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WSJ: Gabbard Leading Trump Effort To Investigate 2020 Election; Minneapolis Mayor Warning To Mayors: "Your City Is Next"; Mayors Grapple With How To Handle ICE And Border Patrol; Tony Goldwyn Trades The White House For "Chez Joey". Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 30, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:32:49]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Tulsi Gabbard's title is Director of National Intelligence. That's a pretty big job, and she's responsible for a lot, coordinating the activities of more than a dozen different intelligence agencies. But her main job recently, apparently, has been to follow President Trump down conspiratorial rabbit holes around the 2020 election.

It's that investigation, White House officials told The Wall Street Journal, that landed her in Fulton County, Georgia, on Wednesday, when the FBI searched an elections office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, what was Tulsi Gabbard doing at an election center in Georgia today?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She's working very hard on trying to keep the election safe. And she's done a very good job. And they, as you know, they got into the votes. She got to sign judge's order in Georgia. And you're going to see some interesting things happening.

They've been trying to get there for a long time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: My panel is back. This is retrospective. This is -- they've got ballots from 2020 --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

BASH: -- not, you know, talking about future elections, which is a different controversy. Listen to what Kash Patel, the FBI director, said about this investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KASH PATEL, FBI DIRECTOR: The FBI and DOJ presented this information to a judge in Georgia, where they determined, the judge, that there was a finding for probable cause following the constitutional precepts that are necessary to safeguard in an investigation, just like any other we do.

Yesterday was a big public-facing step. And you're right, you saw trucks, you saw material being removed, and what the FBI will do is now analyze that information, and we will take the next investigatory steps with our Department of Justice partners.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What do you hear from your sources about why Tulsi Gabbard was there?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So Tulsi Gabbard has faced pressure within the administration at times throughout this year. You might remember just a while ago when the Venezuela operation happened, there were reports that she was also sidelined from that process.

Tulsi Gabbard is also somebody that has, you know, not been shy about engaging in some of the more conspiratorial theories and false statements that have been out there, too. So as I talk to officials, there are those who say, look, this is an effort to sort of gain favor.

Like many people in this administration at times are speaking to an audience of one and are doing actions to please an audience of one, that being President Trump.

[12:35:03]

And this is also a president that has continued to make these false statements about saying that the election was rigged, as we know it was not, that has gone through the legal process. All of that is context that factors into this decision to now engage into this for this intelligence official.

BASH: And how is this being received on the Hill?

ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Well, I reported yesterday that Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded an immediate briefing on this. ODNI rebuffed them initially, but I'm told that that briefing could happen next week. I want to read what Mark Warner, who's the vice chair of that committee, said when this came out.

He said, either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus here, in which case the law actually says that the Senate Intelligence Committee has to be informed of that --

BASH: Right.

DESIDERIO: -- in advance, which Mark Warner says they were not, or this was a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy. So what Mark Warner is saying is that regardless of why she was there, she shouldn't have been there, right? BASH: Yes.

DESIDERIO: And that the Intelligence Committee has to look into this. Now, Republicans control that committee, obviously. So in terms of actually investigating it, we don't know if that's actually going to happen, but Democrats are going to try their best.

BASH: I want to sort of widen the aperture here --

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Sure.

BASH: -- Elliot. And I want to read what Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said in an order on January 28th. Just for context, he's the chief judge of the District of Minnesota, appointed by George W. Bush, clerk for Scalia, taught Amy Coney Barrett at Notre Dame.

Here's what he said. "ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence. ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this court, but like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated."

And connecting these two here for a reason, which is you have a judge like this saying that, and then you have the DOJ doing what it's doing in Georgia.

WILLIAMS: Yes. It -- all of this in Georgia --

BASH: Never mind the arrest of journalists.

WILLIAMS: All this in Georgia makes very little sense when you unpack it. Just on a basic level, why is a cabinet-level official attending the -- exercising a search warrant? She -- like that's so unheard of. It's almost as if the attorney general were watching someone's house get searched.

You know, picking up on Andrew's point, there's no national security nexus here either. And it's also perplexing given that I understand that she didn't have a huge role in discussions over Venezuela, which was a national security nexus. So why on earth is the director of National Intelligence participating in something that has literally nothing to do, barring maybe an allegation that there might be -- sorry, go ahead.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: There is one way to Donald Trump's heart when you have been sidelined, and she was sidelined --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

GANGEL: -- because she's against military intervention and not just Venezuela.

BASH: Iran.

GANGEL: He's been talking about Iran, Israel. She came out in testimony and said something at odds with Iran. And President Trump said, I don't care what she said. I think they were very close to having one about a nuclear weapon in Iran.

So she wants back in. She wants to be back in favor. And there's no better place with Donald Trump than being down there and saying the election was stolen.

BASH: Thanks, everybody.

Up next, how to handle ICE. Mayors across the country are coming together to compare notes. I'll speak to one of them after a quick break.

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[12:43:11]

BASH: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is delivering a stark warning to his counterparts across the country. Here's what he said at the U.S. Conference of Mayors here in Washington yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JACOB FREY, MINNEAPOLIS: We are on the front lines of a very important battle. And it's important that we aren't silenced, that we aren't put down. This is not a time to bend our heads in despair or out of fear that we may be next. Because if we do not speak up, if we do not step out, it will be your city that is next.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Here with me now is Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, who is in town for that Conference of Mayors. Thank you so much for being here.

MAYOR AFTAB PUREVAL, CINCINNATI: My pleasure, Dana.

PUREVAL: Talk about the kinds of conversations that you're having with your counterparts about immigration.

PUREVAL: Yes, the conversations we're having are really consistent with Mayor Frey's warning and message of urgency, and that is really concerned about the fear and the terror that many of our immigrant and, just frankly, cities are experiencing right now.

You know, mayors across the country really look at this issue not as an immigration issue, but as a public safety issue. Public safety is a hyper-local issue led by mayors and police chiefs and communities. And communities decide how they want to be policed, and we take that very seriously.

We work very hard with training our officers, with pushing reforms that strengthen our response, but also strengthen the trust of our community. In fact, 25 years ago, we were one of the first cities to say that after 24 hours of a critical incident, we will hold a press conference, we will publish the body cam --

BASH: Yes.

PUREVAL: -- footage, and we will have real accountability. What we're seeing now from the federal government is a surge of federal agents who are masked with no body cam footage, using tactics from the 1950s that are violent and no accountability, and that will never work. Cities for the last couple of decades have rejected those kinds of strategies --

BASH: Yes.

PUREVAL: -- and it just creates more public safety concerns than it actually solves.

[12:45:09]

BASH: So you're describing the way that your city and local police forces operate. Obviously, what the federal government is saying is that they're going after people who broke federal laws, immigration laws.

PUREVAL: What they're actually saying -- what I've heard them say --

BASH: Yes.

PUREVAL: -- is that they want to focus on the violent offenders, and that's not what's happening. And when you come out and say that victims who are killed are domestic terrorists or trying to massacre federal agents with no evidence, and now calling them insurgents again with no evidence, it erodes that trust.

And what mayors are concerned about is not just that they may be next, and also not just to protect their vulnerable, they're worried about the erosion of trust with our local law enforcement because that public safety piece is so critically important.

BASH: Right.

PUREVAL: Dana, we're having a hard time recruiting people to be police officers around the country, and we're having a hard time keeping people from retiring. And this view of federal ICE agents using these violent tactics is only going to make that worse and only going to be harder to preserve public safety in our community.

BASH: Cincinnati is a so-called sanctuary city. So what are things like there now, given the fact that you have given protections to people in your city, but the federal government doesn't like that?

PUREVAL: Yes, it's challenging to be sure but --

BASH: So how is it actually playing out?

PUREVAL: Yes. But, you know, look, Dana, we have a 3 percent Asian population, a 3 percent Hispanic population. In order for us to continue to be a driver of not just national economy but also potentially the global economy, we've got to be a welcoming city to create more urgency -- excuse me, more vibrancy. Our city is growing for the first time in a generation, and when you look at the data, a lot of that growth is due to immigration. And we want that. We want people to come and stay in Cincinnati. In addition to that, we don't have an undocumented immigrant problem in my community.

We have a gun violence problem. And so, if this administration was serious about gun violence and public safety, they wouldn't divert resources from ATF to put into ICE. They would take that gun violence really seriously. And so, my direction to my administration is we're going to focus on what we are responsible for, which is mitigating and stemming the tide of this gun violence, particularly amongst juveniles.

We have no role in immigration enforcement. We don't have the bandwidth or the resources to do it, and it's not, frankly, our role to do it. So, we're going to continue to focus on creating public safety preservation in our community, continue to work urgently in prioritizing that, and push back on what we see as federal tactics that make our cities less safe in Minneapolis and potentially in other cities moving forward.

BASH: Real quick, what is the kind of conversation, collaboration, coordination -- you tell me which word applies -- that you have with federal law enforcement and ICE agents?

PUREVAL: We have an incredible collaboration with many federal law enforcement. Cincinnati --

BASH: On this immigration issue?

PUREVAL: Not on this immigration issue, no, but Cincinnati was the first city to have a Crime Gun Intelligence Center, which is a joint task force with FBI, DEA, and ATF to get at what I'm talking about, gun violence. And the concern here is not just from Democratic mayors. This is a bipartisan chorus of mayors, including really well-known Republican mayors, saying this is not OK, this is not going to work, and this is going to make us less safe.

BASH: Yes or no, do you think that this push by Lindsey Graham in the Senate to do away with sanctuary cities is going to fly?

PUREVAL: It's hard for me to say. I'm just a mayor at the local level. But what I can say is, regardless of rhetoric around sanctuary cities, if we all are serious about keeping our communities safe, then we need to take a page out of mayors' books and do the hard work to create the trust in the first place to allow for these enforcements of local laws and potentially federal laws to be safe and effective.

BASH: Mayor of Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval, thank you -- Pureval.

PUREVAL: Pureval.

BASH: Pureval.

PUREVAL: Yes. BASH: All right.

PUREVAL: No worries.

BASH: Either one.

PUREVAL: With a name like Dana, I'm sure you get that all the time.

BASH: Yes, but you said it right, which is very impressive.

PUREVAL: Thank you.

BASH: Mr. Mayor, thank you so much for being here.

Up next, "Scandal's" President Fitzgerald Grant is back in Washington. We have a special Inside Politics preview as Tony Goldwyn trades the White House for "Chez Joey".

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[12:53:59]

BASH: It's been a week again, so we thought we would end the week with a much-needed brief escape. Escaped to "Chez Joey," a new musical starting previews tonight. We were invited behind the scenes to rehearsal by one of "Chez Joey's" co-directors, Tony Goldwyn, who you'll recognize as TV President Fitzgerald Grant. Well, he's moved from the White House to the waterfront at D.C.'s Arena Stage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can call it "Chez Joey".

BASH (voice-over): Behind the scenes for rehearsal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I think it came in actually right about there.

BASH (voice-over): A new musical at the Arena Stage in D.C.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got you. Got you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's try that.

BASH (voice-over): With a lot of star power.

BASH: Here I am walking down the aisle with Tony Goldwyn.

TONY GOLDWYN, CO-DIRECTOR, "CHEZ JOEY": Right. Let me introduce you.

BASH: Hi.

GOLDWYN: This is Dana.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.

GOLDWYN: This is Sam (ph). BASH: Hi, I'm Dana.

BASH (voice-over): Tony Goldwyn is co-director.

GOLDWYN: Let's try, first of all, Nolan. He says, Lou took me in. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.

[12:55:04]

BASH: And being back in D.C., Mr. President.

GOLDWYN: Yes. There's -- my old office is up the street.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So that's what this is really about. My transgressions.

GOLDWYN: Yes, I love D.C. It's a great city. I'm so happy to be back.

BASH: You spend a lot of time here.

GOLDWYN: I have, yes.

BASH: Chez Joey is new.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You stole my club?

BASH: Drawn from Pal Joey. There are some really famous songs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's why the lady is a tramp.

GOLDWYN: The idea originally was, you know, inspired by the musical Pal Joey, which is a 1940 musical with music written by Rodgers and Hart, who are one of the great songwriting teams ever. The original Joey is just kind of a ne'er-do-well singer who, you know, is kind of a loser. And it wasn't terribly compelling to us.

And we thought, well, what if we make this about an artist who's on the artist's journey, who is an artist of genius, and who is a really gifted man who can't have his voice heard and just wants to be heard and create? So we thought, well, what if we made it a black artist? Like, that could be really compelling and create a whole world.

This is Richard LaGravenese, a writer.

BASH (voice-over): Goldwyn and Richard LaGravenese started working on "Chez Joey" 10 years ago. Five years ago, they brought in the legendary Savion Glover.

GOLDWYN: And Savion is also doing all of the orchestrations and arrangements, in addition to the choreography and co-directing with me.

SAVION GLOVER, CO-DIRECTOR, "CHEZ JOEY": He's providing the opportunity for me to put on display everything that I am thus far.

BASH: I heard that you were just creating a whole new number upstairs? GLOVER: Yes.

BASH (voice-over): It's for Kevin Cahoon, another Broadway star in this company.

GOLDWYN: We got permission from the Rodgers and Harts stage to replace any songs that we wanted, as long as it was a Rodgers and Harts song. And as you said, they wrote thousands of songs.

BASH: You see this gentleman here practicing his dance moves? His name is Myles Frost.

BASH (voice-over): He starred as Michael Jackson in MJ the Musical, the youngest person to ever win a Tony Award for best actor in the category. Now, four years later, at age 26, he's Joey in "Chez Joey."

BASH: I'm sure it's been interesting to find what your next big project is.

MYLES FROST, ACTOR, "CHEZ JOEY": Yes.

BASH: And it's this.

FROST: It is this.

BASH: I can't even imagine what it was like to, for MJ, embody this person who is the most iconic person in the world --

FROST: Yes.

BASH: -- MJ, versus now, you do have -- you must feel like you have so much more freedom.

FROST: Michael's very technical. He's very specific. You know, there's a certain set of moves that go with certain things.

BASH: How long did it take you to get the Michael Jackson out of him?

GLOVER: We're still working on it.

GOLDWYN: Yes.

FROST: I would agree with that. The only formal training I've had is in the verses of Michael Jackson. So those things are so instilled in my -- and ingrained in my body. It's second nature. So even if you say spin, my first instinct is to spin.

BASH: Show me, show me a spin.

FROST: Yes. So if you say spin, I'm going to go, oh, OK, boom. And say, I was like, no, because that's how Michael would do it.

BASH: Yes, that's very fluent (ph).

FROST: We need to figure out how Joey does that. And I go, OK, I got to take a step back. BASH: How does Joey do it?

FROST: Oh, Joey can do anything. He can do a crossover into this. You know, he can swing this leg over like that. You know, he can even go do that.

Joey is jazz. Joey is sound. Joey is music. The sound that resonates in the earth that connects us all. He's -- he can hear the sounds of his ancestors and be able to interpret that.

BASH: One of the many reasons this is a really unique musical is because look at this, all of the instruments are on stage. All of the musicians are on stage. So the musicians are also the actors. Usually you see an orchestra pit, not in this one.

GOLDWYN: This is my first experience of directing a musical. So in teaming up this, when we first started, did our first workshop, I said, I was like, so see -- I don't know if you remember, but I was like --

GLOVER: Yes, yes.

GOLDWYN: -- so when you -- I'm just curious, like, did you plan it all out ahead of time? And then when you come in and you just teach what you've done? And he says, no, no, I don't plan anything. I was like, really? He's like, no, no, I need the bodies. And when we get in the space, then it reveals itself of what it wants to be.

GLOVER: We're using a method possibly introduced to me by Gregory Hines called improvography, where, you know, there's a pocket of memorable muscularity. There's a familiarity in what to do. When to do it is where the improvisational aspect comes into choreography.

BASH: Which is totally in keeping with what this is. They're supposed to be in a jazz club.

GOLDWYN: Jazz club (INAUDIBLE).

BASH: Gregory Hines called you the greatest tap dancer that ever lived.

GLOVER: I am not what they say I am because I think the same about them. I know that Gregory Hines and Jimmy Slyde, these people are the most supreme contributors to my existence.

Once you hit the sound consciousness, you're no longer tap dancing.

BASH: OK.

GLOVER: You have become a technical, advanced, punctuating expressionist.

BASH: OK.

GLOVER: Now do the -- this first and then the sound. The sound of how it looks -- BASH: Yes.

GLOVER: -- and then the sound of what's going to put it together. You have entered sound consciousness.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Thank you, Savion Glover, for teaching me that.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.