Return to Transcripts main page
Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
CEOs Express Concerns About Tariffs as Trump Promises "I'll Respond" to Foreign Tariffs; Trump Imposes 25 Percent Tariffs on All Steel and Aluminum Imports; Senate Democrats Float Compromise on Must- Pass Funding Bill; In Scathing Ruling, Judge Beryl Howell Halts Part of Trump's Executive Order Against Prominent Democratic-tied Law Firm Perkins Coie; Putin Visits Russian Frontlines as Trump Ramps Up Ceasefire Pressure; RFK Jr. Spreads Misinfo About Measles Vaccine; SpaceX Launch to ISS Scrubbed. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired March 12, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: ... the administration restarted family detention. That means that they can arrest and detain immigrant families. That was a practice that was suspended under the Biden administration, but it is now being revived under the Trump administration. All of this, of course, as they hope to ramp up arrests and then with that, the deportation of undocumented immigrants.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Priscilla, thank you very much, such important reporting, thank you. And thanks so much to all of you for being with us, for that, Anderson starts now.
[20:00:30]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, two of the most powerful CEOs in America expressed their concerns about the President's tariff policy as he promises to respond to new tariffs from Canada and the E.U.
Also tonight, one day after Ukraine accepted the terms of a ceasefire, Vladimir Putin dresses up in fatigue for cameras. What does that signal about their plans with the war with Ukraine.
And later Elon Musk, they made a mistake firing experts on Ebola but then fixed it, but did they? Tonight, a doctor who survived Ebola sounds the alarm.
Good evening, strong comments tonight from two of the nation's most influential CEOs regarding the President's tariff policy and warnings about what they could do to businesses and the economy in the short term.
Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase has changed his tune on tariffs and a newly released interview with Semafor. He now says that, "Uncertainty is not a good thing" and that businesses could change what they do because of the tariffs, two months ago that he defends tariffs saying get over it. Also, today Larry Fink, head of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock said this to CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY FINK, CEO, BLACKROCK: The collective impact in the short run is people are pausing, they're pulling back. Talking to CEOs throughout the economy, I hear the economy is weakening as we speak.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, Fink went on to say he remains, "very bullish on America." But all of these comments come as price hikes are on the way from Canada and now the E.U., after President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs went into effect today.
Hours from now, Canada's reciprocal tariffs will hit imported U.S. steel and aluminum, plus computers and sporting equipment and anything made with cast iron.
The E.U.'s tariffs go into effect next month, with many hitting products like peanut butter, bourbon and motorcycles produced in Republican states and districts. When asked today whether he'd respond to the E.U. tariffs that Trump said, "Of course, I'm going to respond." The good news is that markets had a better day than most of the past two plus weeks.
A favorable report on inflation came out today, which was lower than expected, and that will now serve as a baseline for how tariffs may affect the rate of price increases in the coming months.
All the market indices are still down for the year, in large part because of the tariffs as well as the inconsistency with which they've been announced, paused and then rolled out. Not to mention the carve outs for automakers, plus the brief flirtation with doubling the steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada. Trump dismissed that criticism today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: On tariffs, there's been a lot of on and off, some inconsistency --
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: There's no inconsistency. Let me just tell you the inconsistency. I have the right -- I have the right to adjust. I'm not like a block that just I won't delay -- I have -- it's called flexibility. it's not called inconsistency. It's called flexibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, call it what you will. Businesses do not like a level of uncertainty because it makes planning for the future that much more difficult. Today, the President insisted it will all work out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Financially, we'll be stronger than ever before. I think the markets are going to soar when they see what's happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, so far that hasn't been the case. JPMorgan today said the chance of recession increased to 40 percent from 30 percent. President Trump has struggled on the question of whether there will be a recession. He whiffed on it twice over the weekend. Yesterday, he settled on the response, "I don't see it at all." But his aides are now sometimes peppering their responses with the possibility.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY CORDES, CBS NEWS: Will these policies be worth it if they lead to a recession, even a short term recession?
HOWARD LUTNICK, U.S. COMMERCE SECRETARY: These policies are the most important thing America has ever had.
CORDES: So it is worth it?
LUTNICK: It is worth it, A, I don't think -- the only reason there could possibly be a recession is because of the Biden nonsense that we had to live with.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: That was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last night saying that a recession would be worth it. But then it's not going to happen. But if it did, it'd be President Biden's fault. We saw another aide this afternoon also laying the groundwork to blame Biden if there's a recession. Here's the President's Senior Counsel for Trade and Manufacturing, Peter Navarro.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER NAVARRO, SENIOR COUNSEL FOR TRADE AND MANUFACTURING: Biden was a combination of very overaggressive Keynesian stimulus spending to goose the economy. It built in a recession, possibly at some time down the road, if that spending weren't controlled.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The concern many economists have with tariffs is that they could lead to price hikes, followed by a pullback in spending and then possibly a recession, something Trump told us last month we didn't need to worry about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: As part of the reciprocal tariffs, would you also direct agencies to study the impact they would have on prices in the U.S.?
TRUMP: No, there's nothing to study. There's nothing to study. It's going to go well.
(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: Well, we begin with CNN chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, who anchors "The Source" at the top of the next hour and is going to be speaking tonight with Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin.
Is the White House still trying to avoid a recession or officials more focused on laying the blame on the Biden administration?
[20:05:18]
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the President himself came out and said he doesn't think that there's going to be a recession. Of course, that was after about 48 hours of speculation, after he declined to rule one out because of his aggressive policies that we've seen have so very clearly unsettled the market, Anderson, to put it lightly.
The White House felt a little bit better this morning by those good inflation numbers that came out. But the question was whether or not that was really just a brief reprieve. And if the good news that came out of that could be undermined by the uncertainty that is in the market because of these tariffs and the policies here and what that looks like. And so, the White House has been expressing confidence about this.
They keep saying that there could be some pain, a detox period as some people, some of his top advisers have referred to it as. But they say overall that they do believe this is the policy that he is moving ahead with. And when you listen to President Trump today inside the Oval Office, he's really dismissive of the stock market in those numbers. And instead not saying that he's backing off his tariffs. He's instead talking, Anderson about the ones that he's going to be putting in place in just a few weeks from now. These reciprocal tariffs that he's been talking about.
But really the back and forth has been the President putting in place these tariffs. Then countries threatening retaliation and the President threatening to retaliate again against the E.U. for their retaliation inside the Oval Office today, as he was sitting next to the Irish Prime Minister, a member, of course, of the E.U.
And so, it is this remarkable moment to see how the President is kind of dismissing concerns from other world leaders inside the Oval Office, from these major CEOs of these companies, some of whom he came face-to-face with earlier in Washington this week, and kind of insisting that he is going to push along with this.
And it's also turning on its head, really, this kind of long-standing assurance that Wall Street seemed to think it had after Trump won the election, as he was leading up to the election, that essentially it was going -- they were going to be able to not control Trump, but know where he would go based on how the stock market was reacting to something. And that is just not proving to be borne out anymore. Trump does not seem as bothered by it or nearly as controlled by it, or paying attention to it as he did when I covered him in his first term -- Anderson. COOPER: Kaitlan, thanks very much. We'll see you at the top of the hour. Perspective now from the co-host of one of my favorite podcast, "Pivot," Scott Galloway, and a professor of marketing at NYU and CNN contributor Kara Swisher. It is so nice to have you both here together.
KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Nice, we're here together just for you.
COOPER: Scott, where do you stand on the recession, on what the President is doing with tariffs?
SCOTT GALLOWAY, PROFESSOR OF MARKETING, NYU STERN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: It's difficult to think of a more elegant way to rA.I.se prices and reduce productivity and prosperity and the tariffs. I was a graduate student at Shakhter micro and macro-economics in the 90s, and we talked about tariffs in Economics class, the way I imagine they talk about leeches in medical school. Like can you believe they were stupid enough to do this at one point?
They can be used to restore symmetry and unfair trade. They can be used to protect certain key industries for, you know, for strategic reasons. But these blanket tariffs are nothing but a reduction in prosperity of Americans.
In addition, even worse than the tariffs are the inconsistency. I think the entire world is reshaping around different supply chain and different partners they can rely on. They don't even know -- people don't even know how to adjust for these tariffs because they're on and they're off again. The uncertainty is even more damaging, I think, than the tariffs.
COOPER: We --
SWISHER: He can call it flexibility if he wants, it's chaos is what it feels like. It's like red light green light, that game you play as a kid and it feels very juvenile the way they're doing it. Sorry, I'm mad at you, I'm doing this and it seems haphazard.
I'm calling it a Trump-session, just like he's trying to shove it over to Biden. But really, it's his, he's sort of owning it by saying, I'll do what I want and I'll do, so, fine it's a Trump-session if it happens.
COOPER: It's interesting to hear, you know, Jamie Dimon and Fink. There's a lot of CEOs who are not speaking publicly. And obviously there's a lot of CEOs who are now bending the knee. We've talked about this a little bit.
SWISHER: Yes.
COOPER: That only seems to be rolling, and that seems to be rolling along, the capitulation by a lot of CEOs.
SWISHER: Well, but the market doesn't lie, right. The market is telling you the story and it doesn't care what Peter Navarro says about any of this. It is telling the story in a minute by minute basis. Correct? I mean, Scott and I talk about this a lot.
GALLOWAY: Well, okay, Peter Navarro was in prison. There's a domino of cowardice here that is increasing and more and more damaging.
COOPER: A domino of cowardice.
GALLOWAY: When you have the wealthiest people in the world controlling the most powerful companies in the world agree to be trotted out and paraded around and then texting my "Pivot" co-host, claiming how much they hate themselves. That emboldens the CEO of X to demand that advertisers advertise on her platform, or she will weaponize her boss to block their merger.
That that enables somebody to get rid of or feel pressured to delete the opinion section of a newspaper. You are seeing individuals now intimidated into not speaking out and companies intimidated into having pro-Trump policies or put out fake press releases claiming there's going to be an incremental $300 or $400 billion while in the back room they are trying to figure out trying to figure out, they're reducing spend, reducing production estimates because they don't know what this manic President is going to be up to next.
COOPER: Is it true? You get --
[20:10:20]
SWISHER: I do, I had someone saying -- I know you hate me, but I hate myself more like for having to do this. And one of the things that was interesting, I was on the train coming up here from Washington where the business roundtable was talking about, and I was listening. Of course, they all talk loudly on the Amtrak, as you know, and they were all saying --
COOPER: Never a wise thing to do.
SWISHER: -- they were all saying how tariffs are ridiculous, how it's going to hurt business, how they're going to cut back. And every CEO I talked to is talking about cutbacks. Now, sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it's good to clean up things and clean up costs and everything else, if you do it in a smart way. But this is so haphazard, nobody knows what's going to happen.
And again, I look to the markets. The markets are telling you they don't like this. Americans are telling you they don't like this. The price of eggs is telling you it doesn't like it.
COOPER: I mean, there's a number of people have been making arguments lately that, well, look, you know, the these multibillionaire CEOs, they don't care about making more money that they're doing it either for the good of the country or to be part of the to be part of the conversation.
SWISHER: No.
COOPER: When people say that they don't people who are billionaires care about making more money. Do you buy that? SWISHER: No, I don't. Scott, you first.
GALLOWAY: I think one of the most upsetting features about this administration in general, cadence in America, is that your democracy and your freedom is a function of how much money you have. The wealthy are protected by the law, but not bound by it. And the bottom 99 percent are bound by the law but not protected by it.
Anyone at this table, if things get really ugly, can peace out to Dubai. Any woman in our life has --
COOPER: I'm not sure you and I would just go to Dubai.
SWISHER: No, we'll go on his plane.
GALLOWAY: Oh, anyone -- any woman in my life has access to my classroom. I can say what I want because if someone comes to me, I can lawyer up. The wealthiest man just put the President in office. In America, democracy and the constitution are meant to protect the lower 90, or especially the lower 50, and instead, democracy and rights have become strictly correlated to how much money you have.
So, there is a really unfortunate conspiracy between the wealthiest and the most powerful in our nation who have decided not to speak up, because at the end of the day, they're going to make more money with these tax cuts that add $800 billion to the deficit.
So, everything else were talking about is a misdirect from this conspiracy of the wealthiest, most powerful people in our nation deciding to ignore this blatant, craven denial of democracy and Constitution because they're about to get richer.
COOPER: You think it's really because they're going to make more money? Yes, because A.I. is what's at stake here. This President can affect that. The next couple of years is going to be critical for A.I.. And so, it's going to figure out the winners and the losers. And the government's going to be critical to this.
You know, Mark Cuban said this out loud. He's like -- the reason they're doing it, Kara, is because they want to be first in line for whoever gets the A.I. thing because it's a winner-take all game. And so, it's going to matter. The government data is going to matter. Having access to it, how much building you're going to do, how much investment the government is going to do.
So, they want to be up close and personal, whether it's space or A.I. or the sort of the future tech.
COOPER: Well, I just read an article about Donald Trump, Jr. Being part of this, I guess fund that invests and they're getting access to Elon Musk's A.I. company to invest in that. That, I mean, is Musk positioning himself for his A.I. company?
SWISHER: I don't know, did you see the car sale on the White House lawn the other day? Come on, the stock did go up. He probably made the amount of money he then put into a PAC for President Trump. COOPER: Well, that, Maggie Haberman at "The Times" last night reported on this program. Musk is poised to give $100 million to Trump's political operation.
SWISHER: Which he got today from the stock going up seven or eight percent. Now, that stock is not going to stay up. The problems at Tesla are real problems. People not wanting to buy the cars so they don't like Musk. They haven't had innovative cars in a while and because there's competitors, it's a natural decline in market share for them. But it's being pushed along by the fact that they haven't come out.
COOPER: Do you think this $100 million that "The Times" is reporting is going to give to the political operation, which is different than the kind of money he's been giving to, or his organizations have been giving.
SWISHER: Yes, controlled by him.
COOPER: Right, this is much more direct.
SWISHER: It feels like a gift to me.
COOPER: Well, do you feel it's you know, "The Times" had reported on that that meeting where it seems like Musk was kind of not dressed down, but certainly was told its the department heads, it's the Cabinet Secretaries who have the hiring and firing calls.
SWISHER: If you say so. He knows how to behave like a beta. I don't think he is a beta. He's is in an alpha position here, even if Trump doesn't know it. He's manipulating the situation with his money. And when he needs to look like he's, you know, beneath him or acquiesce, he'll do it.
COOPER: You think he is playing Trump very well.
GALLOWAY: Well, I think you said this. Kara, and I kind of resonated. Kara said that she thinks Trump is scared of Musk. I mean, I'm sure there's some people who've shown him the map that said, you're president because of this guy, and he could un-president you. He's the most powerful man in the world. When a small number of counties and a small number of states decide the election and you have a third of $1 billion, go into those counties weaponized by a platform that a lot of people are on.
You could argue that not only are rights correlated to wealth, but who gets to be President is correlated to who is the wealthiest person in the world right now?
[20:15:27]
COOPER: The House speaker, by the way, was just quoted, you know, was just said at some forum, you know, that you have to consider what Musk is going to tweet on X.
SWISHER: That's correct. He's got to know what he's going to do and he could really affect it. I mean, look, I'm not a fan of Steve Bannon's by any stretch of the imagination, but he has clocked him absolutely perfectly. And I think he understands the threat to the actual movement, which I think he is indeed believes in, even though it's mistaken.
COOPER: We're going to take a quick break. You guys stick around, please, a lot more to talk about. I also want to talk to you about Democrats and how they are dealing with this; party leaders, their responses to what's happening thus far.
Plus, Vladimir Putin visiting the front lines in the war he started in a camo-green uniform. As the world waits to hear if Russia will accept a ceasefire. Clarissa Ward joins us also from Ukraine.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:36]
COOPER: Midnight Friday is the deadline for Congress to pass a Continuing Resolution, basically a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running. Otherwise, it won't just be tariffs that could cause markets to plummet.
Democratic votes are needed in the Senate to assist the thin Republican majority there. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer says the Democrats have the votes to block a bill passed by the Republican controlled House. But late tonight, some Democrats suggested a possibility for compromise if they can get a vote on their package.
Back with us, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. What do you make of how Democrats are --
SWISHER: Feckless, we talked about this on "Pivot" the other day. Just the whole -- from the from the State of The Union on it feels like --
COOPER: You're not pleased with how they behaved.
SWISHER: We were not pleased. I don't think they were pleased. And they will say that's something they'll tell you off the record. I just interviewed Senator Warren, and I tried to get her to at least say, come on. And she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't like -- she's like everyone expresses himself in their own way, but it just seems -- but it's not coordinated, it's not clear and they still haven't figured out how to have a response to Trump in a consistent story.
COOPER: James Carville has talked about just playing possum and laying dead for a while.
SWISHER: Others are being --
GALLOWAY: I think you want to channel Mitch McConnell. I think you want to go upstream of DOGE and threaten to shut the government down. That's what they would do. Threaten to raise, not raise the debt limit such that we default on our next Treasury auction? I would I would be the party of not effing around right now. And also, we need to transition from being the party of indignance to the party of ideas and not wave your cane at the President during the congressional address, but talk about raising minimum wage to $25.00 an hour, bringing down Medicare eligibility two years until we have nationalized health care, figuring out national service, building seven million houses in ten years.
Leave the indignance and the outrage behind because that's just a misdirect, and it kind of lightens up the sensors of the right and become the party of ideas but --
SWISHER: I mean, Ezra Klein, I just interviewed him today for the book they just had called "Abundance." That's the idea is think in abundance, think about building houses, thinking about where we're going forward, what about the future? And that's where the Democrats have to project is what's our ideas, not what we're against, which is Trump. But what are we for and what can we do? How can we make instead of the sort of the cruelty of DOGE? What is government good for, and what results can people get from government? How do you make that case?
COOPER: Scott, do you still think a lot of what's going on with DOGE and Musk is a kind of a misdirect, a diversionary tactic? Because you've said in the past it's sort of diversionary tactic from the explosion of the debt that's going to take place with the spending bill.
GALLOWAY: Well, look at the numbers. "The Wall Street Journal" reports that so far, DOGE has saved a whopping $2.6 billion. We could 6X the savings from DOGE by cutting off all subsidies to Tesla.
I think blaming a helicopter crash on DEI or the gulf of cheap rigs. All of this is a misdirect or male versus female semantics, from the fact that the greatest tax increase in history is about to be levied on future generations by a gigantic increase in the deficit to fund a tax cut.
So, look over here. Maybe we'll get rid of some inspectors for the 11 investigations of Musk companies or the 32 investigations across 11 different agencies. But I generally think this is primarily an attempt to get us to look over here such that they can lower taxes on the one percent and massively explode the deficit.
They talked about Biden economics and stimulus Peter Navarro, such BS about unneeded stimulus from George Washington to George Bush. Deficits were $7 trillion. Donald Trump had $7 trillion during his four years as President. This is nothing but most of this stuff and the Democrats fall for it is a giant misdirect from what is about to be an explosion in our deficits, to give the wealthiest Americans a big tax cut on the credit card of young Americans.
SWISHER: But they do want to hollow out government, and this is their chance. That's why they're doing it so quickly. And with such lightning speed. I hate to use the word blitzkrieg, but that's exactly, well, it actually works with these people. So I mean, this is what they want to do. They want to get rid of it, hollow it out so it doesn't come back.
And I think it's up to Democrats to take the opportunity and say, what can we do to build and give services to the American people? Here they're talking about how bad government is. Maybe the Democrats should start to argue how good it can be. And by doing things like housing, like Scott talked about, high-speed rail, better food, better, better pharmaceutical prices, things like that. And there are billionaires working on this, Mark Cuban is one of them, for example, with drug prices down, egg prices down, how do you have cleaner water and things like that?
COOPER: How long do you think the DOGE cutting or whatever it is that's going on in the sort of unregulated way is going to go on?
[20:25:12]
SWISHER: It could go on for a while, especially -- if there is a government shutdown they could do that. They could selectively decide what to keep open and what not. And so, you know, they'll do it as long as they can do it and probably until the midterms, I would guess, unless there's some blow up between Musk and Trump. But I don't know, Trump did an ad for him on the White House lawn. Everyone keeps predicting this. I don't necessarily see it.
He needs Musk to be able to have a cudgel to all those, to primary those people, or make them scared, or make them nervous or bring them in line. There has to be some sort of fear. But you can't hold people for fear for too long.
COOPER: One of the things I've been obsessed with this week is the attack by President Trump on law firms in Washington, and I know I'm not, like, worried about these individual lawyers, I'm sure they very wealthy and they're going to do just fine. But it is unprecedented to have a President of the United States go after attorneys. In our system, everybody has a right to be represented by --
SWISHER: Including him, he needs a lot of lawyers.
COOPER: And he's had -- he's benefited from lawyers who had security clearances, who could help him defend cases. He's taken away security clearances from attorneys who work for Democrats or people who may be challenging him based on firings. It's sending a very strong message to attorneys do not take cases of anybody going against the Trump administration. We will destroy your business.
SWISHER: Same thing with judges, same thing with the media. He's attacking the Pulitzer Prizes for giving one to "The New York Times" over the Russia case. It's just very typical. I mean, Scott, you talk about this a lot is what you go for to try to quiet people.
GALLOWAY: Well, when you remove the security detail for a general who ordered the strike on the head of Iranian security forces, you're putting that person -- that's repackaged violence. He's saying to people that I will either bankrupt you, levy tariffs against your company, or potentially put you in harm's way if you don't sign up. I mean, this is, I hate to use the word but it's a perfect definition of fascism. I, however, believe we differ on this. I think DOGE is probably going to die a quiet death in the next 30 days.
SWISHER: He has predicted this.
GALLOWAY: Because if in fact they have elevated the decision to the Cabinet members and taken the power away, they "said" that Musk is now an adviser and the Cabinet member or secretary is get to make the final decision. They're not even shouldn't be cutting people. They have hard jobs, The amount of money they're not interested in this posturing.
In addition, I think the real reason that it's going to be like an actor, it's not going to die, it just kind of fades away, is he's losing too much money. It's jumped the lab. It's not only impacting Tesla's stock, which has shed a third of its value in the last 30 days, it's now impacting his growth vehicle and the major source of his wealth moving forward and that is SpaceX.
There are now nations saying we can't count on you. The nation of Poland is reconsidering their contract for battlefield technology with SpaceX. They said, we just can't count on you. You're --
COOPER: SpaceX or Starlink.
SWISHER: Starlink.
GALLOWAY: Starlink, excuse me. And also, Alberta, they're talking about or provinces of Canada are talking about shutting off their contracts. So when SpaceX goes from being the most valuable private company traded on the secondary markets to a company that's reduced in value, I think he's going to decide to kind of fade to black here.
COOPER: Kara, I want to ask you, you're big part in this new documentary that CNN Original films has called "Twitter: Breaking the Bird." When you look at Twitter in the early days, what are the biggest differences between kind of the startup it was and what it is now?
SWISHER: It was a sloppy mess and now it's a toxic mess. I don't know, it was never a very good business. Let's be clear, the Twitter was -- Twitter always kind of bumped along and never met the potential that everyone felt it had. It was always sort of the sort of sad stepchild to Facebook and Facebook grew like crazy because he's a very aggressive CEO. And Twitter always was in a kind of a corporate mess all the time, and it never got the advertising business right. It managed not to buy Instagram. It was right there to buy it and it didn't.
It had a lot of sort of turns that never down dead ends all the time. And it was run sloppily, but kind of in an interesting shaggy way, a very emotional company, I would call it. And I think Mark Zuckerberg called it a clown car that drove into a gold mine, right. But they never made it a gold mine. Under Musk, he's using it as an instrument of influence, and that's what he's absolutely using it for. This is not a business by any stretch of the imagination.
No matter how many people, advertisers you can threaten, you can't make that a really great business. And especially it's become a bad product now. I think it's a bad product now. It's a mess.
So it's -- to me, I boil everything down to product and it has not innovated at all. It never really did for a while and it continues to get worse and worse as an experience.
COOPER: Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway, thanks so much. Appreciate it. I'm so glad you guys finally got married.
SWISHER: Yes, I know. We're very excited.
GALLOWAY: What a thrill.
COOPER: Galloway, Swisher what a thrill.
SWISHER: Here we are together.
GALLOWAY: Here we go.
COOPER: Don't miss Kara and others in the new CNN Original series, "Twitter: Breaking The Bird" this Sunday at 10:00 P.M. Eastern.
Up next, as I just mentioned, some breaking news and extraordinary story we've been following closely this week. The President, by executive order, going after law firms who've represented Democrats and others who've run afoul of the administration. Today, one of those firms fought back in court, and a judge said the Department of Justice's defense of Trump's actions sent a chill down her spine.
Also, had the world is waiting for an answer from President Putin on the ceasefire proposal, Clarissa Ward joins us from Kyiv.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: This breaking news in a story brought you last night, the unprecedented attack by President Trump on two law firms in Washington, D.C. One of those firms, Perkins Coie, brought suit against the Trump Administration yesterday because of an executive order the president signed targeting them.
[20:35:00]
It suspended security clearances for Perkins Coie attorneys as well as their access to federal buildings, all because they represent clients the president doesn't like. It also cited their diversity efforts inside the firm. The firm called it a "Direct and imminent threat to their ability to represent clients, to their ability to stay in business." Late today, a judge agreed, and then some quoting from the bench ruling Judge Beryl Howell called Trump's order a "Punishment for a singled out entity being disloyal."
She went on to say, when "The Queen of Hearts yells off with their heads for her subjects, that it cannot be the reality we are living under." For what comes next, I want to bring in Jeffrey Toobin, Former Federal Prosecutor and the Author of " The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy." What is your reaction to the judge's ruling?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: You know, Anderson, I've heard a lot of court rulings, but I have never heard a judge declare something unconstitutional in so many different ways. She said, this was a violation of the First Amendment, free speech rights. She said it was a violation of the right to counsel. She said it was a right to the -- it was a violation of due process. She said it was a bill of attainder, which means it was specifically targeted against one entity, this law firm.
I mean, it was just a complete destruction of this executive order for now. But, you know, Judge Beryl Howell, very respected judge. She's an Obama appointee, in this case, is going to move through the appellate process. It may have a different fate.
COOPER: Is it possible this will end up in the Supreme Court?
TOOBIN: I think it really may because there was such a clear conflict between the Trump Justice Department lawyer who was arguing, who was basically saying, you know, we don't have to give a reason why we exclude this -- we are excluding Perkins --
COOPER: Right. He was saying that the president has the right to go after any company or any individual that he feels is a threat.
TOOBIN: And you don't have -- and the president doesn't have to give a reason. It can be a good reason. It can be a bad reason. And Judge Howell made a very interesting argument. She said, you mean you could go after Williams & Connolly, which was the law firm representing Perkins Coie, you could go after them for representing Perkins Coie? And the Justice Department lawyer sort of danced around, but basically said, yes, this is entirely in the discretion of the president.
And this conflict about the scope of presidential power is what all of these conflicts are really about. The Elon Musk cases where, you know, can the president's designee, Elon Musk go in and fire all these people? All of these are about the scope of presidential power and that's what the Supreme Court is going to have to resolve.
COOPER: Yeah, I mean, was (ph) the judge has -- as I mentioned that, that the lawyer's argument, the government's lawyer's argument from the Department of Justice, she said it sent a chill down her spine. Essentially, these law firms are saying that this is going to destroy their business because part of the idea of this clearly is to intimidate companies from hiring these firms, not related even to, you know, anything the company might have with the Trump Administration.
TOOBIN: And it came out in court that Perkins Coie has already lost clients. I mean, this has -- this executive order is less than a week old, but they have lost clients. And you can understand the client's position. It's like, how are you going to represent me if you can't even go in to visit the Securities Exchange building (ph)? COOPER: Right. And if some major company is going to hire this firm, and then the president is going to attack that company for -- just because they're hiring this firm.
TOOBIN: Right. And that's why Judge Howell, who was really very outspoken and thoughtful about this, said, you know, this is a threat to all of the legal profession in America. Notably though, and this is consistent with what's going on in the whole country, very few law firms and very few sort of prominent lawyers have spoken out against this publicly. And Williams & Connolly deserves a lot of credit because they weren't afraid to take this on.
COOPER: Well also if -- I mean, I got pushback from Republicans, you know, who saw the pro -- the stuff we've been doing though, that's on this. Well, look, this is, you know, this is payback, this is fair play. Look, they went after Trump. This is not -- this is a law firm that is representing people. It's as if, you know, a Democratic administration would take away the law licenses or go after the firm that represented President Trump in all the legal cases he's been facing.
TOOBIN: Correct. And that's not what the, I mean, you can argue --
COOPER: Well, those lawyers, the Trump lawyers had security clearances. They weren't taken -- their security clearances weren't taken away.
TOOBIN: They weren't taken away. And this idea that you can go after lawyers is very new, and at least according to this judge, very scary.
COOPER: Jeff Toobin, appreciate it. As you know, Ukraine is under pressure from the Trump Administration, agreed to a 30-day ceasefire deal.
President Trump said, today, it's up to Russia now. President Putin so far is yet to say if Russia will agree to a ceasefire. He did send the world a message today, traveled to Russia's Kursk region donning a military uniform.
[20:40:00]
CNN Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward is in Kyiv. Clarissa, what more can you tell us about Putin's visit to Kursk?
CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was one of the rare times, Anderson, where we see President Putin wearing military fatigues in Kursk for the first time since August when Ukraine first took that territory. He was in conversation with the head of Russian forces who was basically saying that through this counter offensive, the Russians have now been able to take 86 percent of the territory that the Ukrainians had been holding.
President Putin said that any prisoners of war should be treated as terrorists. And he said that he was hopeful that combat operations would soon draw to an end. This, of course, has been a key issue for President Putin. This offensive really took them by surprise and it's just possible, Anderson, that maybe taking back Kursk would give President Putin enough of a win that he would be willing to concede or agree to this proposition of this 30-day complete ceasefire.
But of course, as of yet, we don't really know what exactly the Russians are thinking. We should be learning more as U.S. officials begin their visit in Moscow with the Kremlin tomorrow, Anderson.
COOPER: Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting idea that this would give them sort of a -- whether it's a fig leaf or just kind of a justification for having a ceasefire. They may push for more land though, obviously.
WARD: Yes. I mean, previously Putin has been pretty firm that he's not interested in a ceasefire before negotiations, that he views negotiations as being the first step, that he wants to have the full territory that Russia has already claimed as its own, which is not just territory that it has already taken, but other territory that it still claims. That clearly is not going to happen, certainly not going to happen before any kind of a 30-day ceasefire.
Would there be other things, other concessions that he would be hoping to extract? Some analysts in Russia have suggested that perhaps he would demand that the U.S. and the E.U. stop supplying any weaponry to Ukraine, at least during that 30-day pause, because in the Russian's mind, that could be an opportunity for Ukraine's army to reconstitute, to regroup, and then to launch another attack. But again, from the Ukrainian's perspective, the agreement has to be the same for everyone, which is no pre-negotiations or pre-conditions rather, no red lines. We start with a full ceasefire and then during that 30-day period is when everybody gets to the negotiating table and tries to hash out the details that could result in a longer lasting peace.
COOPER: What's the response you've heard in Kyiv among Ukrainians about the agreement by Ukraine to have a ceasefire if Russia agrees?
WARD: It's interesting, Anderson, because I would say for the most part, people seem pretty relaxed in the sense that they are somewhat resigned to the fact that this is inevitable, that at some point this war has to end, that enough blood has been shed, enough treasure has been spent. They are adamant that there need to be security guarantees to ensure that Ukraine never finds itself in this position again, and they're also very skeptical of Russia's true intentions even if President Putin turns around tomorrow or in the coming days and agrees to this ceasefire. There are very few people on the ground here in Ukraine who believe that Russia would actually go ahead and honor that.
COOPER: Yeah. Clarissa Ward, thanks so much.
Well, coming up with the firings at many of America's health agencies. I'll talk to one frontline doctor with a stark warning. He says the diseases are coming. Also more breaking news, phase one of a mission to finally bring back those two American astronauts from the International Space Station was scrubbed tonight. What it means for their ride home, coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:48:40]
COOPER: Frontline doctors fighting the growing measles outbreak say it is much harder when HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says things like this on Fox News.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes -- it causes all the illnesses that measles itself cause encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. And so, people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And what we need to do is give them the best information and encourage them to vaccinate. The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, it's true the vaccine helps stop the spread of measles. A lot of what RFK Jr. said there was at the very least misleading. The adverse effects of the measles vaccine are extremely small compared to actually contracting the disease. And while the measles can cause encephalitis and blindness, they're incredibly rare from the vaccine itself. Between statements like that and the firings at our nation's health agencies, a lot of medical experts are sounding the alarm.
Dr. Craig Spencer has fought infectious disease outbreaks around the world and is himself a survivor of Ebola. He has a piece in this month's Atlantic magazine titled "The Diseases are Coming: Elon Musk's slash-and-burn government tear will have lasting effects on global health." He joins me now.
Dr. Spencer, I want to ask you about a number of things which you've written, but what do you make of, first of all, the message that Secretary Kennedy is now sending?
[20:50:00]
DR. CRAIG SPENCER, PROFESSOR, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Well, Anderson, the last time I joined you just over a month ago was the day of his Senate confirmation hearing. And I told you at that time that I came into that meeting as a skeptic and left even more concerned. And what I've heard over the past few days is exactly why. What we've heard is the head of health leadership in this country bungling basic facts at best and sharing outright lies at worst.
We heard today how he confused, I think, the mumps vaccine for the measles vaccine when he said that measles vaccine declines the effectiveness over time. That's not true. It's the mumps vaccine, so we got that wrong. He also said that measles infections might not be all that bad. Well, it turns out measles infections are really bad. They can wipe your immune system immediately and for years after. There's a reason that we vaccinate.
I've seen measles cases, I've seen what it can do. We need to prevent this. And I'm so concerned that he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth saying, we need vitamin A and we need cod liver oil, but also maybe vaccines, but vaccines might be bad. I would like more health leadership at this time in this country during this outbreak. Again, an outbreak of measles that is already larger, more cases in this -- in this year than we had all last year.
COOPER: Yeah.
SPENCER: Instead, what we're getting, leadership that sounds like a 3:00 a.m. infomercial on the magic of cod liver oil.
COOPER: Elon Musk, I just want to play what he said at cabinet meeting last month about cuts to Ebola prevention.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELON MUSK, SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will make mistakes, we won't be perfect, but when we make mistake, we'll fix it very quickly. so for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola -- Ebola prevention. I think we all want Ebola prevention. So, we restored the Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So was everything restored? And there's no interruption?
SPENCER: No, what he was saying there is a lie. It's an outright lie. Let me tell you why. With all the chaos in Washington, it's probably not something that people focus on, disease detection abroad. But this is the thing that I focus on all the time. My friends are working for CDC and for USAID and for WHO around the world. Those programs have almost all been cut. Right now, CDC has been muzzled and we have not sent our experts to outbreaks like the Ebola outbreak in Uganda. That is actively happening and normally would've been tackled with the assistance of CDC.
USAID experts who do disease surveillance and border screening at airports like they would normally be doing at the airport in Uganda are not doing that. We have the World Health Organization that is trying to step up and do that for us, but we're actively taking away their money. And the Trump Administration has moved to withdraw. At this moment, what this means for Americans is that we do not have our normal eyes and ears on what's happening with diseases around the world at a time when the number of outbreaks is increasing. The risk is going to be increasing here and I've been saying this over and over again, we are going to regret this. I promise we are going to regret this.
COOPER: Because in this day and age, a zoonotic virus, something like Ebola, is only a plane flight away.
SPENCER: That's absolutely true. But think about what's happening. We have an undermining of our disease detection systems abroad and undermining of science and well-settled science and vaccines and things here at home. Losing one of those would be bad. Losing them both at the same time means that if there is an outbreak that we don't pick up on overseas that comes here to this country, normally our CDC, our HHS, we would have the people capable of doing it. We don't really have them anymore.
We have, again, an infomercial about cod liver oil. We have undermined our ability to detect threats abroad and our ability to respond to them here in this country. And the result is unfortunately going to be disastrous. I don't know if it's going to be next week. This measles outbreak, next month, next year, but I promise we will regret this.
COOPER: There's a lot more to talk about. Dr. Craig Spencer, I would love to have you back. I also encourage people to read your article in The Atlantic that's out now.
Still ahead, we have more breaking news. SpaceX scrubbing its launch to the International Space Station today, the mission goal to get the two astronauts home after an unexpected months' long stay. Take a look at what happens now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:58:55]
COOPER: Two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station since last June will have to wait a little longer to find out when they're going to be coming home. You're looking at new video of astronauts exiting a rocket, following an aborted SpaceX launch that would've allowed Commander Suni Williams and Captain Butch Wilmore to return to earth. NASA scrubbed tonight's launch due to a hydraulics issue with the launch pad's ground system.
The two NASA astronauts were supposed to spend only about a week on the station. President Trump and Elon Musk have said that the astronauts were stranded in space for political reasons, something that Commander Williams and Captain Wilmore denied when I spoke to them last month.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: There's some who have suggested here, President Trump, that you were virtually abandoned by the last administration. Again, I know you've been asked this question before, but do you feel you've been abandoned?
CAPTAIN BARRY WILMORE, NASA ASTRONAUT: We don't feel abandoned. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human spaceflight program is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, SpaceX says it has another window to launch the mission on Thursday night. CNN's original series "Twitter: Breaking the Bird" this Sunday, at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. That is the first time that's going --
