting, that's not going to do us any good. He has had a tremendous presidency. His record is great. The economy is humming like no other economy in the world. And so, everybody can say what people didn't feel like. Maybe they didn't. And the question is, why didn't they? I don't know that Joe Biden is responsible for people's feelings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: I mean, I think it's pretty safe to say people did not feel that way, but Clyburn was someone who actually wanted a mini primary process to kind of play out when Biden got out.
T.W. ARRIGHI, VP, PUSH DIGITAL GROUP, & REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah, absolutely. And I think Nancy Pelosi is right. Of course, she said something ages ago. It's clear that 110 days is not enough to get a message out. She failed to address three big issues, the three W's, weakened border, weakened economy, the woke agenda and war. She wasn't able to get messages out for all of that in a short period of time that resonated with the voters. They did deserve a primary process. You can't preach about the pillars of democracy and then strip away anybody from choosing their candidate. I agree with you. It would look be a bad look to pass over. There is no question about it. But you have to be responsive to the people to a degree. And I think they lost the trust of the American people when they took away that primary process.
SIMMONS: I will say, you guys are right in the sense that that is a message I heard coming back from voters, just people I was randomly meeting. They kept saying this to me in the days and weeks leading up to the election. The problem with it, though, is I think she was -- she -- 107 days was the best she could do, and it wasn't really about the issues, I don't think, at the end of the day. I think people just didn't quite know Kamala Harris, and the President is the most intimate political relationship people have in the country, and they didn't have a long enough time to get to know her before they had to pick. TARA PALMERI, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK, & HOST, "SOMEBODY'S GOTTA WIN": The reason I think a primary process would have worked is because it would have presented candidates that were a break from Joe Biden. The way that Kamala Harris ran was she ran as a generic Democrat who had the baggage of Joe Biden, that it's not a very strong place to be running, especially when 67 percent of the country says they want the country to go in a different direction. She is asked on The View a pretty easy question, how are you different than Joe Biden, or what would you do differently? Not a thing comes to mind.
She was unable during those 107 days to separate herself from someone that American people were very much unhappy with. She was just Joe Biden in another form. And so, in a sense, if you had new options, maybe the American people would have just said, you know what, Kamala Harris, there is just too much baggage to go with her, has nothing to do with her race or her gender. We just want a new direction if this Democratic candidate has a vision for the future that is different, because I just don't think that Kamala Harris communicated a vision for America that was different than Joe Biden's vision of America.
COLLINS: And even if she had come out in that interview and said everything we've done needs to be fixed, or we should have done this, and I was VP, do you think it would have made a difference, though? I mean -- or would voters, just because, by nature of her being his VP, you can't separate the two?
SIMMONS: Every -- yeah. Being VP, what people mostly know you for is your President, right?
PALMERI: Yeah.
SIMMONS: I mean, Joe Biden basically ran as Obama part two or part three, so did George W. Bush the first, right? He ran as Reagan one more time. I think this is how you get elected. And when Al Gore tried to distance himself from Clinton, it really didn't work out for him very well in the end. So, it's tough.
I'll say the last point on this part. Dropping somebody into a presidential campaign with 100 days who has never been under the lights, do you like football? Taking a great college football coach and putting the -- a great college football quarterback and dropping him into the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, you can't expect that person to really be able to perform under those lights.
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COLLINS: I don't know. We had Tommy Tuberville (ph) who did pretty well.
PALMERI: She did get a ton of money, though, and she got an infrastructure for her campaign, and she didn't have to run a primary, which is can be very bloodying. It can be really hard.
COLLINS: Pelosi was critical of what Bernie Sanders had to say, and he kind of previewed this here on Monday night. I talked to him, and he said, regardless of how this election goes, Democrats need to take a good, hard look at how they are conducting themselves and how they're reaching out to voters. And on that, Pelosi was critical. She said, Bernie Sanders has not won, with all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him for what he stands for. I don't respect him saying that the Democrat Party has abandoned the working class families.
ARRIGHI: Well, I would say, first of all, if the super delegates didn't exist in 2016, I'd be very interested to see how that all worked out. But, I want to say one thing, country club Republicans were what their party was branded throughout the Bush years, especially the first Bush. That has been replaced by coastal elite Democrats, people who don't talk to the working person, but talk down to them like they're slope-headed rubes. And I think the American people on Tuesday sent a message that we are done with the virtue signaling and the identity politics and all of that put together. I think it was resounding message.
I also, before we get away too far from it, Biden does share some blame in all of this. Look, he said he was going to be a transitional President. He wasn't. He waited till the fifth -- the last hour when everyone with two eyeballs in a brain thought, that's not the Joe Biden I know. He is diminished.
PALMERI: I mean, in Biden's mind, he still thinks he could have won.
ARRIGHI: I have nothing but respect for him. But --
SIMMONS: He doesn't think about like this. Our party, the Democratic Party, has a real problem. And I don't think it's a left-right problem. It's a 3D politics problem. It's outsiders versus insiders. And this is a place where Bernie Sanders, although I don't necessarily like his political solutions, his political pose is the right one. He has touted himself against the insiders and elites and the Democrats will figure out how to get on the side of the people who are mad at all the people who are running the institutions and figure out what institutions they want to fix. We're going to be in this fix again.
PALMERI: I also think, like Democrats, the way they measured Kamala Harris' success for so long was by saying that she ran a flawless campaign. Americans don't vote on a flawless campaign. They vote on a candidate. And for so long, just to say, Oh, the vibes were beautiful, that event, the DNC, the speeches, the rallies, but that's not what people vote for. They want to feel like they know the candidate and never felt like she broke through that flawless campaign, was able to talk directly to people.
COLLINS: Yeah. I mean, there has been so much blame going around. Obviously, we'll see where this ends up. It does mean in four years that obviously every Democrat is going to be running. We'll see what that looks like.
Thank you all.
Up next, we've got new projections. Control of the House is still to be determined. We'll tell you what we're learning about those key races right after this.
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COLLINS: It's that sound again. At this hour, we have two new projections that we can make in House races. CNN now projects that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will win in Washington State's 3rd Congressional District. That was a tough seat that she was holding on to. Also, Democrat Mark Takano holds on to his seat in California's 39th.
Checking in on the balance of power as it stands right now in the House, which is what everyone is watching so closely, CNN can project Republicans are just five seats away from having the majority. Right now, Democrats currently sit at 204, Republicans at 213.
Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Republicans now have the majority there, as CNN can now project Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen has defeated her Republican challenger Sam Brown in Nevada. Right now, at least two key Senate seats still up for grabs. That includes in Pennsylvania, one that we've been watching very closely, Republican challenger Dave McCormick is taking on and ahead right now of Democrat incumbent Bob Casey.
Meanwhile, over in Arizona, the Democrat there, Ruben Gallego, ahead of Republican Kari Lake. That lead, though, has been shrinking with a lot more votes still to be counted. We're watching all the numbers very closely.
Meanwhile, tonight, federal prosecutor announced that they have filed charges in a plot to kill now President-elect Donald Trump. The alleged hit was supposed to happen before Tuesday, and prosecutors say Iran was behind it. Farhad Shakeri is an Afghan national still at large tonight in Iran. The Justice Department says the Iranian officials asked him to focus on watching and ultimately killing Donald Trump.
My source tonight was Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, and before that, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador John Bolton, it's great to have you here. When you hear this news of an alleged plot to assassinate Donald Trump, as someone who has also been targeted, I wonder what your level of concern is about an Iranian attack like this happening on U.S. soil.
JOHN BOLTON, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, & FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UNITED NATIONS: Well, I think it's a very major concern. I think this latest set of criminal charges just expands the information that's now publicly available. There are a lot of current and former U.S. government officials who are -- who have been subject to this Iranian activity, a lot of ordinary American citizens, Masih Alinejad, among others, who were simply voicing their disapproval of the Iranian regime. And I have to say, a lot of other people who are in the range of the
Iranian effort, who are being harassed and surveilled, their names are not public, and they shouldn't be, but this is a large effort by the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism. This is not computer chatter. This is not speculation. This is not some guy locked in a basement ranting demandedly (ph) on the internet. This is a clearly well-organized state effort by Iran, and it includes targets not just in the United States, but in Europe too.
And I think the real question for, as a matter of public policy, whether it's Iran or anybody else, is whether we simply treat this as a law enforcement matter, or we treat the very effort to go after Americans, whether they're successful or not in eliminating them, whether we treat the effort itself as an act of war?
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COLLINS: Yeah. Well -- and that's a question, of course, of how Trump will handle it. Obviously, Iran has seen how Trump was towards them in the -- his first term. We'll see what that looks like in the second term.
And speaking of just foreign policy itself, these details that we're learning tonight about this call Trump had with President Zelenskyy that Elon Musk was on, as someone who served as the National Security Advisor, for people who don't know, typically, the national security advisor is on these calls with world leaders, what is your take on Elon Musk being on that call yesterday?
BOLTON: Well, it's -- my first reaction when I heard it was, well, so what? What's unusual about having the Vice President-elect sitting with the President-elect on a call? And then I realized, of course, Elon Musk wasn't the Vice President-elect. This is really, I think, typical of Trump. This happened in the transition to his first term in 2016-2017. It sort of bounds and norms are not Trump's strength as we know. I wouldn't get too hyper thyroid about it too quickly, but it's certainly not a sign that order and stability have suddenly appeared at Mar-a-Lago despite what everybody is talking about, about these early appointments. To me, it looks like the same chaotic, do what you want to do, Donald Trump with his latest bright, shiny object, Elon Musk.
COLLINS: Well, and we've only -- we've heard that the Chief of Staff, that's what we're referencing there, Susie wiles, we're waiting to hear what these other posts are going to be. And you're someone who has served in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan was in office. I think it's safe to say, I hate to break it to you, that your streak is about to come to an end. And I just wonder, does Trump's win leave more traditional Republicans, conservative voices like yours today?
BOLTON: Well, I think the battle goes on. I think the base of the Republican Party remains a Reaganite party on national security issues. We're going to see a lot of struggles over it in the coming months and years of this second and last Trump term. And I think events in the world are going to have a lot to say about it. A lot of the talk you hear from people like Vice President-elect Vance is glib and superficial. I don't think they've ever confronted the real world in serious times. And I think they're going to do that, because I think there are serious threats and challenges to the United States that are not susceptible to appealing political lines here at home. So, it'll be an interesting struggle. I'm looking forward to it.
COLLINS: Well, and Pence played a pretty big role in the foreign policy front with Trump in office, trying to be kind of this stabilizing force. I mean, what do you envision J.D. Vance's role, if any, in that situation, will look like?
BOLTON: Well, I think Mike Pence had opinions actually. He had experience from his career in Congress, and did a lot for the country that has never become public, did it behind closed doors with President Trump. I don't know that Vance has fixed views on national security. He had fixed views on Trump up until he reversed them in order to get Trump's endorsement for the Senate in 2022, and very successfully, I have to admire it as a marketing technique, and then he got himself made Vice President. So, I'm not sure he is going to go out originally, but I think he will try and figure out where Trump is and maybe get there first. That's not what Mike Pence did. Mike Pence gave Trump is his own honest opinion. Trump made up his mind he is the President.
COLLINS: I remember when you were about to get the job as National Security Advisor, we'd see you coming down the driveway going into the front entrance of the West Wing, when you were interviewing to become the national security adviser. While this hiring process is going on right now, can you just take us inside what those conversations with Donald Trump are like?
BOLTON: Well, I had a number of conversations with him before and after he became President. I had met him beforehand. We talked on numerous occasions, including right before his last debate with Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. We talked about national security issues. A lot of people said that I actually got my job because he had watched me on Fox News for so long. I've been accused of many things. Never accused of hiding my opinions. So, I think he knew what he was getting and then perhaps he found that he didn't like it. But, it wasn't because of false advertising on my part. That's for sure.
COLLINS: What would your advice be to whoever is Donald Trump's next National Security Advisor?
BOLTON: Well, I think the first thing is to remember that the National Security Adviser really should do whatever he can, he or she can, to put information in front of the President that is helpful in making decisions, to make sure the President has the options laid out before him and can make the best selection of policy he wants and then to make sure that the President's decisions are followed through.
[21:40:00]
If the President doesn't take your advice, then that goes with the job. You're the National Security Advisor, not the national security decision-maker. But, most assuredly, what your job is not, is simply to say yes, sir, when the President says something. You have to do what you can. And you're dealing with a human being, obviously, but you have to do what you can to make sure that all of the information is available, all of the feasible options are laid out. And if you fail to do that, simply by saying yes, sir, every time the President speaks, you're not serving the president. You're not serving the country.
COLLINS: Ambassador John Bolton, great to have you.
BOLTON: Glad to be with you.
COLLINS: Up next, a big question has been, what happens to Donald Trump's court cases now that he has won? Well, Special Counsel Jack Smith is responding for the first time today, and we're going to tell you what he is now asking from the judge overseeing that case, and whether that means Americans will get to know more about what he was planning when it came to his evidence.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:45:00]
COLLINS: Tonight, Jack Smith is hitting pause, maybe for good, on his election interference case against Donald Trump. The judge who is overseeing that case has agreed to halt all of the upcoming filing deadlines following Jack Smith's request that she do so. Up until now, prosecutors have until December 2nd to let the court know how they plan to move forward now that Donald Trump, who was indicted, is the President-elect. With the Justice Department under his control again, Trump has made clear what he plans to do to the Special Counsel, who did indict him twice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOICE OF HUGH HEWITT, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: The day after you take the oath of office or maybe even the day that you take the oath of office, you're going to have to pardon yourself, or you're going to have to fire Jack Smith. Which one will you do?
VOICE OF TRUMP: I would try him within two seconds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Two seconds of taking the oath. We'll see how that goes.
Let's get perspective tonight from my legal sources, Elie Honig, a former U.S. Assistant -- U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Jennifer Rodgers, a former Federal Prosecutor. And obviously, there was kind of the inkling what was coming for Jack Smith, but this is the first time we've heard of it. Does he have options here, or what is the kind of landscape look like for him?
JENNIFER RODGERS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR, & CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Not really. I mean, his cases are going away, right? So, his options are, I guess, sit back and do nothing and just let it happen. Let him be fired. But, he is smart, I think, to at least take control of it. This way he can dismiss the case on his own terms, and then turn to the really big item here, which is the report that he is going to write for Merrick Garland about the investigation, which is now going to be the record of this case since the case itself (inaudible).
COLLINS: OK. I'm obsessed with the idea of there being a report, because I've spoken to people in Trump's world. They don't think that he is publishing a report.
I mean, Elie, what is this going to -- is this like the Robert Mueller report? What it's going to look like?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST, & FORMER ASST. U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NY: So, it's an odd scenario that we've not encountered before. The Special Counsel regulations say that at the end of the case, you have to write your report. That's why we got the Mueller report, the lesser known Durham report, the lesser known Robert Hur report that we remember. This one is weird, though, because he has issued -- Jack Smith has issued two indictments, plus two or three weeks ago, we got 165-page brief from Jack Smith, laying out his whole case.
So, if he does choose to issue a report, I get it. Those are important historical documents. He wants to memorialize it all in one place. I'm not sure why he wouldn't, though. I don't know why Trump's people are feeling -- maybe they're hoping there is no report, but I don't know -- if I'm Jack Smith, I don't know what the rationale is behind I'm not going to do this.
COLLINS: Would we learn something new from this report? I mean, you can read the filings. You can see -- obviously, he has a lot of evidence here. And just the question of, would there be something like a bombshell in this? What would we be reading for?
RODGERS: I don't know, because a lot of it was in the brief, as Elie said. I mean, there are certainly some grand jury protected things that weren't -- you could try to get the judge to rule that that stuff now can become public in the form of the report. So, we might see some of that information that would have come out at trial, but otherwise, it's not going to do so. So, I would look for that. And then we're going to see a report in the classified documents case, I see, which is one where we haven't really yet seen all of the evidences in place (ph).
COLLINS: OK. But, does this mean he is going to be testifying on Capitol Hill, potentially like Robert Mueller did?
HONIG: Oh, I doubt. I mean, I don't think the Republican Congress is going to want to drag Jack Smith up there. By the way, one thing that's important to understand about why Jack Smith is packing his suitcases now, part of it is, of course, he is going to get fired, like Donald Trump said. But, even if Donald Trump had said, I'm going to let Jack Smith finish his business, he would still be finishing up because of the DoJ policy that says we do not believe we can prosecute, try, sentence or imprison the sitting President. So --
COLLINS: So, even if Trump was going to keep him -- HONIG: Yes.
COLLINS: -- which he is not. As you just heard, he is going to fire him from the steps of his inauguration, he says. This would go away (inaudible).
HONIG: 100 percent. And this is the same policy we've been talking about for years. This is the same policy that tripped up Robert Mueller. And I think it's worth noting, after the Mueller report, there was a lot of frustration. We heard Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, all say that policy needs to be reexamined and thrown out, and we need to pass laws. No one did a damn thing about it, and it still here. No Democrat even did a thing about it.
COLLINS: OK. I'm a little skeptical, though, that Republicans are not going to call him up. Elon Musk was tweeting Jack Smith's abuse of justice -- of the justice system cannot go unpunished. Republicans like to investigate the investigators.
RODGERS: They liked it when it was the Russia investigation, where they couldn't actually make that connection between the campaign and elections.
COLLINS: But, they don't know what Jack Smith said?
RODGERS: This is very different. We have two cases that actually were charged. There is a lot of evidence. They do not want all of this in the public eye through a course of hearings in the House.
COLLINS: Well, and I just wonder, you wrote on this, Elie, with Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, like how people are viewing this, because there is criticism that he dragged his feet and took too long to appoint Jack Smith to this position. He did all this work, like clearly felt like he could prosecute Trump by indicting him twice. I mean, you had a quote in your book from last year. It said, "When considering Garland's glacial pace, a line from the 1993 chess prodigy movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" comes to mind: 'You've lost. You just don't know it yet.'
HONIG: So, watch that this weekend. It's really good if you haven't seen it.
COLLINS: OK.
HONIG: Yeah. I wrote that in mid-2022, which is a year before Jack Smith was appointed. Anyone who has done this job, as Jen and I have, could already tell the clock had run out, America.
[21:50:00]
Jack Smith never had a chance. From the moment he was put in place, November of 2022, DoJ had already whittled away almost two years of the four years they had. There is no way he was going to, in the two years he had left, get this case investigated, indicted, deal with the obvious immunity issue, and tried. It's not Jack Smith's fault. The blame goes to Merrick Garland.
COLLINS: No one is ever happy with their attorney general, not Biden, not Trump --
HONIG: It's true.
COLLINS: -- to lose their position.
HONIG: Janet Reno. Well, no, Bill Clinton was not happy with Janet Reno. You got to go back to like --
COLLINS: Exactly.
HONIG: -- I'll take a one.
COLLINS: OK. A new book idea for you.
Elie Honig and Jennifer Rodgers, we'll see what Jack Smith does here.
Up next, she was the future of the Democratic Party 72 hours ago. Now, there are big questions, what does Vice President Harris' future look like? We're going to speak to one of the best reporters covering her right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: In 73 days from now, Vice President Harris will leave office as a private citizen. It will actually be the first time in 21 years she will not be holding a public office. Obviously, a stunning political whiplash for someone who on Tuesday was the leader of the Democratic Party and seen as its future.
[21:55:00]
But now there are questions tonight that that might change. The New York Times is reporting, and I'm quoting now from this report, "Officials were privately saying they expected Harris to remain engaged but assumed the party would want to move on from the Biden era as soon as possible."
My source is Jasmine Wright, a Political Reporter for NOTUS, who has extensively covered Harris over the years, and it's great to have you here, because I know you've had a lot of conversations close with Democrat -- with Democrats who were close to Harris since Tuesday night. What are you hearing from them about what they kind of see for her political future here?
JASMINE WRIGHT, POLITICAL REPORTER, NOTUS: Yeah, Kaitlan. Thanks for having me on. Initially, in the first 24 hours after Tuesday's results kind of trickled out, I talked to a lot of Democrats close to the Vice President who privately questioned to me whether or not she should actually run again because of the results of the election and because of the fact that this is now her second national campaign that didn't end the way that she wanted to with her being at the top of the ticket. But, I think that that conversation has shifted, not just in the
zeitgeist, but also in my private conversations with Democrats, one, because I think the conversation around the loss has changed. I think it's been more focused in the last 24 to 48 hours on Democrats' problem with addressing the issues that it has structurally, and I think a lot of the focus has been on what Biden's role in the election has been.
And so, now I think that there has been a little bit of an opening of the -- or for the Vice President, among her allies, to see if she would want to rejoin or kind of recreate her political career, what that would look like. I talked to one official who said that maybe she would want to become Democratic governor of California. That could be a way for her to reclaim the spotlight, or potentially try to fill the vacuum that exists right now in the Democratic Party and become its leader. I talked to one aide the day of her concession speech on Wednesday at Howard University, and they told me, that doesn't sound like a politician that is ready to lay down.
So, I think that there are a lot of options for the Vice President. The real question, though, is, one, has anyone actually talked to the Vice President about what her options are? And then, two, do Americans actually want to hear from her? Because really, one of the real questions or real problems of her campaign was whether or not she was able to articulate why she wanted to be Vice President, and I think that that question is going to follow her if she did run again.
COLLINS: Yeah. And she has a stronger profile now, even despite the loss, than she had before Biden dropped out. I mean, her reputation as Vice President, her favorability was quite low. We obviously saw that shift pretty quickly. And I wonder what you made of, looking at this, if she does run for governor of California, obviously Newsom would be up quite soon, what that would look like in the sense of, it would be a state position instead of she has been in this national conversation now for the last several years?
WRIGHT: Yeah. And I think that she would have to really wrestle with herself of whether or not being the governor of California is enough, after she got so close to being the President. Of course, she has been the Vice President for four years. But, this is actually something that she is known, that she has run successfully in California multiple times, not so much on a national level, but certainly, California races are much different. They involve a lot of money. They don't necessarily involve a lot of door knocking, but it is a lot of kind of a chattier word to mouth, or mouth to word, type of campaigns. And so, that's something that she is more understanding of potentially so she could run, and she obviously has a team in California, people that she has worked with before.
But, again, I think that the question is, who is talking to the Vice President, and how does the Vice President feel going on? She may just want a vacation after the last four years. You never know.
COLLINS: Yeah. I mean, it's been a remarkable last few months for her, and to see from the debate with Donald Trump to just being on the road constantly, to just seeing a very different Kamala Harris than even the last time she ran.
WRIGHT: Yeah. Exactly. And I think that what I have heard from Democrats, and I also believe this myself, is that, sure, there were problems with the campaign. There were problems with the messaging and the strategy. But, her, personally, Kaitlan, I've never seen her perform at this level in just 107 days. And she did get better on the stump. She was able to more effectively convey what she was saying. She was more able to be quicker on her feet when it came to taking questions from reporters, once they finally made her available to do so. And so, there has been growth in that 107 days. I've noticed it. Certainly people I talked to consistently about her have noticed it. And so, there is that, of course, appetite for her potentially --
COLLINS: Yeah.
WRIGHT: -- to do more from people who support her. The question is whether or not she wants to do more.
COLLINS: Yeah. That's a key question. We'll see what that looks like.
Jasmine Wright, as always, excellent reporting.
And thank you all so much for joining us on this very busy night. CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip is up next.
