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Soon, House GOP Leaders to Visit Trump as Infighting Escalates; Several Legal Challenges Launched Against Trump's Policies; Soon, Key Senate Committee Meets on Kash Patel's Path to FBI Director. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired February 06, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

And we are following multiple breaking news stories right now. In moments, President Trump will return to the White House, he'll meet with Speaker Johnson and senior house leaders, Republicans, as infighting escalates about how to advance Trump's agenda.

Also right now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on Capitol Hill. He's hailing Trump's proposal to own and develop Gaza as a, quote, remarkable idea.

Plus, Kash Patel's nomination for FBI director front and center in front of a key committee this hour. We are live on Capitol Hill with what the senators are saying.

And we have a very special interview for you this morning. In moments, I have an exclusive interview with California Governor Gavin Newsom. He just met with President Trump about rebuilding after the devastating wildfires, and he's also been on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers. Plus, I'll ask him about this moment right here when they met on the tarmac in Los Angeles before touring the damaged. Again, he is here for an exclusive interview ahead, so be sure to stick around for that.

And we begin this hour with brand new CNN reporting, a party in power and maybe in need of unifying. Later this hour, Speaker Mike Johnson will lead a group of his senior House Republicans to a meeting with President Trump. The goal, to fuse GOP and fighting.

We are covering all the angles of this busy morning. CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House and Evan Perez is here with us. Elena, I want to kick it off with you. What more can you tell us about the president's impending meeting with House Republicans.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, we do know, Pamela, that House Republican leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, but also those who are really pushing for one broader budget bill. Of course, something that is top of mind for leaders on Capitol Hill right now. That includes Jody Arrington and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith. Jody Arrington is the budget chair. All of them set to meet with the president at the White House today to really talk through the different options.

Now, I can tell you from my conversations with White House officials that this is also something that is preoccupying the mind of the president. He really wants Congress to fall in line behind him, to get behind him, to really pass all of the things that he said he had wanted to do, all the things he promised on the campaign trail.

Now, just to give you a little insight into how the Hill is looking at this, you have the people in the House, like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Arrington and Smith who want one broader, what they're calling a reconciliation bill to get done a lot of the President's priorities, all the things from the border to taxes, to energy.

However, we've also seen people in the Senate, Senate Republicans, kind of grow impatient with waiting on the House. We have people like Senator Lindsey Graham and Majority Leader John Thune, all of them wanting to give Donald Trump an early win on some of those key priorities. They are pushing for two bills. The White House position right now and the president, he said he really just wants to do anything that will get his agenda passed.

BROWN: And I want to follow up with something else. An Israeli political source tells CNN that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gifted President Trump a golden pager. Tell us more about the meaning behind that.

TREENE: Right. And so this was a reporting from our colleague based in Jerusalem, Mick Krever. He reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as you mentioned, Pamela, gifted President Donald Trump while they met at the White House earlier this week a golden pager, really kind of symbolizing the Israeli attack back in September on Lebanon that, you know, targeted pagers used by Hezbollah members. Of course, that was a day that, you know, several people died in Lebanon because of that attack. Krever is reporting that that is something that Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, gifted Donald Trump. In return, we are told that Trump gave Netanyahu a signed photograph of the two of them. He also signed the photograph, quote, to Bibi, a great gift to be a great leader. That was according to a photo that his son, Netanyahu's son, posted on Instagram.

But, again, I mean, the golden pager we know on September 17, thousands of explosions struck Hezbollah through that, so a very interesting gift that he gave the president, Pamela.

BROWN: Yes, it certainly is.

All right, let's bring in Evan Perez. So, President Trump's Department of Justice, on day one, Pam Bondi, we should note she just started yesterday, asked for the FBI to disband this team that combats foreign interference in our elections, right? EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right, yes. And this is part of a number of orders that she signed in her first day, a very, very busy first day, and this is one of them that has to do with national security.

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Now, look, I think, you know, disbanding this task force doesn't mean that the FBI is not going to be doing these investigations, but we do know that the new president, the president has always been a little bit annoyed at this idea that foreign interference in the elections may have helped him in his 2016 election. It's an irritant in the Trump relationship. So, getting rid of this is probably one way to curry favor with the president.

It doesn't mean, however, that they're not going to be doing these types of investigations. If you notice other things, one of the things that Bondi also put in place is a new October 7th task force. This is something actually inside the Justice Department prosecutors have been asking for and wanting more resources on. So, I think it's going to be welcome inside the FBI.

BROWN: And as we well know, we've been watching the president take some bold actions. There's going to be some hearings today about some of those actions that have been challenged, right? Walk us through that.

PEREZ: Well, one of the things that's going to happen today is a hearing on whether this effort to purge people at the FBI and the Justice Department, what the legality of this, whether the FBI needs to turn over these names and whether the Justice Department and the administration has to protect the identities of some of these agents who worked on January 6th investigations. That's been one of the big concerns.

And, look, the administration already has been on this back foot. They've been losing on a lot of these early moves. They lost already. They have -- a judge said it was unconstitutional for them to try to end birthright citizenship. They've also lost on this idea of freezing all government aid or spending, which, you know, is one of those indications of how things are going for the administration. Some of these things have been done very poorly. And that's the reason why you see judges having to step in.

So, we'll see how this hearing goes today on whether the identities of these FBI agents needs to be more protected by the administration.

BROWN: All right. Evan Perez, Alayna Treene, thank you so much.

Well, Elon Musk's DOGE takeover of the federal government is drastically ramping up. There's a new report from WIRED saying that the world's richest man's outsized role in the new administration is already raising some eyebrows in the president's inner circle. So, how long can this musk power play last?

Joining us now is Katie Drummond, global editorial director at WIRED. Hi, Katie. Thank you so much for joining the show.

So, you spoke with aides and advisors in and around the administration. Tell us more about what you have learned.

KATIE DRUMMOND, GLOBAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, WIRED: Thank you for having me. That's right. We spoke to about half a dozen people close to President Trump. So these are people inside and around the administration and they are frustrated. So, they are unhappy about a handful of things, right, one being the amount of power that Musk is now wielding across the federal government. The second is, you know, the headaches, quite frankly, that Musk and DOGE are creating for the administration. And the third and I think sort of the most notable here is really about how disorganized and chaotic they feel that this all is. There are members of the administration who have no idea what communication between DOGE and the White House is even supposed to look like.

BROWN: Yes. I mean, there's not a lot of transparency right now either about what is happening. I want to highlight part of this reporting, quote, a ride or die MAGA Republican operative who knows President Trump personally confided something to WIRED they never thought they'd find themselves saying before the past two weeks. Quote, there could be a collision course coming here at some point. They said when asked if there is a brewing freak out over Musk and Trump world, quote, he's getting too big for his breaches.

Musk appears, at least publicly, to have the full backing of the president. But did anyone WIRED spoke with have any insight on how the president himself feels about him right now?

DRUMMOND: Well, that is actually one of the big challenges for the individuals that we spoke to. As far as they can tell, the president remains very pleased with what Musk is doing, very pleased to have Musk on board and participating in this, you know, massive sort of series of changes that have gone on over the last few weeks. And, you know, these staffers and these operatives and these individuals close to the president aren't quite sure how to broach it with him, with Trump himself, you know, that they have concerns about Musk's actions.

So, this idea of a collision course is really around sort of, you know, at some point this is going to come to a head. You know, these individuals just aren't quite sure how to make that happen yet or when and how it will.

BROWN: Yes, everyone's kind of like, you know, on their tiptoes. They don't want to do anything, say anything that could get them in trouble. But it's just a matter of time, it sounds like from your reporting, until that sort of collision happened.

So, WIRED is also reporting this morning that there are questions around whether one of these DOGE staffers could even pass the background check usually required for access to sensitive government data.

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What more do we know about their past, security clearances and how this hiring process works?

DRUMMOND: Well, there's still a lot that we don't know actually about how this hiring process has worked in terms of bringing individuals into DOGE to work at the behest of Musk, right? That's certainly something that journalists at WIRED and I'm sure elsewhere are trying to ascertain.

You know, in terms of this one individual, this is a 19-year-old who has been brought into DOGE and working on, you know, what we believe to be highly sensitive matters. According to every expert that we spoke to this is somebody who shouldn't even be getting in the front door in terms of security clearance, given, you know, his, I would say, very colorful background, you know, some involvement with Russia, some involvement with China. You know, this is someone with a very peculiar online footprint going back several years now despite the fact that he is only 19, which has, you know, really raised some alarm bells among experts that we spoke to.

BROWN: Wow. Katie Drummond, thank you so much for all of your reporting to help us all better understand what is happening in our government right now. Thank you.

DRUMMOND: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: Still ahead, California governor Gavin Newsom joins me to discuss what working with President Trump looks like now versus the last time he was in the White House.

Plus, a busy day on Capitol Hill. CNN's Manu Raju is there. Could Kash Patel's nomination be in jeopardy? We'll find out.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Republicans are confident right now that they will have the votes to confirm Kash Patel. But we just caught up with a top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee about what the Democrats plan to do when this committee meets in a matter of moments. We'll tell you what he said when we come back.

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BROWN: Happening now on Capitol Hill, the path to Kash Patel's nomination as FBI director is front and center as a key committee is about to meet on his fate.

CNN's Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill. So, Manu, what more are you hearing from senators about Patel's future?

RAJU: Yes. We just talked to the Senate Democratic -- top Democrat on this committee, Dick Durbin, who indicated what he plans to Democrats plan to do here, which is to delay this vote by a week in the Senate Judiciary Committee. They have the power underneath the rules on this committee to delay it by a week, and that's precisely what he plans to do. Senator Lindsey Graham, the chair of the one of the top members of the committee walking into this room just now, so that will be delayed by a week. But we do ultimately expect him to get the votes to be approved by the committee sent to the floor of the United States Senate. The Republicans right now, very confident that their members will be in line, forcing him ultimately to get the job maybe in a couple of weeks' time.

Now, one of the big questions he's going to confront Kash Patel assume he's again, he is confirmed is how to deal with these FBI agents who have been singled out because of their work on the January 6th investigations. We know the Trump team has come out to try to find those specific people have been working on those cases. The chairman of this committee, Chuck Grassley, told me that he wants to Kash Patel to explain to him exactly the roles of these exactly more details about this effort to single out those agents.

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SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): It's only from this standpoint that lower level people have to do what their boss says. So, I think when Patel gets approved, and I'm not going to do much until then, I'm going to try to get some delineation of those that make decisions versus those that don't.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): This is outrageous. I mean, these men and women were called on to investigate a serious problem, a serious incident in the United States Capitol building, and now simply because they did their jobs, they're being terminated? It's not fair.

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RAJU: But first, Kash Patel has to get the votes to get the job. But in the moment, no Republicans have voiced any opposition to him, which means things are looking very good for him to get approved by the full Senate. So, expect in this meeting that's about to start in the Judiciary Committee for Democrats to delay it by one week, which means next Thursday, there'll be a vote in the committee to send his nomination to the floor. And at that point, there'll Republicans believe, the party, the members will stay in line, they can afford to lose three at most votes on any party line vote, three at most GOP votes, and zero at the moment are suggesting that they would vote against him, which means that Kash Patel, things are looking very promising to get the job in just a matter of weeks.

BROWN: All right. I also want to ask you about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on the Hill after Trump's shocking proposal that the U.S. would own Gaza. What are you hearing from lawmakers?

RAJU: A lot of questions and surprise. In fact, one of Trump's top Middle East envoys was on Capitol Hill just yesterday meeting with Senate Republicans who had a flurry of questions about how exactly this would work. A lot of Republicans think that this is either just a pie in the sky idea, something that will never come to pass, or something that simply they just could not get behind, especially the idea of potentially sending troops on the ground. The White House has said it's not committed to sending troops on the ground, but has not ruled out that idea, which has raised some questions among Republicans as well, how exactly they go about a proposal that many believe is unworkable.

The question is going to be if Benjamin Netanyahu discusses this at all in any length with some of the top members. He's meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune this hour. He's meeting with other members from both parties later this hour and meets with the speaker of the House this afternoon.

BROWN: And we just are learning, Manu, I'm just hearing that the Patel vote has been delayed, as you sort of laid out in your initial live shot that that was a possibility, we're told that has happened.

Thank you so much, Manu Raju.

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So, let's discuss this more with CNN Legal Analyst and former Counsel to Assistant Attorney General for National Security Carrie Cordero. Hi, Carrie.

So, what do you make of Patel's chances of being confirmed to lead the FBI, and now we're just learning that the vote has been delayed?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, as Manu was describing, at least publicly, it doesn't seem like there are Republican senators, including some of the most influential who sit on that Senate Judiciary Committee who are willing to break with the president and oppose his nomination. But this delay is a step that enables both parties on the Senate Judiciary Committee to take a pause, to reevaluate the record that Mr. Patel established when he did have his hearing publicly, and to take that into context with all of the events of the past several days at the FBI and between the FBI and the DOJ.

So, it does -- I think it's an appropriate development that they delay this vote so that they can more carefully assess what's going on at the FBI and how a future FBI director of Mr. Patel would approach it.

BROWN: So, Patel promised in his Senate hearing last week that agents wouldn't face political retribution for working on cases they were assigned, as we've been talking about. But how did these latest memos that were handed over from the FBI to DOJ with the agent's information, those who worked on the January 6th investigation, you know, with the subject line termination, that was the initial request, termination, those names have been handed over, thousands of names of FBI agents who worked on those cases, how does that square with Kash Patel's promise here?

CORDERO: Right, it doesn't. And that's why I think they need to go back to him. And whether that turns out to be in private conversations that senators on that Senate Judiciary Committee have with him over the course of the next week, or whether the Senate decides to call him back for a second public hearing under oath, either would be helpful to the senators in trying to make a decision. As you mentioned, Pamela, that memo said termination. And so when the FBI received that memo, they took that to mean based on what it said that the list that was being created was intended to create a list of people who would be fired. And it was not just directed. First of all, there are not political appointees at the FBI other than the director. Everybody else is career. And so it's supposed to be nonpartisan, nonpolitical and nonpolitically influenced staff.

And so there is obviously a lot of fear amongst the FBI staff that, based on cases they were assigned to work with violations of federal law, including laws that involve violence against law enforcement officers, which is a stated priority in the new attorney general's memo to protect law enforcement officers, by the way, it's understandable that there is more for Senate Judiciary Committee to dig into.

BROWN: Carrie Cordero, thank you so much.

And coming up, it is the interview that hit CBS with a lawsuit, but the release of the full 60 Minute sit-down with then Vice President Kamala Harris isn't good enough for the FCC, even though it shows CBS was not involved in malicious altering of anything. Why the ongoing inquiry is raising alarm bells, up next.

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BROWN: Right now on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are holding a hearing on the California wildfires one month after the deadly blaze began ripping through the Los Angeles area. Dozens of people were killed and thousands of acres destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were wiped out.

One month on, the fires are fully contained, and now officials are focusing on the massive and grueling cleanup ahead. The economic damage is estimated to be tens of billions of dollars.

Yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom met with President Trump and held bipartisan meetings with lawmakers trying to secure disaster aid for his state's fire victims.

Governor Newsom joins us now for an exclusive interview following his meeting with President Trump yesterday. Thank you so much for joining us. I know it's been a very busy trip for you here in Washington.

So, you spoke to President Trump for more than an hour. Tell us about that meeting. How did it go?

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): Well, it was -- he was very gracious to accept the meeting in very short order. We extended an open hand, I've said this often, not a closed fist, and reestablished a partnership and relationship to this fire to the emergency that's still at hand as it relates to toxic materials that need to be cleaned up, to debris removal, to people, thousands and thousands of families whose lives have been torn asunder. And so it was incredibly productive.

BROWN: Did you get any commitments from him for aid?

NEWSOM: Broad strokes, not specific commitments, but broad strokes. And I have just all the confidence in the world that it's going to be a strong partnership moving forward.

Look, cameras have moved on and the devastation now is truly being absorbed. It's been -- it's remarkable. As you said, it's just been a month. And people are just coming to grips with the trauma of their lives being completely destroyed, memories, memorabilia, generational homes.

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And so we're trying to do everything we can to distill a sense of well-being. And it's critical that the relationship between the president of the United States and the State of California remain --