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Aides Defend U.S. Takeover of Gaza, Back Off Some Elements; Backlash Against Elon Musk; Trump White House Targets Federal Workers for Mass Layoffs; Sweden Mourns Worst Mass Shooting in Country's History; Price of Eggs Jump Due to Bird Flu Outbreaks. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired February 06, 2025 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is an out-of-the-box idea. That's who President Trump is. It's a demolition site right now. It's not a livable place for any human being.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A demolition site because the U.S. funded that demolition by air, by sea, by ground.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): What Musk is doing is illegal and unconstitutional. Congress holds the purse strings.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The way people drink is changing. Start the night drinking beer. This would be your black stripe. We have a non- alcoholic gin and tonic here. This is your white stripe. Go back to alcohol. Another black stripe. Simple.
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ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster and Christina Macfarlane.
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us from the U.S. and around the world. I'm Max Foster.
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christina Macfarlane. It's Thursday, February 6th, 9 a.m. here in London and we begin with Donald Trump's plan for the U.S. takeover of Gaza. It's drawing widespread criticism from allies including Saudi Arabia, China, Russia and, of course, the Palestinians.
FOSTER: Mr. Trump wants the more than 2 million people who live in Gaza to be relocated. But the White House and others in the administration are now walking back several of his key assertions.
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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Let me just take a step back here because this is an out-of-the-box idea. That's who President Trump is. But that does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza. It does not mean American taxpayers will be funding this effort. It means Donald Trump, who is the best dealmaker on the planet, is going to strike a deal with our partners in the region.
MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: So what he very generously -- has very generously offered is the ability of the United States to go in and help with debris removal, help with munitions removal, help with reconstruction, the rebuilding of homes and businesses and things of this nature so that then people can move back in.
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MACFARLANE: Well, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the plan during an interview on Fox News, its defense minister is ordering the military to prepare for the voluntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza. But Egypt and Jordan are rejecting Mr. Trump's plea to take them in, and Palestinians in the region insist they won't give up their land. Even some U.S. Republicans are questioning how the plan puts America first.
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SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): I'm not supportive of having the American people pay to rebuild. I don't think that's our responsibility.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So sending in U.S. troops.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Doesn't make sense.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It may not work out the way he envisioned it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: More now from CNN's Jeff Zeleny, reporting from the White House.
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JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF U.S. NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Against a wave of backlash from Republican senators and indeed leaders around the world, the White House moved to explain and walk back a bit President Trump's stunning statement from Tuesday night that the U.S. will, quote, own the Gaza Strip and make moves to develop it.
Now, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Palestinians would only have to be temporarily relocated. That was at odds with what the president said one day earlier. He said there would be a permanent resettlement.
But there was still some question about the fact that if the president would be willing to send U.S. forces to the region, the press secretary said the president was leaving it open for this reason.
LEAVITT: I think the president is very good when he's making deals and negotiating not to rule out anything because he wants to preserve that leverage in negotiations. And so I think that's what he's doing here. ZELENY: So laying this out in terms of any ordinary deal the president has done certainly flies in the face of what he has long talked about. He has long criticized the never-ending wars, in his views, and longstanding foreign entanglements. But there certainly are some questions now.
Is this just an opening gambit? If so, how will this affect the second phase of the peace process? But White House advisers are saying the president, yes, is still serious about the idea of developing Gaza and of moving the 1.8 million Palestinians, but there is no doubt. One thing is certain. The president said everyone loves this plan. That simply is not true. Leaders in the Arab world, of course, and European nations as well, pushed back considerably on that.
Republican senators also said that there simply would not be an appetite for an investment of aid from the U.S. or forces as well.
[04:05:00]
So there's some doubt now, just one day after the president made that stunning announcement in the White House, what the future of that may be. But he certainly is committed to doing something new, he said, in the Middle East.
Jeff Zeleny, CNN, the White House.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: So how do Americans feel about the U.S. taking a lead role in the reconstruction of Gaza? An Ipsos Knowledge Panel poll from last year shows only 37 percent support for the idea. 57 percent are opposed.
Interestingly, support was lowest among President Trump's base of Republicans.
FOSTER: The same poll asked about using U.S. military power to defend Israel. 32 percent were in support, 44 percent opposed. And as for Palestinians' view of Donald Trump's leadership during his first term as president, only 10 percent approved, 78 percent say they disapprove, those results coming from a Gallup poll.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister is expected to meet U.S. lawmakers in the coming hours.
MACFARLANE: This comes after Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with Pete Hegseth, the newly confirmed Secretary of Defense, at the Pentagon on Wednesday, and also his meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Now hundreds of thousands of U.S. government workers could be facing mass layoffs, part of Mr. Trump's efforts to downsize the federal workforce.
FOSTER: So far, about 40,000 workers have taken what the administration calls deferred resignation, but that offer expires in the coming hours, and the White House wants to eliminate up to 200,000 positions.
MACFARLANE: Multiple sources tell CNN the CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email listing all new hires who have been with the agency for less than -- for two years or less. The move could potentially expose the office's identities to hackers.
FOSTER: And Elon Musk is now taking aim at Medicare and Medicaid. His team has been given access to the agencies which oversee health care coverage for more than 150 million Americans. Democrats oppose Musk's role in the White House, and now even some Republicans are expressing their concerns.
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SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): There have to be guardrails, obviously, on what information he accesses, but more importantly, what he does with it.
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MACFARLANE: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders spoke with CNN about Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration and the impact on the government for ordinary Americans.
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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): When you see, since Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk becoming $150 billion richer. In two and a half weeks, $150 billion richer. You tell me whether or not we are living in an oligarchy.
And I think the function of government under Trump, under Elon Musk, will not be to serve ordinary people, but to make the very richest people in this country even richer.
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FOSTER: The senator also reacted to Musk's efforts to gut federal agencies.
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SANDERS: What Musk is doing is illegal and unconstitutional. You cannot go into an agency like USAID and essentially fire everybody and get rid of that agency. You cannot do that. That's an agency that was created by Congress. They want to get rid of USAID, fine. Come to the Congress, make your case. You can't do it unilaterally.
You cannot withhold U.S. funds that were appropriated for Medicaid, for community health centers, for Head Start. You cannot put a freeze on that. That money was appropriated by the Congress. And as I hope every fourth grader in America knows, Congress holds the purse strings.
(END VIDEO CLIP) FOSTER: The nation's largest federation of labor unions has filed an emergency lawsuit to block Musk and his team from unlawfully accessing the private data of American workers.
MACFARLANE: CNN's Rene Marsh talks to a mother of three who's now facing unemployment as her job is threatened by Mr. Trump's plans to downsize the government.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I keep having to start over.
RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And this was not supposed to be the thing that you needed to start over from.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt like going to the federal government was a way to find stability over the long-term --
MARSH (voice-over): This woman who spoke with CNN on the condition that she remain anonymous was in one of the first groups targeted by an executive order. Employees connected to DEI programs. A single parent with three kids, school loans, steep rent, and now facing unemployment.
MARSH: What is the general feeling across government amongst your fellow federal workers right now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Grief. They're angry, many that are confused, but all kind of grieving in their own way. The work that many of us do directly impacts the lives of some of our most vulnerable citizens. The people that we serve through these programs that are going to be in far dire straits than we are.
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MARSH (voice-over): It's a story playing out across all agencies of the U.S. government. 2.4 million jobs, the country's largest employer, now in the Trump administration's crosshairs for a dramatic downsizing.
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): They're shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they're saving money.
MARSH (voice-over): CNN has spoken to federal workers at multiple agencies, all who have been placed on administrative leave and are worried about being fired. But even those whose jobs had nothing to do with DEI have been targeted, according to a union president, some because they had participated in diversity training under the first Trump administration. Others had volunteered to plan events like celebrating Black History Month.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a perfect storm. You are sidelining a lot of your federal workers, making them feel fearful. And it doesn't take long for these systems to kind of break down. And for the institutional knowledge that's lost to have like real world impacts. MARSH (voice-over): At least 75 career employees at the Department of Education faced the same fate, also placed on indefinite leave, as the president crafts an executive order that will urge Congress to pass legislation that would shut down the agency.
The Trump administration's plan to slash the federal government includes firing employees who have been on the job less than a year, offering buyouts and restructuring job titles, classifying employees as political appointments, making it easier to fire them.
REP. DON BEYER (D-VA): I would characterize it as chaos. In just department after department, people have no idea who their leader is, what their job is. Can they come to work tomorrow? It's really the worst thing I've seen in federal government in my life.
MARSH: How does it feel to be targeted for the work that you're so passionate about? It's OK, you can take your time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It actually makes me proud of the people that I've worked with and the things that we've done.
MARSH (voice-over): Rene Marsh, CNN, Washington.
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FOSTER: Mourners left flowers at a candle-lit vigil on Wednesday for the victims of Sweden's worst mass shooting. At least 10 people were killed and six others injured on Tuesday after a lone gunman opened fire at an adult education center.
MACFARLANE: Police discovered the attacker's body at the scene, but they haven't named him yet. More now on what police in Orebro, west of Stockholm, are learning about the gunman. CNN's Melissa Bell has this report.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A nation in mourning, left reeling after an afternoon of horror on Tuesday.
ULF KRISTERSSON, SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We've today seen brutal deadly violence against completely innocent people. This is the worst mass shooting in Swedish history.
BELL (voice-over): At least 10 people killed with more injured in a massacre at an adult school in the city of Orebro, central Sweden. Witnesses spoke of bangs and screams from inside the building as the rampage unfolded.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): A guy next to me was shot in the shoulder. He was bleeding a lot. When I looked behind me, I saw three people on the floor bleeding. Everyone was shocked. The police were not on site and neither was the ambulance, so we had to help.
BELL (voice-over): Authorities now believe the perpetrator, found dead at the scene, shot himself. Police have ruled out terror or gang violence as possible motives.
ROBERTO EID FOREST, OREBRO POLICE DISTRICT CHIEF (through translator): There's much to suggest that it's a solitary act. And that's the picture we have right now.
BELL (voice-over): Sweden has grappled with gang related violent crime in recent years. But scenes like those at Orebro are rare. Such violence in a school has stunned the country.
In the words of the prime minister, a darkness fell over Sweden on Tuesday night, and as dawn broke a tide of questions and grief to come.
Melissa Bell, CNN, Orebro.
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MACFARLANE: Now heavy rain in northern Bolivia flooded a small community on Tuesday, affecting at least 100 families and submerging many homes.
FOSTER: The rainfall lasted for hours and caused a stream to overflow. Rescue teams were deployed, but the government says 30 families are in temporary shelter.
MACFARLANE: More extreme wet weather is expected in the coming hours in California. It's fueled by an atmospheric river that's already dumped record rainfall, unleashing fierce winds and heavy mountain snow, and led to flooded roads and landslides across the state. Another storm with up to an inch of rain is set to arrive today and could renew those threats.
FOSTER: But it's expected to be less intense than previous storms, and the rain could be good for the parched landscape and reduce the threat of additional wildfires that have devastated California in recent weeks.
Now, crews are working to assess the latest damage and clear debris. It's unclear when some roads could reopen.
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MACFARLANE: America's most lucrative sports league is headed to the land down under. The National Football League announced Wednesday that it will hold a regular season game in Australia for the first time ever. Los Angeles Rams will take on an opponent that has yet to be revealed in the iconic Melbourne cricket ground known as the G.
FOSTER: The NFL calls the expansion to Australia significant, a step expanding the league's international footprint, and claims there are roughly 6.5 million NFL fans across Australia. They are sports fans, aren't they?
MACFARLANE: Yes, not surprising, though, right?
FOSTER: No. MACFARLANE: Now, the cost of eggs in the United States has risen so much that someone decided it would be worth it to steal 100,000 of them. Details on that ahead.
FOSTER: Plus, there's a new drinking trend sweeping the pubs. We'll tell you about zebra striping. It helps you drink less alcohol, apparently.
MACFARLANE: Here's hoping. And later, three days and counting until a possible three-page predictions on the Chiefs-Eagles match-up in a Super Bowl 59 right here on CNN NEWSROOM.
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FOSTER: Investigators are trying to find out who stole $40,000 worth of eggs in Pennsylvania. Police say some 100,000 eggs were taken from a distribution trailer on Saturday night.
MACFARLANE: Well, the avian flu has caused the price of eggs in the United States to skyrocket up to 36 percent year-over-year last December. The USDA says nearly half of all birds killed by the virus last year were egg-laying hens who died in November and December.
FOSTER: The price of eggs has surged since Donald Trump won the U.S. election. That's despite his campaign to promise to lower egg prices and the prices of all groceries. CNN's Nick Watt has the story.
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FRANK HILLIKER, OWNER, HILLIKER FARMS: And you can have two.
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Frank Hilliker is rationing his eggs. The line forms around 7:00 a.m.
WATT: How many eggs do you eat?
EMILIE SOUTHWARD, SHOPPER AT HILLIKER FARMS: Myself, probably, three -- three a day.
WATT: What?
SOUTHWARD: Yes.
WATT: That's a lot, no?
SOUTHWARD: That's a normal amount.
HILLIKER: Two dozen.
WATT (voice-over): The average American eats about 284 eggs a year. Well, they used to.
WATT: You're consciously dialing back on the eggs.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, for sure, yeah.
WATT: Because of the price?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.
WATT: President Donald Trump claims the high price of eggs helped him win the White House.
TRUMP: They were double and triple the price over a short period of time. And I won an election based on that.
WATT (voice-over): He made wild promises.
TRUMP: We're going to bring prices way down, and we're going to get it done fast.
WATT (voice-over): Then he got egged in the first White House briefing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Egg prices have skyrocketed since President Trump took office.
WATT (voice-over): Democratic lawmakers urged him in a letter to crack down on corporate profiteering.
HILLIKER: They put price controls on things, but now, all of a sudden, we're Cuba or Venezuela. You know, who wants to be like that?
WATT (voice-over): Waffle House just introduced a temporary 50 cent egg surcharge. And Roberto's tacos -- around the corner from Franks Farm is charging customers an extra buck 50 for all eggy dishes.
WATT: Who are they blaming?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, they take it out on me.
WATT: Smells rather noticeable.
HILLIKER: What smell?
WATT: Do you eat a lot of them?
HILLIKER: No.
WATT: They're too expensive.
HILLIKER: It's gone from $2 to $3 a dozen to $9 a dozen.
WATT: That's massive.
HILLIKER: It is, crazy.
WATT (voice-over): And predicted by the USDA to climb even higher.
HILLIKER: Current egg shortages because of the bird flu.
WATT: It is, fully.
HILLIKER: Because of the bird flu.
WATT (voice-over): The only way to stop the spread is to cull millions of infected birds, so slashing egg supply.
HILLIKER: These astronomical prices are all due on supply and demand. Economics 101. There's nothing Biden could have done to stop the bird flu. Look, there's nothing President Trump could have done to stop the bird flu. It's neither of their fault.
WATT: You literally have all your eggs in one basket.
HILLIKER: Yes I do. You got to be careful with that.
WATT: There are so many other bad egg wordplays that we could use, but --
HILLIKER: Exactly.
WATT (voice-over): Nick Watt, CNN, Lakeside, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: How many eggs a day do you eat, Max?
FOSTER: I don't know. On average, probably half.
MACFARLANE: Half an egg?
FOSTER: Well, only because I don't have one every day. I was taken by how big those eggs were, though, so get more for your money.
MACFARLANE: OK.
FOSTER: Ahead, while surrounded by young girls, President Trump takes action to keep transgender athletes from competing against them.
MACFARLANE: Plus, a stark reality check for Syria. After the fall of the Assad regime, the country wants to rebuild, but who is it going to pay for it?
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MACFARLANE: Hi, welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. Here are some of the top stories we're following today.
Across Turkey today, commemorations are being held to mark the second anniversary of earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people. The quakes affected 11 Turkish provinces and left more than 1.5 million people homeless.
Ukrainian prisoners of war held captive by Russia returned home on Wednesday. They are released as part of a prisoner swap. Each side exchanged 150 POWs in a deal mediated by the United Arab Emirates. The Russian government said their released prisoners are currently in Belarus.
And New Zealand is marking the anniversary of one of the country's founding documents. Thousands gathered in Waitangi where the treaty was signed in 1840 by the British Crown and Maori chiefs. The treaty laid down many governing principles still in force in New Zealand today. This year's anniversary comes amid controversial efforts in recent months to reinterpret the treaty.
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