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CNN This Morning
Trump Says "U.S. Will Take Over The Gaza Strip...We'll Own It"; Congressional Democrats Lead Protest Against Elon Musk; Trump Drafting Order To Dismantle Department Of Education. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired February 05, 2025 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:30:52]
KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Five-thirty a.m. on the East Coast. Here is a live look at the City of Brotherly Love whose Eagles are heading to the Super Bowl on Sunday. I cannot wait.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at this side President Donald Trump unveiled a plan for Gaza that has jaws on the floor across Washington and across the Middle East. He is proposing a U.S. takeover of Gaza, and he is not ruling out using military force. The president's plan calls for the displacement of 1.7 million Palestinians. The pitch? Turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East.
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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good where they wouldn't want to return. Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.
REPORTER: But it's their home, sir.
TRUMP: It's been one of the meanest -- one of the meanest, toughest places --
REPORTER: Why would they leave?
TRUMP: -- in Earth. You take certain areas, and you build really good quality housing -- like a beautiful town. Like someplace where they could live and not die. Because Gaza is a guarantee that they're going to end up dying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Trump's comments in the midst of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been finally returning to their homes in northern Gaza, many of them vowing to rebuild.
Trump's remarks were met with a range of bipartisan reaction here at home.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. "I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. I think that might be problematic. But I'll keep an open mind."
Democrats slammed the proposal calling it a distraction.
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SEN. TINA SMITH (D-MN): You've got to take this guy seriously. And, of course -- and I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about what's happening at the U.S. Treasury tonight and it doesn't -- it seems to me completely possible that he's also trying to distract us all from the ransacking of the -- of the Treasury Department's federal payment system that is going on right now under the thumb of Elon Musk.
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HUNT: Yeah. So we're going to get to the avalanche of things that Donald Trump is doing in just a second, but we want to focus in on Gaza right now.
Joining me, Joel Rubin, former Obama Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. Joel, good morning.
JOEL RUBIN, FORMER OBAMA DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JEWISH ELECTORATE INSTITUTE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Good morning, Kasie.
HUNT: Did you expect that we would be discussing this here on the set today?
RUBIN: You know, I didn't get much sleep last night because my phone blew up at about 10:30 or 11:00 after everybody sort of digested the insanity of this all. This is the most reckless, unworkable, ridiculous idea that we've seen on Israel-Palestine from an American president, period. But it was intentional and that's what's really important. There's always the guesswork about did he-did he not mean it?
He was reading off a script -- President Trump was during his press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu in addition to the fireside chat there. So this is a -- this is a real view that he has. Now, why and what does it mean? That's a whole other issue. But this is reckless and dangerous.
HUNT: So Peter Baker, who has covered most of our recent modern presidents, wrote about this and he frames it this way, not unlike how you put this.
"Never mind that he could name no legal authority that would permit the United States to unilaterally assert control over someone else's territory, or that the forcible removal of an entire population would be a violation of international law. Never mind that resettling two million Palestinians would be a gargantuan logistical and financial challenge, not to mention politically explosive. Never mind that it would surely require many thousands of U.S. troops and possibly trigger more violent conflict.
[05:35:00]
Mr. Trump's idea would be the most expansive commitment of American might and treasure in the Middle East since the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq two decades ago. And it would be a jaw-dropping reversal for a president who first ran for office in 2016 decrying nation-building and vowing to extract the United States out of the Middle East."
I mean, this is one of the first things that jumped out to me. I mean, he ran against doing this -- putting American boots on the ground in this region.
RUBIN: Right. That's right.
Let me give a couple of examples as well as to what this would mean in the real world.
First of all, we built just in the past year or so a $380 million pier off of Gaza that floated away into the Mediterranean. It did nothing. It had no impact.
About 40 years ago the United States went into Beirut on a similar mission and our Marine barracks got blown up by Hezbollah and we left under Ronald Reagan.
This would invite terrorism. This would be an extraordinary expense that would dwarf Iraq because quite frankly Gaza is in worse shape than Iraq. And the idea that Americans would somehow now own the Gaza Strip -- it's just -- it's beyond any concept of reality.
So then the question is what does it do? And the big concern is that this could blow up the ceasefire negotiations. And this could sort of burn the fingertips of everyone we're working with in the region. And it could undermine our relationships with key American allies like Jordan and Egypt that Hamas, of course -- you know, they're at the table here. They can then argue and use this as a rallying cry to pull away.
So this has real world impacts on human beings right now. It's not a joke.
HUNT: Joel, what is the possibility of this just being one of these negotiating tactics that we see --
RUBIN: Yeah.
HUNT: -- form Trump, or he says something explosive? We saw it with tariffs, right, earlier in the week --
RUBIN: Um-hum.
HUNT: -- to try to influence -- for example, we were talking earlier this week about Saudi Arabia wanting a two-state solution or a plan for one as part of negotiations to normalize relations with Israel.
Does this just set out a line from which he can negotiate and not represent a real proposal?
RUBIN: You know, Kasie, I think there is always a smidgeon of possibility in that that somehow this will get the Palestinians to pay attention -- he means business -- just like with Canada. We're going to slap a 25 percent tariff on you and then withdraw it a day later -- but get your attention.
But the problem here is that by doing this and by putting this out there what he is now doing is undermining American credibility and word. There is now going to be a discussion at all of these negotiating tables about what does he want? What's he trying to achieve?
The Israeli far right, as I saw on your program earlier -- they're happy. They're excited. This has been a discussion ongoing for a number of years.
But it is not workable. It's reckless, it's dangerous, and it's only going to throw our alliances into disarray.
HUNT: All right, Joel Rubin. Always grateful for your perspective, sir.
RUBIN: Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: Thanks for coming on the show.
OK. So related, flooding the zone is a strategy that Donald Trump deployed in his first term as president, and in this second term -- well, the floodwaters seem to be getting higher. Since Inauguration Day, President Trump has unleashed a dizzying barrage of executive orders and shocking comments.
Among them, firing scores of government employees and offering buyouts to millions of others. Threatening to invade or extort our allies. Freezing billions in federal funding. Pardoning hundreds of people convicted of violence, some against police officers, on January 6. Granting Elon Musk access to vast swaths of sensitive information. And that's even before we get to what we were just talking about -- the president's new comments about Gaza.
The strategy is something that Trump's former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon candidly described during Trump's first term.
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STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only -- because they're dumb and they're lazy they can only focus on one thing at a time. All he has to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They'll bite on one and we'll get all of our stuff done bang, bang, bang. These guys will never -- will never be able to recover.
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HUNT: And, of course, that was the version of that "flood the zone" without the word that we're not supposed to say on television. His actual quote was "flood the zone with s-h-i-t."
Joining me now, Kevin Frey, Washington correspondent for NY1. Kevin, good morning.
KEVIN FREY, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDET, SPECTRUM NEWS NY1: Good morning.
HUNT: Where would you like to start?
FREY: Oh, God.
HUNT: Which piece of the flooded zone --
FREY: Well, I think --
HUNT: -- should we begin with?
FREY: I mean, maybe there's even a better phrase for this variation, which might be "move fast and break things."
Just steal something from Silicon Valley and Elon Musk effectively. Because to kind of bounce off of what Sen. Smith was just saying earlier in the segment, essentially there's so much going on that at least Democrats are starting to argue that this is shielding and distracting from the potential damage that Elon Musk is doing to the bureaucratic infrastructure underneath the entire federal government.
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HUNT: And that, of course -- part of this is that it is hard to talk about some of these -- you know, the bureaucracy is fundamentally boring --
FREY: Correct.
HUNT: -- right, but they do a lot of really important things.
And you saw Democrats yesterday. I want to show a little bit of that. There was a press conference. We have seen Democrats struggle to figure out --
FREY: Yes.
HUNT: -- right, how to oppose Donald Trump the second time around.
Here's a -- let's take a little bit of a look at how they were trying to do it yesterday. Watch this.
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SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): When we open up the Senate every single morning we don't pledge allegiance to the billionaires. We don't -- we don't pledge allegiance to Elon Musk.
REP. SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE (D-CA): No one elected Elon Musk to make any decisions about getting my county, my city, my state. There is an economic coup happening right here in the treasury.
REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY (D-MA): We're here today in the hopes that you will see the light. But if you do not see the light, we will bring the fire. Resist!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Resist, of course the tagline of the opposition from the previous Trump --
FREY: Yeah.
HUNT: -- administration.
But at the same time -- like, they don't have any recourse right now. I mean --
FREY: Effectively, no. I mean, Sen. Schumer and Congressman Jeffries were facing a lot of pressure over the past two weeks to try to figure out how the heck do you navigate this. And I believe at least Schumer was at that press rally last night outside of the Treasury.
Yesterday they laid out essentially like a four-part principled plan, which was litigation, legislation. Trying to appeal to public sentiment, which they cite essentially the withdrawing on the plan to freeze federal government spending as an example of how that might have worked last week because that's a little more tangible and understandable for folks --
HUNT: Yeah.
FREY: -- across the country. And then also providing some degree of oversight.
But because they're not in charge of committees and they can't really dictate what Congress is focusing on.
One thing I did ask yesterday at this press conference with Jeffries and Schumer was is Elon Musk moving so fast through, to quote myself, the bureaucratic infrastructure? Can you possibly keep up with this? And there wasn't really an answer on that front.
The only other thing I will add is that you mentioned that it's more floodwater than before. Some of that seems to be because whether Trump wanted to acknowledge it or not the Project 2025 blueprint has provided a pretty fundamental game plan for how to address some of these things because there have been so many pieces of that that have been adopted by this administration. HUNT: All right, Kevin Frye for us this morning. Sir, thanks very much for being here. I appreciate it.
FREY: No problem.
HUNT: All right. Ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING -- we could use a little bit of this -- Super Bowl week. It's in high gear in New Orleans. Our Coy Wire reports on the new arrival in the Mahomes household who is providing motivation for the Chiefs' quarterback.
Plus, how the Trump administration plans to eliminate the Department of Education.
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JIMMY FALLON, HOST, NBC "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON": The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to abolish the Department of Education. Yeah, it's just like he won fourth-grade class president and you're like no more homework and pizza for lunch every day. And we're getting a vending machine.
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JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, ABC "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!" And is reportedly working on an executive order that would dismantle the Department of Education. That's good. I for one -- I don't know about you -- I am thrilled that a man who writes "smocking gun" and "Scott Free" with two t's, and "tapp" with two p's, and wants to make in "shoebiz," and spells his party "Rupublicans" is doing this. What could possibly go r-o-n-g, you know it?
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HUNT: What could possibly go wrong?
The Trump administration is drafting and executive order that would initiate the process of eliminating the Department of Education, sources tell CNN. The plan would be a step toward fulfilling one of the president's campaign promises.
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TRUMP: We're going to take it all out of Washington. We're going to send it all back to the states. I believe that school choice is the civil rights issue of our time. We want to close the federal Department of Education.
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HUNT: Trump, back in November, nominated former WWE executive Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education. Now as he looks to dismantle it, the president making an unusual request of his pending secretary.
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TRUMP: I told Linda: "Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job." I want her to put herself out of a job. And I want the states to run schools. And I want Linda to put herself out of a job.
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HUNT: Joining me now, NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz. She is also the author of "The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives and Where We Go Now." Anya, very grateful to have you on the show this morning.
I would like to talk a little bit about the ways in which the Department of Education benefits people who find themselves in situations where they have no other recourse, especially people with learning challenges and disabilities. Because I think is a place that a lot of people watching -- certainly, I have friends in my own life. I have -- I have small kids. I think your kids might be older than mine. But this is -- this is something that actually really does affect people where they are.
And certainly, we can also -- a lot of Republicans have always said get the federal government out of education. But these particular ways where the rubber really meets the road -- what are the implications of closing the Department of Education?
ANYA KAMENETZ, EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT, NPR, AUTHOR, "THE STOLEN YEAR: HOW COVID CHANGED CHILDREN'S LIVES AND WHERE WE GO NOW", AUTHOR OF SUBSTACK: "THE GOLDEN HOUR: CLIMATE, CHILDREN, MENTAL HEALTH" (via Webex by Cisco): Yes. So as you mentioned, I mean, there's already a very large degree of local control over our schools.
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The federal government is only responsible for about eight to 10 percent of funding of the schools. However, they have a very large role of oversight and accountability. And particularly for 14 percent of students that are covered under disabilities, they oversee not only the implementation but also the enforcement.
Of course, this is the dreaded DEIA accessibility part, and this is exactly the civil rights role of the federal government that is taken historically.
Along with that the federal government administers Title 1, which is the major program that directs funding specifically to poor students. So places where property taxes are not funding good outcomes for kids. That's where we look to the national government to play that role.
HUNT: So Anya, if you are someone who -- you know, you find out your child's been diagnosed with autism or another version of neurodivergence and you need a plan from your local school to help you educate your child, and the Department of Education doesn't exist, how is your life potentially different? What can't you do that you can do under the current system?
KAMENETZ: You may have lost access to funding and you -- more importantly, you're losing access to a recourse, right? So many, many families that I know personally have gone through this rigmarole of trying to get the services that your kid needs. Many times you have to take various official steps to hold the district accountable and perhaps the state accountable. But the buck stops at the federal government.
And this is exactly the kind of thing that we're seeing from this administration where they're walking away and really dropping their responsibility to protect some of our weakest and most vulnerable students.
HUNT: Yeah.
What role, Anya, does this have in terms of administering college- related grants and things along those lines?
KAMENETZ: So the other major responsibility of the Education Department besides Title 1 and besides Students with Disabilities and the Office of Civil Rights is the giant slate of federal student loans. We're talking about $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt, which effectively turns the Education Department into some kind of bank. So what's contemplated here is moving that function into the Treasury Department or another department.
And there have been a lot of problems with the student loan industry and the student loan administration. Turning it over even more so to business interests -- which I'm sure has been a long time something that the president as advocated -- would not turn out that well most likely for most people that have outstanding debt.
HUNT: All right, Anya Kamenetz. Thank you very much for bringing your expertise to the program. I'm sure we're going to require it quite often here in the months ahead. Thank you very much.
KAMENETZ: All right. Good luck. Thanks.
HUNT: All right, time now for sports.
There's a new arrival in the Mahomes household as the Kansas City Chiefs seek their third-straight Super Bowl title on Sunday. Their quarterback finding new motivation.
Coy Wire has the latest from New Orleans.
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COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: We are here in New Orleans outside the Philadelphia Eagles' team hotel. And they have a tough task here at Super Bowl LIX. They have to try to take down the two-time defending Chiefs who are going for a first-ever three-peat as Super Bowl champions.
Now, as if Patrick Mahomes, their star quarterback, needs any more motivation -- he's already been to five Super Bowls in seven seasons, including three wins -- I found out just a bit ago that he does have some added motivation this time around -- his newborn baby daughter Golden.
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PATRICK MAHOMES, QUARTERBACK, KANSAS CITY CHIEFS: It's always motivating whenever you have another baby -- I mean, just because I want them to have the same experiences that the other two have. And she's been amazing. She's been sleeping well. Mom's been extremely happy and I'm excited for her to be able to come. I think this is going to be her first football game at the Super Bowl and hopefully we can get her a win.
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WIRE: Baby Golden picked a great game to be her first one.
On the other side there is some added motivation for Saquon Barkley, the Philadelphia Eagles 2,000-yard rusher, MVP candidate, running back. Super Bowl Sunday will be his birthday. So we caught up with him to ask how he feels about that.
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SAQUON BARKLEY, RUNNING BACK, PHILADELPHIA EAGLES: I think it's pretty cool that the Super Bowl lands on my birthday. Not only my birthday, Coop's birthday and Sam's birthday too.
But yeah, I don't think winning the Super Bowl on your birthday or whether the day before or the day after. I think just winning the Super Bowl in general is such a cool moment and it puts you in football royalty, and it's something that you wanted to accomplish since you were a little kid. So whether it was on my birthday or not, to be able to win it would mean everything. It would mean the world.
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WIRE: Saquon will turn 28 on Super Bowl Sunday in his first-ever Super Bowl. And his teammate that he mentioned, Cooper -- Cooper DeJean -- it's his birthday as well. Cooper is number 33. Saquon wears number 26. Those two added together equal 59. This is Super Bowl LIX. Some Eagles fans are saying it was written in the stars. We shall see.
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HUNT: Yes, yes, it's written in the stars, OK? But let's not take that for granted, OK? We still have to actually perform. I mean, hell, Jalen Hurts played like he played a week or so ago, fingers crossed. But again, we're so superstitious here that we don't allow ourselves to think that way. Go Birds! Straight ahead here on CNN THIS MORNING President Trump's seismic plan for the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip. Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell joins us live on what it all means for the future of U.S. foreign policy.
Plus, Democrats protest Elon Musk and his growing influence over the federal government.
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PRESSLEY: We're here today in the hopes that you will see the light. But if you do not see the light, we will bring the fire. Resist!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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HUNT: It's Wednesday, February 5. Right now on CNN THIS MORNING --
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TRUMP: The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip.
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HUNT: Owning Gaza?
