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Erin Burnett Outfront
Trump Dealt Double Down Blow Amid Effort To Gut U.S. Government; Musk Deputy Out; "Most Dangerous Nominee?"; Report: Russia Falls For Spoof Report On China's DeepSeek. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired February 06, 2025 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:
Breaking news, Trump blocked by the courts tonight. Judges tonight hitting pause on Trump's buyout offer to 2 million federal workers. Trump facing major reality and legality checks on his agenda.
Also breaking, one of Musk's DOGE deputies is out, abruptly resigning after being confronted with his racist posts, according to "The Wall Street Journal".
Kara Swisher and Katie Drummond, two reporters known for covering Musk's extensively, are OUTFRONT tonight, together with their latest breaking reporting.
And the Senate voting this hour on the man some are calling Trump's most dangerous nominee and author of Project 2025 now about to be in charge of all the money, the budget chief.
Let's go OUTFRONT.
And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.
OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news, rejected by the court. So Trump's sweeping plans to dismantle the federal government did hit a major snag late today. Two courts actually shutting Trump down for now. I'll go through it here.
The first hit came after Musk's massive buyout offer to federal employees, which he builds the fork in the road offer was blocked by a federal judge. Now, that offer gave 2 million federal workers until midnight tonight to accept a deal to resign. That's it. They had to this cutoff, and this is it. No questions asked.
But that's now been pushed back until at least Monday. Then there's going to be another hearing to decide if the controversial so-called buyout is legal.
It's the buyout, you know, came to employees with that subject line, quote, a fork in the road. No mistake that that is Elon Musk's fingerprint, that subject line, the exact same subject line that employees at Twitter received days after he took over that company. And that email about leaving the company is strikingly similar in content to the email that federal workers received.
For example, Twitter employees were told to commit to, quote, exceptional performance or leave. Government workers told to commit to excellence or resign. At the same time, Trump is facing another court blow, and this is on his order to end birthright citizenship. This is an ongoing battle, but this is now the second time this week that a federal judge has slammed Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship, which is a constitutional right.
Judge John Coughenour, who is a Reagan appointee, wrote, quote, it has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain. In this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.
There's -- there's no ambiguity about what that judge sees happening here. Again, a Reagan appointed judge, because right now, the courts, frankly, are the only check on Trump's power. The two last minute stays tonight are significant, but the courts are where the battle over Trump's blitzkrieg breaking of all protocols is being fought, according to a list compiled by Just Security, at least 35 lawsuits have been filed in just the past 17 days, the latest actually coming just a few minutes ago.
Twelve attorneys general say that they will file a lawsuit against Musk and his men at DOGE for accessing sensitive personal information. They write, quote, this level of access for unauthorized individuals is unlawful, unprecedented and unacceptable.
Jeff Zeleny is OUTFRONT, live outside the White House.
Jeff, look, you had two significant setbacks today. It joins a list of others, as I said, this sort of, you know, blitzkrieg go out there with everything has been stymied by the courts and really by nothing else.
Is the White House worried about the courts at this point?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, Erin, every executive order that the president signs, every time he wields his pen, there is the possibility of legal action, court cases, and that in many respects is the point. The White House has been preparing for these. They've been planning for these as long as they've been writing all these executive orders, really for the last four years or so, as all of these ideas were taking shape, the ideas of defending these lawsuits also taking shape.
So the short answer is no. The White House is not concerned about these. I mean, you sort of heard that from the White House statement this afternoon in response to the federal judge in Massachusetts blocking, at least temporarily, this buyout program. The White House has said that we are happy the judge did this because it extends the amount of time that people have to sign up.
Well, the reality here is the judge is going to rule on the legality of this. But the bigger picture to all of this, all of these cases are adding up just as fast as the executive actions and order.
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So it's a flood the zone in the legal realm as well. But it will take so much time. Some of these lawsuits will be going on for so long. So at the heart of all of this is will these cases and which cases will reach the Supreme Court. And the question of presidential authority, his executive view of power that will be tested by the Supreme Court. And we, of course, know this is a Supreme Court that he has appointed three of the justices.
It now favors him. So at the bottom line, to answer your first question, is the White House worried? Erin, most people are not.
BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Jeff Zeleny.
And I want to go OUTFRONT now to Democratic Senator Ed Markey.
Senator Markey today went to the EPA office building and asked to meet with the DOGE representative today. He says he was denied entry. And I want to get to that senator in just a moment.
First, I want to give you a chance to respond to this breaking news, though obviously, as an attorney yourself, you look at these situations for the federal trying to get federal employees to resign, for example, its a stay of a few days. There's another hearing. So there's setbacks here, but its unclear where it will go.
Do you believe the courts will stop Trump or will he prevail?
SEN. ED MARKEY (D-MA): No, the courts, if they interpret the Constitution correctly, are going to stop, Musk are going to stop Trump. I mean, Article One is the Congress. Article Two is the president. Article Three is the judiciary. There's not an article 3.5 where Elon Musk gets to do whatever he wants to do.
They're trying to rewrite constitutional law in our country. And whether it be birthright citizenship or it be this stay that was granted today, it's all reflecting a lot of very good lawyers all across our country who are bringing lawsuits across the board on these illegal and unconstitutional actions, which Elon Musk, at the behest of Donald Trump, are trying to perpetrate on the American people.
And I think we can expect to see a whole string of decisions like this, because nothing that they are trying to do has any precedent, or does it have a basis in law.
BURNETT: So, Senator, I want to share now the picture you shared with us. This is your trip today to the EPA office building where you asked to meet with that DOGE representative. And as I mentioned, you're on the Senate Environmental Committee. That's why you went there. You say you went there specifically to conduct the oversight, which your committee is charged with.
So what happened? MARKEY: Well, I asked for a meeting with the DOGE representative
inside of that building. We know that there's a 25-year-old who has been put in charge of pretty much eviscerating the EPA, and that the job of that DOGE individual and his henchmen are to interview the biologists, the chemists, all of those people in that building who are responsible for -- for protecting the water, the air, the land in our country. They're terrorizing all of these highly dedicated, brilliant people who protect the health of our country on a daily basis.
That DOGE representative would not come out. We got no answer. They said that they would not meet with us. And in the cover of darkness, they want to try to not only completely damage the EPA, but the Department of Education, Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act --
BURNETT: Senator -- yeah.
MARKEY: -- all of the health and education and environmental programs to protect American families. And we got to bring it all out into the light of day. And I think these court decisions are helping to achieve that goal.
BURNETT: It is as if we are in science fiction that I'm talking to a U.S. senator who's talking about going to the EPA to meet with DOGE representative. I feel like I'm in the middle of some Venetian thriller and not in a good way.
But can I ask you a from the oversight that you have been able to do, those biologists, those people who, as you say, are being interviewed by young DOGE employees, you're saying that the one in charge, there is a 25 year old man? What are these interviews like? What kinds of questions are being asked? Do you have any idea what's going on?
MARKEY: Yes, I'm being told by the employees that they are just living in terror inside the EPA headquarters and all the regional offices. They're being asked to justify their existence.
They're brilliant scientists. They gave up their life. They could have worked for DuPont. They could have worked for chemical companies. Instead, they decided to work on behalf of the health of Americans, or they decided to work to deploy solar and wind across our country to ensure that we could fight climate change.
And instead, they're being cross-examined almost in a way that is 1930-ish Soviet Union by 25-year-old inquisitors. And its just the world tipped upside down, where those young people who we revered, who majored in biology and chemistry and physics are now being questioned by people who have no credentials and no interest, by the way, in protecting the health and well-being of Americans across our country.
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And that's why we need the courts. Congress has to stand up and fight, but we're going to need people across this country to stand up and fight, to not agonize, but organize against these people. We're going to need people by the millions to stand up to Trump, because they want to loot all the health care, education and environmental programs for the tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires.
That's the whole plot. It's very simple. And these young men and young -- young women, but mostly young men are in there to accomplish that goal for the billionaire class.
BURNETT: Senator, I appreciate your time and thank you very much.
And everyone's here with me now.
And, Ryan, when senator, talking about that, they're going to need the courts. And right now that's it. It's been the courts. I mean, you know, obviously the senators are Democrat and there are some who are, but there's been disarray in the Democratic Party, certainly congress. There's a disarray question, chaos about what they can or even want to do about it, depending where they sit.
The White House say spinning the news of this setback on the resignations, mass resignations of federal employees, saying were grateful to the judge for extending the deadline so that the, you know, people can take up this very generous, once in a lifetime offer.
Now, obviously, they put the deadline out okay, because they wanted the deadline. So they're not happy about the deadline being extended. I mean, that's obviously spin. Is it?
RYAN GOODMAN, CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, JUST SECURITY: It is. I mean, if they wanted to extend the deadline, they could extend the deadline. So the part of the problem with the program is that it put enormous pressure on the workers to have to decide within just over a week the rest of their lives. And the program is riddled with these different problems in it. So at a minimum, the judges are saying, let's put a pause. They've raised good enough legal arguments for that. And she is rejecting the government's argument.
The governments argument is, can we proceed ahead without the court interfering in the program? So it's not what the government wanted. It's the opposite of what they wanted tonight.
BURNETT: So, Jamal, though, this is just in this sense, right? Okay. So this was a halt. This was a loss. But it's just for a few days. There's another hearing on Monday.
JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah. Right?
BURNETT: So does this does this then I mean do you think the courts will really stop Trump at this or other issues, birthright citizenship, as I mentioned, among others?
SIMMONS: There are responsible judges inside the judiciary who I think are taking on the Trump administration. Look, as you know, I sat here night after night arguing for a very different political outcome in the last election, the American people chose Donald Trump to be president. They did not choose Elon Musk. They also did not choose a level of chaos that it is that were seeing.
And so while we can always make the EPA more regulatory efficient, make sure that people can get their get their laws passed in a way and get the budgets to work in a way that that work better. What we now know, though, is that's not what's happening.
They're not trying to fix the EPA. They're not trying to fix USAID. They're trying to destroy them in some way. The chaos that's happening, so we've got to figure out as a country, how do we do this in a way that doesn't go too far, doesn't move too fast, and isn't too mean.
BURNETT: Right. Well, I mean, they were clear with USAID. I mean, at least Elon Musk was. I mean, he wants to kill it.
So, Congressman Buck is a former prosecutor and you've been in Congress and you've sat there, you know, with Trump, right, understanding the -- what they're dealing with right now, do you believe, Congressman, that Trump will do what the courts tell him to do?
KEN BUCK (R), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, I believe the -- that President Trump will do what the courts tell him to do. I also believe we have a $36 trillion debt. I also believe that President Trump won the popular vote with the mandate on immigration, inflation and to reduce federal spending.
I don't hear Senator Markey talking about how do we reduce federal spending in a responsible way that is different than what President Trump is trying to do. So I think the president is forcing an issue and forcing people to the table so that we do get an answer of some kind in this very important area.
BURNETT: All right. So, Jamal, I want to give you a chance to respond to that because he does get to the heart of an issue here, which is okay. Trump did talk about wasteful federal spending. There has been a big increase in federal employees. And there's a lot of waste in government.
Okay. So Democrats would probably not be smart to be on the side of just defending everything.
SIMMONS: That's right.
BURNETT: Right? But -- but how do Democrats walk that line then?
SIMMONS: They've got to argue for some kind of change here.
But here's the thing that is going to actually change this. The courts are going to do their part. The American people have to do their part, too. We're starting to see we saw outcry in 50 states over the last couple of days. You're starting to hear people speak up about this more often.
This is going to be something where the American people are going to have to put their leverage on Republican legislators, because I'm not sure, even if the courts have a ruling and you tell me, even if the courts have a ruling, what happens if Donald Trump decides he doesn't want to abide by a judicial ruling? What's the recourse? GOODMAN: Nothing. That is the doomsday scenario that a lot of lawyers
are worried about.
SIMMONS: Right. The DOJ is the enforcement mechanism for a court order. And if the president tells the DOJ not to comply with the court order, we're in a real jam.
GOODMAN: That's right. I think that is the doomsday scenario. It hasn't happened yet. There's been some reporting that makes it as though that's what's happening, but not yet. So far they are complying with all the court orders. But what happens come the day that they do lose at the Supreme Court?
Because I think some of these cases are just losers, and if they really want to push it, we're in a real constitutional crisis.
SIMMONS: And this Supreme Court gave Donald Trump immunity, which for any official actions, which means he can do whatever he wants, he can pardon whoever he wants. This is going to take Republican legislators holding this man accountable to actually follow the law and do what it is the country has been set up to do.
BURNETT: And, Congressman Buck, I'm curious as to whether you think that will happen. And part of the context here, and well see how this goes through the courts, right?
But in the current moment, Congressman, right, you've got you know, today, you've got that stay on the on the mass resignations that they want. You've got a federal judge blocking the birthright citizenship again. You've got a block on -- on the freeze in federal spending. So that's where it is right now.
Do you think, Congressman, that this is causing Trump to lose any political capital with Republicans in Congress?
BUCK: President Trump isn't losing political capital with Republicans in Congress, Republicans in the United States, or, frankly, unaffiliated voters in the United States. He's doing exactly what the people told him they wanted him to do.
He is -- and maybe people on the other side look at it as creating chaos. But he is -- he is turning the federal government upside down, and he is trying to find areas that we can reduce spending. And if we don't reduce spending, we're going off a cliff.
And this is an existential threat. The president is trying to address that. The question of, you know, will he obey a federal order? There's no reason to doubt that he did in his first administration. I believe he will now. But he is he is addressing a very serious problem.
BURNETT: You really think, Congressman, there's no reason to doubt it?
BUCK: I do think there's no reason to doubt it. Absolutely. I think that that, you know, if that happens, I hope you invite me back on. And I'd be happy to say I'm very disappointed that he didn't obey it. But right now, the question is, this federal judge has paused the
action. He has not told the administration that it can't follow through. There were federal courts that told President Biden that he couldn't excuse student loan debt, and he turned around and tried to do it a different way 3 or 4 times.
So maybe that -- President Trump will try to do that. But I doubt very seriously he will disobey a federal order.
SIMMONS: I hope if the president disobeys a federal order, congressman, you'll be more than disappointed.
BURNETT: Yeah, I would be. I don't want to laugh. I'm not -- I'm not making as if its a laughing matter.
Ryan, I want to give you one quick chance to talk about something else, though. The top prosecutor that Trump has in Washington is facing a bar complaint now because he asked a judge to dismiss criminal charges against his own client. His own client was involved with January 6th.
How is this going to play out?
GOODMAN: I think it's just -- it's an incredible situation. So he comes into the office as interim U.S. attorney. He dismisses the complaint, the charge against an individual who happens to just be his own client.
BURNETT: Yeah.
GOODMAN: Because he was defending January 6th defendants, you would think just the fact that he defended January 6th defendants, he would be recused, but he's actually representing him at the same time. So the ethics is a pretty strong charge.
I think this might not be the only one that drops, but the first one that drops. It's an open and shut case in a certain sense of an ethical violation. He might just say, I made a mistake. I was so busy I didn't file the paperwork.
BURNETT: All right. Well, all right, thank you all very much. I appreciate it.
And next, the breaking news, one of Elon Musk's top employees at DOGE tonight resigning over racist posts. This is according to "The Wall Street Journal". And we are learning more details tonight about the other young men that Musk hired to remake the federal government.
Plus, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, paying Trump a visit at the White House tonight as the one time Trump critic is now all in.
And Putin's people duped into believing they're actually behind Chinas new A.I. app that caught the world off guard.
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BURNETT: Breaking news, a 25-year-old aide at Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigning tonight over links to social media posts advocating racism and eugenics. This is according to "The Wall Street Journal", who says that the aide resigned after being confronted with the posts. Now that former -- now former DOGE aide was one of the people at the center of a legal dispute over accessing that sensitive, crucial and massive Treasury Department payment system, and it comes as one of our next guests has uncovered even more details about another of Musk's young deputies.
OUTFRONT now. Kara Swisher, tech journalist, podcast host, who has covered Elon Musk extensively for years and the entire tech world, and Katie Drummond, global editorial director at "Wired", which has been breaking story after story on these recent high school and college graduates that Musk has brought to Washington.
So, Katie, let's talk about one of these people specifically. Now, your latest story is a 19 -- it focuses on a 19-year-old software engineer working at DOGE, someone whose past associations that you have looked into such that they are at 19, would call into question, passing a background check. Of course, that hasn't happened in these cases, but would normally happen in a case with access like this.
KATIE DRUMMOND, GLOBAL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, WIRED: One would hope, yes. So this is a 19-year-old high school graduate who has used the unfortunate nickname "Big Balls" online. So that would be one way that we could refer to him. He is now working at Musk's behest inside DOGE, and we looked into his background.
And so we found, you know, several notable things, Erin. One of which is that this individual has founded multiple companies, including one with another unfortunate name, Tesla.Sexy LLC, which he established in 2021. He would have been around 16 years old.
Now, this LLC controls dozens of web domains, a handful of which are registered to Russia. Now, that in and of itself is not necessarily illegal, but every expert we spoke to said that that is exactly the kind of thing -- those kinds of foreign connections that would raise red flags on a background check.
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Now, he also worked at a network monitoring firm that is known for hiring reformed black hat hackers, essentially criminals. And lastly, we uncovered Telegram messages that we've linked to this individual in which that Telegram user is soliciting a cyber attack for hire, so actually looking for someone to perform a cyber attack at their behest.
BURNETT: And Telegram, of course, is heavily used in Russia. I mean, it's a definitional social media platform there.
DRUMMOND: Of course.
BURNETT: So, Kara, you know, you hear this and you have known Elon Musk for years. So now you look at these young men who are now in data and in the private information about maybe hundreds of millions of American citizens as young as 19. The Big Balls here that Katie is talking about, and most of them are in their early 20s. There's an exception I'm going to get to in a minute.
I'm curious, though, Kara, how well does even Musk know these young men? Do you think?
KARA SWISHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I have no idea. I think there is no vetting whatsoever. As you can see, that's taken place. It took Katie and the really great team. "Wired" has done an astonishing job here.
You know, I could make a joke. That's probably why he was hired for all this ridiculous nonsense and other nefarious things. But, you know, there's an expression in technology. It's not a -- it's a feature, not a bug.
This -- this is what they do. They are careless. I don't believe any bit of them when they say they vetted these people and they just -- there are people that will listen to whatever Elon says and do whatever he wants and thinks it's a ball to do this and very funny. And so they're willing to do things, say adults wouldn't be willing to do or cross lines that they wouldn't be.
He wants these malleable, malleable young men in particular, in order to do this. And they think its fun, and it probably is for them, you know, being able to hang out with Elon Musk and, you know, take down government agencies for them. And the arrogance is massive and the ignorance is even bigger.
BURNETT: It is truly incredible. And I want to ask you about that employee, Katie, because, you know, we've learned about that standoff between a career treasury official and a top DOGE person who is at Treasury.
Now, this particular top DOGE person is not a recent college graduate. This person was a tech executive. So has -- has a long career. But this person, the DOGE guy, wanted all USAID payments immediately cut off, right? That was the goal of the meeting.
Career official says that could be illegal. Can't do it. DOGE says no. You could face legal risks if you don't do what I tell you to do.
How direct are the threats from these DOGE workers to federal employees who are currently the ones in charge of these crucial systems?
DRUMMOND: Right. Well, I think that that is a perfect example of exactly what's going on as far as we can tell inside, you know, every federal agency that we are keeping tabs on, and I think points to exactly what Kara was just saying. You know, this -- this sort of this lawlessness, this carelessness with which all of this work is being done.
It really feels as though within DOGE and sort of among these operatives right there, there appears to be absolutely no consideration for the letter of the law or for policy or best practices within the federal apparatus, right? However, of course, you know, legal recourse is being dangled as a threat and weaponized to federal officials who are just really trying to sort of keep things afloat.
BURNETT: Kara, can I ask you just something staring us in the face? Just -- but I -- okay, I understand that the chief of staff for DOGE is a woman, and I don't know everything about every employee.
SWISHER: She's the wife of a long time. Yeah. She's a -- I don't know a lot about her. She's the wife of a long time lieutenant, Steve Davis, of -- I think that's correct.
BURNETT: But all the rest that we hear about, Kara, are men. And I'm not saying 100 because we don't know what we don't know, but, I mean, this is an overwhelmingly male, if not exclusively male enterprise.
SWISHER: Yeah. It's the -- it's -- it's a toxic version of the lost boys in Peter Pan. That's what's happening here. And they're toxic. They've got all these.
They make threats. In this case, they probably made those threats and it might not even have been true. And these people don't know what to do, right?
They may, you know, they nothing they say is truthful. That's the problem. And often, Elon does this. He goes into places like whether its his town in Texas or what he was trying to do with his -- with Grok trying to get this thing going, using natural gas and violating laws or putting a sign in San Francisco just putting it up without permission, and then said, come -- come get me, that kind of thing.
This is typical of this. As you cross, you cross lines until someone stops you. And even when someone stops you, you keep going until they really stop you. And then maybe you don't stop, but the damage is done. That's really the point is, the damage is already done. And so that's the goal here.
BURNETT: You know, I'm also curious, Katie, because, you know, people who say, well, he campaigned on federal spending and there's a lot of waste, fraud and abuse. Okay. That's true.
But then the other argument that you could make is, well, if that's what you were about, you wouldn't go for USAID first, which Marco Rubio has infamously said, the whole foreign aid budget is less than 1 percent of the whole thing, right?
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If you were going for the big money --
DRUMMOND: Right.
BURNETT: -- you wouldn't have started where they started. Maybe you'd start with the Defense Department. I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying you could. And Steve Bannon is actually saying if you really cared about what you were saying, Steve Bannon all in on Trump criticizing Elon.
Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEVE BANNON, FORMER TRUMP ADVISER: The one at $1 trillion is across the Potomac. You know, get an Uber, send a send an army, the Visigoths over there before a federal judge tries to shut you down. And let's get into something we have some meaningful cuts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Musk slammed back, saying, Bannon's a great talker, not a great doer. Would he get done this week? Nothing.
Okay, but I'm interested, Katie. I mean, just that -- that -- that's out in the open. That's an open warfare.
DRUMMOND: Right, right.
I mean, look, I think that, you know, Bannon has taken issue with Musk on several occasions. This is not sort of new for him to be launching this kind of this kind of attack. I do think it calls back to some of the reporting that we published this week, though, around this consternation among Trump's inner circle with regards to what Musk and DOGE are actually doing, you know?
And then I would also say with regards to Elon's response, again, going back to what Kara was just saying, this is right out of his playbook. I mean, its very difficult to keep up with what Elon Musk posts on X, but that specific post at Bannon sort of going after the productivity bit, I mean, that calls back almost exactly to what he had to say to Twitter's former CEO when he took over that company.
What have you done recently? Not much.
BURNETT: You know, here's what I -- Kara, go ahead.
SWISHER: Can I just -- one of the things you're saying is like, there should be cuts and maybe he has a point. This is what you're walking right into their trap. They should do it by passing legislation. They should do it legally.
They're not interested. They -- what they do is they depend on your civility and including the media is like, well, they have a good point. Well, sure, but this is not the way to do it. And therefore, they've won the battle already because you're agreeing to it, but they're doing it in ways that have nothing to do with legislation, the power of Congress and other laws.
So what's the difference how they do it? Well, it matters how they do it here. And that's why they're running over you because nobody's stopping them and saying, this is just nonsense.
And let me just say the last thing is they distract with other things, whether it's DUI with plane crashes and everything else. Well, they're doing that. So, over here, they're doing the actual thing, which is the actual destruction that you can't take back.
BURNETT: Well, I mean, it is true. Once something happens, sometimes you don't realize what's lost until it's gone. And I know that's maybe a generic euphemism, but has truth in it.
Kara, can I ask you, though, because you've known Elon for so long? You know, when I look at his feed -- first of all, you can't avoid it, right? The algorithm, it feeds it right at the top. So even if he's not posting as often as it may seem, it looks like he is.
But if I go in and I look, the guy is posting all the time. I don't know how any human being, I don't care how genius you are, can be posting at the hours of the day that he's posting and being all the places he's physically is.
You know, people do have to have some sort of sleep. So what -- what -- how is Elon doing this as far as you understand it?
SWISHER: I don't know. There's been reporting about some things he does, you know? I don't know. I don't know how he does it.
He's manic. He's a manic person, as anybody knows. He's up all night. I have no idea how -- what the physical, what he's doing physically to himself or what he does.
He is like this. He jumps from thing to thing. But one of the things he does also is he makes a big deal of it, whether it's sleeping on the floor of things or having couches. It's -- in Silicon Valley, it's called hustle porn.
So he just likes to show he's hardcore. He's sleeping on the floor when, by the way, there's a perfectly good hotel next door. Like it's not necessary, but they try to have this idea of -- even with Steve Bannon, you didn't do anything today. I did, or I'm so hardcore. You're not.
It's like weightlifters. Like I waste weight -- so it's such ridiculous performativeness on the part of these people. And in fact, they're doing it again to -- for whatever personal reasons, they're doing it. It's -- it's strange is what it is. And this is not how we conduct business in the government.
BURNETT: And some of these tweets and posts, I understand the world has changed. So sometimes I hesitate before I say it, but there is just a level of juvenileness to some of this that is hard to square with the huge significance of what's actually happening behind that.
But -- all right, thank you. I really love talking to you both.
SWISHER: Great job, Katie.
DRUMMOND: Thank you.
BURNETT: And be sure to join "AC360" tonight at 8:00. Former USAID Administrator Samantha Power will be on with Anderson. And after this break, more breaking news. The Senate just confirming
Trump's pick for budget chief. He also happens to be an author of Project 2025. And budget chief, if it does sound boring to you, it is far from it, and we're going to tell you why it is so important and what he has said that matters.
Plus, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, once a Trump critic, was at the White House today after getting that prime seat at Trump's inauguration, even dialing back the A.I. policies at his own company. So what was he meeting with Trump about today?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:39:18]
BURNETT: Breaking news, you're looking at live pictures. This is Capitol Hill, heated night on the Senate floor, late night after late night. Senators just voted to confirm Russell Vought. He is President Trump's nominee to lead the White House Budget Office.
It is a crucial position. And Democrat after Democrat had tried to explain why they're opposing him during their vote when debate is not allowed. So they were called out for that -- even the minority leader, Chuck Schumer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLERK: Mr. Schumer?
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): For the hundreds of western New York families --
CLERK: Mr. Schumer, you should know pursuant to rule --
(CROSSTALK)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Russell Vought is an author of the controversial Project 2025. That is what mirrors many parts of Trump's new agenda.
[19:40:02]
Vought would have the power in his new position, will have the power to oversee Trump's entire budget and help carry out his policies. It is a crucial power position, and thanks to secretly recorded video of Vought before the election, it isn't a secret what he wants from Trump's new term.
Kyung Lah is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSSELL VOUGHT, TRUMP'S PICK FOR BUDGET CHIEF: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You are
looking at secretly recorded video of Russell Vought, President Trump's pick to lead the largest and one of the most powerful offices in the White House. This video was captured just months ahead of Trump's 2024 election win.
VOUGHT: I want to be the person that crushes the deep state. I think there's a lot of different ways to do that, and it is defunding it. It's impoundment, the ability to not spend money. It's getting rid of their independence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So help you God.
VOUGHT: I do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
LAH: As director of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought controls the budget and oversight of federal agencies. And his confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Vought said this to senators.
VOUGHT: My view of the -- of the position is that you come into an administration and you do what the president ran on, what the president's viewpoints are.
LAH: But in private, Vought is more frank. He's a key architect of Project 2025, a manifesto for Trump's second term.
While Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from project 2025, he's placed a vote in a position of power.
VOUGHT: He's very supportive of what we do.
LAH: In this hotel room, Vought thinks he's talking to family members of a wealthy donor, but one is a journalist, the other an actor working undercover for the UK-based Center for Climate Reporting. The center provided the video to CNN on the condition we blurred their faces so they can continue their undercover work.
VOUGHT: So it's vital that the president has the authority to maintain law and order. And he does. The president has, you know, the ability both along the border and elsewhere to maintain law and order with the military.
LAH: Vought shares Trump's America first view, but goes beyond that to who should be an American.
VOUGHT: Can we, if were going to have legal immigration, can we get people that actually believe in -- in Christianity? Is that something or do we have to have, you know, are we not allowed to have ask questions about Sharia law?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What could we see America looking like, I guess, in an ideal world?
VOUGHT: In an ideal world, I mean, I think we -- we -- we could save the country in a sense of, you know, the largest deportation in history.
LAH: The deportations are already underway, as is another major part of Vought's plan, turn thousands of career federal jobs into political appointments, meaning workers could be fired if they're not sufficiently loyal to Trump.
VOUGHT: Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what's necessary to take control of these bureaucracies, like the FBI, the CDC, Centers for Disease Control, and then some of them just have that attitude, right? Like they're not -- no one would argue that they're meant to be independent. They're just career. So they ignore you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
VOUGHT: There are -- there are the ability to hire and fire, which I'm also kind of known for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.
VOUGHT: So those are the big structural parts of the deep state that I want to be a part of dismantling.
LAH: Vought was OMB director in the second half of Trump's first term. He promises this time around he means business.
VOUGHT: Well, I think that I bring a particular expertise, having done the job before, that I want to be able to hit the ground running. And it's very rare that you have a chance to do a job better after thinking about it for four years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: Kyung's here with me now after that report.
I mean, Kyung, did the OMB have anything to say about your report?
LAH: Well, Erin, we did reach out to OMB for comment. We outlined what we plan to include in our report. We received no answers to the questions that we asked about the video.
Instead, this is the response we received. You can see it there on your screen for yourself. Suffice to say, they did not reply to the substance of our questions -- Erin.
BURNETT: No, making it about Christians.
Okay. Kyung, thank you very much.
LAH: You bet.
BURNETT: And next, the breaking news, Mark Zuckerberg, who had banned Trump on Facebook and Instagram, now at the White House and rolling back DEI policies.
Plus, China's A.I. startup DeepSeek has the world playing catch up. But what happens when we asked it some of the most sensitive topics in China, like about Tiananmen Square? You'll want to see its response.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:49:01]
BURNETT: Breaking news, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visiting the White House today. Sources telling CNN he was there to discuss A.I. but it comes as Zuckerberg, once a critic of Donald Trump, is now at his side, getting a prime seat at his inauguration, paying $25 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump rolling back DEI initiatives.
And tonight, another tech giant, Google, also watering down DEI.
Harry Enten is here to tell us something we don't know.
So, Harry, at least when you look at this politically, you know, people would expect that generally if you pull Republicans, DEI wouldn't be that popular. But what about Democrats?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yeah, I'll tell you something that you don't know. It's so interesting. I was looking at the polling of Americans who want to end DEI.
And yeah, you get three quarters of Republicans who want to, but you get a little bit more than a quarter of Democrats who do. And in fact, I've been looking at the polling and the Democrats who want to end DEI seems to have doubled over just the last two years. So what we essentially have is, yeah, you have that Republican base that really wants to end DEI, but it's splitting Democrats as well, where you get more than a quarter of them who want to end it.
BURNETT: Right. I mean, it's no question on this issue that there are many who felt things went too far, right?
[19:50:02]
The question is what they're doing now. And -- and I'll get to that, but general interest in DEI.
ENTEN: Yeah.
BURNETT: How does one even measure such a thing?
ENTEN: How about you just look at Google searches for diversity and inclusion, right. It reached its peak during the George Floyd marches back in 2020 and June 2020. And you look at the drop in 2024. Look at that down 70 percent, down 70 percent from the peak.
So the bottom line is Americans seem to be less interested in diversity and inclusion than they basically have ever been, or at least going back to when the marches occurred back in 2020. And it's occurring at the same time that we're seeing obvious movement in the government to end DEI as well.
BURNETT: Right. And, and perhaps one would hope it's not the principles, but maybe just the fact that it's become an acronym and a thing of its own. I mean, that's what we'll see.
So -- and to that point, DEI, ESG, environmental, social, investing, if you want a job in DEI, DEI department, and we're talking about these rollbacks in these units. Can you measure that job plunge if that's what it is?
ENTEN: Yeah, we can absolutely measure that job plunge. You know, it's not just happening in the federal government. It's happening in the private sector as well. And again, at the peak of it, when you had the peak number of DEI jobs, it was back in February of 2022. That's at least according to Glassdoor, which, of course is a website that tracks different jobs.
Look at the drop that we've had in DEI job listings. It is down 63 percent from the peak. And also what's interesting about that is the number of people who are searching for DEI jobs, people who are interested in getting in the field. Glassdoor has also measured that that has dropped.
So essentially what you're looking at across the board is just a lot less interest in DEI, a lot less people favoring it. And I think that's a big reason why you're seeing the policies being enacted, not just at the federal government level, but also at these major corporations as well.
BURNETT: Right, right, right. And reflecting, it seems, where many in the country are.
All right, Harry, thank you.
ENTEN: Thank you.
BURNETT: And OUTFRONT next, he was once dismissed as a, quote, nerdy engineer with a bad haircut, but he's now being hailed a hero in China after his latest project shocked some of the best known leaders in technology.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:56:50]
BURNETT: Tonight, the Kremlin falls for "The Onion".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): DeepSeek developers said that the basis for the neural network was the program code that was developed by Russian programmers back in 1985.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Russian state TV stating as fact that China's DeepSeek A.I. chatbot, which has upended the A.I. world, is actually a Soviet roots. There's just one problem with this. That claim came from a satire site, Russia's version of "The Onion", according to "Reuters". But it shows just how obsessed the world has become with this little
known Chinese company, a company that U.S. lawmakers are now pushing to ban.
Will Ripley is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A lunar New Year message live from Beijing, a stage full of humanoid robots powered by artificial intelligence. China projecting itself as the worlds next A.I. superpower just days after the world rattling announcement from tiny Chinese tech startup DeepSeek.
Last month, DeepSeek was a little known company on the fifth floor of this nondescript Beijing office block. Now it's making global headlines.
DeepSeek's founder Liang Wenfeng, once dismissed as a nerdy engineer with a bad haircut, now hailed by Beijing as China's next tech visionary, rocking the global A.I. industry, leaving Silicon Valley scrambling.
His company employs around 140 engineers, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Many interned at U.S. tech giants, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, the same companies that lost billions when DeepSeek announced its A.I. chatbot.
DeepSeek's A.I. model is not just powerful, it's a Silicon Valley disruptor developed at a fraction of the cost, the company claims. But there's one major obstacle hardware. The U.S. has tightened export controls on advanced A.I. chips made in Taiwan, aiming to slow China's progress.
But Beijing is determined to catch up fast. The global spotlight is already exposing cracks. DeepSeek servers often overwhelmed.
Also, growing concern over censorship.
When we asked DeepSeek about one of the most sensitive topics in China, the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, it didn't just avoid the question, it shut it down. But when we asked whether Taiwan is part of China, DeepSeek did not hesitate to give us the official communist party line.
Critics argue U.S. A.I. models also restrict content, but in China, it's not the tech companies setting the limits, it's the government.
Now, with the help of A.I., Beijing can shape conversations far beyond its borders.
What happens if China wins? Definitively wins?
MATT SHEEHAN, FELLOW, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: They could use that to impose all kinds of controls and costs on the United States, on all competitors. RIPLEY: China A.I. researcher Matt Sheehan says artificial
intelligence could revolutionize productivity, cure diseases, drive economic growth. It could also spiral beyond human control, potentially destabilizing the world.
Are you nervous?
SHEEHAN: I'm very nervous.
RIPLEY: DeepSeek just overtook ChatGPT as the most downloaded A.I. app in the U.S. once again triggering national security fears over data privacy and the growing power of another app controlled by China's communist party.
Will Ripley, CNN, Taipei.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: It was amazing just to look at the answer. No answer on Tiananmen Square and the immediate Chinese communist party line on Taiwan.
Thanks so much for joining us.
And it's time now for "AC360" with Anderson.
