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Trump Calls Recent Judges' Orders 'Very Bad Rulings'; Trump Says He Doesn't See Vance as His Successor; Day 2 of Paris A.I. Action Summit. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired February 11, 2025 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: This Tuesday, February 11 right now on CNN THIS MORNING.
[05:59:22]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): I wish the courts would allow the executive and the legislative branches to work.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The centerpiece of our democracy is that we observe court rulings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: It's in the Constitution. Court storm. The president's blitz to overhaul the federal government roadblocked by federal judges as Trump's top allies are now suggesting he could defy the courts.
Plus --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're all going to leave. It's a hellhole right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Turning up the pressure. President Trump says he may cut aid to U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt if they refuse his plans to, in effect, expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza.
And a bidding war. Elon Musk leads a nearly $100 billion charge to acquire control of OpenAI. Why his competitor is saying no thanks.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The indictment is very old. It's -- goes back a long time. Well, I had the same thing.
So, I wish him well.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Case dismissed. The president's Justice Department calls for corruption charges against New York City's mayor, Eric Adams, to be dropped.
Six a.m. here on the East Coast. That's a live look at the Washington Monument.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Jim Sciutto, in for Kasie Hunt this week. Great to have you with us.
The Trump administration finds itself on a growing collision course with the judicial branch, as federal judges continue to step in and pause some of President Trump's many executive orders issued in the opening days of his second term.
Federal judges have now issued orders blocking Trump administration actions on things such as firing most employees at USAID; firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel; cutting funding for public health research; offering a buyout program for federal employees; and has now been told twice to unfreeze certain federal funding.
During a hearing Monday, Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island says the attempted freeze is, quote, "likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country."
The president, however, seems unmoved by federal judges, calling some of his orders unconstitutional.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You got some very bad rulings, and it's a shame to see it, frankly. They want to sort of tell everybody how to run the country. They don't talk about what you're looking at. All they say is, oh, it's unconstitutional. Judges should be ruling. They shouldn't be dictating what you're supposed to be doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Well, they are ruling.
The president's advisers are stepping up attacks on judges critical of their work, such as his vice president, J.D. Vance, who writes, "Judges are not allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."
Elon Musk writing overnight, saying, quote, "Democracy in America is being destroyed by a judicial coup," and, quote, "We are witnessing an attempted coup of American democracy by radical left activists posing as judges."
We should note that there's a Trump appointed judge who also issued one of these orders.
Listen to what J.D. Vance had to say back in 2021 about what Donald Trump should do in January of 2025, years before he was even considered to become his next vice president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice: fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people.
And when the courts, because you will get taken to court. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.
Because this is, I think, a constitutional-level crisis. If we continue to let bureaucrats control the entire country, even when Republicans win elections, then we've lost. We've just permanently lost. We've permanently given up. And so, that's sort of how I think about this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: All right. Joining me now to talk about this, what this means: Alex Thompson, CNN political analyst, national political reporter at Axios; Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former federal prosecutor; Kendra Barkoff, former press secretary to Joe Biden; and Brad Todd, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist.
Elliot, can you just explain the law and the Constitution here? I mean, in effect, actually, what Trump and his advisers are doing, they're not just standing up to the judiciary branch, but the congressional branch, because this is funding that was appropriated by Congress, acting on its constitutional power to do so.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think most of us at this table are children of the 1970s and might remember "Schoolhouse Rock," "Three Ring Government."
There'sF three branches. The legislative branch writes the laws. The president enforces them. And the exec -- and the -- and the courts interpret them. That's how it's worked for 249 years.
SCIUTTO: Right.
WILLIAMS: And that's really how it ought to work.
Now, when either a president or Congress has a problem with how some other branch is going, you sue in the courts, and you have a right to enforce your rights. The president, if he doesn't like something that Congress has done, or if he thinks that he needs more power, can certainly go to the courts to, you know, to vindicate that right.
And maybe you disagree with the court opinion; maybe you don't. But this whole notion of saying that, when we don't like what the courts have done, the courts themselves are illegitimate, really strikes the heart of who we ought to be as Americans.
SCIUTTO: And we should note that Trump and other Republicans certainly cheered court rulings that go their way and did not question the court's power in those circumstances.
[06:05:03]
Alex Thompson, it strikes me that this is such a consistent message from Trump, from Vance, from Elon Musk, who's become, in effect, the -- the information arm of this administration, that they are not just teasing this, but -- but laying the groundwork to say, no, we're not going to listen to --
ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.
SCIUTTO: -- to -- to federal court rulings.
THOMPSON: Yes. And they want a showdown at the Supreme Court.
Now, Donald Trump was one of the most, you know, litigious people in America well before he was the American president. But he is now surrounded by people that believe that, essentially, Trump can do all these things.
And they -- they -- they believe that, basically, the president can do whatever he wants to people that are in the executive branch. He can fire whoever he wants. He can cut off funding.
He is surrounded by people that want this showdown in order to greatly expand executive power, not just for Donald Trump, but for presidents in the future.
SCIUTTO: Brad, are you comfortable with this new reality that the president and his advisers are creating here? Is this the way you want government to be working?
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's not a new reality. Let's rewind the tape. A couple of years ago, Joe Biden lost his -- his plan for student loan forgiveness, if you will, at the Supreme Court.
His quote was, "I will stop at nothing to do this." And he then proceeded to give up $48 billion of student loan debt in defiance of the Supreme Court.
We've seen the same things with Democrats --
SCIUTTO: He didn't defy the court ruling. He found another path to attempt to get that.
TODD: But the court was clear -- the court was -- Donald Trump has not yet defied any court ruling. They've abided by every lower court ruling. That's the fact that we didn't have.
SCIUTTO: They're making a quite public case here to say --
TODD: Who does that (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
SCIUTTO: They're making quite a public case here, to say, we don't have to listen.
TODD: That's not a minor point, though, Jim. That's the major point. Is he abiding by the court rulings or is he not? He is. He is.
They will be appealed there. They're following just the way the court chain of command is supposed to go. They'll appeal to the Supreme Court.
SCIUTTO: Kendra, do you hear them abiding by just the way the courts --
KENDRA BARKOFF, FORMER PRESS SECRETARY TO JOE BIDEN: It doesn't seem like that they're trying to abide by the courts. It seems what they're trying to do is, obviously, defy what the courts are telling them to do.
But I think this is going to play out in the real world. And what's going to happen is grandma is going to stop getting some of her checks. You saw it with the OMB freeze.
SCIUTTO: Right.
BARKOFF: They got so much backlash from the Republican Party themselves. They were calling the White House. They were saying to the White House, this is not working for me.
You saw it yesterday with Katie Britt, who's already saying some of the spending the NIH spends down in Alabama --
SCIUTTO: Right.
BARKOFF: -- we need to really look at these things. And so, I think it's going to play out on two prongs.
One is in the court system. And the second is, at some point, there's going to be some backlash here, and things are going to have to change.
SCIUTTO: Do you think that's a sufficient strategy for Democrats? Because that seems to be a fairly consistent I hear from Democrats, is just wait for the American people to feel the pain from this, and they'll do something about it.
That's not -- that's not exactly an active defense.
BARKOFF: No, it's not. We need to be out there, doing more, talking about it. But there are real-life implications of how this -- these cuts, and these spending freezes, and these jobs will actually affect people in their day-to-day lives.
SCIUTTO: Yes, the Katie Brit example is good, because here's Alabama. And you have the University of Alabama saying, actually, we need that federal money.
BARKOFF: That's right.
SCIUTTO: That's going to impact things like cancer research.
BARKOFF: A lot of these places are in these red states, where there are big institutions, where there are big research institutions that need these fundings.
SCIUTTO: Elliot Williams, can I ask you to respond to Brad's argument, which has become a talking point now, that Biden did the same thing? Is that true?
WILLIAMS: I -- I think there's a big difference -- and you were getting at this with your question -- with finding another way to carry out a plan, and quoting Andrew Jackson in literally one of the darkest moments in the relationship in American history and the relationship between the executive and the courts.
Certainly, I will give the president this. He has every right to challenge orders, has every right to say the courts are wrong, has every right to -- to vindicate his rights.
But when both he and J.D. Vance are making the argument that, well, there will come a day when we simply will not adhere to court orders, that to me is the big problem.
TODD: Wait a minute, though. Let's go back.
Joe Biden appointed a commission to look at packing and expanding the court, an explicit threat to the nine people who actually sit on the court right now. That -- that's something we hadn't seen in 80 years.
WILLIAMS: OK. Counterpoint. What I would say in response is that there is nothing wrong, constitutionally, with expanding the size of the Supreme Court, right? It's --
TODD: It's an explicit threat to the nine people who are sitting there about the cases they have in front of them right now.
SCIUTTO: Although, to your earlier point, didn't happen. There was a commission.
TODD: But Democrats have spent -- Democrats have spent the last eight years trashing the Supreme Court. They've attacked Sam Alito. They've attacked Clarence Thomas. They've undermined the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. And they're going to continue to do it after these cases.
WILLIAMS: I think -- sure, and I think -- You had me until you went with the court size argument, simply because in American history, the Supreme Court has never been set by law at nine.
Quite frankly, when a Supreme Court justice dies or resigns, the court has eight. It can have any number of people. And so, this idea -- it's sort of a little bit of a red herring to say that, well, Democrats looked at expanding or shrinking the size of the Supreme Court.
TODD: In --
WILLIAMS: I think -- I think your better argument is that Joe Biden.
TODD: In modern life, we've only considered expanding the Supreme Court twice: when Franklin Roosevelt didn't get what he wanted out of the court; when Joe Biden didn't get what he wanted out of the court. That is undermining the integrity of the court.
[06:10:03]
SCIUTTO: But here's the thing. This is a common response. When Trump proposes something that the facts show is new, it would be new to openly defy court rulings. The response I often hear from the right is, well, Democrats have done quite similar in the past.
And I'm not sure the facts support that. I mean, Alex.
THOMPSON: I mean, even if the facts did support it, it doesn't justify what -- if Trump were to do it now.
SCIUTTO: Whataboutism tends to be the weakest argument in a number of fronts. But yes.
THOMPSON: I mean, "Biden did X" is not a defense of what Trump is doing now.
TODD: He openly defied the courts.
THOMPSON: Well, I'm not saying -- I'm just saying.
SCIUTTO: Well, one of the judges, I believe, said that they did defy the ruling based on -- on federal.
THOMPSON: Yes, the plain text. And -- and that was last night.
But my -- my point is not saying that just pointing at Biden does not -- is not necessarily a defense of Trump. The fact is that Trump is doing something new, and -- and they're doing it very intentionally. So, they are putting these executive orders to try to push the limits of executive order.
TODD: Like Barack Obama did with the waters of the United States and the clean power plan. And Joe Biden did with the student loan act.
Presidents advancing executive policy. To get to the Supreme Court and test the limits is as old as the presidency.
WILLIAMS: A hundred percent agree.
TODD: This is not extraordinary.
SCIUTTO: Well, the question, of course -- the question, of course, is do they test it in the courts and obey the court rulings? Or are they laying the groundwork here to disobey if they don't like the outcome?
TODD: How come -- how come --
SCIUTTO: And the quite public argument -- the public argument is -- is that that might be the case.
TODD: When Joe Biden said, "I will stop at nothing" when he lost the student loan case, we didn't get on television and CNN didn't say, I wonder if he's laying the groundwork to defy the court? We don't. We treat Republican presidents different than we treat Democratic presidents in this conversation, I think.
SCIUTTO: Kendra, do you agree?
BARKOFF: I mean, I think that there is a very big difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in just the way that they approach things.
Joe Biden is a very methodical thinker. He thinks about things. He talks about things. He doesn't move. He doesn't say random things. And then everybody sort of expects, OK, we're going to go this way, and then we're going to go that way.
I think that these men are fundamentally different people. So, I just think it's a -- it's a very different comparison.
TODD: I'm not sure Joe Biden is capable of coherent thought now at this point. That's an open question.
THOMPSON: Well, we can have a different conversation about --
SCIUTTO: There's a legal -- there's a legal response, and then there's that response.
But anyway, we will see. The test will be do they obey the decisions of the courts?
My panel will be back. Coming up on CNN THIS MORNING, Donald Trump weighs in on his second in command. Why he is saying it is too early to claim that J.D. Vance, his vice president, is his successor in 2028.
Plus, New York City Mayor Eric Adams could soon be clear of federal corruption charges, as the president grants a full pardon for a former governor who was sent to prison on similar charges.
And straw wars. Donald Trump's executive order backing plastic over paper.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Has anybody ever tried, seriously, the new straw? It's made out of paper, right? It disintegrates as you drink it. If you have a nice tie like this tie, this would have no chance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:17:36]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact.
(END VIDEO CLIP) SCIUTTO: That was President Trump, not shying away there, during the campaign, from giving his honest opinion about vice presidents. President Trump on the campaign trail.
But just two weeks ago -- after naming J.D. Vance at the time as his running mate.
Even though he's now in office, some things never change. Trump sitting down with FOX News, sharing this opinion about Vance's future in politics.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Do you view Vice President J.D. Vance as your successor? The Republican nominee in 2028?
TRUMP: No, but he's very capable. I mean, I don't think that it -- you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job. It's too early.
BAIER: Right.
TRUMP: We're just starting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: All right, let's go back to our panel here. Brad, does he not want J.D. Vance to be his successor?
TODD: No. Sure he does. I think J.D. Vance actually was picked, because he might be the future of Donald Trump's movement.
I feel like Doug Burgum or Marco Rubio would have been picked if he was worried more about -- about the short term. I think he picked J.D. Vance for the long term. I think --
SCIUTTO: Then why say "no" so emphatically there when he was asked?
TODD: Because Donald Trump wants to remain at the center of the ring. He doesn't want the torch to pass now.
SCIUTTO: Right.
TODD: It's the sixth [SIC] week of -- fourth week of his presidency. I don't think that's that unusual.
THOMPSON: Well, and then if he endorsed him now, then J.D. no longer needs him, right? Because then he has the most valuable thing in the 2028 primary.
There's already the parlor game going on -- going on among Republicans right now about whether or not J.D. would even get a challenger in 2028 for -- because of Brad's point, which is that, you know, Trump's own aides have called J.D. Vance a legacy pick. Because in that they want the Trump movement, MAGA movement, whatever you want to call it, to extend beyond this four-year period. SCIUTTO: So, let me ask you a question, Kendra, because Trump more
than once has not shut down the idea of going for a third term, regardless of what amendments to the Constitution say.
And again, this is a frequent phenomenon, where statements like that are dismissed as bluster until they become the truth.
BARKOFF: Well --
SCIUTTO: Do you look at that as him signaling that, hey, if I can, if the courts will back me on this, and reinterpreting the language, maybe I will try again.
BARKOFF: Well, I think Trump likes to talk about Trump. And the second somebody moves on to anybody else but Donald Trump, he doesn't like that.
Now, I will say you did see a House Republican introduce a bill into the House to allow for Trump to run for a third term. It was a very narrowly defined piece of legislation that it said basically that, you know, you have to -- it can't be two consecutive runs in a row.
[06:20:10]
SCIUTTO: Right.
BARKOFF: Therefore, Barack Obama couldn't run.
But you have seen some Republicans who are pushing for this. But I think this ultimately comes back to Donald Trump wants to be the center of attention.
WILLIAMS: Look, I think a lot of members of the House put a lot of crazy bills on the floor --
BARKOFF: True, true.
WILLIAMS: -- that really aren't going to go anywhere. And this is sort of one of those Donald Trump -- What did Donald Trump say today parlor games. I don't think there's any serious question about him running.
TODD: He also says if you just left me alone, I'd be finishing my second term last November. Right? So, like, he's -- this is Donald Trump entertaining the crowd so that people in shows like this will get screwed into the ceiling.
WILLIAMS: It's a little bit --
SCIUTTO: That -- that explanation has been said about so many things that turned out. I mean, the Gaza thing was just a random idea thrown out there until Trump has said it about 27 times now and is apparently preparing to pressure the Jordanian king by saying, I'm going to remove aid unless you let me take over Gaza.
I'm just saying that that statement that --
TODD: No, he says --
SCIUTTO: -- it's just bluster has turned out to be wrong.
TODD: No, he says, I'm going to take away aid unless you help me solve the problem of what to do with the Gazans while I rebuild.
SCIUTTO: His actual words are they're leaving Gaza, and the U.S. is taking over.
TODD: Well, no one's --
SCIUTTO: Those are his actual words.
TODD: He -- Well, he's -- he's pressuring the nations in the Middle East to do things differently than they've been doing them. He has no way of doing them.
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: -- the president really intends with Gaza?
THOMPSON: We -- to be honest, I don't think anyone at this table knows what he intends to do with Gaza.
You know, this is -- every single thing he does is to actually, just honestly, a lot of it's negotiating gambits. He'll throw it out there to see what people are going to do, what people are going to say.
The Middle East came back. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt have all come back and said, no way.
SCIUTTO: True. But listen, on Greenland, the Danish -- Danish officials are taking the Greenland threat seriously. Justin Trudeau is taking this 51st state gambit seriously. They're not treating it as bluster.
WILLIAMS: And what all --
SCIUTTO: There's a reason for that.
WILLIAMS: What all these things have --
SCIUTTO: In their perspective.
TODD: You should take Donald Trump seriously. But I've said this, started this. You should not always take him literally, but you should take him seriously.
WILLIAMS: Yes. And I think what this all has in common with the J.D. Vance thing we started talking about at the beginning of the segment, was that it's all the reality show presidency.
You tease something. You throw it out there and say, after the break, we'll find out more. And I think this is all teeing up a commercial break and seeing what he's going to do it. THOMPSON: But to your point, it could end up becoming very, very
serious. I mean, he could try to displace 2 million people in Gaza. I'm just saying that.
SCIUTTO: He's saying that out loud.
THOMPSON: Yes, exactly. But I'm just saying, you know, sometimes he throws these things out there to see how people will react. And then sometimes, if they react in a certain way, he then actually tries to do it.
SCIUTTO: I will tell you, I know that Panamanians are taking the threat to retake the Panama Canal quite seriously. So, dismiss it at your own risk.
Panel, do stick around. I've got more questions for you.
Still ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, quote, "All hell will break out." President Trump weighing in on the fate of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and is now pushing a new demand.
Plus, the world's richest man puts in a bid to buy one of the worlds most advanced A.I. companies.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:27:30]
SCIUTTO: Elon Musk is now leading a group of investors in a bid to buy OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Their offer: $97.4 billion. If he succeeds, Musk could control one of his A.I. company's biggest competitors.
But he faces opposition from the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, who he has very publicly feuded with.
President Donald Trump has emphasized that U.S. A.I. investment in his second term should be a priority, especially after the release of a Chinese competitor of ChatGPT called DeepSeek that operates pretty well and at a fraction of the cost.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The release of DeepSeek A.I. from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win, because we have the greatest scientists in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Tech executives and world leaders, including Vice President J.D. Vance, are meeting now in Paris. They've gathered to discuss their hopes for A.I., as well as to grapple with its potential for economic and social disruption.
CNN's Melissa Bell is in Paris and joins us now. I wonder how those conversations are going. I'm sure there's been a
lot of disruption from DeepSeek's advances.
MELISSA BELL, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There has been a lot of attention on that big Chinese disrupter to the market, but also a lot of talk about what the future is and whether the European way, which has been one of a greater push for regulation so far, is the right one.
We heard even from Emmanuel Macron last night of the need for Brussels to lift some of its red tape to encourage that European innovation.
But we've just been hearing, Jim, from Vice President J.D. Vance. He was at the Elysee Palace last night for dinner with world leaders and Emmanuel Macron. It's his first foreign trip, of course. So, all eyes were very much on the tone that he would strike here at the summit.
And he did take on, head on, European regulation and going further even than the E.U. Digital Act and speaking to GDPR, the privacy rules that he says were so problematic for some American companies, that they were simply blocking European consumers to begin with. Was that, he asked, the kind of world to which -- towards which we wanted to go?
He also then took on the problem of what he sees as wokeism in A.I., speaking to a controversy for which Google had apologized, in which their A.I. generating image service had redrawn historical figures in the name of diversity. Here's what the vice president had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now, over the last few years, we've watched as governments, businesses, and nonprofit organizations have advanced -
[06:30:00]
