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Inside Politics

Trump Endorses Speaker Johnson's Reelection Bid; Trump Sides With Musk Over Bannon On Visas For Foreign Workers; Carter Leaves Extraordinary Post-Presidential Legacy; Biden To Eulogize Carter At State Funeral On Jan. 9; Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 30, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Haley Talbot (ph) keeps a running list of people who aren't totally sold on it yet. It has been the gospel for us as we've covered how many of these fights over the course of the last years. And you've got people, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Tim Burchett, Eric Burlison, Michael Cloud.

I mean, there's 10, 15 people here. Andy Biggs was just on Fox News right before this show, saying he still wants to talk to Johnson, even in the wake of Donald Trump's endorsement. Take us inside the Trump team. Like, how are they thinking about this? Because he was pretty quiet about this for a while until today.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and I think there was a lot of speculation that it was unclear which way he was going to go, particularly after he and Elon Musk completely tanked the CR that Johnson had worked on.

I will say there was a moment after that happened in which Elon Musk came out in support of Speaker Mike Johnson, which gave the appearance, because of the relationship currently between Musk and Trump, that Trump was behind Johnson.

He essentially said the Speaker handled this well for what he was given on the table, which in Johnson, I mean, Musk code for Trump, we're going to still stand by him. But he had been quiet.

Now, to Carl's point, which I want to just point out here, one thing that we're forgetting is what Trump was doing when the Kevin McCarthy speaker fight was playing out, which was he was going to court every day.

And at one point, he actually complained that there was not enough media attention on him because everybody was so focused on what was happening in Congress. Why couldn't we get this done? That's why we saw that Donald Trump was calling almost everyone in the House that he has a relationship with during that time saying, why can't you do it? Why can't you do it?

Just trying to figure out how exactly to do it. So to your point, he doesn't want a fight on January 3rd. He doesn't want any kind of a fight leading into his inauguration. He wants this done because he's actually already seen that this is going to take away from him.

Now, if you're Johnson, you've got to feel pretty good about what happened. You're twisting in the wind. He's probably out there trying to figure out whether or not Trump was going to come out publicly. This is a win for Johnson.

How it plays out? Obviously remains to be seen.

MATTINGLY: Yes, biggest loser remains Kevin McCarthy.

HOLMES: Right, right. Exactly.

MATTINGLY: Who was lambasted not by name --

HOLMES: Yes.

MATTINGLY: -- on the president-elect's Truth Social account this weekend. It seems to be his lot in life from here on out. Susan, just taking a step back, and I think this gets to Carl's point a little bit, which is if you're the president-elect, you want two reconciliation bills, it seems like.

You want to move extremely fast on your agenda issues right off the bat. And you're trying to figure out how to just handle getting a speaker of the House on some level. What does this portend for the opening months of this second Trump administration?

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Yes, I think it's really important because, first of all, it reminds us that this is an unbelievably, really a historically narrow majority that Republicans have in the House of Representatives. Depending on the vacancies and filling those vacancies created by Trump's own Cabinet appointments, by the way, you're looking at a speaker of the House having only a one or two vote margin for a significant period of time.

That essentially means it's ungovernable. And it's actually remarkable that Mike Johnson has survived as long as he is. It's testament to the fact that there was so much chaos last year that, in a way, people just sort of gave up and went along with him.

Will they continue to do so? Donald Trump's instincts here are to bypass Congress. Donald Trump is not -- he's almost the opposite of the kind of president who's going to, you know, invest a huge amount in working patiently, building coalitions.

That's just not the kind of politician Donald Trump is. He's the politician of the bully pulpit of the, you know, the -- or the Twitter pulpit, I guess we should call it, you know, of the sort of middle-of- the-night decree. In his first term as president, if you look at the record of that, what did he do? He consistently bypassed the U.S. Senate, for example, on appointments.

Essentially said, well, I'll just keep him as actings. And so, he's going to want to act by executive decree, by executive order. And I think chaos in the House will only encourage Donald Trump in those instincts, which is just to say, forget about it. I'm just going to be the imperial president.

CARL HULSE, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, to Susan's point, who wants this job, right? I mean, who is going to step in and take this over? It is just a horrible job that it's not going to get any better. And the demands are going to get really big.

I mean, Republicans are going to have the trifecta that we all talk about. You can't blame anyone else now. You're going to -- this is going to be on you. So, you know, I'm sure that people like the idea of being speaker, but are sitting there watching this going, well, I don't think I want to jump into that right now.

MATTINGLY: Well, Hulse, as you know, John Bresnahan informs me you don't have to be a member of Congress to be speaker of the House.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh God (ph).

MATTINGLY: And so while people often flow John Bresnahan's name to be speaker, Carl Hulse, Carl Hulse?

HULSE: I don't think I want that one.

MATTINGLY: It's not. That did not sound Shermanesque, my friends.

All right, stay with me. Donald Trump has Steve Bannon on one shoulder and Elon Musk on the other. Who's he going to listen to when it comes to letting foreign workers into the U.S.?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:39:09]

MATTINGLY: Donald Trump is finally weighing in on a civil war in MAGA World. Two of Trump's top supporters spent the weekend feuding over H- 1B visas, a Silicon Valley-backed program mostly used for high-skilled tech workers. Trump, at least right now, appears to be siding with Elon Musk, who claims he benefited from the program over Steve Bannon, who wants strict limits on all legal immigration.

Trump told the New York Post, quote, "I've always liked the visas. I've always been in favor of the visas. That's why we have them. I've been a believer in H-1B visas. I have used it many times. It's a great program."

My exceptional reporters are back with me now. Just for clarity for people who are trying to figure out exactly what we're talking about here, H-1B visas, they authorize temporary employment of skilled workers, require highly specialized knowledge, intended to help employers who can't otherwise hire needed business skills.

They're capped at $65,000 a year. There's an additional $25,000 new visas that require a master's degree or a higher level of specialized skill.

[12:40:04]

Kristen, extremely important to Silicon Valley. Elon Musk was a recipient of an H-1B visa. Tesla uses them quite often. Take us inside Mar-a-Lago right now, because this has been all the rage on the socials lately.

HOLMES: Yes, I mean, no, it really has. It's been a huge fight. When -- there's been a waiting period to see how Trump was actually going to weigh in. We know privately he had been talking to Musk, talking to the Silicon Valley executives, saying that he supported this program.

But to be clear, in that quote that he gave the New York Post, it's not true. He used this idea that he has always supported H-1B visas. If you actually look at what he did during his first term, he limited them pretty severely.

And if you look at some of his top aides, particularly those who are going to be working on immigration, who are going to be drafting that policy, have already drafted that policy, they are not big supporters of H-1B visas.

But obviously, as we have seen, Donald Trump has changed a little bit of his outlook since becoming so close with Elon Musk. And I will say, it's not just Musk. It's also people like David Sacks. It's also other Silicon Valley executives who have used this program. But he clearly here is siding with that part of his base. And that's not really his base.

And that's what we saw over the last week, was this kind of internal fighting. And not just fighting, but really, you know, kind of clawing at each other between Elon Musk and people like Laura Loomer, Charlie Kirk that were out there, saying that these are not -- Steve Bannon, as you said, these are not programs that we support.

These people are just coming in, these people being tech moguls, coming in and trying to manipulate the system of Donald Trump when his base doesn't believe this.

MATTINGLY: So just to demonstrate what Kristen's referring to there, Steve Bannon has been on his program, I think, today, continuing to be very angry about this issue, War Room. This was Elon Musk saying, quote, "The reason I'm in American -- or I'm in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla, and hundreds of other companies, is that made America strong is because of H-1B.

Take a big step back and blank yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue, the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend."

Now, noted followers of great movies saw a little bit of a hint of the Les Grossman character in Tropic Thunder in that quote, although, I think, he has explicitly said it seemed like that's where he was going. And then you have Steve Bannon saying this.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: The H-1B visa program is a total and complete scam concocted by the lords of easy money on Wall Street and the oligarchs in Silicon Valley, initially to just increase profit margins. But there's a darker element to it today, a contempt of America and American citizens, and we're not going to tolerate it.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

MATTINGLY: Susan, I just think this issue is so core to both sides of this coalition that it's not going anywhere anytime soon, clearly.

GLASSER: Absolutely not. There are many fault lines in the Trump 2.0 administration, just as there were in Trump 1.0. This is one of them, because the lords of easy money on Wall Street and the oligarchs of Silicon Valley are who Donald Trump has spent an awful lot of time cozying up to.

He believes that they are crucial to the support that he needed in order to win reelection for a second term, just as much as the base and the sort of the angry id (ph) that Steve Bannon represents in terms of the MAGA universe. So, is it safe to predict that this feud will continue? Of course it is.

Is it safe to say that Donald Trump's interview to The New York Post, while interesting, is not the final word on this policy debate? Yes, absolutely. Stephen Miller, who is the rare Trump adviser who has been with Donald Trump from the very beginning all the way back to his 2016 campaign when he was on the road with Donald Trump, he is going to be the key adviser in the White House overseeing the administration's approach to immigration.

Miller is an opponent not only of illegal immigration, but of much legal immigration to the United States, and he is going to be the key person in this new administration. So I think that this infighting, it's just a tiny hint of the levels of fighting and, you know, dysfunction and chaos that we're going to see in Trump 2.0.

Why do I say that? Well, past his prologue, and we saw an awful lot of that in Trump 1.02.

MATTINGLY: Yes, from a macro sense and also from a micro sense, because, Carl, if you're looking at policy, and the first thing that Republicans want to do out of the gate is an immigration reconciliation package, or at least that's what Stephen Miller has said he wants to do.

That's what senators seem to be on board with, so working on the House. How do you handle this policy issue, which, as Kristen rightly points out, the first administration restricted H-1B visas, cut them down, and at one point paused them entirely. How do lawmakers draft off that?

HULSE: Immigration policy is hard, you know, as it turns out. You know, they thought it was going to be easy. You're going to come in, and, like, we're going to close the border, and we're going to block whoever we want to block. I look forward to the continuing Steve Bannon-Elon Musk smackdown. I mean, you know, these are two personalities who aren't going to give up.

[12:45:03]

I think also -- and I think Steve Bannon was referring to this, the insinuation that Americans can't do these jobs that you're hearing from some people who are supporting this, that's not going over very well either. And I want to go back to -- I totally agree with everything Susan said there.

I want to go back a little bit to the Republicans own this now, right? So they've been able to use the Democrats as foils in their immigration fights, and now they have to sort out this policy, which is probably the most important thing to their base, right?

This is, in some ways, what the election was about to the MAGA base, and come up with something -- and they need to do it in short order, and I just think what we're seeing now is evidence of how hard that is going to be.

MATTINGLY: Yes, immigration policy is hard. We chuckle, but like it seemed to have been forgotten on some level over the course of the last year.

HULSE: I mean, I don't know how many collapse of immigration bills that you and I and all of us have been around for.

MATTINGLY: Absolutely, very good point.

All right, guys, thank you very much.

Coming up, wage, peace, fight disease, build hope. That was Jimmy Carter's mission after leaving the White House. We'll tell you how he blazed a new path for former presidents. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:50:36]

MATTINGLY: It is rare, perhaps even unheard of, for a world leader to be renowned not for what they did while in office, but for what they accomplished after. That's the case for the late President Jimmy Carter, who found his true calling after he left the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

JIMMY CARTER, 39TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I wish I had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages, and we would have rescued them, and I would have been reelected. But that may have -- and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.

(END VIDEOCLIP) MATTINGLY: Joining me now to talk more about President Carter's legacy of service is CNN Presidential Historian Tim Naftali. Tim, always enjoy our conversations. On this issue specifically, just to be clear, not minimizing anything that President Carter accomplished or his legacy while in office, but the post-presidency was like something, I don't know that there's much historical precedent for. Why do you think that was?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, actually -- well, I'll give you one slight parallel, but it's -- there is no exact parallel for what Jimmy Carter did in his post-presidency. A couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, he was relatively young when he lost to Ronald Reagan. He was 56 years old.

But let's keep in mind, he was always a fitness, not -- not actually fitness buff, he jogged until he was 80 years old. So this is a man at 56 who felt he had a lot more to give. And the question is, what was he going to do?

And in the first weeks, he describes this in one of his 32 books. He describes coming back from Washington, not really being at loose ends, not knowing what to do with his life. And he came upon this idea of what would become the Carter Center.

And what he decided to do was to take his commitment to public service and Rosalynn's commitment to public service and do it on a global scale. No president had ever done that before. Now, the other president who had a very long post-presidency in our modern history was Herbert Hoover.

Herbert Hoover didn't just disappear from the scene. He did come back to provide assistance in reforming and improving government. But Herbert Hoover, who had once had a career, actually as an international humanitarian, didn't do that in his post-presidency.

Jimmy Carter decided to do it. And not only do it in one part, one sphere. The Carter Center is known for observing and encouraging democratic elections. He decided to do it in several different spheres. Democratic resilience, public -- international public health, and at home and abroad, building affordable housing.

So Jimmy Carter decided to basically not only talk the talk, but walk the walk in terms of international humanitarian service. That was the first time any president had done it. And we're seeing now as presidents who leave office relatively young, they create centers sort of like the Carter Center to do this kind of work.

I mean, George W. Bush, for example, has continued his interest and commitment to dealing with the AIDS crisis in Africa. So Jimmy Carter has set a model for the kind of good works you can do as a former American president.

MATTINGLY: I think there's this great anecdote where Rosalynn talks about how he just -- she'd looked over and he was sitting straight up in bed in the middle of the night as this idea had come to him that he was able to flush out over the coming decades.

This also, though, it got him crosswise with the current inhabitants of the Oval Office several times. Didn't always have the best relationship with the President's Club, which he didn't ever seem to mind.

NAFTALI: Oh, my goodness. Well, that's a -- yes, that's quite a story. And each and every one of his successors, Republican or Democrat alike, would have a story of dealing with Jimmy Carter. Because although Jimmy Carter understood there had been a transition of power, Jimmy Carter always considered himself the president.

And he was a maverick. He was a self-starter.

[12:55:01]

And presidents and their advisers would tell Jimmy Carter, would you please, you know, be careful when you're talking to this foreign leader in an effort to improve relations. Keep in mind that we've got to make the policy. Don't get ahead of your skis. And Jimmy Carter time and again would do that.

And Jimmy Carter was also more than willing to speak out publicly against a policy that his successor might have. I'll give you a good example. During the run-up to the Gulf War, this is after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and George H.W. Bush had committed this country to liberating Kuwait.

Jimmy Carter didn't like it. He didn't like the idea. He didn't want the United States to engage in this coalition, actually the United Nations --

MATTINGLY: Right.

NAFTALI: -- effort. And so, Jimmy Carter sent a letter to members of the Security Council --

MATTINGLY: Right.

NAFTALI: -- at the U.N. arguing against his government's own position. He also sent the same letter to George Bush.

MATTINGLY: Right.

NAFTALI: The thing that George Bush didn't know is that Carter was sending it to all these members of the Security Council. That's something Carter didn't tell him. So Carter felt that he had positions that he wanted to share with the world and he went ahead and did it, even when the president who was in the Oval Office didn't agree.

MATTINGLY: Certainly, a one-of-a-kind in that regard. Timothy Naftali, always appreciate your time, sir. Thanks so much.

And thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.

[13:00:00]