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Today: Judge To Decide Fate Of Trump's Federal Buyout Offer; Vance Questions Authority Of Judges To Challenge Trump; Rep. Jordan: "Executive Power Shall Be Vested In A President"; Elon Musk Suggests Firing "1 Percent Of Appointed Judges"; Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Ordered To Stop All Work; New Poll: 53 Percent Approve Of Trump's Job Performance So Far; New Poll: Majority Say Trump Is "Tough," "Energetic", "Focused". Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 10, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Today on Inside Politics, the Trump agenda meets the halls of justice. We're tracking a key court hearing in just two hours that could determine the fate of the Trump, Musk plan to take a sledgehammer to the federal work force. But does the Trump administration even care what judges say?

Plus, an economic tug of war. President Trump is teasing new steep tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports. As a majority of voters in a new poll say, they approve of the president, but also say, he is not spending enough time on lowering prices.

And he is the person behind Donald Trump's push to enact sweeping change across the country. We have new reporting on President Trump's righthand man, Stephen Miller, who went from fringe of the GOP to one of the most powerful people in Washington.

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

First up, a key question coming out of this weekend. Will the courts be a roadblock or just a speed bump to Donald Trump's drive to blow up America's government as we know it? Today in Boston, a judge will hear arguments over whether one of Trump's most audacious plans offering federal employees more than six months of pay to quit, whether that's even legal.

That plan is blocked for now, as are multiple other White House efforts to dismantle wide swaths of the government, to ban birthright citizenship and several more. There are dozens more pending lawsuits against various other Trump orders. But will this administration accept court rulings they don't like? Here's why we're asking that question.

The vice president of the United States said the following yesterday. He said, if a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executives legitimate power. This is why we have Steve Vladeck here joining me now. He's a professor at Georgetown University Law School to try to break all this down. So, Steve, I do want to start by reading a quote for you from somebody who, I think you probably know, who is a -- somebody who is an academic who put it in very stark terms that I want to get your reaction to.

He said, this is, by the way, a professor at Georgetown. He said, the division we've had since 1787 is checks and balances, that no one branch is preeminent, but that all three are required to work together. The vision here is an extremely strong executive and a subordinate judiciary and Congress. What are your thoughts?

STEVE VLADECK, PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER: I mean, I think David asked that exactly right, Dana? And I think what's really striking about what we heard from Vice President Vance over the weekend -- what we heard from Elon Musk over the weekend, is that, you know, historically, presidents have lost court battles, especially early in their administrations, as they've been trying to push the envelope.

This was the story of the early part of Donald Trump's first presidency, when he lost not just one but two rounds over his travel ban. There was no suggestion in those cases that we should be undermining the power of the courts, that we should be suggesting that a court ruling, blocking the executive branches illegal.

Rather, what the Trump administration did is what all other presidents do. They appealed. And so, I think what's really alarming about this rhetorical shift coming out of the White House is it seems to be setting up a real showdown between federal judges who are simply doing their job and an administration that is already not subject to meaningful constraint from Congress, and that's doing its best to dismantle constraints within the executive branch. Dana, at some point we have to ask, who is left?

BASH: I mean, is the answer, nobody. If you look at the way that the founding father, put together the checks and balances, which have been lauded and applauded as among the best that made up the structure of a very successful democracy that has been the United States of America.

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What we have here are people who are working for Donald Trump, and maybe even Trump himself, who don't see it that way. Who don't see the executive branch as a branch that should be perhaps co equal, but perhaps superior to the other two branches with regard to the power. That is a very real philosophical point of view.

VLADECK: I mean not just superior, Dana, but supreme. And I think that's a critical distinction, because you know, what it basically entails is that, you know, Congress can pass statutes like the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which says, presidents can't just impound money willy nilly. Congress can pass statutes limiting who can be fired by the president and when. And you know, those statutes will be ignored, and court decisions purporting to enforce those statutes. You know, we haven't seen them ignored yet, but I do think if you're seeing an effort by the vice president and Elon Musk to soft in the playing field.

And I think what's so striking about this, Dana, is, you know, our checks and balances are set up on the view that each branch is going to push against the others, that Congress will be aggressive, that the president will be aggressive, the courts will be aggressive. James Madison said that ambition will be made to counter act ambition.

Right now, we're seeing a remarkably ambitious president. We are seeing a Congress that shows no interest in asserting its institutional prerogatives, and that leaves the courts. And you know, the courts, I think, have thus far been quite a speed bump, if not a roadblock to President Trump's efforts, but they can't do it alone.

I mean, the courts really do depend upon support from all of us, from Congress, and historically, that's been why presidents have abided by court rulings that they didn't like, court rulings that they abhor in Richard Nixon's case, right? A Supreme Court decision that basically doomed his presidency.

Nixon still complied, because we understood in this country that the separation of powers depends upon the branches talking to each other, policing each other, cooperating with each other, and not one branch being above the others. That's the dangerous road we seem to be heading down.

BASH: Yeah. And then, of course, that is the ultimate question in this current scenario, is, what happens in the inevitable case that one or more of these cases go to the Supreme Court, which is very much stacked with people who Donald Trump not only put there, but people who are ideologically aligned with him. I learned so much from you. Please come back, Steve. Thank you so much.

VLADECK: Thanks, Dana. Great to be with you.

BASH: Here with me at the table are three other people I always learn from, Sabrina Rodriguez of The Washington Post, CNN's Jamie Gangel, and CNN's Manu Raju. Hello. Nothing like starting a Monday on a very, you know, easy, fluffy topic, like the future of our republic.

But Jamie, I want to start with you because I know you spent a lot of time this weekend, doing reporting with the likes of Steve.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So, I love listening to Professor Vladeck, you know, speech. I spoke to legal experts, former DOJ folks, judiciary folks, and they say, the light is blinking red. Look, as Steve just said, yet, right. They, so far, the courts have called held, but the experts that I'm talking to are really concerned.

When you look at Donald Trump's history, he's willing to fight things out in court. He's willing not to listen to courts. And also, the fact that he feels he has not just a mandate, but immunity, that he is powerful, and they all feel we are, if not, in a constitutional crisis, yet on the edge.

BASH: Manu, you spoke to Jim Jordan, who is the chair of the Judiciary Committee. So, he is one of those people who, in theory, on paper, that paper being the constitution of the United States. He should be one of the key people looking at oversight, over the judiciary and the executive branch. Let's listen to part of your conversation.

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MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Should the White House comply with what the judge is saying?

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Well, I assume it will argue this out in court like the other 17 or 18 decisions we've seen in the last several days, that all is going to get argued out in court. So, some of these stuffs going to get ironed out in court.

All I know is, again, Article Two, Section One, the very first sentence, the executive power shall be vested in a president. I think it's important. A president of the United States of America, not in bureaucrats, not in career people in the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Manu?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I guess, it's a pretty significant argument from someone who has obviously pushed back against a very powerful executive branch. When Democrats were in charge, you heard them very raising concerns about Barack Obama going too far and Joe Biden going too far. A number of issues, much different view when Donald Trump is in charge.

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As Steve Vladeck was saying, we're not going to see much oversight over what's happening. I asked Jordan to also about, will you look into what Elon Musk is doing? There doesn't really seem to be much concern about that.

Now, with the thing that he said at the beginning, when I asked him, should they comply? Remember the judges' order from Friday in that case about Elon Musk and DOGE accessing the Treasury Department records, said they had to destroy the information that was downloaded from the attorney department. There's no real indication that they are listening to that order yet.

So that's what I was asking him. The White House isn't saying it's going to comply. He said, should they just comply with it? He said, we're going to fight -- see how we fight this out in court. So that's the view of lot of Republicans, that perhaps they don't have to comply.

BASH: And the thing that we cannot lose sight of. And you mentioned that Donald Trump's history is being litigious, slowing things down. I mean, we've seen that throughout his career in real estate and in business, and of course, as he made his way back to the presidency. Elon Musk has that same MO, just the rules are there to be broken effectively, and that's how he became the richest man of the world, when it comes to disrupting.

But he is now applying that to the federal government. Just one example of one of the many, many things he posted. I'd like to propose that the worst 1 percent of appointed judges as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year. This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent. I don't want to read that as like something that's necessarily going to happen, although in this environment, who knows. But just I think as a window into his world view.

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think hearing Elon Musk express his world view, and hearing Trump and J. D. Vance and other Republicans talk this way is chipping at public confidence in these institutions. I think that is something that Donald Trump has done very effectively since he came into politics.

The way that he talks about the media, it can make someone who doesn't follow it closely become a little more skeptical. The way he's talked about the justice system over many years, can make people skeptical of it.

And I think that having Elon Musk on X every day, raising questions about different agencies, raising questions about different media institutions, raises questions in the American public. And I think that is the point.

I think Donald Trump wants for the American public to say, well, he did say he wanted to change it up, and he's changing it up, and that's how he gets to do it. And of course, the justice system here. Of course, judges are this backstop. But I think there's a bigger question about, what impact does this rhetoric have on Americans listening in on what's happening?

BASH: You know, on that very note, I had a conversation with Kristi Noem, the HHS Secretary -- excuse me, the DHS Secretary. Too many alphabet places here. But we talked about what Musk is doing, and she confirmed, including in her agency, which is getting in and getting under the hood and seeing the data. And we don't even know what he and his people are doing with the data.

Listen to part of that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I remember a time when Republicans were very careful about and worried about the government, particularly unelected people.

KRISTI NOEM, DHS SECRETARY: Well, we can't trust the government anymore.

BASH: Having access that's our original data.

NOEM: Yeah.

BASH: Oh, absolutely, you are the government.

NOEM: Yes, that's what I'm saying. Is that the American people now are saying that we have had our personal information shared and out there in the public --

BASH: But now Elon Musk has access to it.

NOEM: Yes. But Elon Musk is part of the administration that is helping us identify where we can find savings and what we can do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I should say that she later put on social media that she wanted to set the record straight, that she -- said that she and her family had personal information exposed by the Biden administration. She didn't give any details about that. But just kind of about this question of this access to information and what the real end game is for Elon Musk, in addition to just taking a wrecking ball to everything.

GANGEL: So first of all, you are the government may be my all-time favorite -- favorite comeback. Look, I think the real problem is, we don't know. We don't know what's going on in those computers. We don't know if they're complying when a court says to destroy things. We also don't know. I spoke to some people who are in government technology and IT. These are very smart young, they call them the tech lads, Elon Musk's DOGE group that's going in there.

There are concerns about, are they leaving things behind back doors? Other -- I don't want to call it spyware or malware, but more sophisticated things that can't be detected or might not be detected for years to come. So, I think that the word that I kept hearing all weekend long from people who don't know only speak this way. They're scared. They're really scared about what all this means and the speed at which it's happening.

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BASH: Just real quick. Do you sense any of that fear and private conversations from the Republicans who are supposed to be controlling and overseeing?

RAJU: I mean, look, I think -- I think the Jim Jordan camps are one side. They have no concerns. They are very well aligned with Donald Trump. Then there are other people who do believe in the power of the purse. They do believe that they're the ones who control the spending, and the executive branch has to spend that money, regardless, if they like that priority or not.

You bring some apprehension about that, but a lot of them don't want to stick their neck out, because not only will they get Donald Trump on them, they also get Elon Musk. And that's just simply a bridge too far. At this point, we'll see if that change.

BASH: Right, because their own voters who are going to reelect them are Donald Trump's voters. So therein lies the problem that we've seen since the beginning of Trump-ism. Up next, a key question. What do voters think of Donald Trump's first week in office? There is a new poll out that shows good news on that front for general -- for president trump.

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BASH: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the latest government agency that may be headed to Elon Musk's woodchipper. Musk twitted RIP to the agency over the weekend, DOGE shut down the agency's X account. And anyone trying to access this website, which is supposed to be there for consumers to help protection -- with protection from businesses, this is what they see. Page not found. The Trump appointed acting director, closed the office, told employees to work from home, and then this morning, told them, quote, please do not perform any work tasks.

My colleagues and friends are here to talk about more. Sabrina?

RODRIGUEZ: This is another one of -- this is one of the decisions I will say that feels strongly against Democrats. I mean, conservatives have been railing against this bureau for many years, since it came up, you know, with Obama and the economic crisis in 2008.

It is something that has objectively. We by just every metric, has helped consumers that have been faced with fraud. But this is one of those where for Donald Trump, they get to cut it. And a lot of people don't really know what this stands for.

BASH: Yeah. Well, let me just put some meat on the bone to help people understand. These are some recent CFPB regulations. They would limit overdraft fees banks can charge, limit credit card late fees, make it easier to switch banks, remove medical debt from credit cards.

And so, these are things that, as you said, Republicans have not like this from the jump. This was actually a relatively new agency put in place as part of the reforms to the financial institutions after the collapse in 2008.

RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. This is not a straightforward as for example, with USAID, this is something that talking to voters over the last year, people would say, why are we sending so much money to other countries that that what could be spent here.

So, saying that they're going to do a funding freeze, that they're going to gut that agency, is something that they can sell to the American people, and say, Oh, OK, well, we're doing it because we want to bring that money back to you.

But this agency sole goal is to help Americans. Is to help people not deal with fraud, to help people, you know, keep money. So really, to see them doing this is something that I think will be hard to explain. But again, as they do this piece of cutting down on government, on cutting down on expenses, they get to argue that that's what it's for.

GANGEL: You know, this is the kind of thing that helps Republicans and Democrats. So just because Republican elected officials or Donald Trump is not in favor of this. This is the kind of thing that is not political.

And what I'm curious about is, you know, so much of Congress's work is you pick up the phone and there's a constituent on the other end. And at a certain point will Republican members of Congress stand up and listen to voters when these things start having an impact?

You know, Manu, we were talking about phones on the Hill exploded. They couldn't answer them fast enough. But, you know, this kind of consumer protection, FEMA, when they don't show up. I was reading in Virginia when there was the funding freezing. 50 percent of community health centers shut down last week in Virginia. So, at a certain point, this is going to have an impact on all kinds of votes (Ph).

BASH: Yeah. And on FEMA, the DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, also told me, I asked point blank. If the president comes to you and says, would you recommend shutting down FEMA? And she said, yes. The way it exists, yes. They want to block grant, some information and all of these programs back to the states. The question you mentioned, and this is a really key one, is, what do voters think? The P, or what do the American people think in general?

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And if you look at the way that they have responded to Donald Trump, first of all, in this new over the weekend, CBS and New York Times' YouGov poll. The question was, is Trump doing what he promised during the campaign? 70 percent of people said yes, the job rating, 53 percent of people asked in this poll, whether they approve of Donald Trump, they said, yes.

Now, just to give you a little context because I think this is important. At this point, four years ago, that question was asked about Joe Biden. It was 61 percent because we are very much in the honeymoon period. Most presidents have honeymoons. But if you go back even more, this point in Donald Trump's presidency, the first time he was only at 40 percent. So, for Donald Trump, 53 percent is pretty darn.

RAJU: Yeah, it's very darn. Look, it's above water. It's not as high as maybe past presidents but we have seen this time. This is a pattern that typically happens with presidents. American voters do give them some grace. They decide to see how they act, and oftentimes there's a debilitating political event that changes how the American public views that presidency.

And for Joe Biden, it was what happened in Afghanistan. And he really went his approval ratings never really recovered in the aftermath of that. How will any of this impact Trump? We'll see, look, he came in saying he was going to shake up Washington to make all these cuts. People very much felt, a lot of voters, that a government was not working for them. So perhaps, theoretically, we're hearing about all these constant and the like, and people may like what they're -- what they're hearing about. When they start feeling it, as Jamie was suggesting, perhaps that will change. Perhaps I'll change the perception. And voters are not -- they're trying to have the government deal with a problem, and they can't reach anyone to deal with that problem. Maybe start turning the blame to Washington, and these changes are being made. So, this will play out. We'll see how the voters respond.

BASH: How the voters respond? And then in the short term, perhaps that's just what the Democrats quietly are relying on. Is for regular, average people, including and especially those who need these programs, who are Donald Trump supporters, raise their hand and say, no, no, no, Mr. President, this is what -- this is not what we wanted.

I spoke to Cory Booker, who is now the sort of top communication strategist for Senate Democrats yesterday on State of the Union. And Chris Murphy, who has really gone out there, hair on fire, also was on ABC.

I want you to listen to their two sound bites to give an example of the different points of view.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): One is, a legal strategy to stop him from violating the separation of powers, from violating our civil service laws, civil rights laws. And we're winning. We see 41 cases being taken, 10 of them last week, 12 of them, excuse me, were successful in stopping some of his illegal actions.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): This is the most serious constitution crisis the country has faced, certainly since Watergate. The president is attempting to seize control of power and for corrupt purposes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Sabrina?

RODRIGUEZ: This is the latest reminder just seeing those two clips of how there is not a unified message at this point. I mean, you have Democrats clearly in these three weeks since Donald Trump took office, which, again, it's been three weeks. We were -- just was like, wait a second, is it? So, it's only been three weeks. But in those three weeks, we have seen Democrats struggle to figure out how exactly they're going to message around Donald Trump's return.

I think in that first week, there was sort of a question of, OK, are we going to try and work with him? Are we going to try and, you know, we know that he won, you know, the presidency. Are we going to try and work with him in Congress? But with more actions, particularly the funding freeze that we saw a couple weeks ago. That was sort of a turning point of saying, OK, no, maybe we need to speak up more. Maybe we need a really like sound the alarm here.

But I think to what Manu and Jamie have been saying, until we feel, until Americans start to really feel the effects. I think Democrats are really going to struggle to bring home that point of this is why you too need to be alarmed, and this is why you need to reconsider who you vote for, come 2026, which is a ways away.

BASH: Yeah. Really good point. Don't go anywhere. Coming up. Hamas says, it's delaying the next release of hostages. We're live in Tel Aviv with all the breaking details. Stay with us.

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