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Hamas Says It's Postponing Next Hostage Release, Alleges Israel Broke Terms Of Ceasefire; Trump Says Palestinians Would Not Have A Right To Return To Gaza Under His Redevelopment Plan; New Poll: 66 Percent Say Trump Not Doing Enough To Lower Prices; Trump Teases New Tariffs On Steel, Aluminum Coming Today. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired February 10, 2025 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:33:53]
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news, Hamas says it is postponing the next hostage release, alleging Israel has broken the terms of the ceasefire agreement by refusing to allow some supplies into Gaza.
Jeremy Diamond is here with us now from Tel Aviv. Jeremy, what are you hearing?
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, this comes at a very fragile moment in this ceasefire agreement and a very sensitive time in Israel. Following the images of those three hostages who were released from Hamas captivity on Saturday, looking emaciated after 15 or I should say 16 months of captivity.
And so amid all of that, Hamas is now saying that they are planning to delay indefinitely the release of the three hostages set to be released this coming Saturday. They accuse Israel of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreement by both delaying the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza, which happened a couple of weeks ago, and also this entry of relief supplies.
And what they're really talking about is housing and tents, which they say have not entered Gaza in the quantities and the types that were required under the ceasefire agreement. Now, Israel has not yet responded directly to that accusation. But we know, of course, that there have been accusations of violations of the ceasefire going back and forth.
[12:35:06]
And now the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, ordering the Israeli military to, quote, "prepare at the highest level alert for any possible scenario in Gaza", saying that Hamas, by delaying the release of these hostages is committing a, quote, "complete violation of the ceasefire agreement".
BASH: Jeremy, I want to play for you something that the President said in an interview that aired this morning on Fox Cable about whether Palestinians would have a right to return to Gaza under this new plan that he seems to be kind of figuring out as he goes.
Listen to this exchange.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS HOST: Do the Palestinians have the right to return?
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No big money spent. No, they wouldn't, because they're going to have much better housing, much better -- in other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them, because if they have to return now, it'll be years before you could ever -- it's not habitable.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Years is not permanent. What's the reaction there?
DIAMOND: Well, listen, the President basically hinted at the idea that this would be permanent when he initially announced it, now saying very clearly they wouldn't be allowed to return. And this is only going to add to the sentiment that we have heard in Gaza already, where Palestinians have been rejecting wholly the idea of being permanently displaced from their homes, from the land that they consider their own, from the land that they consider home.
And also, of course, more critically, perhaps, in terms of the geopolitics of this, it's been rejected by Jordan and Egypt, the two countries that President Trump now wants to pressure into accepting more than 2 million Palestinian refugees if he were to empty out the Gaza Strip of its population.
We know that the President is sitting down tomorrow with King Abdullah of Jordan, and he believes that he has leverage in billions of dollars of military aid that the U.S. provides to both Jordan and Egypt. We'll see how that shakes out.
But certainly a lot of opposition in the region at the moment. And an Israeli prime minister on the right wing in Israeli politics certainly feeling emboldened by what the President is suggesting. Dana?
BASH: Yes, he sure does. Thank you so much, Jeremy. Appreciate it.
And coming up, the President who cried tariffs. Donald Trump is threatening new levies on key imports. Will he follow through this time? That is a key question.
Plus, the art of not dealing with grocery prices. We'll explain next.
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[12:41:58]
BASH: Tariff roulette. President Trump refused to say how his global gamble is impacting key kitchen table issues. He was pressed on that issue by Fox's Bret Baier before the Super Bowl. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
BAIER: If all goes to plan, when do you think families will be able to feel prices going down, groceries, energy, or are you kind of saying to them, hang on, inflation may get worse until it gets better?
TRUMP: No, I think we're going to become a rich -- look, we're not that rich right now. We owe $36 trillion. That's because we let all these nations take advantage of us. Same thing like $200 billion with Canada. We owe $300 -- we have a deficit with Mexico of $350 billion. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to let that happen.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: Our panel is back here. Manu, I want you to look at a different part of that CBS News/YouGov poll, and that is a key question. His focus on lowering prices is not enough. 66 percent, right amount, 31 percent, too much, 3 percent.
And then if you break it down by parties, Democrats say 82 percent of them say he's not focusing enough, 69 percent of Independents, and 48 percent, almost half of his fellow Republicans say he's not focusing enough on that.
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The, you know, that Republican number is what --
BASH: Exactly.
RAJU: -- stuck out to me. They're typically Republicans really fall in line, even in a lot of these polls. But this is the challenge of, one, the Trump strategy of throwing everything out there all at once. It distracts from what the message is because everything is all -- everything at the same time.
It's not on one singular issue, which is the issue that drove him arguably to the presidency, which is how are you going to deal with lowering grocery prices? The challenge is it's very difficult for any president to deal with grocery prices. But they blame Joe Biden for it, and now he could get blamed for it himself.
But the big thing that could be felt by Americans in their pocketbooks is the tariffs. If they do go into effect, the impacts could be felt rather quickly. And then at that point, do they blame him? That number could only go up, right.
BASH: Right. And the impact, obviously, in the other direction. Jamie, listen to what the President said on Air Force One on this very issue.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What countries will those go on?
TRUMP: Everybody, steel.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Including Canada and Mexico? TRUMP: Yes. Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25 percent tariff.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about aluminum, sir?
TRUMP: Aluminum, too.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: And as I bring you in, Jamie, just look at these numbers that our amazing team put together. Imports, U.S. imports of steel and aluminum by origin last year, Canada is by far the biggest country that exports both steel and aluminum to the United States.
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So I just want to go back to not to -- was it last week, where there were going to be tariffs against Canada and Mexico until apparently Donald Trump over the weekend started hearing that the markets were about to plummet.
Yes, he says he's going to do this. But we have seen time and time again -- and I'm not saying there aren't going to be some tariffs, we don't know.
[12:45:08]
But we've seen Donald Trump declare victory and not do anything. And I think what we really have to see is the devils in the details. Let's wait to see what happens, because the one thing he's scared of, the markets.
BASH: Yes. And it wasn't just over the weekend that he was hearing it would go down.
GANGEL: Right.
BASH: I'm sure you saw when the markets opened on Monday morning a week ago after the threat of tariffs, they went down and then --
GANGEL: 600 points, right.
BASH: -- and then he made the call with the Mexican president and it started to climb back up. You spent a lot of time covering this issue --
SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes.
BASH: -- during the first Trump administration. What is your expertise and the sources who you talk to tell you?
RODRIGUEZ: I feel like there's a lot of deja vu for everyone right now. There's a feeling of, OK, well, when he, and during his first term, he often threw around the threat of tariffs, not even because of necessarily trade-focused issues. Donald Trump views a lot of foreign policy around this lens. Oh, there's a problem at the border, let's throw a tariff. Oh, there's an issue with fentanyl, let's consider it. Oh, we're upset about some other diplomatic issue, let's threaten tariffs. The reality is that when it comes down to him actually going and doing it, there are oftentimes he backs off from it.
However, with the steel and aluminum tariffs, we did see him go ahead and do this in 2018. And we saw Canada and Mexico in turn announced retaliatory tariffs. We saw businesses talk at the time about how prices were increasing for them because it's U.S. importers who are paying the price of tariffs.
But the reality is, I think part of this conversation that gets lost is this does raise a question about Trump's effectiveness as a leader, because he's talking about putting tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He renegotiated NAFTA with Canada and Mexico.
I mean, that is what I spent much of those four years focused on. And he talked about how it was the best and most wonderful trade deal that he had negotiated that was going to make trade an even playing field between the three countries. And now he's coming back and talking about the trade deficit between the three countries.
And he's saying about how Mexico and Canada are taking advantage of the U.S. So it does raise a question. You negotiated this for four years in your first term and now we're having this whole conversation again. So was it a great deal?
BASH: I can't wait you to get the answer to that. No doubt you will.
Thanks, guys. Don't go anywhere, though, because coming up, he is known for his ability to translate Donald Trump's ideas into action. We have new reporting on Stephen Miller after a break.
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[12:51:52]
STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: Goodbye, Democrats. And hello to the golden age of America. And welcome back, Donald J. Trump.
(CHEERING)
MILLER: It's been four long years. It's felt like 400 years.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
BASH: That is the President's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, on Inauguration Day. Three weeks later, Miller is very clearly one of the most powerful people in the U.S. government.
According to new in-depth reporting by my colleagues who write in part, "From a small West Wing office down the hall from the Oval Office, Miller is a leading force behind a relentless flood-the-zone strategy inside the White House, helping guide the President through the opening weeks of his second term. It's a playbook Miller has spent years thinking about".
Jeff Zeleny is at the White House. One of the reporters behind this piece. Jeff?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Dana, there's no doubt that Stephen Miller is one of the leading architects of this flood-the-zone strategy. And we say he spent years thinking about this. He absolutely has.
I mean, you remember obviously from his time as an adviser on Capitol Hill to Jeff Sessions at the time. Immigration has long been his passion, his obsession. So that is one bit of his portfolio. But there is so much more.
He's gone from being a speechwriter in the first Trump administration to being really at the heart of everything that is going on from these executive orders to what Elon Musk is doing to certainly immigration as well. So there is no doubt for all of the fresh faces in this administration.
And there are many. Stephen Miller is not a fresh face. He has been at this President's side really since he decided to run for office. Back in 2015, 2016, when a lot of Republicans would not work for Donald Trump, Stephen Miller would. He did. He has. And he's risen up the ranks.
And he is central to all of this. He's half the age of the President. But he is the absolute center of so much of what we're seeing in this flood-the-zone strategy, Dana.
BASH: And Jeff, you talk in this piece, which is really excellent -- I encourage people to go look at it on CNN.com -- about the fact that he has this canny ability to translate the thoughts and the wants of Trump on a lot of policies, even and especially on immigration, into strategy.
And then ultimately, what we're seeing right now, which is policy. And what is also interesting, you mentioned that I covered Capitol Hill, as did you. We were there together when --
ZELENY: Right.
BASH: -- Jeff Sessions was a United States senator. Stephen Miller was his press secretary. And I think he would be the first to admit he was considered fringe inside the GOP for his views on immigration. It was the time everybody was talking about getting a comprehensive immigration deal. And he was saying, absolutely not. People should be deported.
And now he is front and center. And he's now getting calls from these senators who wouldn't give him the time of day, not that long ago.
[12:55:05] ZELENY: It is extraordinary, really, in just a little over a decade. A, his position has become a mainstream because of the President. There's no doubt about that. But he obviously operates without Senate confirmation, as everyone who works as a deputy chief of staff does. But there is no question he wields considerable power.
And you can look at Stephen Miller as just sort of an arc of how the party has changed, how Washington has changed. And indeed, he perhaps has not changed, actually, but on immigration front and center. So as we go forward here, he'll be at the center of so many policies, controversial or not. Dana?
BASH: Yes, the party has come to him. And he has remarkably been one of the few people who has been in Trump's orbit since he started in politics and stayed very much --
ZELENY: That's right.
BASH: -- in Trump's orbit.
Jeff, thank you so much for that reporting. Appreciate it.
ZELENY: You bet.
BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after the break.
