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Trump Holds White House Event on Musk's Final Day at DOGE; Feds Probe Attempts Made to Pose as Trump's Chief of Staff. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 30, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: ... said he is a government employee and his role in the Department of Government Efficiency showing up clearly formally dressed in his DOGE father t-shirt for the event, his DOGE trucker hat and the president commending him and all of the people of DOGE who he says are great at working on computers. And he commended Elon Musk on the savings that he said that DOGE not only has made but he says that they will continue to make. Elon Musk saying he's going to remain a friend and advisor.

He also dodged a question, by the way, from Fox about that New York Times report about his alleged drug use during the Trump campaign.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, the president saying we will remember you as he handed him a key, a large key to the country, I suppose. Something that he says he gives to very special people. Elon Musk, they're essentially touting what he describes as the success of DOGE, pointing to $160 billion as he describes it in reductions and cuts of waste and fraud.

Though a CNN analysis of those numbers have found that it doesn't actually come with a lot of receipts. We only found a substantiation for about half that figure. He did sort of give a caveat to his initial prediction before the election that DOGE -- or that he would try to attempt to find trillions of dollars in cuts to the federal government.

He says that he believes that if certain programs are kept in place going into the next year plus, then they could achieve roughly a trillion dollars in cuts.

There was also a major headline, I thought, a reporter asking President Trump about certain former Biden figures, officials in the administration having contact with Republicans on Capitol Hill about potential testimony over accusations that there was a cover up of President Biden's cognitive decline. He was asked specifically if he believes that Dr. Jill Biden, the former first lady, should testify. There President Trump saying that he does not agree with the concept. He hates the concept. He says that Biden was going through a lot.

And interestingly, he says that he knows Joe Biden, that Joe Biden would not have supported opening the border, suggesting that auto pen was used sort of to create and manufacture manipulation to advance an anti-American agenda on behalf of folks working for Joe Biden. Really stunning moments in the Oval Office there. Plenty to go through.

KEILAR: Yes, we should mention our colleague Jake Tapper has a book out. He's co-authored Original Sin that is well reported and does not back up this theory. There's a lot of really damning information in it doesn't back up what this picture that we have Trump painting here.

SANCHEZ: And I should just point out, it also contradicts things that Donald Trump said on the campaign trail. And since then, about his belief that Joe Biden advanced these policies. Let's actually go to Jeff Zeleny, who's live at the White House for us.

And Jeff, walk us through what you're taking from this press briefing.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, the big takeaway here is the man who spent about $275 million or so to help elect the president of the United States is now taking his leave. And both men were clearly intent on making sure this was seen as a very amicable separation, if you will, saying that Elon Musk will remain a friend and advisor. The president there, of course, presenting him a golden key in an engraved box there.

But boy, what a difference three and a half months or so make. I'm thinking back to that moment in early February, February 11th, I believe, when the president first invited Elon Musk to the Oval Office and he held court there, saying how easy it would be to a dismantled government to find waste, fraud and abuse.

Well, many of those allegations simply have not proven to be true, as well as Elon Musk standing, of course, on stage very memorably at CPAC waving a chainsaw, saying that he could find, say, billions and billions in just an hour.

That also simply has not come true.

So Elon Musk obviously is leaving because his time as a special government employee has run out. Yes, that is true. But also the political liability that being associated with the Trump administration and things that he has been doing have been bad for business, quite frankly. So it's in both men's interest to have this separation. But the idea that they were both intent on sending the other off in such an amicable way was certainly striking there.

But one other headline I noted, Boris, as you were ticking through them, the president also asked about an Iran deal and he said he does believe the U.S. is close to an Iran deal. That's exactly what we heard a week ago. So it is unclear how close the U.S. is to reaching a deal on Iran's nuclear weapon program. There is still a sticking point over the enrichment of uranium. So the president not getting into details there. But again, he has said that several times this will be coming in a couple of days.

[14:35:00]

We do not believe that it is made much progress in that respect. But he's still taking questions there, of course. The president traveling to a Pittsburgh later this afternoon but

clearly giving Elon Musk the big send off he wants, even as though he says he will be nearby as a friend and an advisor.

KEILAR: Yes, we'll see if he continues to weigh in on what he thinks about how things are going in Washington. Jeff, thank you so much.

We're joined in studio by Wall Street Journal trade and economic policy reporter Gavin Bade and CNN political analyst and New York Times investigative reporter David Fahrenthold. Thank you so much to both of you for coming in.

David, just looking at DOGE here and as we hear the president citing things like transgender mice, there was not research that was cut or in existence to make mice transgender. Just to be very clear about that.

What did DOGE actually accomplish?

DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, so it did cut a lot of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But you don't need a special, you know, we didn't need a waste commission to find those. Trump already told us he was against those.

And it did cut some big federal contracts. But it fell far, far short of what it -- what Musk said was going to be easy, not just that he could do that. It was going to be easy to cut a trillion dollars out of the federal budget and do it by this October 1st and said they're not even 18 percent of the way there.

And even that 18 percent is puffed up with errors, puffed up with guesswork. Even as much as they can inflate it, they're not getting to 18 percent.

Instead, the thing that struck me was he said it's a lot of work. That's what stood in his way. It's a lot of work. Of course, it's a lot of work. That's a cut in the government. Cutting the U.S. government is, of course, a lot of work. And he told us before he was ready.

He had a team that was ready to do that kind of work. And they were going to get deep in and find things nobody had found to step back after three months and say, it's a lot of hard work. Of course. Like, why did that surprise you?

SANCHEZ: The question that led to that was, what was the biggest challenge? What was the biggest roadblock? And he said there wasn't one Cabinet executive. There wasn't even Congress, even though there's extensive reporting that he had friction with a lot of folks in the Cabinet because of cuts that he was making to the departments without even consulting them.

GAVIN BADE, TRADE AND ECONOMIC POLICY REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes, absolutely. I think that he found that this job was a little bit more difficult than he thought and had a little bit of friction with various members of the administration and Congress throughout his time there. So I think he's, you know, going to be happy to be returning to corporate life, so to speak.

KEILAR: I wonder if this effort by DOGE, has it made the federal government more efficient? And I ask that after having spoken to a number of federal workers who have lost jobs or they fear that their jobs have been lost or they haven't lost their jobs. And they're just looking at these little weird like chunks and pieces that are being cut out of their offices that they feel are actually making things very inefficient.

Even as they say, hey, if you wanted to make it more efficient, I totally could have told you how to make things more efficient.

FAHRENTHOLD: Yes, what they cut was what was easiest to cut. Not that they went and found how to make it more efficient or how to make things run more smoothly. It was just who can I get rid of the easiest?

New employees who have less labor protections, smaller agencies that have less protection in Congress. You know, whatever they could cut just to rack up some numbers, that was the guiding light. That was not really a sense of efficiency.

And I think we won't really know how efficient they made the government for a few more months because I think we've already seen some of these things they cut have started to come back because the government realized, hey, wait, that thing you cut, we can't do it without this contract or we can't do this job without them. So until we know how many of these things rise from the dead like zombies, we won't really know how much they change the government at all.

SANCHEZ: Not to mention all the pending litigation, all the stuff that has to get figured out in court. Gavin, I thought it was interesting. One of the noteworthy things that Trump said was about tariffs specifically with China.

He said that China has not lived up to the spirit of this agreement to temporarily suspend the 145 percent tariff that the U.S. had placed on Beijing. He says he's going to speak to Xi Jinping soon. What do you imagine that conversation is going to be like?

BADE: I think he'll probably try to rake him over the coals a little bit and say you're not living up to the terms of this deal that they signed a few months ago in Geneva. But what I thought was interesting was, you know, my colleague Tarini Parti, who asked that question, she gave him the opportunity to threaten tariffs again. Will you reimpose tariffs on China?

He didn't go there. He said, you know, I'm going to talk to him. Maybe cooler heads will prevail, so to speak.

So that was very interesting. And I think it might just come from the fact that the legal authority that he used to impose those tariffs on China, well, that was invalidated by a court this week. There's been a stay on that decision.

But there's a lot of legal uncertainty as to how they can do these tariffs. So maybe that's a card he can't play right now.

KEILAR: What did you think of the opening where he turns his computer around and he's showing a cable news clip of someone lauding what his tariff policies have done to the deficit? Take us through what that really meant.

BADE: Yes, yes. Trump turned around his computer and was showing all the reporters that, you know, a clip from a cable news show, the guest there was saying, oh, you know, isn't it so great that our trade deficit is down in the month of April?

[14:40:03]

Well, it makes sense it would be, because U.S. imports in the month of April --

KEILAR: Can you pause for just one second. We will revisit this.

Let's go back to the White House where the president is talking about Ukraine and Russia.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've known him very well. And I went through a lot of things with him because Russia was, you know, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax turned out to be a total hoax. The New York Times, they got a Pulitzer Prize.

They have to give back the Pulitzer Prize. That's my lawsuit. And they're doing very poorly in that lawsuit. But, you know, they wrote stories about how it was true and it was false. And, you know, a lot of -- Washington Post also.

I have gotten to see things that I was very surprised at. Rockets being shot into cities like Kyiv during a negotiation that I felt was maybe very close to ending. We were going to solve a problem and then all of a sudden rockets got shot into a couple of cities and people died. I saw things that I was surprised at, so, and I don't like being surprised.

So I'm very disappointed in that way. With that being said, I'd like to see it end. 5,000 people.

I think that number is even more than that, but 5,000 people a week are being killed. Mostly soldiers, but also people that live in little cities and towns throughout Ukraine. And I'd like to see that stop.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I asked Karoline this yesterday, but I want to ask you directly.

So many of the things that you're trying to do are held up in court right now. If the courts are going to have so much influence over U.S. policy, do you wish you would have just become a judge instead?

TRUMP: Yes, yes, well, look, it wasn't meant to be that way. If you look at the founders, the president had certain powers and you have your three groups and they all had supposed to be equal, pretty equal powers. But you can't have a judge in Boston running foreign policy in places all over the country because he's got a liberal bent or he's a radical left person. That's what the executive branch is for. And you have checks and balances.

But we had millions of people pour into our country. Many, many criminals poured into our country, murderers, murderers, mental institutions from all over the world being emptied out into our country. And if we don't get them out and get them out quickly, we're going to could lose your country very easily. These are this is a bad -- that anybody would allow this to happen to our country.

You know, with all of the things we took over inflation, we took over some wars, we took over a lot of problems that didn't exist when I was president. None of it existed. We wiped out ISIS.

Other than that, we had no wars. Putin was never going to hit Ukraine. Israel would have never been attacked.

That attack, as you know, Iran had no money. They didn't have money for Hamas. They didn't have money for Hezbollah. They had no money whatsoever. That wasn't going to happen. All of these things that happened weren't going to happen.

You wouldn't have had inflation. So it's very sad when I came back. But the thing that is the hardest is that they allowed 21 million people into our country.

And many of those people are stone cold criminals. They moved their criminal population into the United States. And of all the things that, you know, are bad, I solved inflation, I believe, already. I got the fuel prices down. The fuel prices came down. That's one of the reasons they screwed up the energy.

They screwed up the cost of gasoline and oil and gas. And you had tremendous inflation. The greatest inflation probably in the history of our country under Biden.

And when people said, oh, but the economy is, no, the economy was terrible for the people because they couldn't afford the energy. And the energy brought everything else up. Energy is the big deal.

But with all of that, we solved that already in four months. We solved it. $1.99, $1.98 gasoline. First time people have seen that in a long time since my term.

But the hardest thing to solve is millions of people pouring into our country, many of whom are criminals. Because remember, these countries are smart. Their leaders are very street smart. They're sending the people that they don't want. They don't want the people that are there, that are law-abiding, that are productive, that are working hard.

They want people that are in jails. We have them. They allow them to come in. And I always look to the other side, like, why would somebody do something? You know, in business, I try and study, why would they want to do this? Why would they want to sell it? Why would they want to buy it?

One thing I can't figure out is, what would an administration -- what were they thinking when they allowed millions of people from prisons all over the world, not just from South America, Venezuela, all over the world, from the Congo in Africa, hundreds of people, thousands of people from the Congo, rough, rough prisoners from the Congo in Africa, hundreds of people, thousands of people from the Congo, rough, rough prisoners from Asia, from Europe, rough parts of Europe. Why would they allow them to come into our country? Why would they do that?

It's the one thing I can't figure out. And I don't believe it was Joe Biden. I really don't.

I mean, he's been a sort of a moderate person over his lifetime. Not a smart person, but a somewhat vicious person, I will say. If you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry because he's vicious.

What he did with his political opponent and all of the people that he hurt, he hurt a lot of people, Biden. And so I really don't feel sorry for him, but he wasn't a person that would allow murderers to come into our country. He wasn't a person that was in favor of transgender for anybody that wanted it.

Take kids out of families, et cetera, et cetera. So I just don't understand why, why a thing like this, how a thing like this could have been allowed to happen. Very sad.

It's very sad. It's very sad. Very sad for our country.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President, President. Can I say something?

ELON MUSK, CEO, TESLA: Yes, go ahead. I think the fundamental moral flaw of the left is empathy for the criminals and not empathy for the victims. Empathy for the criminals, but not empathy for the victims.

And there's -- there's been way too much of that. That needs to stop. To the President's point, there's been a very --

SANCHEZ: They're answering a couple of questions. One on the status of Russian-Ukraine peace talks, saying that he knows Vladimir Putin very well, that he's disappointed at the progress of these talks, saying, I don't like being surprised.

Trump also asked there about these federal injunctions, judges that have made decisions to pause or overturn decisions made by his administration. The President there saying that liberal judges are at fault, despite many of these decisions being made by judges that he or other Republicans have appointed.

We're going to keep monitoring the details of this press availability with Elon Musk as he departs the White House's final day at DOGE coming today.

You were talking about the top of this availability and the progress that Trump says that he's made on the economy. He was just talking about gas prices there being at historic lows. What do you make of his reference to how well the economy is doing, despite all of these indications that things may be trending in a direction that a lot of people don't feel comfortable with?

BADE: Yes, just to go back, you know, he played a clip of a cable news host just saying that the trade deficit is down and lauding how great it, great that is. Well, it makes sense the trade deficit would be down because in the month of April, imports to the U.S. fell by over 20 percent. That's the biggest decrease in over 50 years.

And this was right after the Liberation Day tariffs, and then they got pulled back. A lot of uncertainty going on. Now, Trump's team would say that may be a good thing because they would love if Americans would substitute U.S.-made goods for foreign-made ones.

But if you look at the consumer spending statistics for the month of April, they also came in below expectations. What that suggests to me is that far from substituting, maybe just U.S. consumers are just consuming less, and that is not a good sign for the economy going forward. And we know that lower inflation numbers can also mean an economy slowing down.

So I think we're kind of teetering on the edge here. And as he continues to pursue this very disruptive trade agenda, you could see it pushing us into recessionary territory. That's what a lot of the big banks say as well.

KEILAR: And David, as he does so often, he kind of goes back to the past, and I think we have to revisit it and not let it stand alone, because he talks about the Russia hoax. We just have to be very clear that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. The Mueller report did not find collusion. But Mueller was very clear he did not exonerate Trump. And the Trump campaign was quite happy to benefit from whatever things Russia might do that would benefit them over Hillary Clinton. They found extensive contacts between his campaign chairman and a Russian intelligence officer and just a very aggressive campaign by Russia.

We have to remember this, because what's past is prologue as well.

FAHRENTHOLD: Right. It's important to remember all those things which you said, which are true, and everyone remembers, it seems like a million years ago, Don Jr. putting it out himself that he'd had this e-mail exchange where he welcomed Russian intelligence, or the offer of Russian intelligence. That's the prologue here, because now we're talking about that Russian government, that Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, wanting Donald Trump's help, or at least his forbearance not to help the Ukrainians as Putin puts pressure on him.

So whenever Trump talks about himself as an honest arbiter between those two, or as somebody who's going to get really mad at Vladimir Putin and put some sanctions on him just, you know, five minutes from now or two days from now, remember that's the back story. Trump asked Russia for help in the 2016 campaign. Russia provided some help in the 2016 campaign. So we have to view all of Trump's interactions with Putin through that lens.

[14:50:00]

SANCHEZ: To follow up quickly, David, as the press availability has just wrapped inside the Oval Office, the reason that that was brought up is because Elon Musk was asked directly about new reporting in The New York Times regarding allegations of rampant drug use. We should point out that he apparently does have a prescription to ketamine that he's talked about before that he was given for depression, but there are also allegations about mixing it with other drugs and behavior that, even to the public outside, has seemed odd at times. Public appearances and the chainsaw with the sunglasses on.

I just wonder if you have a response to some of that allegation from Musk himself, not just Trump, that The New York Times is biased and has the story wrong.

FAHRENTHOLD: Well, I mean, I should say, first of all, he didn't say he didn't have any response to the story itself, both before we wrote the story and today. It's a great story by my colleagues, Kirsten Grind and Meghan Toohey, about how Musk's drug use during the 2024 campaign was much greater than anybody knew, particularly ketamine. They say he talked to people who knew him, that he was having sort of physical issues from excessive ketamine use.

So it's worth reading that story and understanding that backdrop, as we understand the huge amount of influence that Musk had on the U.S. government and the huge amount of influence he continues to have on U.S. politics and industry.

KEILAR: Yes, he really dodged the question, though, did not deal with the substance of it.

David and Gavin, thank you so much. Really appreciate both of your insights.

And we'll be right back with more news.

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SANCHEZ: Now to an impersonation investigation at the highest level of government. Sources say that federal officials are looking into attempts made to pose as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The Wall Street Journal reports that senators, governors and top business executives received phone calls and texts from someone claiming to be her.

Wiles is one of the president's closest advisers and yields major control over who can meet with the president. Earlier this month, the FBI warned hackers have been using AI generated voices to impersonate senior government officials in an effort to break into bank accounts.

Let's discuss with CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. Andy, thanks so much for being with us. What does it tell you about the evolution of the tactics that are

being used to breach this high level network at the White House on Capitol Hill and with business executives?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes, well, two things really, Boris, the first is, of course, the the evergreen strategy or understanding that high level members of government are always going to be prime targets for foreign intelligence services, foreign operatives here in the United States and, you know, criminal actors, many of whom in other parts of the world are actually sponsored by or do their work with the sanction of state services and intelligence services.

[14:55:02]

So when you are in those positions of trust, you have to be on top of your game all of the time in terms of you are -- in terms of your computer safety and security practices and your communications practices. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is that as bad as it is to be in those crosshairs, it's worse now than it's ever been because of the advances of technology like AI and the ability to produce things like deep fakes and reproduction of voice, you know, voice commands and voice sounds, things of that nature. So it's always been hard to stay safe and to protect the work that you do as a government officer. And it's even harder now.

So it requires a greater degree of discipline and organization in your security practices.

SANCHEZ: I wonder how you track something like this, how you're able to determine the source of it and prosecute what seems like a pretty simple case.

MCCABE: Yes, we don't know a lot of the details about how each one of these scams has been perpetrated. But of course, investigators at the FBI understand that. Now, they'll be looking for those opportunities essentially to engage with the fraudsters, with the intelligence operatives, whoever's behind this.

And so that's easier said than done. But the tried and true methods of undercover engagement combined with extensive computer network analysis, computer forensic analysis, communications forensic analysis to understand if they are getting inside devices or if they're able to spoof existing telephones or e-mail accounts to use those as platforms to masquerade as the chief of staff or anybody else. Those are all good leads to follow.

But I have to say, Boris, right now, more than ever, you need an administration that is careful about communication security. And we know that this administration is not careful about that. They've had problems and their reactions to those problems, like the infamous Signal Gate. You didn't hear any strong statements coming from the president or anybody else about enforcing communications discipline around the devices that they use and the platforms they they use to communicate.

SANCHEZ: When you talk about these folks being more careful, I wonder how you're able to do that if the threat keeps becoming more sophisticated. Is there, you know, a protocol or a multi-factor authentication for something like AI voice impersonation?

MCCABE: You know, not for just straight up voice impersonation. But if you only communicate to your most trusted and important contacts via government approved devices, you've greatly reduced the opportunity for people to step into that communication flow and pretend they're you.

So in other words, if you are the chief of staff and you routinely talk to the secretary of defense, if you do that over open phone lines and on personally owned mobile phones, that's a much easier environment for a predator to get into and inject some, you know, masquerading as you, where if you do it only on government issued VOIP encrypted lines, which is the way you're supposed to, much harder for the adversary to get into that communications connection.

SANCHEZ: Important perspective. Andrew McCabe, thanks so much.

MCCABE: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Up next, we're following a major music announcement from Taylor Swift. The pop star is big news right after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. You're going to want to find out.

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