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Trump Announces Space Command Headquarters Moving to Huntsville, Alabama; Trump Takes Questions in Oval Office; Commemorating the End of WWII. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 02, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: National security moving this to Alabama, we've all can agree with that. Is there any idea of the economic impact this has on the state and on that local area?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Katie, do you want to answer that?

SEN. KATIE BRITT (R-AL): Look, I mean, this is going to be tremendous. I mean, the state of Alabama, what we've seen through this process is the worst of Washington. We've seen politics get in the way of what is best for the warfighter, what's best for national security. And the state of Alabama is about to show the country the best among us.

So we know the economic impact is going to be tremendous there at Redstone Arsenal. We're proud to house everything from the FBI to headquarters there for material command to a number of things.

We obviously have NASA with Marshall Space Flight Center. And so this naturally fits within. When you look at the decision matrix that they placed in front of us, that's why we ranked so high. It's because we have the resources necessary and the ability to build out quickly to meet the needs in front of us.

As far as economic impact, it would be tremendous. Does anybody have an exact number? 1,600 jobs with 3,000 spinoff. Look at this. This is teamwork right here. So we are really proud and the people of Alabama are ready to get to work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I've got a couple of questions if you could just for a second.

TRUMP: Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Owning a home and going about the American dream, it seems like it's out of touch for a lot of Americans.

TRUMP: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just recently, you pushed out a statement about addressing an emergency housing situation.

TRUMP: That's right, we're thinking about doing that. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, can you just --

TRUMP: Well, we need a little help from the Fed. We have a man named Jerome Too Late Powell. You've probably heard of him. He's too late, way too late. And the economy is so strong that it's pushing through that.

Normally, it would have been much tougher. But we're doing so well that we're pushing through. But it makes it very hard for people to get mortgages because too late is too late.

Very simple. He's too late. And probably political, whatever.

He wasn't too late before the election. Before the election, he was cutting rates, right? Because he was hoping that, I guess, Biden would get in or that Kamala would -- he was a big Biden guy.

Explain that one. And then he was a Kamala person. But he was hoping, I guess, she'd win I guess. I don't know. It didn't work out too well. But, yes, we need a very serious cut.

You know, I think that if you look back many decades ago, the United States was always the lowest, even if they were doing badly. The United States was -- because without the United States, everything in the world would die. It's true.

It's so powerful. It's so big. And I made it really big in the first four years. Then it started to degenerate with what this Biden administration did. But we built it up to a level that I never thought we could be at this quickly.

We're the hottest. We're the best. We're the best financially. The money coming in is so big because of tariffs and other things, but because of tariffs.

Tariff gets us even those other things. Plus, it gets us great negotiations. I settled seven wars.

And numerous of those wars were because of trade. And numerous of the trade deals that I made were because of tariffs. It gives you a great negotiating ability.

If that ability were taken away from us by a liberal court acting on, essentially, foreign nations asking to get help from the United States government, when they've been doing this to us for 40 years, that's why we have $38 trillion in debt. We won't have it for long if they let us -- if they allow us to do what everybody knows we should be able to do.

Yes, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, another Biden-era action that you're now reversing is that you signed a deal last week to make federal buildings adopt and embrace classical architecture styles again. Can you talk to us about why you do that? And also, what's your vision for -- TRUMP: Well, we want to see beautiful buildings. Now, you know, it's in the eye of the beholder. I've seen architectural reviews over the years. I'm an expert at it. I've gotten a lot of great reviews. But I've seen buildings that I didn't think were very good get great reviews, and I've seen great buildings get bad reviews.

So -- but it's just a standard. We want to have a good standard. We're building something here.

You know, for 150 years, they wanted a ballroom at the White House. We're doing something at the highest level, using great architects and all. And, you know, it's very exciting.

But we have a lot of interesting things happening architecturally in D.C. And D.C. is like a different place. And, you know, even the contractor said, Sir, we walk down today, we feel, like, much safer. It's like a different place.

Washington, D.C. is great. Now, we're going to also beautify it. We're going to put a topping on the roads. We're not going to rip them apart and take four years to build a road that was exactly the same by the time you build it. But we're going to put toppings. We're going to put new medians in.

We're going to get the graffiti off. We're going to put tiles up in the tunnels where the tiles are missing.

[15:35:00]

And we'll do the whole tunnel instead of, you know, a little area where you see new tiles, old tiles that never looked too good. But they could use it. You know, they've been up 50 years. They've served their duty.

But we're going to make this within about a 20-mile radius from the White House. We're going to have this place spic-and-span. It's going to be crime-free, and it's going to be spic-and-span. It's going to be -- you'll be proud of Washington again.

Go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, China is having a massive military parade that President Putin and Kim Jong-un will be attending. Do you interpret that as a challenge to be in? Are you concerned at all about those countries --

TRUMP: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- as a sort of counterweight?

TRUMP: Not at all. China needs us. And I have a very good relationship with President Xi, as you know. But China needs us much more than we need them. No, I don't see that at all. No.

And I had, actually, a very good meeting with President Putin a couple of weeks ago. We'll see if anything comes out of it. If it doesn't, we'll take a different stance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A judge today in California ruled that your deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles was illegal. Do you have any response to the action that --?

TRUMP: Well, it was a radical left judge. But, very importantly, what did you not tell me in that question or statement that you made pretty much of a statement, I think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I was asking for your response.

TRUMP: No, no. You didn't say what the judge said, though. The judge said, but you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can continue to be in place. That's all we need. But why didn't you put that as part of your statement?

Because the judge -- the same judge ruled exactly as you said, except the judge said that you could leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do.

Thank you very much, everybody. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We've been listening to President Trump taking questions from reporters inside the Oval Office. This was set to be a meeting announcing the move of the U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. The president there, joined not only by Vice President J.D. Vance, but a collection of Alabama lawmakers, including Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville.

The president making news on multiple fronts unrelated to that move. One notable statement from the president, his announcement that U.S. forces shot out a Venezuelan drug-carrying boat in the Caribbean. The president there saying that he got a briefing just moments before he came out and started answering questions.

He said, there's more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country.

This comes as the U.S. has stationed forces in the Caribbean, essentially around Venezuela, and they've doubled the bounty on the head of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Something to watch there.

Also notably, the president asked about his desire to move National Guard troops and other federal forces into American cities under the pretense of an immigration crackdown or stopping crime. The administration seeming to blur the lines between those two things.

The president repeatedly talking about the great success that there has been in D.C., getting at times hyperbolic about how safe the city has been, how contractors going to the White House to do work have told him how safe the city is. He referred to Chicago as a hellhole. Our reporting indicates that the administration is preparing an immigration crackdown there. He says, we're going to do it. I have an obligation to do it, adding that we are going in, but he won't say when. This, Brianna, as a federal judge just ruled that his sending the military into Los Angeles to quell protests there over his immigration crackdown is illegal.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: That's right. And he also addressed that ruling on tariffs, which he ultimately said he can't imagine this is going to hold, which is this idea that tariffs levied against other countries are illegal and that ultimately the U.S. would have to give back, as he put it, billions or trillions of dollars to countries that have been ripping us off, he said.

He was asked if he'd spoken to Putin. He wouldn't say on that. He did say he, very cryptically, I have learned things that will be very interesting.

He was asked about this sort of GPS jamming. The head of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, she was on her plane flying into Bulgaria. There was this GPS jamming. They had to land using maps. And he said, nobody knows where that came from. It is very much suspected that it was Russia.

And just finally, back to the Space Command thing. I thought it was so interesting because he kept saying, pointing to Colorado's practices of voting, and then he was pointing to Alabama's. He's targeting mail- in voting, which is an unrelated topic about why you would move Space Command to Alabama. He's saying Alabama doesn't have mail-in voting and Colorado does.

SANCHEZ: Yes, clearly incentivizing, in his words, incentivizing a state that has a preferred method of voting. Not just that, he also, as we heard from Kristen Holmes a moment ago, pointed out to the fact that Alabama overwhelmingly voted for him in the last presidential election.

One last note as we bring our team in. CNN's Kristen Holmes, Jeff Zeleny, Colonel Cedric Leighton, and Elise Labott.

[15:40:00]

Kristen, I thought it was notable that the first question the president was asked was about his absence over the last few days. He had only done one interview with a conservative-leaning outlet. We've seen him load up onto the SUV and go golfing in his club in Virginia, but kind of unusual for President Trump. He didn't make quite as many public appearances, and that led a reporter in the room to ask him when he found out that he was dead because of some online chatter about the president's health.

The president flipping that, turning that into a joke about his predecessor.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, but I will say it was kind of an awkward moment when he asked about when did you find out you were dead. Usually we hear those kind of questions, but it seemed as though Trump was a little bit confused as to what the question actually was. No, he denied that he had heard any of the conspiracy theories that he was actually dead.

He instead said he had seen that people were concerned, they were asking about his health, and he knew that he had been very busy behind the scenes. He talked about how this was a long weekend, how he played golf. He said he wrote prolific posts on Truth Social, that he was very busy, that he did an interview for over an hour and a half.

And one of the things, of course, that we had been reporting on was this conspiracy theory around his health and whether or not the White House was going to push back on it. And we had just heard from the White House right before President Trump started taking questions, pushing back on this notion that President Trump had any kind of illness.

Now, one of the things that we had seen people pointing to was a bruise on the back of his hand, which you could see while he was sitting there taking questions.

We had spoken to a number of sources who told us that that bruising actually had started well before he took office. They pushed back on the idea that this was something new. They said that it's because of aspirin and the fact that he has done multiple things with his hands.

Actually, one source giving me an anecdote about how his skin is so thin that at one point when he was shaking hands, it ripped open on the campaign trail. So they're very much clearly pushing back on this notion that there's a health issue.

But I do just want to say one thing because I think there was one part of this that was probably the most striking of everything that he said. And it goes back to bringing the National Guard into Chicago or Baltimore. He said specifically, I would love it if Governor Pritzker or the governors of these states, referring to blue states, would call us in and ask us for our help because we want to help them. The reason why that is so critical is it goes to show you the political calculation that he is putting into this ahead of 2026.

He wants to run on crime. He wants to be able to say, Democrats don't want our help combating crime. And he just said that in that Oval Office meeting. It's the first time we've said he want them to reach out to us so we can help them. Yes, this is a very calculated political move on Donald Trump's part.

KEILAR: Yes, really interesting there, Kristen.

And Elise Labott, as we look at some of the national security headlines here, he won't say if he's spoken to Putin. He's learned some things that will be very interesting. We don't know what those things are. And walk us through this Venezuela development.

ELISE LABOTT, FOREIGN AFFAIRS JOURNALIST: Well, I mean, listen, the president has made no secret of that he thinks of the trafficking of fentanyl as one of these national emergencies. And I think it's, you know, we don't know that this is the correlation that they're making, but I thought it was very interesting that he's talking about the tariffs. Don't forget he used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Now, this is an act that says a president can act in a national emergency. He cited fentanyl as one of those national emergencies. I'm not saying that this is the reason he did it, but I just thought it was interesting timing in the whole idea of a couple of days ago, they're saying that this is an unconstitutional thing.

I will say though, the tariffs are not whether there's a national emergency. It's about whether the president has the executive power to make those tariffs. And if Congress were to say, yes, there's a national emergency where, you know, trafficking fentanyl into the country, there's a national emergency, we have to impose tariffs. That would be something different.

But I also thought the thing on Putin, he's definitely hedging. We'll see what happens. I might do something, I might not. He really was very firm going into that meeting a few weeks ago with Vladimir Putin about consequences, about tariffs, about other measures if he didn't sit down with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. There is no -- you now, no one is saying that that meeting is taking place, including Putin, but the president isn't even willing to kind of punish him with his vicious rhetoric.

I mean, he's not even criticizing him at this point.

SANCHEZ: Jeff, one of the things that just struck me about this press availability, right now there are survivors of Jeffrey Epstein testifying before Congress. Not a single question that I heard at least was asked of the president regarding that.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It's extraordinary. And that is something that is going to continue to divide his Republican Party. Speaker Mike Johnson is meeting with some family members of the victims, and there's still very much a division among the president's own supporters. He was not asked those questions.

[15:45:00]

And we should point out, I think viewers may want to know who's asking these questions. And we should point out, I think viewers may want to know who's asking these questions. And it is a collection of reporters, a small collection of reporters that rotates.

Fox News was the network pool in there today, and several of the other reporters are chosen by the White House. It is a different pool rotation than from the time when we all covered the White House and different administrations. So that is one of the reasons that there are more friendly questions, if you will.

But as for the mail-in voting, it is an obsession of his, but we should point out, one in three Americans vote by mail. Many of the places he won, some of the reddest states in America vote by mail. The Dakotas, for example, Utah, for example, my home state of Nebraska, they allow mail voting.

Republicans did very well in vote by mail, but it's become an obsession of his ever since his Alaska meeting with Vladimir Putin.

LABOTT: When Vladimir Putin --

ZELENY: He raised that, of course.

LABOTT: Exactly, and Vladimir Putin said, yes, vote in -- mail-in voting is terrible. You're so right. You definitely would have won the election.

I might point out that Russia does use mail-in voting.

ZELENY: But as for Chicago, perhaps the two headlines, I would say, he said were going to the Supreme Court on an expedited matter on the tariff case and the Chicago. He left open the idea that Friday may not be the deadline or the timing that we thought he would be. He said, we're going in. I didn't say when.

We're going to hear, of course, from Governor Pritzker in the next hour when he holds a news conference as well.

KEILAR: Cedric, the whole point of this event, although he covered many topics, was this move of Space Command to Alabama. How are you seeing what you're hearing there and what is actually this move from Colorado to Alabama?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, so this is really interesting, Brianna, because I noticed that Senator Britt, when she spoke about it, she was told that there were 1,600 jobs that would be basically moved from Colorado to Alabama. The president, when he was speaking, mentioned 30,000 jobs. Now, when you move a major command headquarters, like in this case, a unified command headquarters, the number of jobs is usually not that great. So the 1,600 figure sounds more reasonable to me.

But the other thing that's interesting about this, they did cite, both the President and Secretary Hegseth, did cite specific studies that had been conducted by the Air Force leading up to the decision to do this. And these studies had taken place over several years, both during the previous Trump administration as well as the Biden administration.

But one thing that is interesting that struck me is the fact that there are four different installations in Colorado that deal directly with space-related issues, specifically with Space Command and the U.S. Space Force. In Alabama, there's only one installation, and that's the Redstone Army Arsenal in Huntsville. It is certainly, there are certainly other space functions there, NASA-related space functions in Alabama.

But Colorado, up until this point at least, has been the previous home to all U.S. military, almost all U.S. military space activity. There've been other elements in places like California, but the key thing is that Colorado was actually the headquarters of the first U.S. Space Command and now, up until now, the second iteration of U.S. Space Command.

KEILAR: Yes, well, some sort of push and pull between the Biden administration and the Trump administration on this, and we will be seeing how this all shakes out as they make this move.

Thank you so much to our panel. Very informed, very expert. We appreciate it, and we'll be right back with more information.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Happening right now in Hawaii, veterans are marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II on the deck of the USS Missouri. The event taking place at the exact time on the same battleship where Japan formally surrendered on September 2nd, 1945.

KEILAR: CNN's Stephanie Elam is joining us now from the very deck of that ship. Stephanie, a handful of veterans who witnessed Japan's surrender at quite a young age, they were very young men, were at this event. You spoke with them, some interesting things they told you.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very fascinating things, Boris and Brianna, that we have learned from these vets. Now, these are eight men who served in the Navy who were aboard the USS Missouri, seeing battle, went to Iwo Jima, and were here on the ship also for the surrender. So they have very interesting memories.

Right now, the memorial is going on down below us. I can hear them speaking. One of the vets is speaking right now, but I want to introduce you to another vet who says that his time here on this ship was some of the greatest time in his life.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERT KENNEDY, SERVED ON USS MISSOURI DURING WWII: Robert Kennedy.

ELAM: Will you say your birthday for me?

KENNEDY: October 15th, 1925. I reached the rank of electronic technicians made second class, which means I had two stripes on my petty officer chevron.

ELAM: You were working with technology at the time that was still very brand new with radars. Can you tell me about what you were doing?

KENNEDY: It was a little bit frightening to be responsible for maintaining something as fairly new as this technology.

ELAM: Were you nervous?

KENNEDY: Oh, I'm sure. I wouldn't want to admit it, but I'm sure there were times when I wondered what was going to happen next. We knew we were playing a significant role in bombarding the enemy locations. ELAM: Do you remember when you found out that Japan was going to surrender?

[15:55:00]

KENNEDY: They made a significant effort to make sure that every person aboard was brought topside. It was extremely exciting.

ELAM: Did it occur to you that you were in this place that was pivotal to the entire world?

KENNEDY: Probably not immediately, but very quickly I realized that I was part of a significant world event.

ELAM: You look back at your entire time on the Mighty Moe as a positive life experience.

KENNEDY: Oh, yes, yes. It was, I will always be proud of my Navy service, but particularly proud of my Navy service as we participated in the end of the war.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM (on camera): It was so moving how well these men can recall that time over 80 years ago on this ship. And keep in mind that over 3,000 servicemen were on this ship during World War II. And the foundation that runs this museum, that runs this ship, says that they've only been able to locate about eight of them.

All eight of them are here and present today to take part in this, making sure that they're here. And for some of them that passed away recently in the last few years, their families are here to mark this event in the honor of their loved ones -- Boris and Brianna.

KEILAR: What a great story, Stephanie. Thank you so much for bringing that to us. We really appreciate it.

Stephanie Elam on board the USS Missouri.

SANCHEZ: What a great assignment, Stephanie, got there in Honolulu.

Thank you so much for joining us today. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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