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Right Now: Heated Confirmation Hearings For Key Trump Nominees; Biden Warns Of Oligarchy, "Tech-Industrial Complex"; Three Richest Men In The World To Attend Trump Inauguration. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired January 16, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:32:45]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, confirmation hearings are continuing for key Trump Cabinet picks. Among them is Scott Bessent, the president-elect's nominee to lead the Treasury Department. The billionaire hedge fund manager is facing scrutiny from the Senate Finance Committee as he just made this glaring declaration about extending Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts.
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SCOTT BESSENT, TREASURY SECRETARY NOMINEE: This is the single most important economic issue of the day. This is pass-fail. That if we do not fix these tax cuts, if we do not renew and extend, then we will be facing an economic calamity. And as always, with financial instability, that falls on the middle and working class people.
We will see a gigantic middle class tax increase. We will see the child tax credit halved. We will see the deductions halved.
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BASH: My panel is back. Kayla, what do you make of the messaging there?
KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, he knows who his audience is. It's not only the Senate Finance Committee, but it's also the president-elect who has made it very clear that extending his 2017 tax cuts is his biggest priority.
Yes, he cares very deeply about trade and right-sizing some of those trade balances or imbalances as he sees them. But the whole reason why he's been pushing for this one big, beautiful bill is because there is worry that if they do two bills where the first one tackles immigration and defense spending and some energy issues, that perhaps they'll waste valuable political capital and won't have time to get to the tax issue at hand.
Now, it's not necessarily that they won't have time because the tax cuts do expire, many of them, at the end of this year. So they will have to deal with it one way or another. But whether they are able to do that on a bipartisan basis by perhaps raising the cap on state and local tax deductions still remains to be seen.
But he knows that Trump very much wants this done. This is a non- negotiable. And so he's trying to raise the stakes for all the members of the Senate.
BASH: And just going back to what you showed us, which, again, we know because we were all there in 2024, the economy is by far the biggest priority for voters who supported him and even those who didn't.
[12:35:12]
We've seen a lot of activity on the Hill this week for the Justice Department, the Attorney General, Defense Secretary, Secretary of State. This is the first biggie on the top issue for the American people.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF: Exactly, which is why you hear at the committee today, and I'm sure will continue, Democrats are seizing this moment to try and get their messaging in a better place than they thought it was in the '24 campaign on the economy.
They think, as they found in 2017, being opposed to these Trump tax cuts was a successful messaging effort for them in the 18 midterms. They argued to the American people that they were skewed much more to the wealthy. I think it's why exactly you heard Bessent not, you know, trying to reframe what certain things would not exist if the tax cuts are not renewed.
They're on the more popular policy proposals broadly than on, of course, the tax cuts that went to the wealthy. So Democrats are seizing on this moment that he's before them in the spotlight to try and get a better footing on economic messaging that they clearly know they lost to Trump in the campaign.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Which was obviously a glaring weakness during the campaign. I also thought it was interesting that even Scott Bessent is being asked right now about whether or not he will respect the independence of the Fed as well.
And this has been a through line, you know, throughout these hearings. Each of these picks getting pressed on, will you respect the independence of these institutions that you will be working with? And how does that also collide with the loyalty tests that many of these picks have been put through at Mar-a-Lago when Trump was considering them as well.
BASH: Yes. And you mentioned some of the other nominees who we've seen this week. Let's just listen to several of them who were making comments along those lines.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY NOMINEE: The first and most important thing we could have done is elect Donald Trump as the new commander- in-chief. Because past is prologue. Our warfighters understand what kind of commander-in-chief they're going to get in President Donald Trump. Someone who stands behind them. Someone who gives them clear missions. Someone who ends wars decisively.
PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: I will fight every day to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components. The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone.
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE NOMINEE: I think the president's been abundantly clear, and that is his policy's going to be driven about making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Now, apart from maybe that last one, I just want to say that we played them because, generally speaking, of course you hear nominees of incoming presidents or presidents say that they will support the president's policies.
We don't usually hear the nominees intentionally use the political language and branding that the president likes to use in order to communicate with his base. And that was intentional across these nominees' hearings.
TAUSCHE: Yes, it was intentional. And it was also, you know, they answered these questions in sort of big-picture format. In a few cases, were -- was there a yes or a no answer? Because they know that that will essentially pigeonhole them into what they're able to do or how they're able to maneuver if and when they get installed at each of these departments.
BASH: OK, everybody stand by because up next we're going to talk about a team of oligarchs. That's how President Biden described the people who are gathering around Donald Trump, who will be part of his group of ultra-wealthy supporters and advisers.
He may have had Team Trump in mind. Well, we know he had Team Trump in mind. And we're going to take a closer look at who these billionaires populating the incoming administration and the people who are supporting the administration exactly are.
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[12:43:41]
BASH: In his final Oval Office address last night, President Biden name-checked former President Dwight Eisenhower as he delivered a warning reminiscent of Eisenhower's call against -- call to action against a burgeoning military-industrial complex.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. I'm equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power.
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BASH: My smart reporters are back with me. David Chalian, what did you make of that?
CHALIAN: I thought the speech was really interesting because it wasn't the speech I anticipated that Joe Biden was going to give as a farewell address. Because I suspected, after reading the few interviews that he's done or whatever, that he was going to really focus on trying to tie a bow on his legacy.
And I was just surprised to hear him leave the country with a directive and a warning going forward, that that's what he chose to lean into rather than his own personal legacy. He did a little bit of that obviously.
BASH: He did, yes.
[12:45:09]
CHALIAN: But just that moment of the speech, I think we -- your ears perked up and you were like, this just has a different approach to his goodbye. It was this to-do list for the American people to take up the mantle of guarding against democracy, but beware of this thing that he sees as a, you know, troubling warning that the country should be aware of.
BASH: And he specifically made an analogy to the robber barons back in the day. And on that note, I just want to show our viewers some of the big tech leaders who are going to attend the Trump inauguration.
CEO of TikTok, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and it goes on. And so, if you kind of look at this list and we'll talk about who's going to be in his actual Cabinet in a second, the point that President Biden was trying to make is that he believes these people are the modern-day robber barons.
KANNO-YOUNGS: I saw his warning as an effort to directly call into question Trump's appeals during the campaign to the working class. The claims of sort of populist appeal and an effort to help middle-class and working-class Americans.
And instead, you had President Biden, as he leaves office, make the argument that actually the president-elect is surrounding himself around a concentration of wealth that seeks to use power to benefit themselves. That's what I saw the argument of yesterday in the speech and an effort to put that into historical context and say that it's once again relevant in the present.
BASH: I think -- no, I think that's true. I think all things are true on this particular issue. To borrow Elissa Slotkin's term, genuflecting, the other thing that President Biden is seeing and everybody is seeing is that these people who are the most wealthy people, if we can put it back up on the screen, not just in the country, among the most wealthy people in the world, have decided that Donald Trump is their guy.
And that has played itself out not just in the money that they're giving for the inauguration, but in the case of Mark Zuckerberg in particular, the big changes, the policy changes, and the messaging changes that he has aggressively taken in the past week.
TAUSCHE: Well, it's hard to know how much of this is simply kowtowing to the incoming president. How much of this is them seeing the election results and realizing that the country is perhaps in a very different place than they believed it was through their own corporate policies just a few years ago.
But what I find interesting about Biden's warning on oligarchies and this concentration of wealth and powers that in speaking with some of his White House officials in the weeks since the election, not all of them necessarily agree.
They actually believe that perhaps the White House should have done more to cultivate a relationship with Elon Musk, that perhaps Biden's snub of Musk at a 2021 event on electric vehicles where he excluded Tesla because Tesla was not unionized then just created so much bad blood between Musk and the administration, despite Marty Walsh going to Austin and meeting with him at a factory --
BASH: Yes.
TAUSCHE: -- that then there was essentially irreparable damage. The fights erupted on social media, and now the White House, I spoke to one official who actually compared it, that singular event to when President Obama roasted Trump at the 2013 White House Correspondents' Dinner and said, you know, is this -- was that the event that catalyzed Elon Musk to go against our administration and side with the Republicans, pour a quarter of a billion dollars into the election, the same way that President Obama's jokes essentially catalyzed --
BASH: Yes.
TAUSCHE: -- him to run for president.
BASH: Yes, that is such great reporting.
CHALIAN: I don't think they decided that Trump is their guy. I think they're their own guy, and they think Trump is the vehicle to serve their needs and interests.
BASH: Right. You said it in a much more articulate way than I did, and that was what I was trying to suggest. We didn't get to -- we're going to have a lot of time, the fact that those are, except for Elon Musk, who's sort of outside adjacent, even though he's going to have an office, the fact that Fredreka Schouten did a great piece, which I encourage everybody to look at online, nearly a dozen people worth at least $1 billion are going to be in his Cabinet and in his inner circle. There you see them.
Up next, we're going to have a little political baby talk.
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[12:53:55]
BASH: Who says Democrats and Republicans can't be friends? Amid all of the consequential, sometimes contentious Cabinet confirmation hearings this week, you might have missed this. Listen to this light-hearted exchange between Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth and Republican Senator-turned Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio.
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SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D), ILLINOIS: You just run for president, and I didn't think you would know who I was. I was pregnant with my daughter and trying to change Senate rules so that I could bring her onto the floor so I could do my job and vote.
I heard, "Tammy Duckworth", from across the Senate chambers, and you came running down from the top back of the Senate chambers to tell me, I'm with you. I will support you. You have the right to vote, and I will support you being able to bring your daughter or your child onto the floor when she's born. And I want to thank you for that kindness.
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE NOMINEE: I think what I exactly said is, what's the big deal? This place is already full of babies.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Speaking of babies, we have some breaking news. Introducing Eleanor Ricky Gray, daughter of Kristen Holmes and Noah Gray. After a wild run on the campaign trail, Eleanor arrived on January 14th, weighing in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces. Her amazing mom deserves an extra shout-out.
[12:55:09]
Kristen was just named CNN's Senior White House Correspondent after reporting from nearly every campaign rally, breaking news late into the night, early in the morning, and delivering essential transition news all while very pregnant.
Congratulations to Kristen, to Noah, and of course, Eleanor's proud big brother, Elliot. And just a special note for Eleanor, when you may or may not get into your teen years, I want you to know this, your mother is a badass, when you get into your teen years and may or may not understand that. Noting it here.
Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.
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