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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Trump Addressing Tariffs As Stocks End Another Rollercoaster Day; GOP Trying To Keep Party Together To Pass Funding Bill; Ukraine Agrees To Ceasefire Proposal As U.S. Restores Aid. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired March 11, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We wouldn't have a northern border problem. We wouldn't have a tariff problem.
They don't have much. They spend very little, as you know, the least of almost anybody on military. And we spend the most of anybody on military.
We have a great military. I rebuilt the military during my first term. Were going to have to rebuild it a anybody on military. And we spend the most of anybody on military. We have a great military.
I rebuilt the military during my first term. We're going to have to rebuild it a little bit, again, not that much, but we're going to have to rebuild it a little bit again.
But Canada would be great as our cherished 51st state. You wouldn't have to worry about borders. You wouldn't have to worry about anything. And by the way, it is very highly taxed and we're very low tax. We're considered a low tax nation because of me, because I cut the taxes so low.
So the people of Canada would pay much less tax. It makes a lot of sense. And by the way, when you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done with a ruler, and that's what it was. Some guy sat there years ago and they said -- well, when you take away that and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is no place anywhere in the world that looks like that. It's -- it's --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: And then if you add Greenland, that's even --
ELON MUSK, TECH BILLIONAIRE: I mean --
TRUMP: That's pretty good.
MUSK: It's going to look beautiful.
TRUMP: Okay?
(CROSSTALK) REPORTER: What are you going to tell the CEOs, sir?
TRUMP: I'm going to look at this. I'm going to make a decision. Do you want to hear what my decision?
Okay. What's your best of these cars? What do you think?
MUSK: Well, the car that I drive is the model S Plaid.
TRUMP: Which is that one?
MUSK: It's that red one in the middle.
TRUMP: I like that. Yeah.
MUSK: Yeah.
TRUMP: I like that.
MUSK: It's -- it's -- it's 0 to 60 miles an hour in two seconds. So faster than a Ferrari.
TRUMP: That's pretty fast. I don't know if my people can handle it. They're going to -- Jeff, they're going to be using it more. I'm not allowed to use it.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: All right. Welcome to THE ARENA. I am Kasie Hunt in Washington.
President Trump there at the White House making some news on several fronts. The economy -- he says he is optimistic.
We're of course, watching the Dow Jones Industrial Average there, closing down just a minute or so ago, another 478 points on the day. That is the S&P is nearing correction territory as well today.
Let's get straight to the White House. We find CNN's Jeff Zeleny who is standing by.
Jeff, he talks about a number of things here. Of course, the economy has really been front and center. The cost just from yesterday's dip was -- dip. That's an understatement, was four point -- $4.5 trillion. Instead, there we heard the president talking -- obviously taking a tour of the Tesla. He says that he is buying to support Elon Musk.
What else did we learn?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Kasie, he was asked by reporters if he sees a recession. He said this: I don't see it at all.
Of course, that is not how he answered the question the last time he was asked that, in an interview that aired on Sunday, he really declined to weigh in. And that was one of the things that really sent the market reeling on Monday and throughout much of today. It was notable that the president is coming out really just in the final hours of the markets today, not talking earlier today, but certainly trying to talk up the markets.
He said markets go up, markets go down. And he talked about how he believes his economy is going to be one of the strongest ever. We shall see.
One of the things that has been missing, of course, is certainty. There's been plenty of confusion about the on again, off again tariffs lately from -- from Canada. And right now, even in the middle, as the president was speaking, it seems to be there is a bit of a reprieve coming back about the electricity tariffs and the threats of electricity tariffs from Canada back to the U.S.
So that seems to have calmed down somewhat. So the president certainly talking about the markets, but making clear that he values one particular stock overall, that is the cars he was standing next to. That, of course, is Elon Musk's Tesla company, which has just been hammered in recent days and all year long really, losing some 40 percent in the stock price.
But the whole reason the president was out on the south lawn of the White House looking at five Tesla vehicles, he said he wanted to basically talk up the -- the Musk vehicle, talk up Tesla, and saying that he was doing something on behalf of the country. The stock price had fallen unfairly. Never mind the fact that the president has talked against electric vehicles. Never mind the fact that his administration has done a lot to sort of wipe out some charging stations that were sort of came of age during the Biden administration, never mind any of that.
But the fact is the president was -- he got into a Tesla Model S, a red one. He said he likes how it looks. He said he cannot drive. Of course, the Secret Service will not let him, but he's going to leave it at the staff or at the White House here. So the staff can drive it.
But look, trying to talk up the markets. As he heads over in the next hour or so to talk with American CEOs at the Business Roundtable, of course, a place where. The business leaders have been watching very carefully the uncertainty.
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So he's done some cheerleading here, but we'll see if he adds any certainty to what actually roiled the markets in the first place.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, I was going to say he's going to have to answer to a lot of those business leaders. And it's interesting. He would focus on Tesla stock. It's sort of more interested, honestly, in what he wants to do with the Chips Act and how that is going to affect some of the other. I mean, Nvidia has been driving so much of the growth in the stock market basically all by itself.
Jeff, just briefly, did they buy all five of these Tesla vehicles that are out behind the White House right now, or what is the actual story there? Do you know?
ZELENY: It's unclear. There were four cars, one Cybertruck. The president seems to have just bought one. He said he wanted to buy
it at full price. He didn't ask for a discount. Who knows if any money actually exchanged hands here?
It really did play out as something of a promotional commercial. There you can see the vehicle standing there, so it's unclear if the president bought one or not. He said he has bought a Tesla for one of his granddaughters early on.
But just a separate headline, he also talked about Ukraine and that ceasefire that at least the Ukraine side has reached. He hopes Russia will meet as well. And he said he hopes to be speaking with Vladimir Putin in the coming days.
And he would welcome a meeting here with Volodymyr Zelenskyy once again.
So a lot of headlines this afternoon, Kasie.
HUNT: Never a dull moment.
Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much for that update.
ZELENY: You bet.
HUNT: All right. Our panel is here. Julia Ioffe, founding partner, Washington correspondent at "Puck"; CNN political commentator Kristen Soltis Anderson is here. Also, Bakari Sellers, of course, a Democrat. Bill Stepien, former campaign manager for Donald Trump, a Republican.
Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for being here.
I honestly like many days covering the Trump -- Trump's Washington, Bakari, don't exactly know where to start. But I think the economy, quite frankly, a big picture is where we should be. And he's saying there that more definitively answering the question about a recession or lack thereof.
But I think we can put up on the screen how the stock market has been viewing today. I mean, it's -- it's in better shape right now than it was earlier today, closing down 478 points. But this is the second day in a row of sharp, a sharp nosedive for the economy.
If you're a Democrat watching this, you're thinking what?
BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, so the first thing is, I mean, you can use Donald Trump's own words against him in which he said that if the stock market, you know, we lose a thousand points, and in two days, then the president should be impeached. He accused Joe Biden of being asleep when we had steep stock market drops before.
But I think even more for Republicans today, and they need to get Donald Trump out of this if they want to have some success. You have Donald Trump up here doing a infomercial, trying to raise money and save a company for the richest man in the world, while people's 401(k)s are crashing before their eyes. The imagery of Elon Musk and Donald Trump standing on this TV screen together, by the way, can we get some green or something over there? I don't want people to think I'm responsible for the breaking news in the Dow dropping, but the fact is, you have that up there consistently.
And that imagery for Democrats -- I mean, if Democrats at the leadership wants to be out there, this is the time to do the counterprogramming from Washington, D.C. This is the time to do those press conferences and say, look, he's out there with Elon Musk, trying to save his company while your portfolio, not only is he trying to fire you from the federal government and force you to take retirement, and you're watching your portfolio drop, look at what's happening in real time.
HUNT: Bill?
BILL STEPIEN, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I think for four years, we've seen politicians play the short game, right? Free money, free college education, wipe out student debt.
This is the long game. We're not used to seeing someone play the long game. That's what we're seeing here. Someone who thinks that access to our economy is a privilege, not a right, someone who thinks that we should use access to our economy as leverage for better deals for our country.
Yeah, there's short term pain. We're seeing it on the screen, and I promise you that -- I promise you that Donald Trump sees those numbers, too, and he knows that there's going to be a political price for that.
HUNT: Well, to that point, lets watch exactly what Donald Trump said about the R-word recession, because a big part of where we are this week. Yes, it's back and forth about tariffs, but it's also a lot about how he did or didn't answer the question that Maria Bartiromo put to him over the weekend when he refused to rule out a recession. So here's what he's saying today.
Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Specifically on the recession.
TRUMP: Yeah.
REPORTER: Do you think there will be a recession?
TRUMP: I don't see it at all. I think this country is going to boom. But as I said, I can do it the easy way or the hard way. The hard way to do it is exactly what I'm doing. But the results are going to be 20 times greater.
REPORTER: Mr. President --
TRUMP: Remember, Trump is always right, right?
REPORTER: And what do you say to --
TRUMP: You look at what I've said over the last 10 years, Trump has been right all the time. This is the -- this is the way to do it. We're going to make America great again.
You know, to make it great, you have to have jobs. You have to have factories. You have to have -- I look at -- I look at some of the things that like this last administration, he was the worst president in the history of our country.
Nothing was happening. Nothing. He had no idea what was going on. Our country went to hell. And then to allow millions of people to come in that are prisoners and mental institution patients and all of the things that gang members, drug lords, we're searching them all down now, trying to get them out of our country. And we're going to do that.
But on the financial end and the economic end, what we're doing is, to me, it's the most exciting. Our country will be greater than ever before, and it won't take too long.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Okay. So there was a lot there, Kristen, but the part that I want to focus in on is what he said at the very top, which was that he said, I don't see a recession happening. And then he pivoted to explain what he believes about tariffs. My question is, why couldn't he say that on Sunday to Maria Bartiromo?
KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think what Donald Trump believes is that this short term problem that he's clearly facing with the economy looking the way it does, is going to ultimately pay off because he believes over the long term those things he just talked about. We're going to see these factories come back, et cetera., that that's all going to come to fruition.
The problem he's going to face is that in politics, the reason why everybody focuses on the short term is because we have elections every two years for Congress, and saying, sure, you're going to feel short term pain now, but there's a factory town that's going to get revitalized five, ten years down the road. That's a politically tough argument to make. And eventually voters go, okay, I feel the pain. Where's the payoff?
He's going to start getting asked that by voters pretty soon.
HUNT: And, Julia, I suppose the fact that -- I mean, he keeps joking about running for election for a third term, but he is for our Constitution, a lame duck, really, right? Like he is not going to be the one that's going to pay the price here. It's going to be members of Congress.
They seem to still be willing to go along with him on all of this, despite this short term pain that they will likely pay the price for. JULIA IOFFE, FOUNDING PARTNER AND WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK:
Well, it's interesting that so far, he hasn't even used Congress, right, in -- in the first couple of months since coming to power.
But I do think that he's -- he has so consolidated control of the GOP, right, that, you know, the one -- or one of the very few members of Congress who's stepping, stepping up against him, the congressman from Kentucky, he's already threatening a primary challenge for, that people are just scared now, having gone through eight years of this, including the last four years during the Biden administration, where he was, in effect, a shadow president exercising control over Republicans in Congress from Mar-a-Lago, telling them what to vote on, what to not vote on.
I think they've learned the hard way that if you go against Donald Trump, you get primaried, you lose political power. So I think they're ironically too scared to fight back against him, even if they end up paying, like you said, at the polls in two years.
HUNT: Bill, I take your point about how if in fact, there was a consistent tariff policy. I mean, certainly -- I mean, there are Democrats out there, Bakari, who have argued that this should be a tool in the toolbox, right?
However, the president -- I mean, just today went back and forth and back again with tariffs on Canada and that unpredictability -- I mean, I was talking to Larry Summers yesterday about this really more than anything, right? If you have a consistent tariff policy, fine. What the market is having a big problem with is the back and forth and back and forth.
How do you see that as being helpful, especially when it has to do with our neighbor?
STEPIEN: It's easy to have a simple explanation to say Trump did that, when you put the stock market numbers on the screen. There's kind of chaos going on Capitol Hill right now, right? We're not going to have a federal budget, right? Debt ceiling, government shutdown.
In terms of what makes an economy move, the mechanics of an economy, that matters a little more than like the price of a piece of wood from Canada, candidly.
SELLERS: That's ironic, and I wanted to just pinpoint the statement there, because what we have to realize is that that budget shutdown, that gridlock that you're seeing here, the fact that Trump is, is being inconsistent at best, those are all Republicans. Like Republicans have the White House, Republicans have the United States Senate, and Republicans have the United States House of Representatives.
And so I agree with Bill wholeheartedly that the ineptitude that you see up here is all in their lap. And can we please stop calling it tariffs? I mean, I know that's what we're saying as an economic as an -- as an -- as an instrument of, of economic policy. But at the end of the day, they're taxes on American people. I mean,
the people who are feeling the brunt of tariffs, that is a tax, period, point blank period. And by going into a tax war or a trade war with our neighbors -- I mean, we are having a new trade war with Canada. No one would have ever guessed that before, and I don't even know why we want it to be a 51st state when there was so much fentanyl up there. That's what we were told months ago.
ANDERSON: Republicans do not want it to be a 51st state because it's effectively like adding another California to the United States. It's politically progressive, 40 million. Think it through, Mr. President.
SELLERS: We still have -- we still have Puerto Rico.
We still got some other stuff to do before we get there, okay?
IOFFE: Well -- and to Bakari's point, this is the same kind of logic you heard from Democrats when Biden was in power, right? And inflation was high. People said, well, that's not the president's fault. This is -- the economy is a very complex picture. It's not just the president setting policy.
All of a sudden Donald Trump is in office, and we hear a very different tune about how complex the economy is and how Donald Trump has absolutely nothing to do with tanking the stock market and stripping tens of thousands of dollars off regular peoples 401(k)s.
STEPIEN: This need not be an either/or, both things can be true at the same time. Collected tariffs doubled during Trump's first term. The S&P went up 67 percent during his first term. Both things can happen at the same time.
HUNT: But weren't those tariffs more consistent? I mean, and Joe Biden, I think -- I think we should say, Biden left some of those tariffs in place, right? Again, this is not something that -- I mean, Democrats historically have been more protectionist in many ways, but it's the inconsistency.
STEPIEN: Perhaps, perhaps. I mean, there is inconsistency in the first term, too.
ANDERSON: And I would also argue that a desire for consistency is actually part of why Donald Trump got elected. That there was a sense that with the Biden administration, that if there were questions about who's minding the store, that there was a sense of chaos and unpredictability and weirdly, Donald Trump, the self-described wrecking ball, was the one who I think some voters said maybe he'll bring back some stability, and right now, these -- this tension between Donald Trump, the wrecking ball, Donald Trump, a strongman --
SELLERS: There's also -- there's also some -- what we saw today from Donald Trump in the Elon Musk infomercial is actually some of the appeal of Donald Trump that we didn't have from Joe Biden. And so, yeah, when you when people castigate the policy of -- of Joe Biden, I mean, they're not talking about the successes of the Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure bill, et cetera., or as you were talking about it earlier, the Chips Act, et cetera. What they wanted was this where you could see him, touch him, and he could just talk off the cuff.
HUNT: Fair enough. And hawk Teslas on the -- on the south lawn.
All right. Stand by, everybody.
Right now, I do want to know, what are you hearing? To all my sources and friends around town, you know who you are. Check your inboxes. Today does mark five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID 19 a pandemic. And this sort of leads to my question for you today, five years later, how much is the COVID era anger still driving our politics? My sense is it may be really significant, but I really want to know what you think.
Do send us thoughts, tips, exclusives. It's the wrong question, if we're all wrong here at the table. Again, do please let us know and viewers will let you in on the conversation later on this hour.
Coming up next, more of that drama that's unfolding on Capitol Hill as the House nears a vote on a government funding bill. Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy will be live here in THE ARENA.
Plus, the breaking news on Russia's war with Ukraine with a potential first step toward a ceasefire.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:21:54]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back to THE ARENA.
The rubber is meeting the road, voting about to get underway in the House on a measure that would fund the government and avoid a shutdown that would be set for the end of this week. It's one of the earliest legislative tests of the second Trump presidency. There's been a full court press from Trump and Republican leadership. Only one Republican, Thomas Massie, has so far come out against the bill, although there are still some outstanding question marks among the House Republican conference.
Massie earned the ire of President Trump, who wrote this on Truth Social today. Quote, Thomas Massie is a grandstander, and the great people of Kentucky are going to be watching a very interesting primary in the not too distant future.
We are joined now by Texas Republican Congressman Chip Roy.
Congressman, thanks so much for being on the show.
REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): Good afternoon, Kasie.
HUNT: So what is your message to your Republican colleagues who may still be on the fence? And to Congressman Massie, who has said he's a no on this bill? ROY: Yeah. Well, first of all, Thomas is a great friend, and, you
know, having been the recipient of some similar tweets, you know, the sun comes up tomorrow and, you know, we'll all be moving forward to try to deliver what we came to Washington to do for our constituents. And I think that's what Thomas does every day. That's what I do every day.
And this one, I just disagree with Thomas. I think that where we are at this moment, where we've got the president in the White House, we've got Russ Voight at OMB and Elon and DOGE doing what they're doing. We have the opportunity to have this administration do what we've been asking to be done for a long time, which is actually root out the waste, fraud and abuse, the ridiculous expenditures, identify them, and do the job that the American people sent us here to do in November.
Importantly, a CR for six months -- and again, I'm not a huge fan of CRs, but I've never ruled them out either. This kind of differentiates me from both ends of the political spectrum in my conference, where there's strategically beneficial, I'm for them. I never found them that strategically beneficial under the Biden regime, because I didn't agree with what Joe Biden was doing.
But here, I generally agree with what President Trump is doing, freeze spending, freeze it at roughly 2024 levels. In fact, it's a $7 billion reduction. Get rid of earmarks. Make sure the defense spending doesn't get bloated up to be used to gross up entire expenditure, and then keep the lights on to allow DOGE to do what they're doing. Russ and OMB to do what they're doing.
And then let's focus on FY 26, because the clock is running out. We only have six months left to deal with that FY 26.
So I think we're in a good spot to do it. Remember, don't mean to filibuster here, but my Senate colleagues, my Democrat friends over in the Senate, they didn't pass a single appropriation bill for this cycle. We passed five off the floor, 12 out of committee, and we got jammed up by them. So we're trying to clean up the mess and move forward.
HUNT: Congressman, I want to ask you. You talk about DOGE and the efforts that you are. You say that you are supportive of.
Elon Musk did an interview yesterday with Fox Business where he talked about entitlements, and I want to play a little bit of that interview that that he did and then ask you about it on the other side. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUSK: The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is all of the -- which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So that -- that's -- that's like the big one to eliminate, because that's the sort of half trillion, maybe $600 billion or $700 billion a year.
(END VIDEO CLIP) [16:25:04]
HUNT: Congressman, would you be supportive of Elon Musk doing what he said he was going to do in that interview, which is cut entitlements essentially?
ROY: So put it in context of what he was actually talking about. First of all, he said $600 billion, $700 trillion. That is a tiny fraction of the total amount. And why? Because what he's talking about is eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.
He's been identifying --
HUNT: Sure, the entire cost of Medicaid is basically what he was saying there, that $700 billion number. It's not the 500 million that many people say is often the number for Medicare or Medicare Advantage fraud.
ROY: Keep in mind -- right. But, Kasie, keep in mind what's happening here. We are now dealing with the expansion population under Obama, where able-bodied individuals are getting a 90 percent federal funding compared to the vulnerable and the elderly and the sick, who are only getting 50 to 75 percent because Obamacare was structured in a bad way.
You have enormous amount of fraud under Medicaid. You have illegal aliens getting Medicaid, you have California gaming Medicaid in order to get money.
HUNT: Do you really think there's $700 billion worth of fraud and waste in Medicaid? Seven hundred billion? I mean, it's the cost of the whole thing.
ROY: Okay. Well, Kasie, let me give you a number that might mean something. The 2021 CBO budget baseline compared to the 2025 CBO budget baseline, a $1.2 trillion increase, significant amounts of that is waste, fraud, and abuse. Significant amounts of that is illegal aliens, significant amounts of that are able-bodied citizens as compared to the vulnerable.
That's what we need to sort out. By the way --
HUNT: You think you can cut $700 billion without touching law abiding American citizens who are entitled to their benefits under Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid? I mean, do you think that's really possible in these programs, 700 billion with a B?
ROY: Yeah. Well, well, first of all, remember that we've gone from $4.5 trillion of spending, Kasie, in 2019 to $7 trillion in 2025. We've identified $1 trillion in improper payments.
That means money that's going to the wrong people and money that's going in the wrong amounts. There is plenty of us to be able to go find to find the waste, fraud and abuse. Make sure its going to the right people. But again, I'm being very specific -- I actually believe in work
requirements. Most Americans do it, polls at like 80 percent. You should work if you're able-bodied. And then these are the kinds of ways that you can save money.
And Elon was just simply saying not just in Medicaid, but broadly, when you have duplicate Social Security numbers, where you have known fraud in Medicaid and Medicare, I worked in the attorney generals office in Texas and the Medicaid fraud division there was very busy because of so much fraud, we can do a better job getting the actual dollars to the people who are supposed to get them under the programs, like the vulnerable under Medicaid.
HUNT: Yeah.
President Trump, of course, on the campaign trail said over and over and over and over again that he's not going to cut Social Security and he's not going to cut Medicare. Where are you on this? I mean, do you stand with the president on that? Do you stand with what Elon Musk is apparently saying here?
ROY: Well, again, let me be clear about what Elon is saying. He's saying find the waste, fraud and abuse, the duplication and those things that you can find in the --
HUNT: But that's not what I mean. That's not what he's saying.
I want -- I just want to know, like, are you with -- with President Trump on cutting Medicare and Social Security on not doing that?
ROY: But -- but to be clear, that is what Elon was talking about. And on Social Security, under what we're going to deal with in terms of reconciliation, we're legally not allowed to talk about Social Security, touch Social Security under the law. Medicare, the president is saying were going to preserve the benefits for people who have paid into Medicare. And now we need to get busy finding what we can in food stamps and Medicaid under the reconciliation process and get the tax policies in place, so you don't have the biggest tax increase in history on the American people. I think that's the right approach.
Do we need to find a way to make Social Security solvent by 2033? Yes. It will be insolvent by 2033. Do we need to find a way to make health care prices go down so that Medicare can actually be there for seniors? Yes, because right now it's exploding off the charts.
The costs are unbearable for the average American family. That's a working class family that's got insurance or doesn't, or they're a senior citizen under Medicare. We've got so much work we need to do, but the priority right now is waste, fraud and abuse, DOGE doing their job.
And yes, some reforms in with respect to Medicaid so that we can actually stop the bleeding under Biden, that was funding illegals and funding the able bodied at the expense of the vulnerable.
HUNT: Sir, I want to finish here where we're -- we're a little tight on time. So briefly, if you don't mind, but the president has been saying you heard him say there he doesn't think were headed for a recession, but he has repeatedly said that there's going to be some short term pain with his tariff policy.
We're obviously looking at the Dow Jones industrial down 478 points today. It follows another bad day. People's 401(k)s are not looking as good as they did on Friday.
How much short term pain do you think your constituents are able to bear, considering what they have told us about how they're struggling in this economy?
ROY: Well, what we're reaping, unfortunately, is the, you know, result of the last four years of, I think, failure under the Biden administration. And so we're now having to deal with that.
We've got interest rate dilemmas. It's hard for people to afford homes. They can't get an affordable mortgage. Food prices are high. All of the issues that we're now dealing with.
And yes, the president has now got to clean up that mess. Remember, Ronald Reagan is now viewed as a pretty strong economic warrior, as a president.
[16:30:04]
He inherited a big mess in '81, '82, and it took about two years to cycle through and get that done.
I think the American people trust President Trump to come in here and shake things up and try to make the changes necessary. We've got to get interest rates down a strong market. We've got to get the regulations out of the way, stop funding these massive Chinese companies with the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, which are actually hurting American energy, unleash American energy and the economy going again. That's what we expect President Trump to do.
HUNT: All right. Congressman Chip Roy, I really appreciate your time. I hope you'll come back to THE ARENA sometime soon.
ROY: Thanks, Kasie. God bless.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next here, an update on talks to end Russia's war with Ukraine with the secretary of state saying the ball is now in Moscow's court.
Plus, new comments from Elon Musk on Social Security after he suggested that entitlements could be on the chopping block.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:35:13]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): There was a proposal from the American side to take the first step immediately and try to establish a complete ceasefire for 30 days, not only with regard to missiles, drones and bombs, not only in the Black Sea, but also along the entire front line. Ukraine accepts this proposal. We consider it positive. We are ready to take such a step, and the United States of America must convince Russia to do so.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. After three years of war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has accepted a ceasefire proposal. U.S. and Ukrainian officials met for eight hours in Saudi Arabia to get to this agreement, and they're making clear that the ball is now in Russia's court.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)(
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY: We'll take this offer now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes. That they'll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court.
And -- but again, the president's objective here is number one, above everything else. He wants the war to end. And I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard. We hope the Russians will reciprocate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: President Trump says that he thinks hell talk to Putin this week, and hopes there'll be a total ceasefire in the coming days. This, of course, comes after relations between Ukraine and the U.S. deteriorated so far that Trump cut off aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Today, the U.S. announced they will immediately lift that pause and resume security assistance to Ukraine. Trump also said he would invite Zelenskyy back to the White House.
Our panel is back.
Julia Ioffe, how significant do you think this agreement that Zelenskyy made for this 30-day ceasefire is? What does it actually mean?
IOFFE: Well, the devil, as always, is in the details. And this does not include a ceasefire along the -- along the front lines. So in the Kursk of Russia and in eastern and southern Ukraine, the fighting will continue there. That's if the Russians accept this ceasefire deal.
This is only a moratorium on attacks on the Black Sea and aerial attacks with drones and cruise missiles, the kind we saw on Moscow today from the Ukrainian side, and that we've been seeing throughout the war on Ukrainian cities, on civilian infrastructure.
A couple problems I see potentially arising here. The first is that after that first summit in Jeddah between the American and Russian sides, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was asked about the Americans asking the Russians to stop to let up on their attacks on civilian infrastructure, which has been causing blackouts all over Ukraine, loss of heat during these blistering winters.
And he said, don't know what you're talking about. We haven't been attacking civilian infrastructure, so how can you stop something that you're denying happens, right? That's the first thing.
Second of all, the primary casualties are happening on the front lines. And that's not even the subject of this negotiation.
The third thing is I Russia would have to accept this. And be keep, stick to it, right? Zelenskyy brought up in that disastrous oval office meeting. He said, we've signed ceasefire deals with him. We signed one when you, President Trump, were in office the first time in 2019. And look at where we are now.
I think all of this gets back to the travesty and the tragedy of pushing the victim in this war to stop fighting and saying the war will stop as soon as the victim stops fighting back, right? Stop hitting yourself, essentially.
And I think that the kernel of all of this is in there, because the war would stop tomorrow if Russia stopped attacking.
HUNT: One of the things that Secretary Rubio was asked about in the course of this press conference was about that relationship that Julia mentions between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelenskyy, the kind of personal relationship.
Let's watch how Rubio responded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBIO: This does not "Mean Girls". This is not some episode of some television show. This is very serious. People are going to -- today, people will die in this war. They died yesterday. And sadly, unless there's a ceasefire tonight, they'll die tomorrow.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Bill Stepien, what is your understanding of the relationship between Trump and Zelenskyy? And Rubio says there, this is not a television show. I mean, with all due respect, Donald Trump understands -- I mean, you can say it in a in a negative way toward him and that he treats sometimes politics like a television show. But you can also say he understands the power of television, and he uses it to his great political advantage.
How do those things kind of really affect what Rubio correctly says is an extraordinarily serious topic?
STEPIEN: You correctly referenced devil being in the details. I think we're all in a world these days where we rush to judgment, right? We saw that Oval Office meeting and we all made judgments about what's happening and what it meant. We panned Donald Trump. What a disaster.
Like, things are very different in this administration. Things play out publicly, sometimes messily, in this administration compared to the last one.
[16:40:05]
But there's a process, right? Rubio and Waltz were dispatched. They're doing their jobs. In some instances, to your point, Trump plays the role of lead blocker, right? So the running back can come in behind and advance the ball. I think that's what happened here.
HUNT: Bakari?
SELLERS: I mean, I think that if anyone has faith in any members of this administration, Democrats and Republicans alike, they would probably rank Rubio probably near the top. And I don't know what that means. The bar is low, but there is at least a simmer, a glimmer of hope when you see Marco Rubio out there giving the reins and able to do these things.
HUNT: Yeah, I mean, I think even Democrats see him as a serious player.
SELLERS: He's definitely -- I mean, we may disagree on policy, but at least he's not embarrassing the United States of America on the world stage. And he's someone who carries that level of gravitas.
But what I do believe is one of the missteps that came out of that meeting, and something you've been seeing over the last week is a new, confident and emboldened Zelenskyy on the world stage. Because when you look at his approval rating back in Ukraine, it's above 60 percent.
Even those people who have been detractors for years have said they like the way that Zelenskyy has stood up for his people in this battle against Donald Trump. And you're seeing that.
If we get a ceasefire that is good for the entire world, that is something that we have to be sure. And I'm just hopeful that Donald Trump has his friend on the -- on the main line, because we know he's extremely close to Putin and they're doing this knowing Putin will agree to it.
ANDERSON: And my hope is that what the Trump administration will now do is be very clear that if the ball is in Russia's court, they need to take action here. What has been a little bit concerning over the last week has been -- are there Republican leaders who actually are starting to make it sound like Russia -- like Ukraine is the bad guy. Russia is the good guy in this conflict. And that's not where any polls I've ever seen, even polls exclusively of Republicans are at.
And so being very clear about it is Russia's responsibility to stop shooting is very important.
HUNT: Yeah, for sure.
All right. Coming up next here, Elon Musk touching the third rail of American politics. The White House now forced to walk back comments from the president's key adviser. Plus, something totally different. The ice cream emergency that
wasn't.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:46:29]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: What's your best of these cars? What do you think?
MUSK: Well, the car that I drive is the model S Plaid.
TRUMP: Which is that one?
MUSK: That red one in the middle.
TRUMP: I like that. Yeah.
Wow.
MUSK: So I can --
TRUMP: That's beautiful.
This is a different panel than I've -- everything's computer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Everything's computer.
President Donald Trump continuing to support Elon Musk with the purchase of a Tesla arriving at the White House today, they said even though the billionaire, of course, continues to say things that could be massively politically problematic for the Trump administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MUSK: The way in entitlement spending, which is all of the -- which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements. So that -- that's -- that's like the big one to eliminate, because that's the sort of half trillion, maybe 600 or 700 billion a year.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The White House emphasizing today that while President Trump supports rooting out waste, fraud and abuse, he will stay true to this campaign promise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I will not cut one penny from Social Security or Medicare.
And we will always protect your Social Security and your Medicare.
I will always protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts. I will always protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts.
I will always protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So pretty clear there, Kristen Soltis Anderson, what the president said, it does seem to contradict what Elon Musk said, although now everyone, of course, as you heard Chip Roy earlier on the program and the tweets from the White House are that, well, actually, we can find this amount of waste, fraud and abuse.
ANDERSON: Yeah, this is not an issue on which I think Republicans are all unified in their heart of hearts. I think politically, they all know there is no winning in touching Social Security.
And I really have been thinking a lot lately about 20 years ago. George W. Bush gets reelected and he gets reelected on a platform of I'm going to make you safer. And the very first thing he does with all this political capital is says, let's privatize Social Security.
Now, in hindsight, it is interesting to wonder what would have happened had we 20 years ago radically changed Social Security. Would we be on a more fiscally healthy path? I will leave that to the policy people, but I do know that it politically did not go very well for George W. Bush back then. And I don't think the politics are any better now.
SELLERS: There's a direct correlation between that policy promise that he came back in with and how drastically they lost in midterm elections. And I think that we're going to begin to see that.
The 100 days is one thing, but something we were talking about off air. The telltale sign will be Virginia and New Jersey which come up quite often, and that will be the next election we have in this cycle. But also, there is a problem when Elon Musk is the leading trumpet, for lack of a better term, when he is the head cheerleader for the Republican Party and he's out there hawking Teslas on the front lawn of the White House, and he's trying to get Donald Trump to buy a $100,000 vehicle while threatening to take away my mother's Social Security.
That is a bit ironic. And not only that, but he's -- he -- he gets -- when he talks about policy, he's just not smart. I mean, he said that Social Security was a giant magnet for illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants don't get Social Security. In fact, they contribute over $25 billion a year and don't receive any.
I mean, he says things like that, and then it gets magnified because he owns X, and I'm like, this dude is just not smart when it comes to these issues.
IOFFE: Well, and yet, right, he -- I think it's actually quite smart for Donald Trump to have him around as a heat shield, right? He's -- he's out there saying crazy things. And for once, its not Donald Trump saying crazy things, right? [16:50:02]
And he can -- and he's also a kind of to mix metaphors, a kind of test balloon, a trial balloon, right? He goes out there and says something about cutting Social Security. If people get up in arms about it, Trump can say, well, that's just Elon. You know, I don't agree with that.
HUNT: Right. Well, so Elon was pressed, Bill, about this. He was asked about it in this extensive appearance where Donald Trump was lined up with four Teslas on a Cybertruck on --
IOFFE: Which we keep saying, by the way, continuing to get -- to help this commercial.
HUNT: Well, yeah. Yes, it is. It certainly what Trump was going for.
But let's watch what Musk said when he was asked about entitlements and benefits.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Can you guarantee people who are concerned about an interruption to benefits that there will not be?
MUSK: Yes. We're going to be very careful with any interruption to benefits. In fact, only by tackling the waste and fraud in entitlements like Social Security and Medicare can we actually preserve those programs for the future, because with unchecked fraud and waste, we won't be able to afford them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, Bill Stepien, I mean, point taken on that, but also the idea that there's going to be interruptions to benefits has been introduced into the system. I mean, that's not something that we ever talked about before.
STEPIEN: No. I mean, for a White House fighting a war on like 19 different fronts every day, having to do the cleanup on aisle Elon today is just not what --
HUNT: I'm going to steal that phrase, clean up on aisle Elon.
STEPIEN: I mean, I don't talk about building electric cars or rocket ships for a reason. Like policy people should talk about policy. The sticks are out there every morning. Go talk to the morning shows.
You know that's not his space. I would stick out. Stay away from it.
SELLERS: And the funny part about it is he said, we're going to be extremely careful to make -- they haven't been careful in anything they've done. I mean, they've had to go back and rehire people. They fired people that were over our nuclear reserve.
I mean, so to think that he has the ability to go in and to Bill's point, I don't even think he knows what he's looking for. I mean, you're talking about somebody like yourself who is although we disagree on policy, you can be considered a policy wonk. You know this stuff better than most people, right?
HUNT: You do. Don't sell yourself short, though.
SELLERS: You do. I mean, you know it better than Elon, but that's the bar being in hell.
But my point is that you have to have people around you who are doing this, and I'm just afraid -- and this is bigger than Democrat or Republican, I'm afraid for those individuals who utilize their Social Security check to pay a mortgage or rent, that Elon Musk is going to create a faux pas, make a mistake, and they're going to be out in the cold, literally.
HUNT: All right. I -- on that cheerful note here, I want to turn to this because earlier actually, this is probably less cheerful. We asked sources and friends around town about this sort of inauspicious anniversary of today, five years later, how much is COVID era anger still driving our politics?
Here is what some of you had to say. One longtime GOP campaign operative wrote in, quote. It dramatically eroded the trust that the American people have in their government. It will take time, and a lot of leaders with integrity to fix it.
One longtime pollster chimed in this: Today, it's less about COVID proper, more about the framework under which so many Americans saw COVID, wild conspiracies and remedies.
Kristen Soltis Anderson, I think I was struck by this when we were listening to Donald Trump's address to the nation. That sort of the way the COVID pandemic changed how we relate to not just each other, but to our government and to our institutions is something that we are still feeling every day.
ANDERSON: One hundred percent. I think the effect that this has had on the average Americans belief in their ability to trust theoretically nonpolitical institutions, public health, the CDC, those sorts of things suddenly went from being apolitical to being quite political, that suddenly whether you were wearing a mask or six feet to -- or two weeks to stop the spread, six feet to keep it. All of that suddenly became a signal of how virtuous you are. Are you listening to the right political voices? And it took things that previously weren't political and made them political. And now we have effects like learning loss from students who were kept out of classrooms way too long.
You have the -- the way that so many small businesses had to close their doors, like there are still lingering effects that people really feel from this. And I don't think those wounds have fully healed.
IOFFE: Can I just jump in on that? I think that's totally true. But I think what's left unsaid is that Donald Trump, who is president today, in part because of it, politicized that because COVID happened on his watch and he didn't want to be hurt by it.
And so he made a lot of these things -- political issues, team sport issues, whether you wear a mask, whether you are vaccinated. I've had GOP operatives tell me the reason he didn't want people to get vaccinated is he didn't want Joe Biden to get the win for a vaccine that was developed on his watch. So he made it a political issue.
I think these things aren't the weather. They didn't happen just spontaneously.
HUNT: Well, I mean, I totally take your point. I think some Republicans would also argue Democrats also really politicized it.
But unfortunately, that conversation is going to have to wait for another day.
[16:55:00]
Coming up next here, the phone call that led police to police showing up to a 4-year-old's house to say, you've been served. We'll bring you that.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
4-YEAR-OLD: My mommy is being bad.
DISPATCHER: Okay, what's going on?
4-YEAR-OLD: Come and get my mommy.
MOTHER: Oh, this little one got the phone and he's four.
I ate his ice cream, so that's probably why he's calling 911.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HUNT: Oh, you heard that right. A 4-year-old in Wisconsin got so upset when his mother ate his ice cream that he ended up calling 911. I'm sorry. What?
To make sure that there wasn't something more serious going on. The cops did end up showing up at the house. And this is what happened when they walked in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MOTHER: So, no calling 911 unless it's a real emergency. Okay?
POLICE: What he's you calling for?
MOTHER: I ate his ice cream.
POLICE: You ate his ice cream.
MOTHER: Mommy has to go to jail.
POLICE: Should we take her to jail for eating your ice cream?
4-YEAR-OLD: Yes.
POLICE: Yes, I agree.
MOTHER: I would let you arrest me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So those same officers did stop by two days later with a sweet treat. Two scoops of ice cream and sprinkles.
Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD".
Jake, have you ever stolen your children's ice cream?
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, THE LEAD: Nope. I would never do such a thing. I have two things. One, kudos to the mom that the kids know to call 911. And second of all, prison. That's what I say. Prison.
HUNT: I've never stolen mine either. So I'm with you. Thank you.
