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Apple Announces $500B Investment in U.S. Facilities; Judge Pauses Some DOGE's Access to Sensitive Data; Trump Names Right-Wing Podcaster as FBI Deputy Director; Fact-Check on Trump's "Drill, Baby, Drill" Energy Policy. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired February 24, 2025 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: New this morning, a big announcement from the world's most valuable company, Apple says it will invest more than half a trillion dollars and create 20,000 jobs in the U.S. over the next four years in a move that could help it avoid President Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods.

CNN's Clare Duffy joins us now with more. OK. So, what more do we know about this investment and why Apple is doing this?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, Pamela, this is huge, $500 billion investment in U.S. facilities over the next four years. As you said. expected to create 20,000 jobs. This of course comes as Trump has implemented a 10 percent tariff on all goods imported from China, which is where Apple makes a lot of its products, most of its iPhones.

So, I do think that this could be a way for Apple to try to avoid some of those tariffs. Of course, these facilities won't be up and running overnight, so it may be that Apple is trying to gain favor with Trump and potentially seek an exemption to some of these tariffs. tariffs, which it did during Trump's first term as well.

Trump had hinted that this was coming. He met with Apple CEO Tim Cook last week, and then he thanked the company in a Truth Social post this morning, saying that it showed faith in his policies. This investment is going to cover a number of facilities and efforts, including a new factory in Houston that is expected to create servers for artificial intelligence computing. That is expected to open later this year. Apple said it will also invest in more production of Apple TV Plus shows in the United States and start a new academy to train small and medium businesses on how to incorporate and use artificial intelligence, Pamela. So, really a wide-ranging investment here.

BROWN: Yes, certainly a positive for the United States. Clare Duffy, thank you so much. Also, this morning, a judge has just paused some of DOGE's access to sensitive data at the Department of Education and U.S. Office of Personnel Management as Elon Musk and his team continue to overhaul the federal government.

But what is the potential economic fallout of running the government like a Silicon Valley startup, basically? Joining us now for more on this is Edward Luce, U.S. national editor for the Financial Times. Hi, Edward. So, what do you think about this move fast and break things approach to the federal government?

EDWARD LUCE, U.S. NATIONAL EDITOR, FINANCIAL TIMES: Well, it's I think a classic mistake that people make, which is to think that government is like a private business and should be run like a private business. This is sort of over and above that category error in that Musk is seeking to run it like a startup, like he's a founder and this is a startup.

We saw when he took over Twitter he got rid of 80 percent of the staff, including the trust and safety people. And he's taking that same sort of approach that we saw, I guess, personified by him wielding that chainsaw on stage at CPAC last week. The history of business people running government like it is a business is not a good one.

BROWN: Why? I mean, because some people think it is, as we've seen, some Americans think this is great. What historically have we learned from this approach, even though what we're seeing now on the scale is certainly unprecedented?

[10:35:00]

LUCE: Well, because government isn't a business. I mean, you know, it has a very, very different role institutionally in society. A lot of the things that we're now seeing sparking at these town hall protests and arguments with Republican congressmen back in their districts because people are seeing things like the park services or the CDC in Atlanta or food inspectors in their states, they're seeing people lose their jobs that they do actually value or a coming to value.

There is a sense here that, you know, it's a bit like good health. You only really know it's worth when you lose it. But that's the kind of popular impact we're getting because it's, I guess, in a way, what Musk is giving us inadvertently is an instruction in the hidden value of government and the hidden value of having safety inspectors, you know, and having people who research diseases and combat avian flu and so on, air traffic control. And I guess the hope is that we don't lose this before people fully value it.

BROWN: I want to drill down a little bit more on this because I've certainly heard from people who say, well, layoffs happen all the time in private companies, you know. Why is this so different the sort of mass layoffs in the federal government in terms of the impact on the country and the potential impact on the economy?

LUCE: So, a couple of things. First of all, for sure, the federal government should be streamlined, for sure there are regulations that are probably unnecessary and inhibitive of economic activity, and for sure, there are parts of -- there are dead wood corners in many federal agencies. But this takes time to find out, which is why the chainsaw is such an inapt metaphor. It's a scalpel. You need to figure out which areas are functioning well, which areas can be dispensed with. This is an enormous complex organism. And Musk is taking the move fast and break through things approach. So, you're not -- you're just not going to get the kinds of informed choices that you would have if you were studying what you were doing.

Secondly, though if you look at the share of federal employees of the labor force, it's at an historic low. This isn't bloated. This is lower than it's been since before the Second World War. So, I mean, let's not get carried away in saying this is a vast sort of Kafka- esque operation. There are real problems in terms of responsiveness and in terms of regulations in the federal government, no doubt about it. But the rate and the manner in which Musk is approaching it is a cure worse than the disease.

BROWN: What -- I just want to go back to sort of the direct impact you think all of this could have on the economy. As you know, the economy is a big driver for politics, right? I mean, that's part of why Donald Trump was elected into office. What do you think some of these moves could mean for the economy? Prices at the grocery store? And what do you think about Trump's claims that DOGE is saving taxpayers billions of dollars per day and that this is all part of his master plan to help the economy?

LUCE: Well, I'm starting with the billions of dollars per day. I mean, DOGE itself has put out a $55 billion, which is annual claimed saving, but some of those are duplicated. Some of those have been actually disproven already, but most of them, he hasn't shown his work yet. It's just a number that he's claiming.

So, the real stated purpose of DOGE is to cut public spending. What it is mostly doing is cutting regulatory capacity. Now, that's something quite different and has a very different economic effect than reducing the federal deficit, which is going to be extremely hard and which Congress needs to approve, that the action is on Capitol Hill next month when the government funding runs out mid-March.

I think if you see a continuation of the path that musk has been on, which is gutting agencies that regulate his businesses, we're going to get a much more cynical and angry public reaction. Because the conflict of interest here is really enormous.

[10:40:00]

BROWN: It cannot be ignored. He has billions of dollars' worth of contracts in front of contracts in front of various government agencies, some of those agencies in which he is going in and essentially getting rid of personnel and having access to the systems as well. Edward Luce, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

LUCE: Thank you.

BROWN: Coming up How does a right-wing podcaster and lightning rod for criticism become second in command at the FBI, when typically, the second in command is an actual FBI agent? That's after the break.

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BROWN: Well, new this morning, the shakeup at the FBI continues. President Trump announced that Dan Bongino, the controversial right- wing podcaster and former Secret Service agent will be the bureau's new deputy director. So, he'll be number two there.

Evan Perez, CNN, senior justice correspondent joins us now. Evan, I used to cover the FBI beat with you.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN, SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BROWN: And I know this appointment breaks with tradition.

PEREZ: Yes.

BROWN: But it also goes against what Director Kash Patel said about the job recently, right?

PEREZ: That's right. I mean, the FBI Agents Association put out a statement last night welcoming Kash Patel to the directorship at the FBI. One of the things they pointed out was that Kash Patel had made a couple of promises in private meetings with them. One of them was that the deputy director would continue to be an agent, a career agent, which is the tradition at the FBI.

As you know, Pamela, this is a job that has day-to-day oversight of everything the Bureau does. The deputy director knows about cases, often more information about investigations going on than the director or the attorney general knows. And so, this certainly breaks with tradition.

And it also should -- we also should note that Patel had told people that he was likely to have Robert Kissane, who is a career agent from Newark who -- I'm sorry, from New York City who was supposed to be his deputy, and it appears all of that fell apart because the FBI leadership was resisting some of those efforts to get names of all agents who touched on FBI's investigations of January 6th. So, it appears a lot of this came about because of that resistance inside the FBI. Pamela.

BROWN: All right. Evan Perez, thanks so much. Great to see you.

PEREZ: You too.

BROWN: Coming up, it was one of President Trump's top campaign promises. Why experts say, drill, baby, drill works better in theory, perhaps, than practice. Up next.

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[10:50:00]

BROWN: President Trump is summing up his energy plan in these three words, drill, baby, drill. I'm sure you've heard that before, right? He says expanding oil and gas drilling will not only drive down prices at the pump but also increase the country's energy independence.

CNN's Bill Weir joins us now. Bill, this strategy might sound good on paper, but what about in practice?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pam, it definitely sounded good to voters on the campaign trail who thought, wow, more money in your pocket, cheaper gas in your tank if we just drill the sweet American crew that is abundant everywhere. Well, that's wrong on several levels. And cutting off the oil supplies from Canada or Mexico or even the Middle East would be devastating to both the American and the global economy. And here's why.

There are a lot of different kinds of crude oil. This is something President Trump fails to explain. There is light sweet, sort of the champagne of crude oil, which we produce a lot of here in the United States. But then, there's the chunky, gunky tar sands oil. Basically, like coffee grounds. Champagne, coffee grounds.

Well, we pump a lot of the champagne, but we run our economy on a lot of the coffee ground, the heavy, gunky, all the refineries around the country, which go back to the 1930s, were built for the kind of oil which we were importing in those days, back from Saudi Arabia.

And so, if you look around the country, there are refineries on the Gulf Coast of Mexico there in which produce kind of the variety of both heavy, the champagne and the coffee they can produce. But most of it around the country, especially in the Midwest, is relying on that Canadian oil for their products and their bottom line. And so, it doesn't make any sense.

Here's the breakdown of U.S. oil production. 80 percent of it is champagne. And so, we export to the country does about 15 million barrels a day of this champagne oil to the rest of the world. Only about 19 percent is the heavy or medium grade that is useful in the refineries here in the United States.

And so, the oil imports that we talk about, 90 percent of the stuff we really need comes from Canada, Mexico, and other parts of South America and the Middle East right now. Trying to shut all that down, change that, would be devastating to refineries, and would drive up the cost of energy in so many ways that are unfathomable.

And, Pam, right now, about 90 percent of the new power plants, like utility scale power plants, are solar and wind. As now utilities realize, when you build one of these kinds of power plants, the energy delivers itself to you. You don't have to pipe it across continents. You don't have to ask OPEC for more sunlight. So, to be truly energy independent these days would be going for the renewable energies that Donald Trump seems to be intent on killing.

BROWN: And how is Canada responding to Trump's criticism and overall energy vision?

WEIR: There is huge anger in Canada. I'm married to a Canadian. We were just up there in Canadian coffee shops, they're now ordering Canadianos instead of Americanos. There's a huge sort of sense of betrayal from our northern neighbors, and now they're talking about opening up pipelines to the west coast of, you know, British Columbia and then piping to China, finding other markets around the country instead of the U.S.

There was some talk of making oil an exception to those Canadian tariffs. But who's to say with Donald Trump in charge?

BROWN: And I'm sure it doesn't help that Trump has called Canada America's 51st state, right? I'm sure that doesn't help with that sentiment you described.

WEIR: Not at all. Not at all.

[10:55:00]

BROWN: All right. Bill Weir, thank you so much. Coming up, more fallout over the mass firings in the federal government. Why CIA insiders think that this could possibly put some of the nation's most classified secrets at risk and why they're sort of scrambling to potentially reorganize things.

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BROWN: Well, good morning to you. You are live in the CNN Newsroom.

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