Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Elon Musk's Role in Trump Administration?; Republicans Confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired February 13, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

SHERIA SMITH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION UNION PRESIDENT: A parent from Kentucky e-mailed, whose attorneys that they have been working with were placed on paid administrative leave, e-mailed because they were concerned about the state of their sexual assault complaint against their district that we were working with them on for free and what would happen to that.

[11:30:06]

We are receiving messages from universities whose fundings have been cut. What we have is, again, chaos. And it is going to be the American people that bear the brunt of this.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Sheria Smith, thank you for coming on. We appreciate it.

SMITH: Thank you.

BROWN: We are monitoring the confirmation vote for Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:35:06]

BROWN: We have breaking news into CNN.

RFK Jr. is now confirmed as HHS secretary.

CNN's Manu Raju and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now.

First to you, Manu. A few weeks ago, it was uncertain whether he would have the votes to get confirmed. He clearly did and now he has been confirmed as HHS secretary.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

And the one big reason why he was -- there were a lot of questions was just because of all the public statements that he had made questioning vaccines over the years, questioning their safety, suggesting that there was a link to childhood autism, and not accepting the science that debunks that notion that there is a link between the two. But even though he, at his confirmation hearing, struggled on the

question of vaccines linked to autism, hedged on that question, and it caused concerns among one key Republican senator, Bill Cassidy, Cassidy ultimately voted yes, despite being a medical doctor, despite having his own reservations, because Kennedy made commitments to him that he would not try to undermine vaccines, that he believed in the safety of vaccines, walking back some of his past statements of sorts.

That was enough to win over most Republican senators. That won over Susan Collins of Maine, another swing vote, also Lisa Murkowski, someone who said that she still harbors some concerns about RFK Jr.'s views on vaccines.

And we just asked her moments ago, I said, how do you trust her -- him on this issue? He said, by oversight. We're going to oversee what he decides to do here on these issues. He gave her some commitments as well.

There was one very significant defection here in the United States Senate. That was Republican Mitch McConnell, the former GOP leader, someone who just put out a scathing statement about RFK Jr.'s views about the issue of vaccine.

I'm going to read you part of it, Pamela. He said that -- he noted that he's a childhood survivor of polio. And he talked about how vaccines have saved millions of lives around the world. He said that he will not condone the relitigation of proven cures and neither will millions of Americans.

He goes on to say that, referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. :"A record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions does not entitle Mr. Kennedy to lead these important efforts," referring to efforts to try to treat illnesses and disease.

He goes on to talk about the efforts to try to deliver on vaccines. He says: "Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he's the best possible person to lead America's largest health agency."

Now, McConnell is in the twilight of his political career of sorts, stepping aside from Republican leadership, where he ushered through much of the Trump agenda in his first term. There was a falling out, of course, in the aftermath of January 6. And now he has stepped aside as Republican leader.

As a member of the rank and file, he has told colleagues his shackles are off. He has said that to his colleagues, and very clearly, this is the third Trump nominee that he has voted against. He is the only Republican senator to vote against more than one Trump nominee, and the other two ones, of course, Tulsi Gabbard, to be the director of national intelligence, that happened yesterday, and Pete Hegseth to be the secretary of defense.

Now, with his opposition to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that makes him three nominees that he has voted against, a major signal to the Trump administration, but still not enough to stop RFK Jr. from getting this important post. He was just confirmed 52-48, 52 Republicans voting in support of his confirmation, 48 Democrats opposed -- 47 Democrats and Mitch McConnell opposed.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: All right, there you go.

Sanjay Gupta, to bring you in, what kind of an impact could RFK Jr. have as HHS secretary on certain health issues, including vaccines?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think there was two prevailing themes. One was the theme of making America healthy again, which had pretty broad support, frankly, had a lot of echoes of what we have heard in the past from like the Let's Move Campaign from Michelle Obama, for example.

But that has broad support, trying to make people healthier. We spend a lot of money on health care. We don't see enough in return for those dollars. I think this issue of vaccines was the linchpin. And we got a sense of it during the confirmation hearings of where this was headed, especially after Dr. Bill Cassidy, Senator Bill Cassidy, came out and voted for him in that procedural vote, but also said a couple of things.

He said -- as you can see on the screen there, after speaking with Kennedy, he said that there was assurances that he was going to work within the current approval and safety monitoring systems, he was going to maintain something that we reported a lot on, what is something called ACIP. That's an advisory group on vaccines.

And also the language even on the CDC's Web site, that it would continue to say that vaccines don't cause autism. Now, these were assurances that Kennedy gave to Cassidy. They're not enforceable. We will have to sort of see how that plays out.

[11:40:03]

So I guess the answer to your question, Pamela, is, we will see. I mean, I think there's a lot of things that he wants to do with regard to disrupting the things that would make America healthy again.

With vaccines, if I had to sort of predict, I don't think that there would be that much of an impact on the childhood vaccine schedule, for example. And, as Manu just pointed out, there's going to be a lot of oversight around that very specifically.

BROWN: All right, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:45:24]

BROWN: Running the government like a corporation with a CEO and chairman of the board? That could be the strategy for President Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE team.

After all, Musk said this back in 2020.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELON MUSK, OWNER, X: Government is simply the largest corporation, though some people -- I think it's a false dichotomy to look at government and sort of industry as separate. Government is simply a corporation in the limit. It is the ultimate corporation with a monopoly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: I want to bring in CNN global economic analyst and associate editor for "The Financial Times" Rana Foroohar, and Vittoria Elliott, who is a reporter at "Wired" who has covered Elon Musk extensively.

Vittoria, first to you. From this -- from your reporting, is this still Musk's view of government? Does this reflect what he's doing right now?

VITTORIA ELLIOTT, POWER AND PLATFORMS REPORTER, "WIRED": Well, I definitely think, if not his view of government, it certainly reflects his own business practices.

When he took over Twitter in 2022, he brought in executives and engineers from his other companies to interrogate employees, do code reviews, sort of make them justify their jobs. He did mass firings, even using the same title in the e-mail, that "Fork in the Road" e- mail.

And he also cut a lot of the roles in trust and safety, the type of people who keep hate speech or missing disinformation off the platform, these sort of rules that could sometimes be seen as cost centers a little bit because they weren't necessarily driving new users with new products, but were ultimately things that really helped a lot of users feel safe.

So I think, if the idea that the government is just one big corporation -- I'm not in his mind. I don't want to speak for him, but I think we can definitely see his business philosophy coming out in the way that DOGE seems to be going into agencies and the way that he is really honing in on firing people and cutting costs.

BROWN: Rana, to bring you in on this conversation, you have written that the chaos we're seeing could all be part of a governing philosophy. It has different names. It's also known as Dark Enlightenment, perpetuated by this blogger Curtis Yarvin, who has been cited by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.

Yarvin recently gave an interview about his views to "The New York Times."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: What's so bad about democracy? CURTIS YARVIN, FAR RIGHT BLOGGER: All right, to make a long story

short, whether you want to call Washington, Lincoln and FDR dictators, the sort of opprobrious word, what they were was basically national CEOs. And they were running the government like a company from the top down.

QUESTION: So why is democracy so bad?

YARVIN: So it's not even that democracy is bad. It's just that it's very weak.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, Rana, those ideas, once the fringe, are now becoming more mainstream.What is the impact of treating the government like a start- up business? The fallout from failure is much different, obviously, between a start-up and a government.

RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Yes, it's a great question.

I think Curtis Yarvin can hardly believe the attention he's getting these days, thanks to what Musk has been doing. Yet the techno- libertarians, as I would call them, folks like Musk, but also Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, the cadres of tech pros in Silicon Valley that have gotten so rich and so powerful that they literally believe themselves to be on par with nation-states in terms of their influence, what we're seeing Musk do is very much in keeping with that.

I mean, he's going into the Treasury, for example, and saying, I want the keys to the plumbing of the U.S. and global financial system. And when people say no, they get fired. We're seeing lawsuit after lawsuit about what's happening in this administration, and particularly a lot that's being perpetuated by DOGE that is illegal.

You know, I mean, it's -- we're seeing restraining orders. I'm sure that, when the dust settles, it's all going to be found to be illegal. But it is in keeping with the way that Silicon Valley operates. A lot of people in the Valley are extremely libertarian. They really believe that government has -- democracy, anyway, sort of outlived its usefulness.

And they would like to see a world without government. I mean, they buy into free trade areas and special cities that are sort of run by private armies. It's a longstanding trend. And I think Elon is just the apex of what we have seen.

[11:50:04]

BROWN: And, of course, as Vittoria said, we can't get into his head, but certainly the actions he has taken, the words he has used -- we played some of that -- is reflective of that.

He just said this recently, actually, equating federal agencies to weeds. Let's listen to his sound. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUSK: We do need to delete entire agencies, as opposed to leave part of them behind, because if you leave part of them behind, it's easy -- it's kind of like leaving a weed. If you don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed, it doesn't stop weeds from ever growing back. But it makes it harder.

So we have to really delete entire agencies, many of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, Vittoria, from the access that Elon Musk and his DOGE team have right now, what are we seeing today with these scores of firings? That's what we're seeing. Do you see this as an effort to consolidate power in the executive branch as part of this overall effort that Rana was just talking about?

ELLIOTT: Yes, I mean, I definitely think that we are seeing, particularly with the way that DOGE and Musk and the Trump administration has approached USAID -- agencies are set up by Congress. They're funded by Congress.

That is fundamentally the entity that has the ability to do that and to authorize funding. And so this sort of desire to rip up these agencies without necessarily going through the protocol that's clearly set out does definitely seem to be an end run to try and consolidate this power in the executive branch, specifically through being able to turn on the taps or turn off the taps of funding.

And I think a really great point here also is that, like, Musk has sometimes not necessarily directly quoted thinkers like Curtis Yarvin, but people he's close to, like Peter Thiel, the billionaire chairman of Palantir, how long sort of been clear supporters and readers of Yarvin.

And I think, like, in our reporting, we have seen people from both Musk's companies and Thiel's companies as part of the DOGE effort.

BROWN: Yes, I think that's a really important point there.

So, Rana, if we continue this analogy of the government as a corporation as part of this overall philosophy in Silicon Valley, what positions do President Trump and Elon Musk have right now?

(LAUGHTER)

FOROOHAR: Well, I would say they're insider traders. They fancy themselves as co-CEOs.

Of course, I will say, as somebody that's covered business for 33 years, co-CEO positions never work well. Somebody always gets ousted. So we will see what happens there.

But what's so concerning is that the access that Musk and his team have gotten so far allows them all kinds of potentially insider run- arounds. I mean, you could front-trade Treasury auctions. You could get access to funding, early funding information that might benefit certain industries or companies.

If you have the keys to the Treasury, you can authorize payments to be made or not made. I mean, these are the sorts of powers that you haven't seen really since several centuries ago, the time of kings and autocrats.

And, again, I mean, just like Maya Angelou said, when people show you who they are, believe them, folks like Musk and Peter Thiel and the whole crew that we're talking about, the libertarians in the Valley, have been saying for many years that they think democracy is broken and that we should move to a world in which there really is a different kind of power structure.

And I think that what we're seeing is eerily similar to some of those states.

BROWN: And just to be clear for our viewers, what you laid out is, well, you're concerned about the possibility. We just don't know, right? I mean, there has been a lack of transparency in terms of what exactly -- what access Elon and his staffers have and what they're looking at, even though they are putting out -- quote, unquote -- "receipts" of programs that they think are wasteful.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: And a judge did say that they couldn't have access anymore to that Treasury system, but, again, lots of questions still about all of this.

I'm curious, Vittoria, to wrap this up with you, what you think about Musk and Trump's apparent love affair, if you want to call it that. Trump has a history, as we know, of dramatic fallouts with his closest advisers once they start challenging him too much or getting too much attention.

Right now, though, publicly, at least, it doesn't seem like that's happening.

ELLIOTT: Well, I think a couple of things.

On the surface, it seems that they -- the two of them are pretty copacetic. Our reporter at "Wired," our freelance reporter Jake Lahut, published a piece last week about sort of how people within Trump's inner circle are getting a little uncomfortable with the level of power and access Musk and his DOGE team seem to have across agencies.

[11:55:11]

But I think at the end of the day, even though we -- perhaps they may clash in private, they are mutually beneficial to each other. Musk is able to do some of the things that might be otherwise really unpopular. Cutting programs and funding for things that people rely on is not something that a lot of voters are going to be super excited about.

But Trump gets to maintain a little bit of distance from that part of his agenda. And for Musk he can sort of hone in and focus on this stuff that has become his personal pet project without the sort of other stuff that the president has to necessarily deal with, and Trump can sort of take on that element.

BROWN: Yes.

ELLIOTT: So I do think, even if there might be a push-pull there, it might not come out in public and I don't know that it would necessarily change the way that either of them are behaving right now.

BROWN: Vittoria Elliott, Rana Foroohar, really interesting and important discussion. Thank you both.

And thank you for joining us. I'm Pamela Brown. You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok and X @PamelaBrownCNN.

Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts after a short break.