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Trump Adviser: Panama Canal, Greenland Comments are Negotiating Tactic To Protect Economy, Curb Chinese Influence; Trump Supporters Feud Over Visas For High Skilled Workers; Retiring Congresswoman: "Trying" To Set A Better Example; Plane Crash Survivor Describes Flight's Final Moments. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 27, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Today on "Inside Politics," cracks in the coalition, the issue of American culture and legal immigration is triggering the rift between 2 groups of Trump supporters, the MAGA base and the Silicon Valley tech bros.

Plus, how old is too old to be in Congress? 68 year old House Democrat says she's stepping down to set a good example. Will others follow her lead?

And is it too early to talk about 2028? Undeniable, yes. But it's also the Friday of a holiday we've cut us some slack, and, you know, Democrats are having conversations behind the scenes about who to nominate for president 4 years from now. We'll talk about some of the early frontrunners.

I'm Phil Mattingly with Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines, "Inside Politics."

It's all about the art of the deal. At least that's what advisors are saying about President-elect Trump's repeated calls to expand U.S. territory into Panama, Greenland, even Canada. But how real is all of this? Does Trump actually intend to retake the Panama Canal? Does he want to buy Greenland, a country that is very clearly not for sale? Will Canada become the 51st state?

CNN's Alayna Treene joins me now with some new reporting. Alayna, we've been covering this all week trying to divine the meeting of tweets. You've been talking to advisers behind the scenes, what's the intent here?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. What I've been told from these advisers, Phil, is that essentially all of this is part of a larger negotiating tactic on Donald Trump's part. Now, what I'm told that the intent really is here is to try and force some of these foreign leaders to the negotiating table.

One, to try and help bolster U.S. trade, try to, you know, end what Donald Trump thinks are practices and deals that are taking advantage of U.S. companies. But also to try and curb both China and Russia's influence, abroad.

Now let's talk about the Panama Canal specifically for a moment. Donald Trump believes, I'm told, that essentially the canal is taking advantage of U.S. companies. And what he really wants, his overarching goal is to try and lower the rates for different vessels to pass through the canal.

He also believes, that China owns a lot of the ports in the canal, and that's effectively given them control over some of these, shipping rates and which vehicles -- or, excuse me, which vessels and ships are able to pass through.

For Greenland, for example, Donald Trump believes that somehow having more control -- the United States having more control over what's going on in Greenland or being able, to work with Greenland more could deter Russian influence in the Arctic region.

Again, all of this is part of what they argue is some sort of negotiating tactic or really, Donald Trump trying to strong-arm some of these leaders show that he's coming from this position of power to bring them to the table. Now this is what one adviser specifically told me about this. They said, quote, "Everything has to be looked at in terms of curbing Russia and China influence while also protecting the economy."

Now one thing that I also found interesting is, it did seem because Donald Trump has been so fixated on the Panama Canal this week, that it kind of came out of nowhere. But when I talk to these people and sources close to Donald Trump, they say he's actually been fixated on this for months. And pointed me to an interview he did with Tucker Carlson on X in August where he brought up the Panama Canal.

He said that he thought it was a mistake that Jimmy Carter, then President, negotiated this treaty that gave control of the canal over to Panama, and that essentially he believes and feels that China is now really calling the shots there. So this is something that has been kind of percolating behind the scenes in the mind of Donald Trump.

All to say, what you laid out, Phil, is he is he going to be able to buy Greenland? Is Canada be going to become the 51st state? No. I don't think that's going to happen. But what Donald Trump does believe is that maybe some of this rhetoric could help him get some sort of better deal down the line once he's actually sworn in. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Laying the groundwork. Alayna Treene, thanks so much. And fantastic reporters joining me now at the table, CNN's David Chalian; CNN's Kristen Holmes, and Bloomberg's Justin Sink.

Guys, what I find so fascinating about what Alayna was just walking through is, there's been a lot of tweets related to Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. There have not been any tweets related to the complete implosion of two of his closest advisers and his base on X over the course of the last 36-ish hours or so.

[12:05:00] So much so that, like, even though we can't say tweeting through it anymore, because I guess we'd be Xing through it, it feels like Elon Musk is quite literally trying to tweet through it on some level. David Chalian, explain to people why this matter. We'll get into the details of why it's happening, but why it matters for the coalition.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Well, it's a fascinating divide that came into public view this week over this issue of high skilled foreign worker visas, H-B1 visas. And it is -- you know, the tech industry relies heavily on these kinds of workers, as they seek out the best and brightest minds around the world to help them do their business.

And so given all that we have talked about in this election season about the tech bros and the relationship to the Trump campaign, we're seeing this first real public divide of the MAGA base who, by the way, not just signed up for Donald Trump's railing against illegal immigration, but there's real fervency for and fervor for dealing with legal immigration and limiting legal immigration, and that's this piece of it.

And so when, you know, you have Vivek Ramaswamy or Elon Musk, somebody who as you Kristen knows, I don't know if anybody's had the ear of President-elect Trump as much since the election --

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Or the accessibility.

CHALIAN: Or the accessibility as Musk has had in the last several weeks since the election. When they start defending what they need, and it is a complete odds with the Laura Loomers of the world who are saying, hey, we don't want to see this any kind of an expansion of this form of legal immigration of high skilled foreign workers coming into work in the United States. It creates a fascinating political rift, into which, as you noted, Donald Trump is not yet, taking a step fully.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. To that point, I think this has been hard to pin down for all of the rhetoric and very clear agenda items on Donald Trump's immigration planning and what he did in his first term. He's always been a little bit kind of back and forth on this issue of high skilled workers, on visas for high skilled workers.

He said, was kind of ambiguous about it during his first term even as his administration, the denial rates for these visas, jumped dramatically. They suspended them at one point during 2020. Internally, his team was working hard, it seemed, to cut back legal immigration. I don't think -- it seemed that way that it actually was happening.

Externally, the President-elect has said things like this. Listen to the contrast of these two sound bites I want to play.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL- ELECT: Two simple rules: Buy American and hire American. You graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a Green Card to be able to stay in this country. And that includes junior colleges too. I know of stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here. They had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can't they go back to India, they go back to China. They do the same basic company in those places, and they become multibillionaires employing thousands and thousands of people, and it could have been done here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: The importance of that second piece of sound is that it came during the All-In podcast, which is hosted, by several people including David Sacks, who is this AI czar, who's also been somebody who's been had the President-elect's ear on some level, has been involved in this fight as well. Those are this, quote, unquote, "Silicon Valley bros."

HOLMES: Yeah. I kind of -- I actually kind of felt bad for David Sacks on this. Like, he waited and then clearly wanted to get out as fast as possible. Like, I had no idea why he actually --

CHALIAN: It's been an illuminating moment for I think several times.

HOLMES: Like, he is not an Elon Musk or a Laura Loomer. So this presence on social media, I think, was a little bit -- a little bit of an abrupt introduction into this world. But watching this unfold was very interesting. And I think that, clearly, Donald Trump, and as you saw there in that podcast, has had somewhat of a development on this topic in particular.

Now as David said, he has often been opposed to not only illegal immigration, but also legal immigration, particularly if you look at the case of Springfield, Ohio, the Haitians who were there illegally. So, clearly, he is trying to pick and choose here.

But what has been so interesting about this is that some of his loudest supporters and strongest supporters, including people who are aligned with Steve Bannon, who have huge followings, Laura Loomer, who is a little bit more on the fringe, but still is considered a big supporter, have been outright attacking Elon Musk and this entire idea.

What will be interesting is to see what Donald Trump actually says. He can say whatever he wants on this podcast, but if you look at any of what's going on social media as these fights unfold, you're seeing both sides picking and choosing things that he's saying, saying Donald Trump gets it.

Here's what he said at this time. Donald Trump gets it. Here's what he said this time. Now Donald Trump is going to have to weigh in at some point as we move forward and he is getting inaugurated and becoming president. So this is going to be an issue that comes up.

MATTINGLY: It's really important point. It's also one where it's the -- OK, I get what he says, but also watch what he did and watch the advisers who will be leading his immigration efforts. So Stephen Miller has been very clear publicly and in drafting the legislative and regulatory issues in the first term that cutting back on legal immigration was part of the planning, whether that is maintained with this new coalition, we don't know.

[12:10:00]

You know, what's interesting for me, Justin, too is the way Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk were trying to defend this, also got them into trouble in the sense of, basically, I'm short handing here because some of the terms they use are really offensive. But they're saying Americans are too dumb, they're too lazy. And Vivek Ramaswamy blamed the culture, including Family Matters and Boy Meets World, also Saved by the Bell.

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign born and first generation engineers over native, quote, unquote, "native Americans" isn't because of an innate American IQ deficit, a lazy and wrong explanation. A key part of it comes down to the "C" word, Culture. "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ or the jock over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers."

I don't know, man. Like, I feel like that dynamic has kind of always been part of the American ethos at some level. But also, like, the jock and masculinity and all that was, like, the whole Trump theme for winning.

JUSTIN SINK, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, BLOOMBERG: Yeah. I mean, it's hard to come out of the last election and say the problem that needs to be addressed is Americans love football too much. It's just a really strange message to bring to a base that, in fact, sort of embraced masculinity, embraced, you know, barstool culture, that sort of thing. And, it's going to be an interesting sort of friction for them to navigate.

It's not totally on new. Jared Kushner, you might remember, tried to bridge this gap during the first term. And he went and he met with sort of far right immigration groups, and he met with corporate interests. And he came out with an immigration plan that is not dissimilar that to some of what the kind of tech bros this time around are rolling out.

And then it immediately hit into a wall because the president's MAGA base said, wait, wait. You're not requiring forms to actually verify that workers have legal status. You're not requiring restaurants to do that. And it just kind of crumbled. And so this is going to be a problem, I think, not just in immigration, but across president's agenda.

He's promised a lot of things to a lot of people. And now he's going to have to prioritize or run the risk that none of his agenda gets done.

CHALIAN: But the two things that were top for everything related to him, the economy and immigration. And here we see where those two issues can at times be in conflict with each other or in certain pieces of it and how Donald Trump navigates that conflict is going to be fascinating to watch.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. There's no question about it. And it's going to be one across several different areas that are going to be really important to watch.

All right. Stay with me. Coming up, the 68 year old Congresswoman who says she wants to set a good example for her colleagues by retiring. Stay with us.

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[12:15:00]

MATTINGLY: Time to bow out. Congresswoman Annie Kuster is retiring at the end of the year now. The 68 year old New Hampshire Democrat is torching lawmakers who, well, refused to pass the torch. Telling the Boston Globe quote, "I'm trying to set a better example. I think there are colleagues and some of whom are still very successful and very productive, but others who just stay forever."

My panel is back now. And, look, this has become a conversation in front of mine for everybody for obvious reasons that we all watched during the CNN debate and have talked about ever since. Also been something that a lot of people know behind the scenes and have talked about related to Congress for since I've lived in Washington, DC.

One of the questions that I have with more people being willing to speak openly about it, including soon to be former colleagues, Justin, is, is this going to change the dynamic? We've seen anything that says, like, all right, it's shifting here.

SINK: Well, I think Joe Biden's performance and Democrats' performance in this presidential election is going to be a moment of reckoning on this issue. You're right that there's long been kind of stories and whispers about members of Congress who have been showing up for a long time and basically not functioning in their job.

Their chief of staff tells them how to vote. Their staff does all their work for them. But the difference there is they continue to win reelection over and over again. So it doesn't change congressional majorities.

With Joe Biden, you know, age was undeniably one of, if not the central, sort of question of this presidential race. And so as a result, you know, if you're a Democrat, you have to look at what happened and say, do we need to put more guardrails in? Do we need to think about things differently?

And Republicans who have seized on it are probably going to go through the same conversation, over the next 4 years as Donald Trump gets older and older and likely faces some of the same challenges that Joe Biden did. So this is just going to be an issue that that comes in front of mind. It's a tough one because we've seen people like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell be very effective, in the older age. But it's one that's kind of front and center for many.

MATTINGLY: One of the things, David, that I was struck by in the interview that she gave the Boston Globe was she's talking or recalling the conference calls -- private conference call that some moderate Democrats had with president Biden after that debate where he was kind of defending himself. His team is putting him out there.

And she says, quote, "It was painful. I haven't had these conversations since I talked to my own parents about, you know, their aging and their limitations." Which gets it something that I don't know about you guys, I heard this a lot after the debate from people not in our world who said for them, what they saw in the debate stage was reminded them of conversations they'd had with their grandparents or with their parents when things were moving in a direction that weren't necessarily positive for their health.

And they were never going to get past that. That was always going to be how they viewed president Biden because of that moment. Now I'm just wondering if that if that has an effect as well.

CHALIAN: Well, I think that we've learned over time in Washington, the thing that is likely to have more of an effect than age is power, and people will hold onto it at all costs. And so while I think it's hard to imagine the culture changing in a way that all of a sudden elderly, long standing politicians, even in decline, are somehow sort of excommunicated from Washington because those folks are going to hang on to their power as best as they possibly can.

Now maybe we'll see more primary challenges inside, these parties take place, and perhaps they'll be more successful so that the voters may have more of a say about the generational change. But I don't expect we're going to see a whole bunch of elderly powerful politicians who serve for a long time to say, you know what, Joe Biden looked really old on that debate stage, and clearly, there were questions swirling about whether he could serve another 4 years. I'm going to hang it up. I don't I don't see that.

[12:20:00]

HOLMES: And I answered you one thing with David. I mean, it's the idea that people are just going to see power is, to me, at least in Washington, seems really unlikely. And part of that is, like, Donald Trump himself is 78 years old. What he said a week ago or 3 weeks ago, whatever it was, is I am nowhere close to 80. He -- that is how most people think.

Now most people don't have the enormous amount of power that these people in Congress and, you know, now Donald Trump will have, but people tend to not be able to actually see themselves deteriorating, which is why a lot of companies have a retirement age capped at 65 years old or at 60 years old. It just happens that we exist in a universe in which people can hang on to power essentially as long as they want to until, you know, somebody forces them out.

MATTINGLY: It's an important point. First off, like, go hang out with your families. Like, I don't understand this. Like, I long for retirement. I'm kidding. I love my job. I love my job.

But people also miss that there are structural issues here as well, which is they have staffers. Those staffers are using their connection to that Congressman when they leave Congress as lobbyists, as consultants, as everything else. The current staff wants that power as well, utilizes that power as well. There's a whole infrastructure behind these individuals.

Justin, I was looking at the or watching the chairmanship or sorry, ranking member races in the Democratic House Conference, where you saw some young members were able to actually bounce out or kind of quietly replace some of the older folks. And then you also had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lose a race that I think a lot of progressives were really hoping, particularly given the role, as the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, which is a very public facing role, very attack dog role. She lost it.

SINK: Yeah. And you, you know, you saw this with Senator Feinstein during the first Trump administration where there's a lot of particularly progressive frustration with how she handled the Supreme Court hearings time and time again where she didn't really bring the case to folks like Brett Kavanaugh in the way the Democrats wanted to.

And so there is this inherent tension where some of your political aims may be pulled back because you're protecting that system or structure, that you described. And I think for Democrats or politicians on both sides of the aisle, because this is a bipartisan issue and one that both have faced. There is going to have to be this resolution at some point, but I think it -- as with everything, will take a long time and will be a difficult road.

And you saw that you know, Joe Biden was able to hold on to power because in a large part, the system was set up to protect the president from primary challenges and from outside bids. But if the culture around that changes it does sort of open up the possibility that we'll see something new.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. If more people lose, to be frank. Yeah. That seems to be -- that's the only thing that seems to invert the incentive structure.

All right, guys, stay with me. Next, did Russian air defenses accidentally down a passenger jet over Kazakhstan? At what price will Russia pay if they did? Stay with us.

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[12:25:00]

MATTINGLY: Today, we're hearing from one of the survivors of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Central Asia on Christmas day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUBHONKUL RAKHIMOV, PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR (via translator): When the first bang happened, I looked around, quickly assessed the situation, and thought that the plane was going to fall apart. A couple more seconds passed, but it didn't fall apart. Another minute passed, not even a minute, a few more seconds passed, but it didn't fall apart. I thought that I should start praying now. I started saying words. I started to remember the almighty.

I thought that those were probably my last words. So I thought I needed to get ready for a meeting with the almighty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: The airliner said this morning that its jet went down near the Caspian Sea because of, quote, "physical and technical interference." A U.S. official told CNN early indications suggest a Russian anti-aircraft system may have downed the plane in a possible case of mistaken identity.

Russian officials are urging against speculation while the investigation continues. Joining me now is CNN Military Analyst, Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. General Mark Hertling, to start with, what the airline says, physical and technical external interference, strikes me as a euphemism for was struck by likely some type of air defense system. What do you see in this situation? The pictures that you've seen, the video we've seen about what actually happened here?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, we've seen limited pictures, Phil. We've seen pictures from one side of the aircraft, and the indentation of what appears to be shrapnel, I would think 100 percent, for sure that it's shrapnel, has going into the airplane. You see the indentation going in.

The individual you just, had on the film just now was in the back of the plane. I've seen a film of him before saying Allahu Akbar. He was praying, God have mercy or God is great. And he didn't talk about some of the shrapnel that went through the aircraft. So once we see more pictures, I think we're going to see both the incoming shrapnel on the aft of the airplane and the rear of the airplane as well as the wings and the rudder, but also on the other side, some of that shrapnel went out.

He also -- there are also indications that some of the passengers were wounded by that shrapnel as it came into the aircraft. That is the physical interference coming from some type of explosion, some type of shrapnel.

The technical interference --