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Fire crews Push to Contain Los Angeles Fires; Trump Suggest Banning People with Ties to Critics from his Administration; DeSantis Picks Ashley Moody to Replace Rubio. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired January 16, 2025 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:30:00]
TRACI PARK (D), LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL: -- the pipe is broken, all the gas lines and water lines, all of the power lines were down from the fire. And so, they have been on the ground going house to house, making sure those things are off and clearing the area so that we can begin the process of getting folks back in to at least see what if anything may be left of their home.
In the Brentwood area because of the number of first responder vehicles coming in and out, utilities being turned off just as a preventative measure as the firefighters continue to work in the area, we have not allowed folks to return home yet. But I am pushing our partners to ensure that this happens as soon as possible. I understand the frustration and the need of people to go home.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. And, Council Member, last month at a fire commission meeting, I understand you warned that resources were being strained beyond the risk -- beyond the brink, I should say, despite the fire risk in the area. You said this -- we can show this to our viewers, time and time again, elected leaders in L.A. have failed to make meaningful investments in our public safety. And as a result, Angelenos are suffering the consequences.
I suppose you still stand by that. And what do you make of whether the resources might have made a difference if we had more of them as these fires were spreading?
PARK: Well, our fire department has been chronically understaffed and under resourced for decades. Staffing in the fire department was decimated following the financial recession in 2008, and it has never fully recovered.
In the issues that I was speaking about at Fire Commission 21 days before this devastating event occurred in my council district that displaced and ruined the lives of thousands of my friends and constituents, we talked about the fact that we have dozens of rigs sitting in a mechanic shard with no one to fix them. We talked about the fact that many of our stations are in disrepair.
And that just on an average day here in the city of Los Angeles, we don't have adequate resources to meet our demand. We have about the same number of firefighters and fire stations in 2025 that we had in 1960, but our population has grown substantially and the calls for service have quadrupled, but we have not added 911 operators or firefighters and paramedics to address that load. On any given day in Los Angeles, there are stations with no resources.
ACOSTA: And, Council Member, I mean, who's to blame for that?
PARK: Again, this is decades of chronic under investment. This is not any one administration. It is not any one budget year. It is the fact of we have many, many competing priorities, including an ongoing homelessness crisis that we are throwing a billion dollars a year at and making virtually no progress. We're starting to see the tide turn on that, but we have not focused on the core municipal services, public safety, high functioning infrastructure that's necessary.
ACOSTA: Do we have a clear answer as to where folks are going to go? I mean, that's something that we've been hearing is that people just don't know what to do, where they're going to live.
PARK: That's right. And I'm hearing that from dozens of my constituents who not only don't know where they're going to live, but they have kids that need to go back to school. That's uncertain when they're going to be able to get home and begin the process of rebuilding if that's what they choose to do.
But I want to let folks know the FEMA and Red Cross have set up a disaster recovery center at the UCLA Research Park. It used to be the Westwood Pavilion. All resources are set up there, from the Department of Insurance, where you can begin filing claims, to FEMA, to register for benefits, the DMV, to get your documents replaced. Our City Department of Planning, Building and Safety, Bureau of Engineering, they are all on hand for one-on-one concierge service so folks can get their questions answered.
ACOSTA: All right. Thank you very much for that information. We'll make sure to pass that along as much as we can. Councilwoman Traci Park, thanks very much for your time. All the best. Best of luck in these coming days. We appreciate it.
PARK: Stay safe.
ACOSTA: All right. Still to come, as President-Elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next week, he is now suggesting he will blacklist people from working his administration who have ties to his prominent critics. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:35:00]
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): That is why today I'm proud to announce that I am selecting our attorney general, Ashley Moody, to serve as our next U.S. senator.
ACOSTA: All right. Right now, you just saw it there, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announcing the appointment to replace Marco Rubio in his seat in the United States Senate. Let's discuss with CNN Political Commentator Jamal Simmons and Republican strategist Doug Heye. Doug, let me start with you first. What do you think?
DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST AND FORMER RNC COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: You know, we've heard so many names bantered about, starting with Laura Trump some months ago. There were speculations she would run in North Carolina as well. It's a young, she's 49 years old, a woman who's been elected repeatedly statewide. So, you know, we're going to see releases from the RNC and the Senate Republican Conference saying why she's great.
[10:40:00]
The DNC and the Democrats in the Senate are going to say why she's terrible. But the reality is, she will be sworn in as a senator very soon. She's been elected by a pretty comfortable margin statewide in Florida before. She could be around for a long time.
ACOSTA: Yes. And, Jamal, I do want to ask you about something that Donald Trump put up on Truth Social. The president-elect suggesting he will blacklist anyone who has worked with or been supported by people who have criticized him. And you see the list of names. There are people like John Bolton, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, James Mattis, Mark Esper. What do you make of all that? I mean, Pam Bondi has said that there will not be an enemies list over at the Justice Department, but we're not hearing the same thing from Donald Trump about the White House.
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR VP HARRIS: I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Listen, I think every president wants to make sure that people who work for him or her -- soon to be her, hopefully. Every president wants to make sure that the staff comes to work for them is going to be some people who, you know, align with their views and their values and people who support them.
We all go through being vetted when we go to work in the White House and they ask you questions about what you might have said and asked me questions about critical things I said about Joe Biden when I went to the Biden White House. But the question is, are they hiring people who are going to exercise their best judgment on behalf of the American people and are going to try to fix the institutions that the American people want them to fix to make their lives better or are they just hiring people who are going to be stooges and flunkies for Donald Trump and do whatever it is he wants to do and not tell the emperor when he's not wearing clothes?
They've -- that's the part that concerns me. It's not all the kind of back and forth about the, you know, what happens inside of the administration. The question is, what are they going to do for the American people that comports with what -- why it is they elected him and sent him there?
ACOSTA: Yes. And, Doug, I -- and Jamal, I do want to play some of President Biden's final address to the American people last night, he warned that there's an oligarchy that is taking shape in this country. Let's listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy. I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Doug, what do you think? I asked Tim Kaine about this earlier on in the program. He said it, it echoes what Dwight Eisenhower said about a military industrial complex when he was leaving the White House.
HEYE: In politics, you can say anything, blank, industrial complex, and you've identified an enemy and you can, you know, sort of build from there. There are real concerns about what's happening in social media, in legacy media, as a lot of that is falling apart. We see so many departures at the Washington Post and people moving into sort of new media spaces. Right to be concerns about what's happening with TikTok and at X or Twitter, whatever you call it.
But also, I think Joe Biden's whistling in the wind. A lot of people just didn't watch him or listen to him. I sure didn't.
ACOSTA: Jamal, what do you think?
SIMMONS: I think this is a speech is going to stand for the ages. This is one of the fundamental questions of our time. How is it that we're going to deal with the extraordinary amount of wealth that is disproportionately going to just a very few people, the political power they're able to wield to do that, a president who can't be checked illegally at all by any of the things he's done. He's basically immune, as the Supreme Court says.
So, what you see is all this power sort of aggregating at the top of the scale with the elites. And you see people sort of saying, no, we want more. We want a country that's going to respond to us and do the things that we want. Donald Trump promised to be one of those presidents.
But if you look at how they're stacking up, you look at how they're putting this all together, that doesn't seem to be the case. And I think they're setting themselves up to really have their clock cleaned in the next election in the midterms. If the Democrats can get their act together and actually make a case about how they want to fix institutions in order to make them work for the American people, not just defend those institutions.
ACOSTA: All right. Guys, hold those thoughts. I want to take a quick break. We'll talk about more of this after a quick break. Be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:45:00]
ACOSTA: And I'm back with my panel today. Confirmation hearings will be held for Trump's picks to lead HUD, the EPA, Interior and Treasury. And, Doug, at first it seemed like some of these more controversial choices like Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., Kash Patel, might not get confirmed. Now, it appears they may all go through. Do you think any of these picks go down at this point?
HEYE: It's possible that one or two, but just that. And, you know, because when things get involved with Donald Trump, we view them in a very different lens quite often. The reality is, a Democratic president or a Republican president with a Senate of his own party gets almost all of his nominees through, if not all of them. And if they go to a floor vote, they do not lose. And so, I think we have to start with that.
And as we've watched these confirmation hearings like, you know, yesterday and so forth, OK, you have these bombshell moments that get attention, but this is all about math. Can you get four Republicans to vote no on any of these? And if you can't, they're confirmed.
ACOSTA: Yes. I mean, Jamal, I'm trying to tick off the names in my head where you might get those four. I mean, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, maybe Senator Cassidy of Louisiana has bucked Trump in the past, maybe Mitch McConnell, but can you get all four of them on any one of these picks? What do you think?
SIMMONS: I doubt you're going to get all four of them on any one of these picks. You know, the reality is, as Doug was saying, the president is going to get most of what he wants. I think most of the damage that was done in these nominees happened before they actually got to the committee hearings.
Now, we'll see what happens with people like Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel. I think those are ones where there's a lot of people in America -- in Washington who are very concerned about what it looks like to have an FBI that's under the thumb of Donald Trump for him to just sort of flick his finger and decide to go after people when they feel like it.
[10:50:00]
I think a lot of people, Republicans and Democrats alike, ought to be concerned. I mean, think about what happened to Mike Pence, you know, on January 6th, Donald Trump didn't care that he'd been loyal, you know, for three years and 11 and a half months. He wasn't loyal on the day that he wanted him to be. So, he went after him. So, I think there are a lot of people who are concerned about that.
But most of these other folks, I think they're probably going to get there. And the American people may find that they elected somebody is going to lower their prices and deal with their anxiety about all the changes happening in America, and instead, they've got somebody who just wants to get money for his friends. ACOSTA: Yes. And going back to that Truth Social post that we were showing earlier, I mean, you mentioned Mike Pence. I mean, anybody who's worked for Mike Pence, apparently, they're on this list too. Doug, I mean, are we going to have an administration that is just chock-full of ultra-loyalists? How do you run a government that way? Don't you need to have expertise? Don't you need to have the career civil servants who've been there, done that, know what they're talking about?
HEYE: Yes. So, I'm a Catholic, which means I believe in converts. And in politics, politics is usually about addition, not subtraction. So, sure, if you were somebody who was working on the January 6th Committee for Liz Cheney, you're probably not really high in line to get a job in the administration. That sort of makes sense. But to just say with a broad swathe, I don't want any of these people, win some converts and you can get real pros into some of these areas where you need them.
ACOSTA: And I did want to ask you about the story in The Washington Post this morning, Doug, and what we -- and Jamal as well, what we may be seeing next week. The story is a deportation at light speed, how Trump's crackdown could unfold. Doug, it doesn't sound to me like the American people have really come to grips with what we may see next week. You have Trump advisers talking about this being shock and awe next week.
HEYE: Well, two things. One, Donald Trump promises a lot of shock and awe, and that's very much a Hollywood production. And then, sometimes the details aren't exactly what they were promised to be. But also, immigration is on Donald Trump's favor.
So, what we see -- what the reaction is, depends on what we see. If Donald Trump is able to outline, we got rid of these people who were drug dealers and kingpins and rapists and all these other things, people who are, you know, actual criminals. The public's going to applaud him on that. If all of a sudden, we see --
ACOSTA: Administrations, Republican and Democrat have deported criminal migrants in the past.
HEYE: Sure. But what we could see Donald Trump do is what he does with executive orders in the past. You know, he would sign it, regardless of what it said. He would hold it up and say, look what I just did. And if he says, these drug kingpins are gone, the public will support him.
ACOSTA: Jamal, what do you think? If we see -- if we start to see families --
SIMMONS: Well, I think if they go after --
ACOSTA: -- mixed status families, if you see families with U.S. citizens, if we're talking about light speed deportation, that's how The Washington Post is describing it.
SIMMONS: Listen, Americans have been unsettled by economic challenges that have faced them for decades, have been unsettled by the kind of cultural changes. They're still trying to sort of wrestle with and get their arms around.
But you know what? The American people are not, they're not cruel. And I think we saw that the last time when we had those things about kids who have been separated from families and people who are living in with mylar blankets and what looked like cages. The American people aren't cruel.
And if they have images or a sense that what's happening is real live human beings are being treated in a cruel and inhumane way, they're being -- American citizens are being deported to other countries because their parents are here without legal papers, I think if they see that, I don't know how that will survive over the course of time.
ACOSTA: All right. We'll be watching.
HEYE: I agree with Jamal. The reaction will depend on what we actually see.
ACOSTA: Yes, absolutely. All right. Guys, thank you so much. We appreciate it. We have more news coming up after the break.
But first, this week's Chasing Life.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
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(END VIDEOTAPE)
[10:55:00]
ACOSTA: Thank you all for joining me this morning. I want to take a moment to talk about something President Biden said during his farewell address. He warned the free press is crumbling in this country. I would add that's only if we the people let that happen. Journalists exist to seek the truth, to tell people's stories, to lift up voices that may not be heard otherwise, to shine a light on injustice and to hold the powerful accountable. We are not the enemy of the people. We are the defenders of the people. Walter Cronkite once said freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.
I want to take a moment to show you something. A woman sent me this sign eight years ago. She --
[11:00:00]