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CNN
04-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
What Made These Special Elections...Special - CNN Political Briefing - Podcast on CNN Audio
David Chalian 00:00:01 Hey everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. Judge Susan Crawford 00:00:10 Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale. David Chalian 00:00:22 'Earlier this week, liberal judge Susan Crawford celebrated her win in a critical state supreme court race in Wisconsin. For an off-year state judicial election, this race attracted a ton of attention and a lot of money. Elon Musk pumped more than $20 million into the race to back Crawford's opponent, the conservative judge, Brad Schimel. But Musk's money and an endorsement from President Trump were not enough to put the court in conservative hands. In Florida, Trump-backed candidates had success. Two Republicans won their races in special elections there, shoring up their party's narrow majority in the House of Representatives. Here's Republican Randy Fine, crediting the president for his win in Florida's 6th District. Rep. Randy Fine 00:01:08 I thank President Donald J. Trump, who asked me to do this and who trusted me all along the way. Mr. President, this win is yours far more than it is mine. David Chalian 00:01:20 So what do these elections tell us about the national political mood? And have they taught us anything about what to expect in the future? I spoke with party leaders from each state, the Democratic Party Chair for Wisconsin and the Republican Party Chair in Florida, to get their takeaways. What worked for them? What didn't work? And what did they learn about where their parties stand in their home states in this first hundred days of Trump's second administration? First up, Ben Wikler. He is the chair of Wisconsin's Democratic Party. Ben, thanks so much for joining me, appreciate it. Ben Wikler 00:01:57 Thanks so much for having me, David. David Chalian 00:01:59 'Obviously, an enormous victory for you and your team in battleground Wisconsin this week. Any Democrat I talked to in Wisconsin before did not see a 10-point victory, I will say. So what is your takeaway here? What happened? Why such a substantial victory for Crawford this week? Ben Wikler 00:02:16 So first, Susan Crawford ran a spectacular campaign. She was the right candidate for this moment. Her focus on protecting people's rights and freedoms on integrity and independence was a massive contrast to a candidate who basically was running as a MAGA henchman and was visibly clearly bought off by the richest person in the world to do whatever he wanted. So that contrast spoke volumes. But the other side of this is that there's this pent up well of rage in the electorate of people furious with the way things are going, with what this administration is doing. Anyone who is an ally of this administration is going to face that wrath of the ballot box. We thought it was gonna be closer because we could see that what Republicans were doing was engaging more Republicans. It was driving up the MAGA base turnout. We thought was probably helping us to turn out our folks just as much. But what we saw was right. You know, the Schimel campaign actually got more votes than Janet Protasiewicz did in 2023 when she won by double digits. It's just that on our side, there was like a geyser, this release of this massive wave of intense pressure that people wanted to find any way to fight back. So Susan Crawford, and I'm just still wrapping my mind around this, she got more votes than every Republican who's ever run for governor in the state of Wisconsin. She got more votes than Scott Walker has ever gotten in the state of Wisconsin, and this was in a spring supreme court election, which is normally low turnout city. David Chalian 00:03:39 'Right. And that, to me, because one of the pieces of conventional wisdom in American politics right now is that Trump has this ability to dig deep and turn out, and so, in the context in our recent presidential elections when Trump is on the ballot, that large, huge turnout which used to always kind of be seen as something that would benefit the Democrats because of low propensity voters turning out, now is something that benefits Republicans in the Trump era. And reliable voters who vote in like every election tend to be more college-educated now and more friendly to the Democratic party that in special elections or off-year elections, the Democrats can perform better if turnout is a little lower. And it seems like you blew that concept out of the water here. Ben Wikler 00:04:27 I think that's right. I think what we saw maps much more cleanly onto the midterm elections than anyone could have anticipated. You know, if you get as many and enough votes to win the 2018 midterms, which Susan Crawford did in a special election, that suggests that a high turnout midterm environment is really good. Now, this is still lower turnout than a presidential election, but we're not going to have a presidential election until 2028, and the organizing and the work, I mean, we saw this happen in 2020, that the huge amount of organizing that happened on the Democratic side and the constant communication, the rage, the protests, all that led to blowout turnout in 2018 and in 2020 and led to Donald Trump's defeat. You know, the Biden coalition was a very high turnout coalition. So I think that this idea that it is also the case that Democrats are stronger when fewer Republicans show up for the polls, but there's really a tide that I think is only going to accelerate now with the tariffs and what is probably a recession that we're going to spin into rapidly of people who are just saying, this is not what we signed up for. This is not acceptable. We need to change. We needs people who actually believe that this should be a country that works for everybody. David Chalian 00:05:31 So that leads me to my next question, Ben. Can you help me, and I know there aren't exit polls and we don't have a full sense of this, but can you help separate out how much of the voter response and the big Democratic victory this week do you think is attributable to Trump policies and this political environment versus this Elon Musk sort of message you guys ran so hard on that a billionaire was trying to buy the election and, you know, chainsaw Musk responsible for this and that, you know, his numbers are, he's less popular than Donald Trump is. And I'm just wondering if you could separate, I know you made it one package, but do you think, absent Musk, that what is going on in this Trump 2.0 era is still potent for your side? Ben Wikler 00:06:20 'Absolutely. It's hideously, hideously unpopular. This was a three-layer cake. So the first layer was candidate versus candidate. If you watched TV through the course of the spring, there were ads about crime and public safety. That was the core Republican message. Susan Crawford got to beat Schimel to a standstill on that front. The second piece of that part of the cake was the argument about abortion. And the abortion ban is still incredibly unpopular and very motivating for Democrats and persuasive to Independents and some Republicans. And the campaign discovered that and zeroed in on that, even though the national conventional wisdom is that abortion has lost its potency. We saw it last year in state legislative elections and Tammy Baldwin's race. We saw it again this spring. The second layer is the biggest one in driving this turnout differential is the overall sense of what Trump and Musk and Republicans in Congress, the whole Republican machine is doing. Disappearing people in the streets, the gutting of social security, the threats to the Veterans Administration, this just sense of precariousness that the country's falling apart, our Constitution's being trampled. The Schimel campaign was advertising about Trump. All their ads were about Trump. I think those energized our voters more than they energized Republican voters. And then the third piece was Musk himself. And Musk, you know, we were communicating about Musk. Musk's ads were all, the ads Musk was financing, first they were about crime, then they were Trump. His flyers that his canvassers were going out and delivering to people were all about Trump, so he was trying to make it about Trump, but Musk himself, in mid-March, there was a poll that found that Trump is underwater by six points in Wisconsin. Musk is underwater by 12 points. Musk coming to Wisconsin, bribing people, handing out giant checks to the head of the college Republicans as though he was giving them out to regular people. The kind of slap-in-the-face insult of grabbing money from people's Social Security with one hand while handing out $100 payments to sign a petition with the other, it did not land well at all. So I think that he was the kind of the maybe the frosting on the cake. I don't know where it is. He definitely helped Democrats more than he helped Republicans. But Crawford would have won even without Elon Musk for sure, and I think even even without the Trump thing, we were constantly modeling an even turnout scenario. And she was going to win not by a lot, but she was gonna win in that scenario, too. Then we had this gigantic hyper gusher of turnout fueled by Trump and Musk and what they're doing, and that led to the kind of blowout that we saw this spring that is going to inspire people to run for office next year. David Chalian 00:08:33 Which, looking at that blowout, getting a little dorky here county by county, you know, there were 10 counties that Donald Trump won in the presidential just a few months ago in Wisconsin that Crawford flipped, including places that Trump won repeatedly, like Brown County, where Green Bay is. He won three times as a presidential candidate, whether he won statewide or not, Crawford flipped it. But even outside, you know, go a little further out of Green Bay, Winnebago County. Again, Trump won it three times, and it went to Crawford. What is that? Is that something that Democrats, like, will that just revert back to norm in 2026, or you think there is something shifting? Ben Wikler 00:09:09 There's a real possibility that those are blue in '26. We, you know, in Winnebago County, I was knocking on doors there with Gordon Hintz, who's the former Democratic assembly leader. He's now the county executive of this presumably reddish county. And I'm sure he'll do a great job there. That is Ron Johnson's hometown, is Oshkosh, Wisconsin. David Chalian 00:09:25 This is home to Oshkosh, everyone that's listening, yeah. Ben Wikler 00:09:28 You know, and the BOW counties, they've been overperforming for us. Like we also won the BOW counties in the spring supreme court race in 2023, and we've gained ground there. If you look election by election by election, there's a shift. And right now, you know, talking to a ton of people there, people are going to protests every single week outside of Republican congressional offices, outside of, you know, any place that has a Tesla logo on it. Like there's a well of energy and fury that could put those counties into play in the statewide races in 2026 in a very real way. The place that swung the most, and this is a real danger sign for Republicans, relative to 2024, the biggest swings were all in western Wisconsin. Southwest Wisconsin, the kind of western rim along the Mississippi, that's the third congressional district. That's a district held by Derrick Van Orden, a far right Republican congressman who was at the insurrection on January 6th. And his number has come up. This is a really, really bad time to be a Republican representing a bright purple district that went bright blue in the Supreme Court race just now, and the level of energy for Democrats in western Wisconsin on the back of this, having had conversations already this morning about it, is through the roof. David Chalian 00:10:34 Well, it's interesting because, as you said, you think the lessons from this week may be more applicable to a midterm election than a presidential election, obviously. And I'm intrigued to see how that plays out because, you know, we saw in '23, Protasiewicz, you know, big victory and then, you know, a year and a half later on the presidential level Trump comes in and wins the state. So it is not obviously necessarily predictive, but you make the argument it may be more applicable to the midterms. Ben Wikler 00:11:00 'I think that's right. I mean, the presidential elections, more than any other election, are connected to everything about the state of the world. That, you know, if there's a massive recession, which seems like Trump is just really determined to create, and the country is failing working people who vote their pocketbook, don't really pay attention to politics right now, then it'll be a Democratic year, almost regardless of what either of the campaigns or candidates due. If, miracle of miracles, lightning strikes, and maybe there's an AI breakthrough, and suddenly Grok is powering a giant explosive moment of GOP-led abundance, which I find unlikely, but, you know, this is a crazy world we live in. Then maybe Republicans are suddenly getting all the credit, and people who, again, don't think about politics much turn out in the other direction. It seems like this administration's doing everything it can to disadvantage working people. They're attacking things that people have relied on. They're gutting labor protections. They're gutting things that keep our air and water clean and attacking Social Security and healthcare. They're planning to give this multi-trillion dollar tax cut to the ultra wealthy. All those things kind of set you up for a 2006, 2008-type scenario, and I think, you know, for people that are thinking about their own political futures across the country, like, this really is the time to dig in and get involved. I think candidate recruitment could be just extraordinary. I think the senators like Gary Peters and Jeanne Shaheen and Tina Smith that are kind of passing the torch in '26, they're doing that knowing that those seats are very likely to be blue. Honestly, this might be, you know, knock on wood, but it's not just the House majority that might be in play in 2026. If you look at 2010 and Senate seats that Republicans won, including Scott Brown in Massachusetts in that special, it feels to me like there's that kind of wave, and it's driven by people, definitely Democrats, but also Independents and some Republicans, who feel, as I personally do, that we're in a moment of deep crisis, of profound crisis as a country, people who want to figure out anything they can do to try to make a difference in changing that. And that kind of energy can fuel outcomes in midterm elections that go beyond the normal sloshing back and forth in American politics. David Chalian 00:13:07 Well, Chairman Wikler, I'm sure we will be in touch over the next year and a half to see if some of those predictions come true. Thank you for your time, really appreciate it. Ben Wikler 00:13:14 Thanks so much, David. David Chalian 00:13:17 We're going to take a quick break, when we come back we'll hear from Evan Power, the Republican Party Chairman of the state of Florida. We're here with Evan Power, the chair of the Florida Republican Party. The GOP secured two key victories in special elections this week. Republicans Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine both secured seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Chairman Power, thanks so much for joining me, appreciate it. Evan Power 00:13:51 Thank you for having me. David Chalian 00:13:52 Obviously there were two big consequential special elections in two different Florida congressional districts, and you guys were successful at adding to the Republican majority in the House, padding that very thin majority that Speaker Johnson and Donald Trump are needing to navigate as they try to get through the president's agenda. So, congratulations on that. What do you make of the takeaways? Because, obviously, you guys won these races, but you won them by far smaller margins than Trump did in these districts or the members running just a few months ago in November. Why do you think that was? Evan Power 00:14:29 Well, if you look at the history of special elections in Florida, they're always close. In the past, we usually have not been successful in specials, but we are this time, and we were seeing great turnout on election day of people who were sending the message, and they told our candidates at the polling places while they're waiting to vote that they were there to send a strong message that they wanted to support President Trump. So I think double digit wins are a big win in a special election in Florida. David Chalian 00:14:54 'So you see no, there's nothing to learn from a Trump plus-30 or Trump plus-37 district having that margin sliced in half or more? Evan Power 00:15:04 'I don't think there's any long range, it's just the nature of being the party in power versus the party out of power, and Florida's special elections, and there's also some election law dynamics with vote by mail and other things that factored into those races. But I think, you know, double-digit wins are a solid sign that our people are happy with what the president's doing and want it to continue. David Chalian 00:15:25 And, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the advertising I saw from your candidates and the outside groups supporting them featured Donald Trump. They were running as full Trump allies in these heavily Republican districts. Evan Power 00:15:39 'They were. And I think, you know, that was the message. The president did two tele-town halls, one in each district. And, I think the other thing about these races that was interesting is just the Democrats pumped so much money in. We were outspent 9-to-1 or 10-to-1, depending on the district, and the president's help led to record election day turnout. We actually turned out more Republicans on election day than we were expecting, and that led to a big win. David Chalian 00:16:04 'I know in the 6th Congressional District, to replace Waltz, I know the Democratic candidate out-raised your Republican candidate 10-to-1, but actually Republicans outspent overall when you look at the total ad spending, outspent the Democrat. And that was because there was some concern that now Congressman-elect Randy Fine, or Congressman Randy Fine, I guess he's been ceremonially sworn in at least, was not performing at the level that was making the party feel totally confident that this was going to go as it needed to go and sort of came in with a rescue operation. What did you make of what Fine was not doing that he needed to do? Evan Power 00:16:43 Well, that's an interesting district, and so the polling didn't look great, and neither candidate running in that race was actually originally from the district. So there was a factor there. And then beyond that, a lot of those people vote on election day. So our turnout at the very beginning was lower because we didn't do extremely well in vote by mail, which we didn't anticipate. But there was a feeling that we needed to rush there to make sure that we turned out all our people on election day, and in the end we did. David Chalian 00:17:10 Now in the 1st congressional district where the vacancy was left by Matt Gaetz, the Democrats overall did outspend your team on this. A, why, if you are the incumbent party, would the opposition be in a position to outspend? So why don't we start there? Evan Power 00:17:27 Well, I think a lot of it has to do with ActBlue. I think there's an investigation into ActBlue going on and how they leverage donations, and I just think that there's a small group of Democrat activists who are donating money, and they really just want to win whatever they can. And the Florida Democratic Party sells this hope every couple of years that they can win a seat, and every time we end up embarrassing them by not allowing them to do that. David Chalian 00:17:52 'Particularly of interest to me, in the Florida 1st Congressional District as an observer of elections, again, this is the one that was more pro-Trump. He won it by 37 points, and it is an even more Republican district than the 6th is: Escambia County. We saw a 22-point swing. I think Trump won that county by 19 points in 2024. And, actually, the Democratic candidate here in the special won Escambia. What happened in that county, and is that, do you see that there is some sort of trend that you need to be aware of to guard against going forward? Evan Power 00:18:27 'I think that was a candidate-specific thing. The Democrat candidate there is from Escambia, and she had worked very hard. She ran against Matt Gaetz just a couple of months ago. She was able to qualify for this special by petition within like two or three weeks of announcing the special election. So she had some infrastructure there. Our candidate was a statewide elected official but hadn't spent that much time there. So I think this is a candidate-specific, election-specific result. I'm not worried about Escambia County in the midterm at all. David Chalian 00:18:57 But I bet you got a lot of incoming about that Escambia result this week. Did you have to calm nervous jitters in your party? Evan Power 00:19:04 'There's people who are concerned, and we look at everything, and I think, by and large, we spend the off year trying to rebuild the vote-by-mail file because it empties out every two years. So, we're going to spend some effort there, making sure that we have the resources in place going forward. David Chalian 00:19:20 You know, you're talking about specials in general, but obviously, we've seen a pattern over time, and this applies to sort of both parties. When you are the party out of power, you could thrive a bit more on motivation, opposition to what is going on. Do you think, even though, again, you were totally successful here at winning these seats, as you said, by double digits, do you think that you are seeing in the fundraising, in some of the turnout numbers that we're talking about, that the Democrats right now are just more energized than the Republicans are in Florida? Evan Power 00:19:52 I think there is a group of Democrats that are more energized, because they're upset, and they're making their irrational arguments on why they're upset. It's also, we won so big, we had record turnout in Florida in November where we won by 13 points the most since 1988. And it's hard to motivate those people to go out and vote, especially on the short timetable that we had. And I think once we were able to get that message through, we were to turn out our voters like we did at the last minute in CD6. David Chalian 00:20:18 'And so is there anything that you watched and observed on Tuesday night that you are putting sort of on a to-do list for you as chairman of the party to ensure that Florida stays as red as it has been in recent years and doesn't shift back into a more purple competitive state? Evan Power 00:20:36 'For us, it is continuing what we've been doing, which is registering Republicans, out-raising the Democrats and outworking them. And if you look at what we're done voter registration-wise, even since the election, we've added another 100,000 Republican voters since the election. So we're gonna continue to work on that and continue to register, to out-register, out-raise and outwork the Democrats. David Chalian 00:20:56 Florida Republican Chairman, Evan Power. Thank you for your time, sir. Appreciate it. Evan Power 00:21:00 Thank you. David Chalian 00:21:03 That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.
CNN
28-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Former Trump Staffer on Signal War Plans - CNN Political Briefing - Podcast on CNN Audio
David Chalian 00:00:01 Hey, everyone. I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington bureau chief and political director. And welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. Senator Mark Warner 00:00:13 You are not on this group chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard 00:00:13 I'm not going to get into the specifics. Senator Mark Warner 00:00:14 You refused to acknowledge whether you were on this group chat. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard 00:00:18 Senator, I'm not going to get into this. Senator Mark Warner 00:00:20 Why are you why are you going to get into specifics? Is this. Is it because it's all classified? Because this is currently under review by the national security? Because it's all classified. If it's not classified, share the text now. David Chalian 00:00:31 That's Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, questioning Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about a now infamous text threat. This week, regularly scheduled hearings about global threats turned into grilling over a group chat on the messaging app signal. That chat included top Trump administration officials and a journalist. The editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg, was accidentally added to a group where cabinet members texted about U.S. military strike plans in Yemen. Goldberg in The Atlantic revealed tech showing exchanges about specific operational details for the strikes. But President Trump and his allies have continued to deny that any classified information was shared. Here's what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said after those texts were published. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 00:01:23 There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information. David Chalian 00:01:34 Olivia Troye is a former national security official. During the first Trump administration, she served as homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. She also worked in the Pentagon as a George W Bush appointee. And she joins me now to share her insights on this incident. Olivia, thanks so much for joining me. Olivia Troye 00:01:56 Thanks for having me David. David Chalian 00:01:57 Your name popped into my head of somebody I wanted to talk to when this story emerged out of the Atlantic and Jeffrey Goldberg being inadvertently. Added to this group text and then pretty sensitive information being shared by the Secretary of Defense. I want to talk to you because obviously you've had a ton of experience as a national security official dealing with information that is highly sensitive, that is classified. And I know there's a lot of semantics around classified or not classified and war planning or attack planning. We can get all that. But I want to first just get a sense from you about how abnormal what occurred is. Olivia Troye 00:02:39 Yes. First of all, I mean, I I'm still in shock over the what's happened this week. Quite honestly, I must have read that article. I mean, at least three times, I, I also felt, as I was reading the article, you know, Jeffrey Goldberg in the article says he couldn't figure out, like, is this real? Is this like a scam? Is this a I like what is happening here? And I also felt that way because I was like, it's one of those things where I was like, my being punked. Like, is this a fictional story happening here? Because I just couldn't believe what I was reading. And it's, you know, I have coordinated so many principles, committee meetings that are referred to cabinet level meetings, deputy meetings, even policy meetings. I've attended them. I've been on the distros, I've been a part of it. And to think about the fact that these types of meetings are basically being held on signals, that's what this showed us, right? That the National Security Advisor convened this cabinet level meeting basically on a group chat, almost like almost like a group gossip session is so mind blowing to me. And yes, we can disagree or agree on whether it's classified or not, but I've got to tell you the level of detail on there. I have not seen that level of detail on anything unclassified in terms of operations that I've been a part of. David Chalian 00:04:02 I know, you know, part of the administration's response, as it is often, is to sort of blame the reporter who exposed the story, Jeffrey Goldberg, in this case, blame the press for covering something hyperbolic. Lee. I guess what I want to get a sense from you is, is this just a fascination or. I know they pointed that the military exercise was successful, but is there potential danger in what occurred here? Olivia Troye 00:04:35 Oh, absolutely. I mean, yes, the mission was successful, but thank goodness it was successful this time. Thank goodness that no one disrupted the operation. Thank goodness that we don't lose lives, that our planes weren't shot down. That there wasn't an escalation to preempt this measure, because that's what really could have happened if it got into the wrong hands. And look, I'm not convinced that it didn't get into the wrong hands. I'm not convinced that our foreign adversaries don't have access to these signal chats. And the worst part of it, to me was then finding out, you know, that I've got friends of the Department of Defense who were equally in shock because the workforce was warned about using signal and the possibility of vulnerabilities on the application. And so they were warned to be careful when using the signal app on their phones. Right. And here we are with the leadership of our country, having a whole conversation about sensitive locations, targets, even down to the timing of it. And so I think they can blame Jeffrey Goldberg all they want for saying, you know, he was part of this conversation. He which by, you know, complete accident and in many ways not wanting to be and at some point he's like, wait, this is real. And he gets gravely concerned about it. And I, you know, I give him credit because he is the one that actually use tremendous judgment in what he first decided to report or not to report. And the fact that, you know, thank goodness he wasn't out there real time posting it on social media. Some might have. Right? I mean, they would have reacted that way. And in which case, I just can't imagine the anxiety to of people who are working in these communities now thinking, okay, so for the next operation, I can't even trust the leadership of our country at the highest levels of my agency or community to protect me in this situation, to have my back well, and going into this scenario and risking my own life for the sake of what we're doing here. David Chalian 00:06:33 So let's get into some of that, what you described as very specific information. I want to focus in on what Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, added into this chat. You said he talked about specific times. I mean, he said it would be, you know, at 2:15 in the afternoon, guaranteed the first strike will happen. Then he talked about specific weapons that were going to be utilized in your experience. And again, I know I don't I just want to illuminate for our listeners. Would that kind of information be classified? Olivia Troye 00:07:09 Yes. Especially because he connects it all. That's the key. Sometimes it's considered and classified, if you're just talking about one small bit of it and you're not connecting the dots to everything else. But I don't see how you can actually sit there with a straight face and say, this isn't classified. When every operation I'd ever seen, especially, by the way, the audience that usually receives this type of detail is a very small audience, and they're either on classified distros or they're sitting in the situation room, or they're sitting in a military command center. I mean, I've been at the Joint Special Operations Command centers overseas, where I have watched by the minute an operation go down. But I can guarantee you that the only people that we're aware of to the minute detail are the people in a very small distribution. And it's controlled and it's certainly not being shared in any unclassified channel. But it was also the fact that, like, he connects the dots on it. He's saying, okay, the planes will depart here and they're going to this target, and then they're going to do this. And then he confirms, actually, one of the things that I noticed was he mentions a terrorist in the location and he's he's entering the building that's targeted. I mean, how much more specific can you get? And Mike Walsh says a building has collapsed. And he, you know, Pete Hedges said it's like having this conversation. There is clearly confusion in the text. But also this is why you shouldn't be having these conversations is just a the fact that you're tying it all together is also and I'll say this because I'm seeing them say that they're not talking about sources and methods. David Chalian 00:08:42 Yeah. I was just about to say, while you're saying this, I just want to Hegseth just specifically talked to reporters on the tarmac earlier this week. He's traveling abroad, or he may have been in Hawaii right before he was heading abroad. And he said, no sources, no methods, no targets, no routes. He said nothing classified, that is how he defines it he put nothing inappropriate in that chat. Olivia Troye 00:09:08 That to me is completely ridiculous, and it sounds like maybe he needs to sit down and have his own refresher on classifying things. What different levels of classification mean, and what it means when you tie things together and how. Yes, basically he was describing sources and methods and how they were going to do things here. Right. And he's also basically giving away the knowledge that we had going into this operation, which is also part of why all of this is considered sensitive. And so I think I think the dangerous part of it is that anyone if it got into the wrong hands, they would have known in detail what the plan was ahead of time. And we just got very lucky this time that that didn't happen. But the concern for me is, well, how many other operations or other policy planning or other sensitive discussions are happening in these signal groups. I mean, it's labeled Hootie group at the top. And I kept thinking like, okay, so are they going to be is there an Israel group? Is there a Gaza group? Is there a Venezuela group? I mean, what how many policy discussions? I'm just kind of imagining the distribution for this. Having handled a lot of this coordination, even for Pence on the Covid task force, was like, I, I can't in a million years picture a situation where I would be developing distribution lists on my cell phone in an unclassified application, and discussing remotely even a smidge of what was discussed in this conversation. And quite frankly, I think if Mike Pence would have found out that I was doing this, I would've been fired. I've been walked in building immediately for that kind of breach, and I'm I probably would have lost my security clearance and everything else that comes with it. So I to me, this is just completely reckless and complete lack of judgment by many. Who should have known better? Especially people like Mike Walz. He's got a lot of experience in this. He was supposed to be the rational, professional, experienced person who really understands kind of how national security operates. And he had a similar role to me and Vice President Dick Cheney's office back in the day. I mean, so this is someone who worked in the Pentagon. He served in the military. So did you get Pete Hegseth, right? I mean, they should know better. David Chalian 00:11:31 We're going to take a quick break. We're going to a lot more in just a moment. Stay with us. David Chalian 00:11:59 Welcome back. We're here with former national security official Olivia Troye. Olivia I want to get to sort of the whole accountability piece, which you hinted at at the end of our conversation in the last block about what would happen to you had you done something like this and you would have been marched out of the white House and maybe lost your security clearance? We'll get to that and how the Hill is and should respond, and other accountability measures that may or may not be employed by this administration in a moment. But beyond the operational details that I've put in, I wondered what you thought of seeing in in this tech chat, Vice President Vance sort of disagreeing or presenting a counter argument with the president's, apparently, according to Stephen Miller in the chat, already greenlighted operation and calling into question and suggesting maybe it was a mistake. The American people don't usually get insight into that kind of internal deliberation in near real time. What do you make of that? Olivia Troye 00:13:02 Well, to be honest, the first thing I thought was, oof! When the president reads that, he is going to be livid because now he has a complete insight into what's happening behind the scenes by his own vice president. So if I were J.D. Vance, having seen my previous boss navigate this dynamic, I would probably be feeling a little nervous and sheepish about the fact that now the cards have been shown that he was basically countering what was being discussed and what good for him. He was providing a different viewpoint and saying, hey, maybe we need to take a pause. Maybe we need to think about this. And actually, I think that was a positive sign to me because I said, okay, well, there's someone actually thinking of the pros and cons of this kind of trying to think through that. But I also thought it was very interesting and evident, and it's been my experience in the past of working with some of this, that people in the same circles and personalities that Stephen Miller completely immediately chimed in. It wasn't the chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Right. It was Stephen Miller who turned in, and he's like, no. The president was very clear, and he basically says, like, this is moving forward. And so, you know, for lack of a better word, David, he trumps the vice president and says, now get back in line. This is what we're doing. David Chalian 00:14:18 And I also just want to get your take on what the exchange that Vance and Hegseth were having about Europe, because so much of the foreign policy posture of this administration, Trump 2.0 to date has been to really reimagine sort of who's an ally and who's an adversary. And obviously, the U.S. relationship with Europe is going through transformation. And and it was interesting to me to see I, if not revelatory, I think we kind of knew where Vance and Access were on this. But I'm just curious where you thought that conversation about Europe playing out in this group chat leaves us in terms of U.S. foreign policy? Olivia Troye 00:14:58 Yeah. So the first thing I thought of was, wow, our allies or European allies are reading this now and they're like, okay, well, this is truly how they really think about us. And, you know, I think there's mentioned to them and that are freeloading, which is inaccurate, right? That's not true. And I think it's very evident that this is an administration who is going to aggressively counter our alliances. And in many ways, we've seen side with potentially foreign adversaries like Russia. And so I think in that real time conversation, they're having these discussions. And it was fascinating just to see them blatantly being like, oh, the freeloaders. And yeah, it's absolutely pathetic. I think that was some of the terminology used in the chat. And I think that is evident to the rest of the world about what's really happening here in our foreign policy and the kind of discussions that are shaping the international dynamics. And to me as well. I was just sitting there thinking, I can't imagine being one of our European allies and watching this and being like, hey, one, this is what they really think. And to get to know that this is how they're conducting foreign policy and military operations and discussing sensitive things, because I'm not sure that I want my country to be sharing the information if it's going to be out there for everyone to read. David Chalian 00:16:20 So let's talk about how the administration has responded so far. We mentioned when Hegseth was saying that you obviously said was a bit of absurd kind of rhetorical response. What do you make of how President Trump has responded? Seems to be wanting to distance himself from this, suggests he doesn't have knowledge, maybe even, you know, putting Mike Wallace on the hot seat and sort of suggesting he is to blame here. And then yesterday suggesting when a reporter asked about Hegseth and what he wrote, he was like, why would you even bring Hegseth into this? What is Hegseth have to do with this? He seemed to really want to wall off any kind of blame for his defense secretary. So what do you make about how the president and the administration overall has responded to this. Olivia Troye 00:17:03 I think first of all, I think it's it's very typical for Trump and sort of this operation. Obviously the first thing they'll do is try to discredit the source, right? So they're trying to discredit the reporter, even though the reporter exercised the best judgment out of the entire group, I would say, because that was our first go to move is just like, oh, the press hates us. And this is another hyperbolic situation. You know, Trump likes to use the words witch hunt. So he's already kind of tossing that out. And so that was to be expected. But the reality is I think Donald Trump is pissed. I think he's pretty mad because honestly, this is embarrassing. It's embarrassing for the entire cabinet, the white House, I think behind the scenes, like he's he's probably very, very annoyed that this is. David Chalian 00:17:49 What gives you what gives you that sense? Olivia Troye 00:17:51 I mean, I've seen it in the past where he's sort of like, we had this leak. How did this get out there? I mean, he's been very angry in the past when these situations and also I think it's, you know, when it makes his entire cabinet look ridiculous. And right now, that's how they're looking. It ultimately looks bad on him. And so I think that's why you saw him kind of he's trying to figure out like, okay, who is a person that gets the blame here. Who's the scapegoat in that situation. And personally, I thought it was going to be my fault because he's the one that right. Obviously he's the one that puts the chat together and then adds the reporter. David Chalian 00:18:27 And he also is the administration official in most tension with MAGA world at the moment. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of skepticism from from some of the most ardent Trump supporters that he's a bit more sort of national security establishment, kind of a Republican. Olivia Troye 00:18:42 Yes. And then the other thing I think for them is I think Trump is trying to figure out, I mean, this is not a good news story, right? I mean, this is making them look completely ridiculous. He knows it's bad. He's got Republicans that are actually. You know, in one rare moment right now, which is very, very and not not heard it very common right now. He's got Republicans criticizing him and what happened here. And he's got people, influencers on social media and everything that are coming out. And also calling this out and being like, this is not okay. And he knows the gravity of the situation, I think. And so I think from his perspective, he wants this nightmare to go away. This is like taking all the attention. And then also I think, you know, I thought it was very evident where he talked about signal and he seemed confused about what signal was. So it's clear that I didn't. Trump is sort of at a like I'm like, what actually kind of happened here and he doesn't know signal application like what it is. I think there's just a lot of loose ends here that are probably making him feel very unsettled and angry about it. But ultimately, I think he's like, you're making me look bad. It's really not about actually you're you should be protecting these sources and methods and you should be protecting the operation. I think it's more so the fact that it brought embarrassment to the white House and the entire cabinet. David Chalian 00:20:00 My last question for you is We've seen Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, call for an investigation. We have seen some Republicans express some concern that this was a screw up, though we've not seen sort of the floodgates open and sort of demand a what should happen from here, should there be an investigation and should somebody lose their job over this? Olivia Troye 00:20:26 I mean, in any other scenario, if you are a military member or a intelligence officer or anything, somebody would lose their jobs and there would be accountability from all the way from the top down to the lower level. On how this happened. And so there should be an investigation. There should be an investigation to like, how did this happen? What were the actual facts that led to this situation? Why is this happening? Why are they using signal? First of all, I would be asking that question. This is not how we conduct traditionally major senior level policy and intelligence. And then also I think there has to be accountability. Like somebody needs to take responsibility for their actions, if only also for what you're saying to the communities that these people lead, because it really is about leadership comes from the top. And so when you have intelligence officers, military service members, all of this community is watching this happen. And they, by the way, hold sensitive operations in high regard. They're held to a certain standard. And I think the leadership needs to show that they're going to hold themselves accountable and to that standard high standard as well to protect this information. So I do think that this needs to happen. And I think, you know, I don't think that this is a Partizan thing. This isn't about politics, isn't about Republicans and Democrats. It's actually about protecting the American people and national security. It's about protecting everything that our country stands for when it comes to these types of sensitive operations and things. And so I think it should be bipartisan. I commend the Republicans that are saying, yes, we need to get to the bottom of this so that it doesn't happen again. We can at least work on that together. David Chalian 00:22:10 Olivia Troye, thanks so much for your time. Olivia Troye 00:22:12 Thank you. David Chalian 00:22:13 That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration or contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams and Grace Walker with support from Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Perry, Robert Mathers, John Dionora, Leni Steinhardt, James Andrest, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.
CNN
21-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Howard Dean's Prescription for Democrats - CNN Political Briefing - Podcast on CNN Audio
David Chalian 00:00:01 Hey, everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. 'Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (clip) 00:00:09 This isn't just about Republicans. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too. Sen. Bernie Sanders (clip) 00:00:21 And let us never forget: Real change only occurs when ordinary people at the grassroots level stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back. David Chalian 00:00:38 'That's the Democrats' two most well-known progressive politicians speaking at a rally on Thursday in Las Vegas. Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez booked stops in Nevada, Arizona and Colorado as a part of Sanders's ongoing "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. The Vermont senator told my colleague Kaitlan Collins this week that he's been hearing on the road how frustrated some voters are with the Democratic Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders (clip) 00:01:06 In the Democratic Party, you've got a party that is heavily dominated by the billionaire class, run by consultants who are way out of touch with reality. It has — the Democratic Party has virtually no grassroots support. David Chalian 00:01:21 That lack of grassroots support is also what my guest today sees as a core problem for his party. Howard Dean is a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, a onetime candidate for the party's presidential nomination, and he also served six terms as Vermont's governor. Before that, he worked as a physician in the state. He argues that his party has got to get back to basics and that rebuilding the Democratic brand can't be done without knocking on a lot of doors. Governor Howard Dean, thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate it. Howard Dean 00:01:57 Thanks for having me. David Chalian 00:01:58 I have wanted to talk to you in this moment because there's a lot of talk, as recently as this week — Chuck Schumer was invoking this — of thinking about the current troubles in the Democratic Party, if you will, or the current conundrum that the Democratic Party finds itself in compared to 20 years ago, after George W. Bush's successful reelection effort in 2004 and where the Democrats sort of found themselves in 2005, and you may have some perspective on where the Democrats found themselves at the time. That was the time that you took over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and I'm wondering, do you see parallels to this moment for Democrats? Howard Dean 00:02:43 'There are, but it's, you know, it's a lot further down the track now. I was elected by people who were outside the Beltway. In fact, the inside the Beltway people didn't want me, and they ran sequentially a whole bunch of different candidates against me, and they didn't last long. I had a hard time convincing the DNC that I should be their chair, but they gave in. And the first thing I did was just let the D-Trip and the DSCC know that they weren't getting any money from us because if you want to win races, you have to be out in the states, and it worked. We took back the house, and, you know, the House people were calling people who had financed their own campaigns, and we were calling up governors in places like Kansas and saying, who's the best candidate for this? You know, and we won, and we took back the House, and we took back the Senate, and then we took back the presidency. We also had a fantastic candidate. Barack Obama was a great candidate and had a great campaign. I will huff and puff a little bit. His data people were pirated from my campaign. My campaign, I hired them to redo all the DNC's data, which was pretty much nonexistent. And then Obama hired them away from me in 2006. The key thing that has to be done today is a much higher, more complete version of what we did. You can't — you're not going to win this in Congress. And the problem is, as I always like to say, that Congress is basically, or Washington is middle school on steroids. They work hard. They're smart, and it's all about them all the time. And they do not invest in city council races or school board races or, you know, those kinds of things. And if you don't do that, then the message of the Democratic Party is what the Republicans say it is. And that's exactly where we are right now. David Chalian 00:04:22 So, right there at the end, you sort of tied the mechanics of it to where the brand finds itself. And we had a poll out this week at CNN — just 29% of Americans have a favorable view of Democrats. That's the lowest favorability number for the party, just a measure of popularity, in all of CNN's history of polling on that question going back to the early 90s. So, why? Howard Dean 00:04:47 The Democratic Party brand is what the Republicans say it is. They're good at this, and they're on the podcasts and all this kind of stuff, and they have the, you know, an inveterate liar as the president of the United States now, and he's successful at it. I mean, you can say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but one thing he's incredibly skilled at is resentment politics. And he's really good at it. David Chalian 00:05:06 And it works, apparently? Howard Dean 00:05:07 'And it works very, very well. So here's our problem. If you want the brand of the Democratic Party to be what Donald Trump says it is, which may or may not be true, and it isn't true, but it's still a very — he's a great messenger. If you want it to be different, what you do is you have people knocking on doors not five weeks before the presidential election. You do it when some young guy or gal is running for the legislature, and then they get their brand of the Democratic Party. They're going to lose the first time in these red states, but eventually they're going to win, because the Republicans are not so good at running anything, and they're not very nice. And their rhetoric is really awful, and people get sick of that. You switch the brand from being politicians in Washington who are out of touch, which the Democrats fall into pretty easily, as we saw last week. And you switched that brand to, oh, this gal is knocking on my door. I remember teaching her in school, and I know her father, and that's now the brand of the Democrats: nice person, working hard, cheerful, knows the neighborhood inside out. It's expensive, and it's hard to do. And it's hard to get donors to fund that stuff because they, you know, they want to say, I met with the president, and I told senator so-and-so. That doesn't get you anywhere, and there'll be a lot less senator so-and-sos if we don't get the message and start doing things differently. David Chalian 00:06:24 You mentioned last week you're referring to the vote that happened in the Senate that prevented a government shutdown, but, in doing so, advanced and allowed to pass a continuing resolution, a spending bill put forth by Donald Trump and Mike Johnson and the Republicans, that was, save one person in the House, almost uniformly rejected by Democrats in the House. But Chuck Schumer led the way for ten Democrats to actually join with the Republicans, to move that forward into law and keep the government open. Your critique was you saw last week that they were out of touch with where the Democratic grassroots are across the country. Are you suggesting a shutdown would have been the preferable outcome? Howard Dean 00:07:04 I think not voting for a bill that violated a large number of Democratic Party principles and harmed our people that we support, you know, that was a mistake. And we voted for the Republican version, which basically takes money away from middle class and working people and gives it to their billionaire supporters. David Chalian 00:07:23 But the alternative was a shutdown, right? Howard Dean 00:07:25 That, well, that's correct. And the reason there would have been a shutdown is because the Republicans passed some ridiculous bill that had no business being signed into law. Now, look, I am not one of those people that thinks Schumer should leave or any of that kind of stuff. He's a very able leader and maybe close to the most able Senate leader, maybe since George Mitchell. The problem is, though, he is a leader in the Senate, inside the Beltway. And what's going on inside the Beltway is very different than what's going on outside the Beltway in the Democratic Party. And I don't think there are many people in Washington that get that, especially in the Senate. David Chalian 00:07:59 One of the things, as you know, Schumer has been talking basically nonstop since the vote in trying to constantly explain his position and why he did it. But one of the things he points to, which I think, if I was talking to Nancy Pelosi, she might say the same thing. In addition to what you are talking about, your 50 state strategy and investing in these state parties and state legislative races and the like, they would say that, in 2005, after Republicans had a pretty sweeping election victory in 2004, they waited for this moment of potential overreach from President Bush at the time, privatizing Social Security, and you all collectively in the party in that moment seized on that and that that, according to Schumer's telling of it, is what unified the Democratic Party, leading to those 2006 midterms that were successful for the party. Howard Dean 00:08:47 I hate to say this, but that is a classical inside the Beltway analysis because it was something they did. What won that was my going to every single one of the 50 states and seven territories and then putting money into those, each one, each single party, except for a few of them that were very big from big states, and they thought they knew better. We basically put data and computerized their voting lists and all that kind of stuff, and then we gave them, I forgot how much it was a year, on the condition they were trained five times, and they had to come to Washington, and we went out there. And if they didn't do the training, they didn't get the money. You know, you can have these quote unquote moments that people talk about in Washington. They don't do any good if you're not at the people's doors. And, you know, you cannot do this long distance through media. That's important. It's important to be in people's houses doing the kind of thing we're doing right now. But if you're not out there in person with a recognizable person that you know instead of a politician, then you're not going to win this race. I don't care how many podcast you do. David Chalian 00:09:46 And do you see the Democratic Party doing that right now? And I don't mean just the organization of the DNC that you once led and perhaps you, you know, maybe Ken Martin is doing this right now as chair of the DNC. But do you see, broadly, the Democratic Party heeding the advice that you're saying right now? Howard Dean 00:10:01 Well, I have high hopes for Ken because he did come from a state which I think is important. He's not an inside the Beltway guy, and I think he's trying to do the right thing. But, you know, everybody in Washington who, except for the DNC, thinks that the DNC's job is to make you look good and get elected. It is not the DNC's job. The DNC's job is to win elections. And they can't do it by just spending all their time in Washington. And they can't do it if they don't fund people outside the state who aren't capable of funding themselves. I don't believe in the theory that this was the turning point, and it's some issue that got voted on in Washington. The turning point is 10,000 times when somebody knocks on your door from the neighborhood and says, I'm running for school counselor or city council or school board, would you support me? And whether they say yes or no doesn't always matter. And the interesting thing now is most of that work is done by people who are Democrats, but they're not associated with the Democratic Party directly. Run for Something is one of them. They've had like 1,500 candidates who are young people from every background you can think of who are running for offices in red states, a lot of them, and they're winning. Indivisible is another one. And so there's tons of people who are grassroots organizations. I think those people are more effective. What they need is coordination and some money. David Chalian 00:11:20 We're going to take a quick break. We're going to a lot more with Governor Howard Dean in just a moment. Stay with us. David Chalian 00:11:36 'Welcome back. We're here with former Vermont governor, former DNC chair, former presidential candidate Howard Dean. I guess I could say the doctor is in, as your campaign posters used to say. We asked in our most recent poll, an open question. We didn't give any names or options. We just asked a question about who is leading the Democratic Party and represents the — asking of Democrats — represents your values and who you know, who do you see out there that represents your values, leads the party? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out on top in that, offered up as a name. Does that surprise you? Howard Dean 00:12:15 It does, but I think it's great news. We can't win without the under 35 crowd, and she can mobilize them. I am really impressed with her. When she, I was very impressed with her opening campaign. She beat a guy who I know and like, and she did an incredible job. And in the beginning she was sort of out there. I mean, she's obviously a very principled person, which matters. But there are things you have to do in order to build coalitions, and she has gotten really good at it. I think she now qualifies as being one of the major leaders of the party, and I think that's a good thing. David Chalian 00:12:46 I would imagine, given sort of the dry spell that Democrats find themselves in in this moment, that your party is going to have, I don't know, maybe up to 20 presidential candidates emerge for the 2028 contest. I mean, it could be a very crowded stage like it was four years ago. Do you think there was something that you observed in that 2019, 2020 Democratic primary that should be a cautionary tale for the Democrats, as they organize themselves to try and win back the White House? Howard Dean 00:13:14 I don't think so. I mean, my theory of the case is that Biden won because people were exhausted by Trump, and then it came down to Biden and Bernie. Bernie is exhausting, too, because he's, you know, believes very strongly in what his message is. And I think it's a good message. But I think people were just and then, of course, they were exhausted by the pandemic. And Biden seemed like, you know, a good, solid choice that wasn't exhausting. Let me just defend Joe Biden. He did some things that were not right at the end. He should have probably not run again. But the fact of the matter is, I think he's going to go down in history as the most effective domestic president since Lyndon Johnson. David Chalian 00:13:51 I wasn't planning on spending a bunch of time on Joe Biden in this conversation. But now that you've brought it up, let me just ask, though, don't you think the decision, as you say, which probably wasn't the right decision for him to run for reelection, given the threat that he and his team and the entire party was putting forth to the country, that, Donald, that a return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office presents? Don't you think then his decision to do that, the clear negative position that put in the party, the path it created for Donald Trump to go back to the White House, negates all of what you just said? Howard Dean 00:14:21 No, of course not. Yes, he — it was a terrible mistake. In retrospect, he shouldn't have run, given what I know now about his health and what I didn't know then. But the fact is, you're never going to take away the achievements that he had. David Chalian 00:14:36 I want to go back to what you were saying about the need to be knocking on these doors repeatedly, talking to people, identifying with people they know. My next question to you is, okay, you're at the door. You're having a conversation, you're invited into the living room or it's a community event and you're around with your neighbors. What is the message? What are Democrats offering in that conversation right now? Howard Dean 00:14:56 A lot of it is the kind of stuff that Sanders is talking about. He's been talking about it for his entire life, but it is particularly resonant right now. We need to get you a decent health care plan that's not going to bankrupt you. We need to guarantee some job opportunities so your kids can go to college. We need to make sure that the education system works, works fairly, and we need fairness in this society, and I think that's a very important message. But it has to be delivered. And I also think my generation needs to get the hell out of the way. I hope the next candidate that we have is between 40 and 50, not between 60 and 80. David Chalian 00:15:33 Why do you say that? Howard Dean 00:15:34 'Because we got creamed with young people, and that's a disaster. Young people have always been the, sort of the light. You know, I'm 76 years old. I remember what it was like to be 20 and protesting against the Vietnam War. And we fought for civil rights. And the country has changed dramatically over the last 50 years for a lot, for a lot of what we did. The Democrats turned off that generation, and we can't do that. And so that's why I want somebody that all those young voters, anybody under 40, can really relate to. And it's somebody that they see as their leader, and I think it is — I am for term limits. That's that's an old conservative thing, and you wouldn't be surprised to have a liberal Democrat advocating it. I think we ought to have term limits in the Senate, term limits in the Supreme Court and term limits in the House. This is supposed to be a part-time job, this legislation. If you professionalize the legislation, then all you're going to do is create a class of people who are out of touch with the rest of the country, and I think that's true. And I think it's true of the Republicans, too. They're actually far worse than the Democrats, just much better with the dishonesty factor. David Chalian 00:16:37 You were in your mid 50s when you caught lightning in a bottle with your presidential campaign. I know it wasn't ultimately successful, but you defined internet, online fundraising. You were able to generate enthusiasm. You were able to go at the more establishment picks for a while there. A lot of that was due to young people, but you were in your mid 50s. Does it have to be a young person that generates the enthusiasm from young people? Howard Dean 00:16:59 It doesn't have to be young in terms of the number of years you live, but it does have to be young in your terms of your willingness to tell the truth without trying to manage every word that you say. That kind of cardboard stuff just doesn't go. Especially the younger you are, the less B.S. you want to put up with. And, you know, there's a lot of B.S. in Washington on both sides of the aisle. David Chalian 00:17:21 And thinking about your presidential run, and it's like eons ago now, and it's a different media environment and everything — but do you think there's something in what you experienced in 2003 that you could offer as advice for this next generation of Democrats that will be seeking the top job? Howard Dean 00:17:37 I think the time has long passed that people in their 70s and 80s ought to be giving people advice. You know, it's a whole different world out there in terms of how this all works. And, you know, what do I, what do I know about the media? I just had a bunch of smart kids working for me, because I told the truth about what was going on in Iraq, which was based on a lie. And I told the truth about what the Congress had been doing, including the Democrats. And that is — the truth is an incredibly attractive principle in politics because there's so little of it. And that's all I did. And, you know, my campaign had tons of faults. But it did change that generation. Now that generation's in power. A lot of them are county chairs, state chairs, in state legislatures. We need the generational turnover. I'm, you know, I'm not ready to sit in a rocking chair and do nothing. But I want the next president of the United States to be 40, if it's possible. David Chalian 00:18:32 About President Trump, and we're, you know, in, I don't know, what day we're at, but we're nearing at the end of April will be is first 100 days mark here. Are you seeing an administration that you anticipated? Is it worse than you expected? Is it about what you expected? You know, he still, while he's unpopular, and his numbers are upside down, he's still at his highest popularity in his entire career. Howard Dean 00:18:56 The problem this time around is that he has really people who don't believe in democracy working for him. They have a blueprint to make sure that only white male Christians are allowed to run anything, and they're executing on that blueprint. You know, I mean, Elon Musk is the perfect example of that. The scary part is we really could lose our democracy this time. You know, I was pleased when John Roberts, who I have very little in common, nor do I like much, came out and talked about, you know, the need to not talk about impeaching justices. We'll find out what John Roberts is about after he, you know, voted for this ridiculous sweeping presidential immunity bill a year ago. We need somebody to stand up, and the Congress hasn't done it, and they're not going to do it until after the midterms, when we hopefully control at least one of the houses. So the courts are going to have to do it. David Chalian 00:19:44 Do you see Democrats, I know they're not in power, but is any Democrat in your mind standing up right now effectively and capturing the imagination of the country? Howard Dean 00:19:53 I do think AOC is, and Bernie always has for young people. And there are I think there are people who could — I'm very interested in Gretchen Whitmer. I'm very interested in Wes Moore, for president. I'm sure there are other people out there. I think Andy Beshear, although he comes from such a red state, I don't know, but he certainly is telling it like it is. We just can't have politicians who are willing to lie and say whatever the hell comes into their head or hedge the truth. That's just not an attractive principle. This country is going to be a wreck after a couple more years of Trump. Look what he's already done to the stock market. He's abandoned our Democratic friends. He's getting in bed with Vladimir Putin, who may be certainly in the running from the most evil person on the planet. This is ridiculous. And his presidency is a disaster so far, and we're only 60 days in. So there's plenty of time for somebody to emerge. And it's going to take some time. I don't think the race is really going to start until after the midterms. David Chalian 00:20:51 I know you just named, obviously, as a former governor, you're right to only throw the names of governors out. But AOC and Bernie Sanders obviously serve in Washington. But what do you see as Hakeem Jeffries's and Chuck Schumer's responsibility and role in this moment? Howard Dean 00:21:05 I think their role is to get — make sure Congress and the Senate continue to be Democratic or are Democratic. That's their role, and they're good at it. David Chalian 00:21:13 And not to be, I mean, faces of the party nationally? They obviously are. Howard Dean 00:21:18 Obviously that didn't work so well last week, did it? David Chalian 00:21:20 I know. You — so even though you support Chuck Schumer, you don't buy his explanation that a shutdown would have been worse? Howard Dean 00:21:28 'No, I do buy it. I buy his explanation. I just don't agree with it. I don't think he understands — look, I told you, he's a terrific leader, and he's very smart and very good on tactics. I do not think he understands the country as a whole. And, you know, it's very rare that majority or minority leaders in the Senate end up being presidential candidates, and that's why. So no, I'm not anxious that, you know, anxious at all in getting rid of the House or the Senate leadership other than, you know, the people who've been there for 109 terms. It might be nice to get some 40-year-olds in there, but I'm not I — and Schumer did a great job when he was majority leader, getting Biden's picks on the judiciary through. He even appointed more judges than Trump did. So, I am not one of the people who thinks that Schumer should be fired or any of that kind of stuff. He's very good at what he does, but I do believe that we have to figure out a way to win elections, and that is not going to be done from inside the Beltway. It is not. David Chalian 00:22:28 Governor Dean, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it. Howard Dean 00:22:30 My pleasure. Thank you. David Chalian 00:22:34 That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.
CNN
14-03-2025
- Automotive
- CNN
Why Musk's DOGE Moves Are ‘Just Like the Twitter Takeover' - CNN Political Briefing - Podcast on CNN Audio
David Chalian 00:00:01 Hey, everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. Earlier this week, President Trump stood on the White House south lawn in front of a row of new Tesla vehicles. In what amounted to nearly 36 minutes of free advertising for the electric car company, trump pitched both the vehicles and the company's owner, Elon Musk, to the American public. Since Musk took on a major role at the White House and became closely associated with the MAGA brand, Tesla has seen sales drop. President Donald Trump (clip) 00:00:38 They love the product. But because he's finding all sorts of terrible things that have taken place against our country, they want to penalize him in an economic sense. And I just think that's very unfair. David Chalian 00:00:50 As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk is leading Trump's charge to shrink the federal government by cutting spending and eliminating federal jobs. But applying that "move fast and break things" mentality of Silicon Valley to the federal government is certainly not sitting well with Democrats and even some Republicans, and clearly not that well with the American people. A new CNN/SSRS poll this week showed just 35 percent of Americans expressed a positive view of Elon Musk. Musk is new to Washington, but what can we learn about his approach to DOGE from how he's led his companies? Kate Conger is the coauthor of the book "Character Limit," a detailed account of Musk's takeover of Twitter, now called X. And she continues to report on Musk and X for The New York Times. She joins me now to share her insights on Musk and the parallels she sees in his management of Twitter and DOGE. Kate, thanks so much for joining us. Kate Conger 00:02:08 Thank you for having me. David Chalian 00:02:09 'So I guess I want to start at the 30,000-foot level and tap into your expertise on all things Elon Musk, as you have observed him before he got involved in government and politics and since, and that's where I want to start, is sort of, do you see any similarities in his approach to what he's doing with DOGE to anything he did with his companies? I mean, I know, the "Fork in the Road" memo was similar from Twitter, but overall the approach here, does it feel familiar to what you observed in his private sector work? Kate Conger 00:02:43 Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, I feel like a broken record because I just keep saying over and over again, this is just like the Twitter takeover. There's so many things that Musk has pulled from that experience to fashion what he's doing now with DOGE. And I think he really views Twitter as a success story, actually, and thinks that the cost cutting that he did there was really effective and really essential. And that's the model that he's looking to replicate. So, I mean, you see the parallels, not just in the "Fork in the Road" email like you mentioned, but also the people that he's bringing in to advise him. Many of them also worked on the Twitter deal. You know, some of the approaches to getting rid of real estate is something that he tried at Twitter, the mass layoffs, the encouraging people to resign. These are all things that he tried in those first few months after that purchase and really viewed as a success. David Chalian 00:03:35 And yet, we all know running a company and working in the government are not the same thing. I mean, obviously, I think everyone believes government could be run more efficiently. I would be surprised if you could meet an American who doesn't believe that the federal government can run more efficiently, but in what you're saying, since you see so many similarities, was there sort of no surprise for you in the headlines of what was coming out of his efforts in DOGE, or that he didn't adjust his approach because he's not the CEO here in the government. I mean, he is an advisor to the president. He's not the top dog, ostensibly. And yet, as you note, his approach seems similar. Did that surprise you? Kate Conger 00:04:19 Him wanting to take this approach is not a surprise. He's really been clear about that, and he's actually a very sort of repetitious person. He makes the same movie references over and over again. He cracks the same jokes, and so to see him reach for this familiar playbook was not a surprise at all. I think what is surprising to me is that Trump has allowed him to do all of this stuff basically unchecked. Going into this, I was thinking there may be some potential for Trump to feel like, you know, he didn't have as much power as he wanted, and that Elon was kind of steamrolling him. And it actually seems like they've had a pretty productive working relationship, and Trump isn't uncomfortable with that. That part of it is a surprise to me. David Chalian 00:05:00 You had mentioned some of the people who were advising him and helping him and working for him at Twitter, he brought over to this government efficiency effort. Can you tell me a little bit more about Elon's world, if you will? Like, who are these people that are supporting him in this effort in the government? Kate Conger 00:05:19 Sure. So he tends to operate in a really small circle. He doesn't trust a lot of people, and he keeps the few people that he does trust very close. So one of the people who he's brought over to help run DOGE is a guy named Steve Davis, who's worked with him at SpaceX, at The Boring Company and at X after the transition to help cut the budget. Steve has been really intimately involved in the current work on DOGE. Another example, I think, is Michael Grimes, who is his lead banker on the Twitter deal. He's come in and done some work with Treasury and DOGE, and is someone that Musk really trusted to make that transaction happen, and I think, you know, you see that trust continuing into these new roles in government. And then even some of the kids who are working on DOGE kind of at the lower level, some of them have experience with his other businesses who had worked for Musk, either at X or Tesla or SpaceX. So again, you see him kind of tapping into this pool of trusted candidates who he already knows. David Chalian 00:06:22 And when you say kids, we're not talking about child labor laws being violated here. They're young adults, but yes. Kate Conger 00:06:29 Yes, they're 20 year olds. I should not be calling them kids. It's a bad habit. David Chalian 00:06:34 I think we all do that. I agree with you about the sort of, I also was surprised that Trump has given him as much leeway as it seems that he has given him. And there was all that talk when the TIME magazine cover came out with Musk behind the Resolute Desk, and if that was going to upset Trump, and then yet we did see, you know, Trump responded a bit to some of the blowback he was getting from his cabinet officials, from some Republicans on the Hill. And there were these reports of him trying to rein him in a little bit. But then we learn of this explosive cabinet meeting from your colleagues at The New York Times, where he gets apparently into a heated back and forth with Marco Rubio, a heated back and forth with Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary. What did you make of that report, and what do you make of the fallout from that becoming public, and how Rubio and Duffy sort of responded or how Musk responded after the fact? Kate Conger 00:07:33 Well, I think that reporting was so interesting because it reflects, again, these kinds of things that Musk returns to over and over. One of them is asking for the specific data. He really likes to ask for that when he's feeling challenged and make someone prove their point to him. And you saw him do that with Secretary Duffy where he said, give me the names of the specific air traffic controllers that you've been asked to fire. And Duffy couldn't do it. And so that's an interaction that Musk feels like he's won, and Duffy is lying to him because he wasn't able to pull these names out of a hat and provide them. And so it's really interesting to see him kind of engage in that rhetorical device over and over again. David Chalian 00:08:14 Perhaps that's what led to the unfollow on X. Kate Conger 00:08:18 Yes, so the fallout like, yeah, is really interesting. You know we saw him and Marco Rubio go on X and kind of patch things up. And then with Duffy he went and unfollowed his accounts, and I think was sort of dismissive of him. So, you know, it's interesting to see how his relationships with the cabinet members shifted after that meeting. David Chalian 00:08:36 I mean, Rubio went on X to really try and say, no, no, no, I'm doing the stuff you asked us to do. We've cut 83% of the programs at USAID. Thank you, DOGE. You know, I mean, it seemed like Rubio did not want to be perceived as in an antagonistic place to Elon Musk, despite the fact that he's the Secretary of State. Kate Conger 00:08:56 Right. Yeah. And I think there is a lot of uncertainty right now between Musk and the cabinet members about who is in charge. And we saw this with these emails going out that Musk sent, asking people to list five bullet points of things they accomplished during the week, and then some of the cabinet members pushing back and saying, my agency reports to me, they don't report to Elon Musk. They're going to tell me what they did this week, but you don't have to tell him. And so I think there is a little bit of tension there, and people are kind of trying to figure out where their power stops and where Musk's begins. David Chalian 00:09:30 We're going to take a quick break. We're going to have a lot more with Kate Conger in just a moment. David Chalian 00:09:47 Welcome back. We're here with New York Times reporter Kate Conger talking about all things Elon Musk, which has just got to be one of the most fascinating beats for a reporter to be on. I do wonder what you and how you approach in your reporting and thinking — it's not as if Elon Musk is a disinterested party to the United States government. I mean, his private companies get a lot of contracts from the United States government. Is there anything in your reporting or your research into him that would indicate that while he's doing this government assignment, he is very much keeping in mind how the work is benefiting perhaps his companies? Kate Conger 00:10:27 Definitely. I think that that is very much front and center. And, you know, we saw recently him and Trump going onto the lawn at the White House and doing basically a commercial for Tesla. There are so many conflicts like that. And I personally see it actually a lot with X in the way he's tried to reshape that platform to basically be a pulpit for the administration. You know, he himself does a lot to promote Trump, obviously, but he's also set up all of these DOGE accounts on X: the main DOGE account itself and then all these individual agency accounts for DOGE updates and tips. And so he's really kind of fuzing the platform with the administration in really interesting ways and making it kind of, I don't know, a new media empire. And I think that that is an interesting conflict that's starting to emerge in addition to, I think, the more obvious ones, the federal contracts that he has with SpaceX and Starlink. David Chalian 00:11:24 We have a brand new poll out this week from CNN that shows Musk is not wearing well with the American people broadly. He's at a 35% favorable rating with the American people, according to our newest poll. And that's largely driven by Republicans rallying around him. He's got like a 75% favorable rating with Republicans, but more than 6 in 10 of independents, 60% of independents, have an unfavorable view of Musk. I mean, he's — those are not numbers that anybody in public life would want to see. And you noted the sort of commercial on the south lawn for Tesla. His stock, obviously, in Tesla was taking a beating in large part, I think, to political opposition to some of the cuts he's been putting forth in his role in DOGE. And, clearly, Trump wanted to boost him. How much do you think Musk is consuming how his own personal brand is being affected by this assignment he's taking on? I mean, all of these guys are obviously very, you know, these are big egos, right? And like, he's a player as the richest man in the world on a very unique space and all of that. But, you know, if his stock goes down because of what he's doing, if his numbers are bad with the American people, will we see Musk change course or alter in any way from any of the history of him that you followed? Kate Conger 00:12:46 'You know, I don't think so. I mean, he is someone who's so self-assured, and when he becomes uncertain, often what he'll do is run a poll on X and ask his followers, hey, should this be happening? Famously, we saw him do this at Twitter when he was still the CEO. He ran a poll saying, should I remain CEO? And his followers said no. And he said, okay, fine, I'm going to find another CEO and step out of the role. And he's done that recently, asking his followers, is DOGE doing a good job? Do you support what I'm doing? And I think when he runs those polls, it's a sign that he's feeling the pushback. But I think X has shifted so far to a platform that is for and about Elon Musk, that all of those polls now go in his favor. You know, he's not having people saying, hey, yeah, you should step down, and you probably shouldn't be CEO of the government. It's just people who are his fans who are voting in those, and he takes that as affirmation that he's doing a good job. I've never seen him pay attention to poll numbers before, but he did share some the other day that were again favorable to him. And I wonder if that's coming out of his connection with Trump and knowing that Trump is interested in poll numbers and so wanting to demonstrate interest in that and show that he has support. David Chalian 00:14:00 What did you make of that image at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington, D.C., a few weeks back, where he held up a chainsaw on the stage? Elon Musk (clip) 00:14:11 This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy. David Chalian 00:14:15 I mean, it's instantly become an image that Democrats are putting in their campaign ads already. But I'm just wondering if that was sort of classic Musk or not. Kate Conger 00:14:24 'Yeah. So something that he's really into is recreating memes in real life. And we had this in some reporting recently where he had his desk set up in the Eisenhower Executive Building with a DOGE sign on it. When we published the photo, people were responding and pointing out to me that one of the periods is missing. So it's, you know, there's not a period after every letter in the DOGE acronym. And people are asking me, why is that? It's because he made that sign based on an AI-generated image, and the AI had left out a period. So he did it as well when he recreated it in real life. So he has this real penchant for trying to take memes and make them into reality. And I think that was a big part of what was going on at CPAC. You know, he kind of had this, this meme idea of himself as the government cost cutter. Obviously, he's taken a lot of inspiration from Milei, who's come up with the taking a chainsaw to government metaphor and gifted him the chainsaw onstage. And so, you know, he's kind of pulling on all of these online references to create his image and create these kind of viral moments that he knows are then going to go on X and go viral there. David Chalian 00:15:33 'It has sounded to me in some of what Trump has described, you know, Musk is not anticipated to stay for the duration of the whole four-year term or not. Do you have a sense of how long Musk is in this for, and whether or not we have a sense of if he's enjoying it, this whole notion of government service and being a senior adviser to the president? Like, is this something that really appeals to him that maybe he wants to find other roles to continue to serve in this kind of public way? Kate Conger 00:16:01 'Initially when he was debuting the idea for DOGE, he said he was going to do it for two years and be done. I have a hard time imagining him stepping away from it. He's just kind of an all-in personality, and he's clearly enjoying this a lot. You know, he's spent so much time in Washington, I think to the detriment of his companies, which are kind of suffering without his oversight. David Chalian 00:16:26 Which, by the way, in a very lengthy pregnant pause in an interview on Fox recently, when asked about his companies, it seemed he — I read that as he completely affirms your assessment just there that it is not easy to continue to run his companies and do what he's doing in the government. Kate Conger 00:16:43 I mean, I don't think it's easy to run five companies if that's your only job. And then you add running the government on top of that. I mean, things are going to slip through the cracks. They have to. But I think he is really enthralled with this and intoxicated by the power that it gives him. And I think it will be really hard for him to voluntarily step away from that. David Chalian 00:17:05 Kate, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Kate Conger 00:17:08 Thank you. This was really great. David Chalian 00:17:11 That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN audio support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.
CNN
07-03-2025
- Business
- CNN
Trump's Tariff Whiplash - CNN Political Briefing - Podcast on CNN Audio
David Chalian 00:00:01 Hey, everyone. I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington bureau chief and political director. And welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. This week, President Trump addressed Congress for the first time since retaking the White House. In that speech, we heard him double down on one of his most consistent policy positions: tariffs. President Donald Trump (clip) 00:00:22 Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it's happening, and it will happen rather quickly. There'll be a little disturbance, but we're okay with that. It won't be much. David Chalian 00:00:37 On Tuesday, the U.S. imposed 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China. Stock markets tumbled in response, and the U.S. auto industry scrambled to make a plea for Trump to reconsider. He relented by announcing a one month exemption for U.S. automakers. Then he gave Mexico and Canada a nearly one month delay as well. So why is Trump imposing these tariffs on our northern and southern neighbors? What's the strategy? What could the economic ripple effects be, and how will Americans feel the impact? Rana Foroohar is a columnist and associate editor at Financial Times and a global economic analyst for us here at CNN. She joined me to help us sort through these questions and to check in on the state of the economy so far under Trump 2.0. We spoke on Thursday afternoon, just before President Trump announced the tariff delays for Mexico and Canada. Rana, thanks so much for joining me. Rana Foroohar 00:01:48 Oh, thanks for having me. David Chalian 00:01:50 So let's start with the news that Donald Trump has been generating this week around his favorite pet issue of tariffs. What do you make, Rana, about about this one month carve out for automakers? And now I think —we're recording this on Thursday afternoon — and as I was just coming in to chat with you, I saw some reporting out there that perhaps there's going to be a carve out for any kind of trade that was included in the USMCA, which was sort of like the NAFTA update. I'm just trying to wrap my head around, is this more bark than bite from Trump, or is there actual bite here at play? Rana Foroohar 00:02:29 Well, it seemed a couple days ago that there was going to be a lot of bite. Now that's being pulled back, which is very classic with Trump, right? So if you start to think, well, wait a minute, is this hype and also P.S. Trump negotiated the USMCA. I mean that's another thing. It's like, okay, wait a minute. You said, Trump, in your 2020 State of the Union speech, this was the greatest deal ever. This is going to make, you know, trade free and fair and awesome. And then you come in and blow it up. So maybe this is now this kind of, you know, classic Trump. He's going to lay down this fake line in the sand and then act as though he's gotten some big concession, when in fact we're ending up where we started. The key thing here is that the market now doesn't trust what's going to happen from one day to the next, and that is going to be, I believe, the biggest takeaway from this entire scenario. David Chalian 00:03:23 That's really fascinating because we saw the market in the first couple days of this week really react negatively to this. But then maybe on the auto carve out, the markets seemed to factor in that it is more bark than bite, but it does inject a lot of uncertainty, which we know markets don't like at all. Rana Foroohar 00:03:41 Absolutely. And you know, I spent a lot of time this week talking not to people about tariffs but just talking to market participants about, what is your view of the US right now? Are you beginning to see the US as more of an emerging market, as something that's unpredictable, chaotic, unstable? And if so, is that making you change your asset allocations? And that is the really big deal here because we have an economy — and I'm sorry if I'm jumping ahead a bit — but this is all this is all connected. We have an economy that is based largely on people putting their money in an S&P 500 index fund over 20, 30, 40 years, watching it rise and then having that money available for their retirement. If you start to mess around with that, if you start to make big money managers, asset managers, pension funds think we don't trust the US anymore, you are messing with the entire American retirement system, and that's a big deal. David Chalian 00:04:35 Wow. So just to button up on tariffs, though, because of what you were talking about. You know, not knowing how real this is or not or if it's bluster, we actually had an example just a few weeks ago when this first started out, right? I mean, he announced initial tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and then they satisfied enough requests initially on combating fentanyl or dealing with the border, and he pulled back from those. And I just feel like we're in a rinse and repeat cycle now. And yet, I don't want to dismiss the real risk to the economy that the tariffs could carry. Rana Foroohar 00:05:12 We're in a rinse and repeat cycle. And, even if you pull back, even if you say okay today no tariffs. Great. The market does its thing. The market will do its thing, hour by hour, day by day. But think about what this means for business. I'll tell you something. I had a conversation this week with a real estate developer who said, you know, I'm just going to hold off on building right now. Even though we're in a market — we have a major housing shortage in America, which is one of the reasons, frankly, inflation is high because housing costs are so high because we don't have enough houses. This builder said, I'm holding back because I don't know what the price of lumber is going to be from day to day, because a lot of it comes in from Canada. Is it going to be okay next week? I don't know. Who knows? David Chalian 00:05:57 Interesting, because we have a real estate developer in the Oval Office. So getting that mentality and thinking of a real estate developer.... Rana Foroohar 00:06:01 Well, we have the real estate brander. We don't have a guy that's built stuff. We have a guy that has slapped his brand on things. That's a little different. David Chalian 00:06:10 That's fair. We're going to take a quick break. I do want to get your thoughts more broadly on where the American economy is right now, and we will talk about that in just a moment. David Chalian 00:06:29 Rana, how would you describe the state of the American economy right now, six weeks into the Trump administration? Rana Foroohar 00:06:37 'Well, interestingly, the fundamentals are actually pretty good still. I mean, America had the best post-Covid recovery in the rich world. We did better than all of Europe. We did better than most of Asia, rich Asia. You know, we did okay. And really, until Trump came into office, it was all signs are go. In fact, there was even a little worry, I would say, at that point that, you know, what was the inflation picture going to be? The Fed was like, you know, do we still need to hike? Where are we? So that meant that things were, you know, animal spirits were high. Things were rolling along. Trump comes in, you get the Trump bump. You know the stock markets are up. You get some more worries about inflation. But then you start to get the tariff back and forth. And you also get Elon Musk firing a bunch of federal workers. And you get certain hedge fund managers saying, wait a minute, is that going to cause a recession? Is, you know, are mass layoffs of possibly, you know, millions of federal workers going to cause a recession? Is uncertainty going to topple the markets? You get a lot of geopolitical risk coming in, and so even though the fundamentals of the economy are still good, you know, unemployment is low about 4%, which is very low. You have some inflation risk, but it's not out of control, I would say at the moment. You're starting to now see signs of, wait a minute — we may be moving towards a slowdown. And the big question mark, which, by the way, let me let me stop for a moment there and say, that would be historically normal. In fact, if you discount the brief V-shaped dip that we saw during Covid, that Covid recession and rebound, if you discount that, which I would, because it was a pandemic, we're six years over for a recession. So we're headed probably at some point to a slowdown. No question about it. And that would be true no matter who's in the Oval Office. But the fact that you've got Donald Trump, and we're getting these bizarre decisions day by day, and he's literally throwing up the playbook economically and geopolitically of the last 40 years. Well, that's making markets a little nervous. And that may raise borrowing costs. And then you're into a question of do you see a slowdown at the same time that you see inflation going up? If that happens, you're into the stagflation problem of the 1970s, which some of us remember. I remember I was kid, but I remember my parents and gas lines. David Chalian 00:09:01 So does that mean — I mean, I know you're always on the lookout for all of it, but do you think we should be more on the lookout like on recession watch right now or on stagflation watch right now? Rana Foroohar 00:09:11 I think recession. I think a slowdown, it wouldn't surprise me. You know, I wouldn't say we're going to feel it strongly by the summer, but we might start to feel it into the fall. David Chalian 00:09:24 Wow. Obviously that will have enormous political ramifications... Rana Foroohar 00:09:28 For sure. David Chalian 00:09:29 Even if, as you said, it's not necessarily related to Trump's policies. But I do want to ask you, you mentioned Elon Musk and the layoffs. And can you help our listeners understand, what is the connection? I feel like we here at CNN and broadly in the media, like, tell the story of DOGE and Musk along one line as sort of like a government policy thing, and then we talk about the economy separately. Is there an intersection between what is happening with the federal government workforce and the American economy? Rana Foroohar 00:09:58 'That's a really interesting question. So let me answer that in kind of 2 or 3 parts. There is about 10 million federal workers. So that's a not insignificant number of people. If you lay off enough of them, yeah, that does start to have an effect on unemployment numbers for sure. It is already having just at a regional level in the Washington, in the sort of Beltway orbit, it's definitely having a dampening effect on the economy. People are, you know, they're not buying homes as much. They don't know whether they're going to have a job. They don't know what's going to happen. Washington's a company town, right. And the company is the government. So definitely seeing some regional slowdowns there. Now, at what point does say the dismantling of entire agencies start to have a knock-on effect? And one of the things I'm watching closely here is housing, because the housing market is complicated, and it's at the center of the American economy. If housing is good, generally, the economy is good. If housing is in trouble, then the economy starts to be shaky. And one of the things Doge has been doing lately is just slashing and burning in different ways that are actually starting to have an impact at the margins. Let me give you one small example. There was the first few days into the administration, DOGE actually slashed some budget for a small operation that actually sets the rates for unusual kinds of mortgages, like jumbo mortgages, really big ones, which, by the way, if you own a house in major metropolitan areas in America, you may well have a jumbo mortgage because you need it, because houses are expensive. So suddenly, for about 48 hours, the market didn't have a price on jumbo mortgages. Well then, whoops, they come back in and they actually re-fund that particular operation within one of the housing agencies. I would love — and I don't know this for a fact — but I would love to know what happened. Did some market participants say, wait a minute, we're going to end up with no jumbo mortgages available in another week if you guys don't fix this? These are the kinds of things, particularly when you have an incoming head of the new Federal Housing Authority that would like to slash and burn, would like to get rid of major parts of the housing bureaucracy of government. You know, you can argue we should have fewer regulators, but, boy, you got to be careful. And I don't love the idea of a 22-year-old that's never had a job coming in and trying to, like, figure out what to cut in the American housing system. David Chalian 00:12:32 'That's fair, it seems. My other question — you had mentioned when we were chatting earlier that, you know, Donald Trump is sort of upending both the economic and global order of the last 40 years, you said. And I'm wondering if there are economic ramifications for the way Donald Trump has been approaching the Ukraine-Russia war. Does that intersect with our economy? Rana Foroohar 00:12:56 Oh, boy, does it ever. I mean, gosh, in so many ways. I'll start with the biggest, which is that, you know, until quite recently, we knew that the Washington consensus was shifting. We knew America wasn't the only center of gravity of the world anymore. I mean, Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor under Biden, actually gave a pretty important speech about that, saying, Washington consensus is over. We're in a more multipolar world. But we kind of thought that the poles were America and its allies and China and its allies. And we thought that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea were kind of in one basket. And the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, you know, and associates were in another. Trump just upended that. He's saying, I want to be in bed with Putin. I mean that, first of all, the idea that maybe he thinks he's Nixon, and he's somehow going to like shift the trajectory of Russia's political economy, I don't think so. I do not think so. And also, P.S. even if you could, why would you want to side with Russia over Europe? I mean, Russia is a failing state that has some natural resources and nuclear weapons. You know, why in God's name would you not want to side with the world's largest trading bloc, which is the European Union? There's also very strange things happening. Like, you know, there was, the FT actually did an interesting piece the other day on how American investors are going to pay Russia to rebuild the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which takes gas into Europe, into Germany in particular. Well, for starters, I don't think Europeans are necessarily going to want to buy that gas. I think they got pretty burnt the last time that Russia played petropolitics. But also, if you're America, why don't you want to ship our own natural gas over there? And so that makes me think, is somebody paying somebody? Is somebody — what is this? What is the game plan? Because there is, you know, I'm pretty good at economic strategy. I don't see one here. David Chalian 00:14:54 And then my last question for you, and this is far off yet. So I apologize because the Congress is nowhere near yet passing the tax cuts. But I do wonder if Trump and the Republican legislative agenda to make permanent his 2017 tax cuts, does that ease some of the market concern about the current uncertainty of his actions? Rana Foroohar 00:15:18 Well, I mean, this is why I think a large part of the business community is still okay, maybe we'll get our tax cuts, maybe we'll get our deregulation, and they're not really speaking out, and they're not being very vocal about the amount of disruption that this president is causing with tariffs and with the geopolitical changes we've just spoken about. I don't think that these tax cuts and any deregulation that we see is going to have the same kick that it did the first time around, because we are just several more years down a market cycle that, as we spoke about earlier, was ready to change anyway. Economies rise, they fall, they rise, they fall. That's natural. We are historically overdue for a slowdown, and we're going to get it, whether it's sharp or more moderate and shorter will, I think, have a lot to do with all the things we've just talked about. David Chalian 00:16:06 Rana, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Rana Foroohar 00:16:09 Thank you. David Chalian 00:16:12 That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political Briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Faiz Jamil. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from: Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.
