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Confusion Over Abrupt, Drastic Flight Restrictions Over El Paso; Interview with Kevin Hassett, Director, White House National Economic Council: U.S. Economy Added 130,000 Jobs Last Month, More than Expected; Pam Bondi, Democrats Trade Insults During Combative Hearing. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 11, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: ... They had to have some reason to believe that he was involved somehow, but then they released him. And if they did so without even questioning him, then I'm clueless as to why they would do that. That is not normal procedure.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: One of many unanswered questions, but obviously top of mind is getting 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie home.

Again, the family asks that if you have any information that may lead them to her, you call the numbers that are on your screen. One of them, 1-800-CALL-FBI. Chief Charles Ramsey, thank you so much for sharing the expertise. Appreciate it.

So we now know what contributed to this morning's unprecedented airspace shutdown over El Paso. We have details about what we've learned. Pete Muntean is going to break it down for us next.

[15:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The airspace over El Paso, Texas reopened earlier today after the FAA had ordered its closure just very suddenly late last night. There was widespread confusion today over what had prompted that restriction. Multiple sources now telling CNN the catalyst was actually a Pentagon plan to use a high energy counter drone laser without coordinating with the FAA about the potential risks to civilian flights.

We have CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean on this story. Pete, what are you learning here?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, this was sudden and so mysterious, but now we know really taking the mystery away from all of this why this went into place, this huge sweeping airspace restriction, all due to the Pentagon wanting to use this high energy laser that it can essentially melt drones. This was not coordinated, at least according to multiple sources, between the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration. So the FAA essentially had to act unilaterally here, putting this 10- mile no-fly zone, 10-mile radius, up to 18,000 feet. It was going to last 10 days. That is pretty significant.

Never before in modern aviation history has there been a precedent for something like this. A lot of people have been comparing this to the airspace shutdown nationwide on 9-11. We knew the reason for that.

That was obvious. This was not very clear. And even some pilots going into El Paso International Airport last night were asking on the radio, why the heck is this going on?

I just want to show you here, the El Paso International Airport is truly pretty much across the street from Biggs Army Airfield and Fort Bliss there. And so it now seems that this high energy laser was being used at the Army's Fort Bliss, and the Federal Aviation Administration was straight up concerned that this would pose a risk to civilian flights. This is not a small airport, by the way.

KEILAR: That's right.

MUNTEAN: We're talking about 100 flights each day. Over that 10-day period, it would have been 1,000 flights, so a pretty big cascading impact. And multiple sources are telling my team and the national security team here at CNN that this really was put in place, this flight restriction was put in place to force the Pentagon's hand.

And this is what caught so many people's attention, the use of deadly force in this notice to airmen, this temporary flight restriction, because this is something that is not necessarily unusual, but it's really just the size of this that's so unusual. And so we're now getting to the bottom of this, but there are some really big questions here about if the Pentagon has stopped using this system, if it plans to stop using this system, and if it used it already. Sources telling our Natasha Bertrand and Zach Cohen that the Pentagon actually used this high energy laser system to target Mylar balloons just before this restriction went into place.

We're talking four Mylar balloons, and that's so critical.

KEILAR: That's not what they wanted to target.

MUNTEAN: Right. And so it really raises some questions about whether the military had the ability to, what's called IFF, identify friend or foe, so critical in using something like this. And so if they sort of lacked the basic knowledge of this system, you can see why the Federal Aviation Administration put this in place. All of this explanation, though, that we're getting from sources, really undercuts the White House explanation here that this was all because of a drug cartel drone that flew across the Mexican border, causing this airspace restriction.

Only lasted eight hours. Now things are getting back to normal. A really, really interesting case of potential un-coordination between different parts of the U.S. government.

KEILAR: Mylar balloons. All right. Pete Muntean, thank you so much.

A new jobs report revealing better news than expected. So what does it tell us about President Trump's plans for the economy? We talk about it with the director of the National Economic Council next.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: New data out today shows the U.S. labor market blew past expectations to start the year with the economy adding one 130,000 jobs last month. That is nearly twice as many as expected.

We're joined now by Kevin Hassett. He is the director of the White House National Economic Council. Kevin, thanks for being with us. And I know you obviously welcome.

Yes, I know. I know you are glad to be here and that you welcome the higher than expected jobs numbers. What's your read on this report?

KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Yes, I think that they're, you know, the top line is that there was a lot more private sector job creation. Once again, it was 172,000. And one of the stories that everybody's been worried about, I mean, it's actually a legitimate thing to worry about, is that I was going to take away people's jobs.

Well, the top line job number shows that that's not happening. But the other thing you can see is that prime age labor force participation, which is like people's desire to go get a job and to get back into the workforce, went up to the highest level it's been since 2001. And so I think that the AI story needs to be modified a little bit.

What's happening is that AI is increasing productivity and wages and bringing people back into the labor force. And finally, the interesting thing, too, is this all happened while federal government employment went down a lot, about 360,000 over this year, which means that federal government employment is the lowest it's been since 1966 and the lowest as a share of the overall labor force that spends ever in all recorded history, which goes back to the Second World War.

[15:45:00]

KEILAR: Yes, I want to talk to you about that federal labor force here in a moment. I do want to dig into some of the numbers here. The manufacturing jobs, they increased by about 5,000. And I know that you have touted the president's tariffs for the building of factories.

Last year, though, we did see this decline of 72,000 manufacturing jobs overall. There were eight consecutive months of manufacturing job losses through December. Is it the White House's position that this 5,000 manufacturing job increase is the beginning of a turnaround?

HASSETT: Well, you know, what's going on is that one of the other things that we could look at, which I'm sure you like to look at the details, too, that the construction employment has gone up a lot. And we've been tracking the groundbreaking of new factories that are happening in part because of the trade deals --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Well it was flat in this report, wasn't it?

HASSETT: No, construction was up. And construction has been up really significantly since the Big, Beautiful Bill passed. And so I think that our view is that what's happening is they're ground breakings for manufacturing buildings, which are being expensed right now because of the tax bill and that those jobs are coming -- and those manufacturing jobs are coming. And surely the buildings won't be empty.

KEILAR: OK. So are you expecting that then to be a turnaround because we -- HASSETT: Oh, that's right, yes.

KEILAR: Yes, that's what you're expecting.

HASSETT: I didn't mean to not be responsive. Yes, we think that this is a step in a direction that's going to accelerate. And the reason that we're confident in that is that we can see that the new factory construction is really lifting off, as is the capital spending.

So, they're not only buying the buildings, building the buildings and hiring construction workers, but they're also buying the machines that go into the buildings. And so once the machines are plugged in, then they'll be hiring the workers as well.

KEILAR: I hear you touting the cuts to the federal workforce. they were obviously significant over the last year, and certainly in the numbers that we've just seen here. Last night, though, in an interview, President Trump detailed what he called, quote, the one thing he didn't like about the DOGE cuts.

Here's that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Cut 10 percent of your payroll. Cut your cost. Cut, you know, in other words, be specific.

When you cut, get rid of the people that are doing a lousy job, OK? In other words, take care of the people that are doing a good job. And I didn't want a general cut.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: He's saying there he wanted more targeted cuts, which is a --

HASSETT: Yes, he said that in the oval to me yesterday.

KEILAR: Yes.

HASSETT: In fact, he was worried that the cuts went too far. But we have the budget space to hire people back. But the other thing that we've looked into is in the counties around D.C. where a lot of these federal workers are affected, that they're being rehired in the private sector at a really impressive pace.

KEILAR: Ok, but Kevin, if you've lost them.

HASSETT: But the president is concerned about that.

KEILAR: Let me let me ask my -- if you've lost them and they had important jobs. I mean, I know you say you can rehire them, but you can't. I've talked to -- I mean, I'm sure maybe some of them, but some of them you can't.

That's just not going to happen across the board here. And a lot of them don't necessarily trust the administration as an employer at this point in time because of how they were treated in the sort of whiplash that they experienced and how arbitrary it felt to them. How many people would you estimate were cut?

I think it was like in -- how many would you estimate were cut by DOGE, by the DOGE efforts that were actually doing a good job, that were not targeted cuts like the president says he wanted?

HASSETT: Yes, that's a thing that given that the president has asked about it, that we're definitely we've asked the Council of Economic Advisors to give us precise numbers on that. But the bottom line, I can say is that by achieving the cuts that we have, then we've permanently, perhaps maybe not completely permanently, if some people come back, we've reduced federal workers by 360,000 people. And that's like almost $30 billion a year in savings.

And so what President Trump is doing is taking a big step towards getting closer to a balanced budget. We were in a fiscal situation that was completely out of control when he came into office. And now we've reduced the deficit by about $600 billion this year because of high growth, tariff revenue and reducing the federal workforce.

And that kind of fiscal responsibility is something that people have been asking, you know, governments of both parties to do for a long time.

KEILAR: I do want to ask you, because of these jobs numbers, which are better than expected, Wall Street analysts are now expecting the Fed to hold on rate cuts. And the chief economist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management actually said that the acceleration in employment is seen as, quote, vindication for Chair Powell's holding pattern. That's as reported by FoxBusiness.com.

What do you think of that?

[15:50:00]

HASSETT: Yes, I disagree with that. And, you know, I guess in some sense, time will tell. But the bottom line is that when you're having a big productivity boom, which we have because in part because of the AI revolution, productivity growth is about as high as we've seen it, except for going back into the 90s.

When a productivity boom happens, then that increases supply and puts downward pressure on prices. And so Alan Greenspan believed in the 90s, you might recall, that even though the computer was coming and we were having high growth, that the Fed could keep rates low because it was productivity boom, not a demand side boom like you got from, say, Joe Biden, when the government spent so much money.

And so I think the problem is that if the Fed is keeping rates artificially high because they've got this Keynesian view that growth is bad, then they're making a mistake. And I think they are making a mistake.

KEILAR: Kevin Hassett, thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it.

HASSETT: Thanks, it's great to be here. Thanks.

KEILAR: Attorney General Pam Bondi in the hot seat over the redacted Epstein files. We're going to break down the key moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: That feisty hearing we were monitoring all afternoon on Capitol Hill with Attorney General Pam Bondi has wrapped and at times it got ugly. What's this?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch. Not on our time. No way.

I told you about that, Attorney General, before you start.

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: You don't tell me.

RASKIN: Oh, I did tell you because I saw what you did in the Senate.

BONDI: You're a lawyer. You're not even a lawyer.

With this anti-Semitic culture right now, she voted against a resolution contempt -- condemning --

REP. BECCA BALINT (D-VT), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Oh, oh, oh

BONDI: I want to be clear.

BALINT: Do you want to go there, Attorney General? Do you want to go there? Are you serious?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move on to the gentleman --

BALINT: Talking about anti-Semitism to a woman who lost her grandfather in the Holocaust.

BONDI: Texas from Cuba, convicted homicide, arson, weapon offense, convicted. So what are we talking about?

BALINT: Convict some of these perpetrators that rape these women that are sitting behind you, that you refuse to even acknowledge they are here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: At one point, Congresswoman Crockett of Texas got up and left. And it seemed that Attorney General Bondi had come prepared because she kept referring to notes. Even when asked questions about the Epstein files or about the immigration crackdown, she would cite, as you saw there, photos of undocumented migrants and just go in different tangents seeking to attack those who were criticizing her.

KEILAR: At one point, Congressman Jared Moskowitz referred to her burn book, in fact, because she did have some clearly prepared one-liners.

We're joined now by CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor -- former federal prosecutor, Elie Honig, who doesn't need to prepare his one-liners ahead of time.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: And no burn book.

SANCHEZ: I tried to prepare one. I couldn't find anything on there.

HONIG: He's spontaneous with the put-downs.

KEILAR: Right? OK. I know, Yes. So, wow.

HONIG: Yes, It was really a disgrace. It was not a good moment for Congress. I don't think the members of Congress did a particularly good job, with a few exceptions, of asking questions.

It was a humiliating day for the attorney general to go into a hearing like this. The purpose of a hearing like this is to provide information to the extent you can to Congress and the American public.

Instead, the attorney general goes in there looking to get off insults, looking to get off attack lines, condemning people for not celebrating that the Dow has reached 5,000 or 50,000, telling people they have Trump derangement syndrome. There was a really telling moment, I think, towards the end of the hearing, just an hour or so ago, when Representative Dan Goldman -- and I should say I was a colleague of his back at the prosecutor's office -- asked her a very specific question about why were certain names redacted out of these documents in the Epstein files. And you know what her response was?

I'm paraphrasing. Well, you don't know what you're talking about. You're a crappy lawyer.

That's the answer she's giving. That's the level of information that she's giving to the American public. I think nobody was served by any of that.

KEILAR: Just to be clear, that document was of the victims, right? Wasn't it? HONIG: Well, no.

KEILAR: What was the document he was talking about?

HONIG: There was a couple, but he had a document that showed the names of people who had done wrong. There was another document that Goldman showed that listed names of victims that had been improperly revealed.

KEILAR: Right, like the reverse of what should have happened.

HONIG: Right, so both sides, and both of them, she just sort of launched an ad hominem attack, rather than giving some sort of explanation, or at least just say, yes, we're going to try to fix that. What's so hard about that?

SANCHEZ: There was also a dispute about what information was privileged or wasn't.

HONIG: Yes.

SANCHEZ: There was also a powerful moment where he asked survivors of Epstein that were in the crowd or their family members to stand and asked them if any of them had been in contact with DOJ. None of them raised their hands.

I mean, overall, in large part, there was a bipartisan condemnation over how DOJ handled the Epstein files. And she also notably seemed to contradict her deputy, Todd Blanche.

HONIG: Well, a lot of times, right? And that's one of the biggest questions, which to this moment, we still don't have a straight answer. Is there or is there not an ongoing criminal investigation within DOJ of anyone around Jeffrey Epstein?

Pam Bondi announced back in November, yes, I've assigned the case to the Southern District of New York. They will do a full and robust investigation. Todd Blanche, two weeks ago on TV, says, no, there's not really anything. It's not a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. That's Todd Blanche's words.

Today, again, you get mixed messages. You get unclear answers. Somebody needed to try to pin her down, yes or no. Now, granted, try as one might, she was not in any mood to give any specific indication.

So those victims, I don't think, walk out of that hearing room with any more of a sense of whether there's a real investigation or not than they had six hours ago.

KEILAR: Yes. Ellie, thank you so much. It was really something to watch.

And I don't know that I say that in a good way.

HONIG: Yes. I mean, as a DOJ alum, it wasn't delightful to watch. It was a little bit painful to watch, really.

KEILAR: Yes. Ellie, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

[16:00:00]

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. Brianna, always a pleasure.

KEILAR: Always.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Even when it's during a contentious hearing.

KEILAR: That's right.

SANCHEZ: Thank you so much. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

END