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Musk, Ramaswamy Meet With Republicans on Government Efficiency; Some GOP Reps Call For Cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid; Bezos "Super Optimistic" About Trump Administration; Just Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired December 05, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:01:11]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Let's go to the Hill, where the word of the day or acronym of the day is DOGE because you have Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up the Department of Government Efficiency. They're meeting with lawmakers. We expect them to speak here momentarily. And this is the speaker talking now, Speaker Johnson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON, (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: Dumping gold bars off the Titanic here at the end. We take over in January and until then, the big government Democrats are still in charge and they're spending money, in our view, recklessly. And so, yes, we've had a lot of discussions over the last couple of days about what our authority would be to claw some of that back and to stop it. It's a serious challenge, and we need to stop it and expose what's happening.

That's what this effort will be about going forward. There is an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse in the government, and I think everyone knows that intuitively. And so the efforts here, both with our subcommittees that are being created here and with the DOGE effort itself, will be to explore that, to investigate it and lay it bare for the American people to see.

I think that's how we'll begin to bring about the change that we all need. So this is an ongoing effort. Yes.

MAN #2: Some labor unions are already fighting back. They've already signed contracts to try and get this, that they could be able to work from home, things like that. Your reaction to that?

JOHNSON: Well, there was a report that came out today, I don't know if you all have seen it, but someone did a little survey of how many federal employees are actually working in the office. By one estimate, it may be about 1%, if you don't count the security personnel that are covering these buildings.

That is absurd and it's not something the American people will stand for. And so one of the first things that I think you'll see is a demand from the new administration and from all of us in Congress that federal workers return to their desks and get back to the work that they're supposed to be doing. I think that is common sense.

What you're going to see here, the overriding theme here, is a return to common sense and a turn to accountability and efficiency in government. I think that's going to serve the people well. There'll be a lot -- there'll be a lot more to tell you all in the days ahead. Thanks for being here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: We are expecting to hear momentarily from Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. Or maybe they just walked away to.

KEILAR: Maybe --

MARQUARDT: All right --

KEILAR: -- they got a little --

MARQUARDT: -- they walked off.

KEILAR: -- drive by.

MARQUARDT: As Johnson was saying there, they are expected to meet with both House and Senate Republicans that all of the members have been invited and that he does believe that there will be a good showing among those lawmakers.

KEILAR: Yeah, but he's -- he's been asked the tough question. I want to bring in Mark Preston to talk about this. He's being asked how do you cut $2 trillion, which is the number that Elon Musk put on what he thinks they can cut from 6.75 trillion in annual spending? So you're talking about a third of the government without touching Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The answer, if you ask anyone who knows about the math of budgeting, is you can't.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: OK, so let me acknowledge that I failed -- my only class I ever failed was --

KEILAR: You can fail it and still know that it's incorrect, that's my point.

PRESTON: Basic algebra, I don't know if you can feel that, but I feel that in college. And even I know that there's no way you're going to be able to get to that number unless you do cut Social Security in Medicare. That's why we discuss this whenever we're talking in politics. We call it the third reel of politics. The third reel on a train is electrified. You do not touch it. So that is why we discuss it that way.

Look, there has to be some efficiencies that has to be brought to the government. No question about that. But, you know, the first 100 days is interesting. We always measure the first 100 days of how the President is doing and the proposals he gets through. We're now going to be measuring the first 100 days of what Trump does to the Department of Justice and where he cuts government down. It's going to be an interesting one. MARQUARDT: Mark, are you surprised at how supportive Johnson is of this effort?

[14:05:01]

I mean, we keep reminding our audience that this is not a real department, that at the end of the day, this is Congress that will -- that will be charged with this.

With Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress come January, isn't the natural stance for the Republican House Speaker to essentially tell outsiders we got this, like this is our job. But and yet he seems to be very supportive of this Musk-Ramaswamy effort.

PRESTON: I think the last Republican we saw do that in Washington was John Boehner. And you know, since then, we have now, or maybe -- maybe, excuse me, Paul Ryan, forgive me for that, but what we see now is that we're no longer talking about the Republican Party. We're talking about the Make America Great Again party. And I know a lot of people think that the Republican Party is going to come back the good old days of the Reagan years in the 80s. And in all of that legacy.

Well, it's not. So, yes, you know, the Speaker has very little margin in the House right now to get anything done. And more importantly, Donald Trump just has to say, I don't want him to be speaker, and he's gone.

KEILAR: And let's go to Rene Marsh on Capitol Hill, who is the one who asked that all important question of Speaker Johnson at the beginning. How do you approach this problem without touching these entitlement programs that when lawmakers touch them, Renee, it's almost like political suicide. We've seen that before. They even talk about touching them. Tell us about this. And also, we didn't get to hear from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy themselves.

RENE MARSH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. So, Brianna, it has been a whirlwind here on Capitol Hill as these two billionaire men who are tasked with streamlining the federal government make their way through the hallways here for various meetings with members of Congress. We saw Elon Musk walking with his young son on his shoulders throughout the hallways here.

And just a short time ago, we did hear from Speaker Johnson who is about to convene a meeting with the two men where he calls it a brainstorming session, where they are essentially talking about ideas as to how they can make these dramatic cuts to federal government spending.

I don't think that there's any debate that both sides believe, Democrats and Republicans believe that if waste can be cut, it should be cut. But this DOGE team that President Elect Trump has put together, the Department of Government Efficiency at the helm is Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they are saying that they would cut some $2 trillion.

So that was my question to the Speaker, is that something that will be discussed? Will there be sort of a reality check moment here when they are in those rooms behind closed doors with these members as to what is truly realistic? As you made that point, a vast majority of the federal government spending is for programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. So how does one cut $2 trillion without cutting into those programs which many Americans support? That is the big question. Not getting many answers there.

As far as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, they're walking through the halls, they're walking by the cameras, but they're not saying anything today, not giving many comments. However, Elon Musk did say that the meetings are going well here on the Hill today. And that's about the level of what we've received from the two men.

But again, this is just a starting point. This will be a partnership. As you know, DOGE is not a formal government entity. They will be working outside of the federal government. So they will need Congress as partners to do any of these recommendations to make these cuts, whether it's to the federal workforce or to any of these government agencies. They will need Congress as their partners to do this sort of work, which is a huge undertaking, Brianna.

So that is what we have here. Those men are all behind closed doors as we speak. We will be sticking around here to see if we can get something on the other side of the meeting which is slated. It was slated to begin at three, but they're all behind closed doors right now. So perhaps they're getting underway a bit earlier.

But that is the situation here with these again, two billionaire men tasked with streamlining the federal government, meeting with members of Congress, all Republican members of Congress, to figure out a game plan for how they will do this. Back to you.

KEILAR: So interesting. They have the game plan, but the political cost of it will not be theirs to bear. So we'll see what happens. Rene Marsh live for us on the Hill. Thank you.

I want to go now to Kara Swisher who is joining us. Kara, you of course, long time tech journalist. You've covered Elon Musk for decades and you've referred to DOGE as the department of grandstanding Edge Lords. I wonder what you think right now of this spectacle you're seeing on the Hill even as we're not hearing from Elon Musk.

KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, HAS COVERED ELON MUSK EXTENSIVELY: Actually, Mike Johnson was more of a grandstander right there and in fact full of a lot of incorrect things. By the way, people -- I'm a math gal, so the national debt grew 8.1 trillion during Donald Trump's presidency, the largest four year increase in the nation's history.

[14:10:10]

This is a problem for all of us, for both sides of the aisle, for everyone, for the American citizenry. And to make it like the government doesn't work at all, everyone in government is a fraud, is not how you go into something where you have the real intent of actually doing better for the American public and the American taxpayer. Now, I would like that to happen as an American taxpayer, pay a lot of taxes, probably less than those billionaires do in terms of real -- in real terms. But what has to happen here is not the grandstanding but the really hard work of figuring out how to make government more efficient. And I think it's fine to do this. I think it's a great idea. I just -- there's a lot of hand waving here.

There's a lot of insulting government workers, some of whom are great, some of whom aren't just like in companies. And the idea that there's a silver bullet, just because these two billionaires who can cut at will can do this here, this is not their company where they reign like kings, this is the government that has to also serve the people. So it has to be done carefully. And to turn it into this kind of spectacle seems beneath the goal here, which is to have a better deal for the American public.

KEILAR: And whatever their recommendations are, it's --they're not going to bear the political brunt of that, right? These lawmakers that they're advising are going to have to. I wonder -- I wonder what you think about, you know, their understanding of what can be cut and what kind of skills they're bringing from their professional capacity into this.

SWISHER: I'm not so sure because, you know, you could look at some of Elon Musk's businesses that are run pretty well and others that aren't. Twitter, he just fired everyone. And that -- and the thing is declined in every, every single metric except that he uses it for influence. So that might be a positive thing for him personally. And it has been. By the way, his wealth has increased $70 billion since Trump was elected for a small investment of $120 million is what he did there.

I think it's really important to start to identify efficiency in government and moving it into, in fact, the digital age. There's so much stuff that we can do with AI, with government services, with payments that could really clean things up. But to do this, oh, the Democrats spend too much money. In fact, it was the Republicans who did. And what's the point anyway? They all spend too much money, right?

And I think it's really important to be think about that. What are the best ways to do this and create a better service for the American public without having to demonize government workers or say it doesn't work at all, hate government. Government does a good job in a lot of ways and not a good job. And if they're going to do a $600 toilets kind of thing or the wrench that cost a million dollars, I don't -- they've done this before, the Grace Commission, and nothing came of it because it wasn't a serious attempt to cut costs in a way that's responsible.

And so, I mean, I sound like a dull person, but this should be -- this should be easy in many ways and it shouldn't be a spectacle. It's not -- maybe it takes that to get people focused on it, but the minute they come into Mike Johnson's constituency and start to cut, you're going to see a very different story from him for example, quiet behind scenes -- KEILAR: Or anyone -- anyone's constituencies, then you start hearing

them. I do wonder. So you've also -- you've covered all these Silicon Valley bigwigs and they're chiming in. They're jockeying for influence. You heard Bezos yesterday saying he's very optimistic about a second Trump administration. Trump seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. Zuckerberg, Monday says he wants to help shape tech policy. You even had Bezos saying he's going to try to talk Trump out of the idea that the news media is an enemy. You --

SWISHER: (Inaudible) very persuasive.

KEILAR: Yeah. You write about this in your recent book. Also the evolution of these guys, which is so interesting. So I wonder, like is this the same old, same old, or is this something new, the way you see these guys trying to influence the President Elect?

SWISHER: I would rather have a janitor influencing him than all billionaires around him. They have all their own interests. In Bezos's case, he's trying to get more government contracts and he's worried about Elon Musk. Same thing with Mark Zuckerberg. He doesn't want to get -- he was threatened with prison by Trump and now he's having dinner with him. Great. I get it. He has shareholders. These people have shareholder interests in their own personal wealth.

I would like to see a wider range of people advising President Trump or President Elect Trump because you get a lot more points of view. Why is it only billionaires, all of whom have personal interests, including Elon, who has, I think, $15 billion in federal contracts. Well, wow, what should we cut of his? Is there stuff that he's doing that's inefficient? I mean, it's just to me, letting the foxes into the hen house. Only foxes is a, you know, what happens to the chickens in that situation.

KEILAR: It's not good.

SWISHER: So I think it should be a more wide ranging thing. It's not good. And look at -- some of them are good, some of them are bad.

[14:15:00]

But do they -- do billionaires with enormous self-interest have the only answers for the American public? You know, Johnson looked like he couldn't -- like he was looking at a celebrity or something. And that's, I find it -- I find it discomforting. I would say.

KEILAR: Yeah. There are a lot of people, including a lot of voters, who look at Elon Musk as a celebrity, someone they certainly have on a pedestal. So we'll see what happens. Kara Swisher

SWIHER: Great entrepreneur.

KEILAR: Yeah.

SWISHER: Let me just say great entrepreneur, probably has great ideas, but he doesn't have the only ideas. And I welcome it to work. I wish, I hope they don't do a grandstanding situation where nothing happens. KEILAR: Yeah. We'll see ahead if it transitions into something more productive and less performative. Kara Swisher, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

SWISHER: Thank you. Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: Ahead, lawmakers on the House Ethics Committee are meeting right now with plans to vote on releasing a report about allegations against now former Congressman Matt Gaetz, as House Democrats try to force the report's release.

Plus, how President Biden's outgoing White House is plotting to protect some of the people who could be targets of Trump's retribution when he takes office.

And why one of the country's biggest health insurance companies plans to limit the amount of anesthesia that patients can use during surgeries and procedures. Those stories are more ahead on CNN News Central.

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[14:20:45]

MARQUARDT: We have some breaking news. There is a tsunami warning for parts of California and Oregon after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake strike offshore. CNN's Chad Myers is live in the CNN Weather Center. So, Chad, this is the northern part of California. What more do we know?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: This was a 7.0 earthquake just off the coast of Northern California. So there could have been a tsunami generated a significant tsunami with inundation onto the land, Alex. This could be something here, we don't know numbers yet. Obviously, we don't know what the wave would have been. We don't know where it is right now.

But we do know that Northern California, very close to the coast would have already experienced it. So that's going to be our ground truth. But San Francisco, you could get some type of a wave here about 50 minutes from now. So don't count 50, count at 45 and be to the good here.

But this was a very strong quake, very shallow as well that we think the depths have been changing up and down as they're kind of evaluating what this earthquake truly did. Now, there was most of the shaking on land here, of course, not that far from Fort Bragg, but this is the area that could also see the waves from this.

So we're not -- I can't tell you what that is. That just to me looks like the Pacific Ocean. I don't see a tsunami there, but it would be impossible to tell you what that looks like from this far up in the sky. I don't see inundation. Looks like just normal waves here. This is still Northern California here coast.

So you're going to need to be away from the water at this point in time. This is the time you need to get away. So Fort Bragg, you probably already saw your waves. And so now as you get down along the coast, a little bit of a longer lead time for you to get away from the coast there in Northern California.

This would be considered a strong to a very strong quake. So this was a significant event here for the bottom of the ocean. The ocean moved in a subduction zone, likely the Cascadia fault area there. And now the waves are coming through. It's hard to tell where high tide or low tide would have been here on these pictures.

I mean, they do look like significant waves coming in. But almost every wave in the Pacific Ocean looks like a significant wave, especially in the wintertime when the big storms off the coast generate significant waves all by themselves. Get away from the water, get away from the land, get away from that coastal areas. If you're in Northern California, certainly the police there on the scene. Alex.

MARQUARDT: Important advice, that quake at 10:44, so just about 40 minutes ago. Chad, we know that you'll be keeping a close eye on that coastline. We'll come back to you when we know more. Thanks very much. Brianna.

KEILAR: Police in New York City are asking for the public's help identifying a person of interest in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. These are new images taken inside a hostel where employees say a guest wearing a jacket and mask identical to the gunman's had been staying. In the meantime, police are combing through new surveillance video and a key piece of evidence involving the bullets used in the attack that could help point to a motive.

CNN's Josh Campbell is with us now on this story. Josh, what are police saying about this person of interest? This is a pretty clear view of his face in this new image.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: That's right. This is a critical development because we can now see the face of this individual. Of course, before, right after the shooting, he was wearing a mask. Now, you can clearly see it.

This was obtained as authorities say, as they were doing a video canvas, looking at the pattern of movement of this individual leading them to a hostel where these images were obtained. An employee at that hostel said that this individual rarely lowered his mask while he was there. But of course, in these images we actually see that.

I want to show a side by side comparison, if we can, of one other critical piece of information and kind of putting on my investigator's cap where you look at the smile on the left and then obviously the neutral face on the right, people can change, you know, maybe fake when you smile. It's hard to fake how you smile. And so they're really appealing to people who might know this individual specifically.

Like this is someone that I recognize. They want them to actually call law enforcement. And then separately, I think we have another side by side image of not only the hostel picture but also the incident of the shooting.

[14:25:00]

I want to pay specific attention to the backpack that is being worn. Now, in those images that we just saw, you see a black backpack that was at the hostel. And of course, during the shooting, he was wearing what looked to be a white backpack.

I was talking with our colleague Andrew McCabe, who actually told me right after the shooting, I think I have that exact same backpack there on the left, that white one. It's a high end backpack. And so the question will be, was this something that he later procured?

Just to give you an example of how intensive this work is, investigators would likely be trying to determine where that would be sold, to determine if someone matching that individual's description actually purchased that between the time of that hostile video and then obviously of the incident itself. So that's one example of just this labor intensive effort underway.

KEILAR: Certainly. And Josh, what can you tell us about these -- it's a -- it's a live round and it is a bullet casing that was shell casing that was found. Tell us about what they found and why they think that could speak to a motive.

CAMPBELL: Yeah, you know, in that surveillance footage, that very graphic footage of him actually killing the CEO, you see him racking the slide on that gun as he fires. Left behind are the spent shell casings.

So when you fire a bullet, the shell casing gets ejected. But during what appeared to be a jam of that firearm, a live round was also ejected. Authorities say that there was writing on those two items with the words delay and the word depose.

Now, as investigators have looked at this, this is similar to the vernacular within the insurance industry that a lot of critics use when they're describing the insurance industry, this phrase delay, deny, defend, essentially describing how insurance companies might stonewall claimants from actually getting their collection for payment.

And so that is one theory here which would obviously make this very personal if this shooter was actually writing those words on the bullet before the ammunition, before actually firing on the CEO. But I say one theory because there is a danger in investigations of getting what's called tunnel vision, where you focus just on one theory at the exclusion of others.

In this case, for example, you can imagine that if this was indeed a personal dispute, what better way to try to, you know, cover that up than actually making it look like a disgruntled claimant? So we don't -- we don't have, obviously, a lot of information on the motive, but critical pieces of information that authorities are now getting as they try to determine why this actually occurred.

KEILAR: Yeah, certainly. Josh Campbell, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Alex. MARQUARDT: Thanks, Brianna. We want to go back to our breaking news on that earthquake off the coast of California and Oregon. With us now is Seismologist Maureen Long. Maureen, this 7.0 earthquake not too long ago just off the coast of Eureka, California, how unusual is an earthquake like this?

MAUREEN LONG, SEISMOLOGIST: That's right. So you know, California, as we all know, is earthquake country, right? So this earthquake occurred in a part of the plate -- tectonic plate boundary system near California where we know that we have earthquakes fairly frequencies -- fairly frequently. Excuse me. So I would say that this earthquake is, you know, not unusual from a geologic standpoint, but certainly unsettling for those who feel strong shaking.

MARQUARDT: So how worried, Maureen, should people be? I'm looking at the tsunami warning that has just been put out. Some five million people under this tsunami warning from Davenport, California. So that's south of San Francisco all the way up to Lane Line, Oregon.

So that's quite a bit of that coastline. And it looks like the expected time for the tsunami activity, it ranges, but started about 15 minutes ago, if you will. But five million people under this warning, how worried should they be?

LONG: Well, certainly they should be aware anytime that we have a tsunami warning. That is something to take very seriously. So I would give anyone the advice to, you know, heed the advice from NOAA from the tsunami warning to, you know, stay away from the -- from the shoreline, be aware that you may need to evacuate.

And the reason that these warnings get issued is because there is a chance from an earthquake like this one that happened beneath the ocean that we may have a tsunami. So certainly being aware and knowing that a tsunami warning is in effect for that stretch of coastline, very important for everyone right now.

MARQUARDT: We just heard our Chad Myers telling people to stay away from the coastline. Is that the best piece of advice? How far back should people be and is there anything else that they should be doing?

LONG: Whenever there is a tsunami warning, in any situation in which there's a tsunami warning, the advice is always to stay back from the coastline and seek higher ground. So certainly for people who are near the coastline right now in the affected area, seek higher ground and go in from the coastline. You know, as far as it's practical to do so, right now.

We, you know, don't yet know what the actual impact of any tsunami that has been triggered is going to be. We'll learn that, I think in the next, you know, minutes to hours --

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