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One World with Zain Asher

President Trump Holds First Cabinet Meeting Of Second Term; Trump: Zelenskyy To Visit White House On Friday To Sign Deal On Natural Resources; Aired 12:40-1p ET

Aired February 26, 2025 - 12:40   ET

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

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(CNN US SIMULCAST)

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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You have been listening to a wide- ranging discussion with the press there, as President Trump holds his first cabinet meeting of his second term, among the topics discussed, both

domestic and foreign policy. He talked about tariffs. He talked about the U.S. economy.

But he ended right now where he began, and that is on the war in Ukraine. At the top of this cabinet meeting, he announced that President Zelenskyy

will, in fact, be coming to the United States, to Washington, D.C., on Friday to sign that rare earth minerals deal with President Trump.

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And President Trump reiterating that there will not be any additional support in terms of giving specifics about more military assistance. Though

he did say that he would help the Europeans and perhaps peacekeepers once a deal and a ceasefire would be reached.

Also, notable to hear him talk about Vladimir Putin and his conversations with him. He described him as a very smart and cunning person. Also said

that he will have to make some concessions. I believe that may be the first time that we have heard President Trump make that point, though he's said

that many times in terms of President Zelenskyy.

So that, in addition to a question that was notable about Taiwan, whether the United States would indeed come to Taiwan's defense.

ZAIN ASHER, CNN ANCHOR: And he stayed out of that.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

ASHER: He sidestepped that question.

GOLODRYGA: He said, that is something I do not want to get into right now. Maybe going back to the concept of strategic ambiguity. But clearly,

President Biden had broken that concept by stating numerous times that the U.S. would indeed come to the support of Taiwan.

ASHER: And actually the beginning of this cabinet meeting actually started with Elon Musk and the president actually asking Elon Musk, who was

actually not sitting at the table. He was sitting against the wall, asked him to stand up and describe his work with DOGE.

Elon Musk, very interestingly, described DOGE as, quote-unquote, tech support. There it is there, the video of Elon Musk standing up.

He also said that part of his job in terms of making these cuts with DOGE was to work on the $2 trillion deficit that the U.S. had. He described the

cuts that he's making as not optional.

I mean, obviously, federal employees, over the weekend, got an email from Musk team, essentially saying, listen, you have to justify your job. What

have you done for me lately? What have you done in the past week to justify your work? If you do not respond to this email by a certain time, that will

be seen as, in effect, a resignation.

A lot of federal government employees got mixed messages from their own bosses in terms of whether or not to respond to that email or not.

But back to the deficit, Elon Musk essentially said, listen, America is going to go bankrupt. So these cuts are not optional. We have to make these

cuts. He needs to find a trillion dollars in savings and just sort of talked about what he was doing in terms of his work with DOGE.

I want to bring in Kevin Liptak joining us live now from the White House. So, Kevin, just as part of Donald Trump's relationship with Elon Musk.

Obviously, he asked Elon Musk to stand up there. Reporters around the room were allowed to ask Elon various questions.

But essentially, one key moment at the beginning of this cabinet meeting was when the president essentially said, listen, does anyone actually have

any problem with Elon Musk around this table? Does any cabinet secretary have any issue with Elon Musk? Obviously, they're not going to admit that

in front of the president, so everyone remains silent.

But just talk to us about how much daylight there is between Musk and his team and the various cabinet secretaries around this table.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And heading into this cabinet meeting, that was kind of the backdrop, this rift that had been

apparently growing between Musk and the Senate-confirmed members of the cabinet. And one of our big questions was where exactly Musk would be

sitting.

And you saw him there on the wall in between two relatively junior aides to the president. He wasn't at one of the seats around the table where the

other Senate-confirmed members of Trump's cabinet were sitting.

But it was notable as the meeting went on. It was very, very apparent just how much power Musk has. He is now the most powerful adviser to the

president. In fact, he was the only person, aside from President Trump, who was really given any significant time to talk in that meeting, and the rest

of the cabinet was essentially left to be the set dressing.

You know, they were sort of left to sit in silence to listen to Musk, sort of standing in the corner in half shadow, talking about his efforts to root

out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. So I thought that was pretty interesting, just the atmospherics and the visuals alone, not to

dwell on them too much, but really kind of gives you a sense of how Musk is operating outside of the traditional structure of the federal government.

And it was interesting to hear him talk about that email. Donald Trump, when he was asked, you know, yesterday we heard about a million people had

responded to it. That leaves another million people who hadn't responded.

He was asked, well, what is left for those federal workers who didn't respond, who may have been told by their own cabinet agencies to hold off.

And he said that they were on the bubble, so not necessarily giving them a whole lot more clarity about how they should proceed going forward. So that

was an interesting moment.

But you're right, that moment when he essentially put them on the spot, the other members of the cabinet asked them how Musk was doing, I think was

intended in some ways as a power move to demonstrate, look, I'm in charge here, and I have given Musk extraordinary bandwidth to do what he's doing.

If you have any objections, say them now. I think it was clear exactly where he thinks his members should stand on all of this.

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ASHER: All right. Kevin Liptak, live for us there. Thank you so much.

GOLODRYGA: Well, domestic politics wasn't the only topic at the cabinet meeting. As we noted, President Trump said Ukraine's president will be

coming to Washington on Friday to sign a deal on Kyiv's natural resources and the reconstruction of the war-torn country.

Let's bring in CNN's Nick Paton Walsh who joins us now from Kyiv. So some news there confirming from the president that President Zelenskyy will be

coming to a deal seems to be near being finalized between these two countries.

It appears, Nick, that it is a bit more favorable, the terms, to Ukraine, though no specifics about any sort of U.S. defensive help and security.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, I mean, I think they'll certainly listening to Donald Trump, they

will take some significant heart and at least confirming -- him confirming the Friday meeting. There was not such direct confirmation and positivity

from Ukraine's president this morning, but also Trump did spell out that they wouldn't be giving security guarantees.

I can't recall the precise phrasing, but not very much was essentially what he was referring to pointing more towards Europe to do that. Remember,

Europe to put peacekeepers in place wants to have a U.S. backstop of logistics.

But good news from there and him spelling out potentially how this could be a very big deal, talking also about the potential wealth and how he

considers there to be $350 billion worth of debt that the United States wants to be repaid from Ukraine. And that seems to be a pretty inaccurate

inflated number.

And also to contradict starkly with what we've heard from President Zelenskyy, who doesn't want to refer to money already given to Ukraine by

the United States as debt, says it is grants. And indeed that is the nature in which it was originally given.

In fact, Zelenskyy, today, very clear railing against the concept of this as being reimbursed debt, saying he wouldn't allow 10 cents of that to be

construed that way.

So it does appear, regardless of the rhetoric we've been hearing, that this deal is moving forwards. We saw a copy of that. And some of the text

essentially refers to a Ukraine reconstruction and investment fund, which will take 50 percent of relevant resources in Ukraine and put it into this

particular pot.

It does go on to have some quite loose language of how the United States supports Ukraine in trying to get security guarantees, but it doesn't say

the U.S. will indeed supply them.

And then there's, I paraphrase here, language that suggests there might be moves taken to protect financial or resource assets inside of Ukraine as

well. But this is not a U.S. security guarantee. And so here we are stuck in a very complicated place here, where it is obvious that this document

doesn't really do the justice of giving either side the sort of stark interpretations that they wanted this particular deal and kind of fudges a

middle way.

And explicitly says that once the deal is originally signed, there will then be further work on a fund agreement that deals with the actual

specifics. So a bid certainly to try and get the US-Ukraine relationship back on track and no doubt about that.

And the meeting on Friday between Trump and Zelenskyy will be about repairing something frankly way more vital in Trump's very interpersonal

transactional world of politics and foreign policy to be sure that he decides he wants to support Zelenskyy as a person and as a president again

after a week to 10 days and that relationship has really been in free fall.

So, yes, it's exceptionally rocky road that we've been on, but Friday, really a make or break relationship, I think, moment between the U.S. and

Ukraine.

ASHER: All right. Nick Paton Walsh, live for us there. Thank you so much.

All right. Let's bring Professor Todd Belt, Director of George Washington University's Political Management Program.

So, of course, you were listening to that cabinet meeting. I mean, he touched on so much, just in terms of referring to President Putin as smart

and cunning, essentially saying that he's not necessarily sure if there is going to be this long-term situation where there is a long-term ceasefire,

but that this war would never have ended, wouldn't even have come close to ending had President Trump not being in power.

He talked about his idea of a gold card. This is essentially making immigration for sale in this country, where you would essentially sell

green cards for $5 million, replacing the EB-5 investment visa.

But, of course, the moment that stood out at the beginning was with Elon Musk standing up and talking to the entire room and media and the reporters

as well about his role at DOGE. Just walk us through what stood out to you in that 45 minutes that we just saw there.

TODD BELT, DIRECTOR OF GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY'S POLITICAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM: Right. Well, what we saw here is really more of a press conference

than a cabinet meeting. It wasn't the president getting the advice from his advisors as is constitutionally mandated under Article 2. This was Donald

Trump holding forth like he always likes to do and having a couple of others chime in, specifically, as you mentioned, Elon Musk.

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What really stood out to me is something that happened while this was going on, and that is a memo from the Office of Personnel Management went out and

said that all the department heads need to work with Elon Musk to put together mass layoffs by March 13th.

So what was happening here, I think, is we were seeing Elon Musk with his discussion of, you know, having a good relationship with all of the members

of the cabinet and the cabinet saying that they trust him.

This was putting a little bit of the veneer back on this in terms of the problems that they had earlier this week moving forward and trying to show

that everybody's singing off the same page of music.

GOLODRYGA: And, Firas, I do want to bring you in, Firas Maksad, because another big headline was whether or not we would see phase two implemented

in the Gaza ceasefire hostage deal.

The president seemed a bit skeptical there, but said, ultimately, it's up to Prime Minister Netanyahu. We have about 30 seconds left. I'm so sorry

that we have such limited time. But give us your thoughts on whether we will actually see that begin to be implemented this weekend.

FIRAS MAKSAD, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR MIDDLE EAST, EURASIA GROUP: Let's -- yes, let's make it quick. We will see the presidential envoy, Steven

Witkoff, head out to the region, presumably, Saturday or Sunday. We've got two days until the end of phase one of the ceasefire. Phase two is

essentially when the war is supposed to come to an end.

The Israeli prime minister has a very fragile cabinet coalition. Many of them do not want to see this war end for their own ideological and

political reasons. It's going to be very tricky business for President Trump, who very much wants to bring an end to this war, has pretty much

said this on the campaign trail repeatedly. And it's going to be a tall order.

So the next couple of days are going to be heavy lifting for the presidential envoy, Steven Witkoff, as he heads to the region.

GOLODRYGA: Go ahead.

ASHER: I'm so sorry. And also, the fallout continues with President Trump's comments, you know, a few weeks ago talking about turning Gaza into the

sort of riviera of the Middle East, something that he has doubled down on and appears to be serious about.

Give us your take on that.

MAKSAD: You know, Zain, there are two schools of thought here on this. One is that the president is just riffing with no particular strategy in mind.

The other one is that he, in fact, this is very much thought through, and it's meant to give the Israeli prime minister some wiggle room, some

political space internally with the far right part of his government coalition.

In essence, give him some credit so that he can get past the phase two of that crucial ceasefire deal.

President Trump very much eyeing the deal of the century here, normalization between Saudi Arabia, which has developed a very good

relationship with the Trump administration and Israel.

ASHER: And, Firas, sadly we are -- I tried to get in that second question, but we are out of time right now. Firas, thank you so much for being with

us.

I'm Zain Asher. Appreciate you being with us.

GOLODRYGA: I'm Bianna Golodryga. Thanks so much for watching. "AMANPOUR" is up next.

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