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Quest Means Business
Trump Stands By His Gaza Plan In Meeting With Jordan's King; Macron: Situation In Gaza Has Been Absolutely Terrible; DAMAC has Pledged $20 Billion To Build Data Centers in US; Trump and Musk Speak to Press in Oval Office. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired February 11, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:11]
RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": Closing bell ringing on Wall Street. It is one of those days.
The markets are actually up. They are managing to weather the storms one way or another, all things considered. It is quite an achievement,
particularly since we started down. But I think we are -- forgive me, I am wrong. We are at the best of the session.
Yes, there we go. Good strong gavels. It was Infinity Natural Resources ringing it.
Those are the markets and I am here at the World Government Summit. Those are the markets. And these are the main events that I am talking about
tonight.
Donald Trump stands by his Gaza plan in a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah.
The IMF managing director says she wakes up in the middle of the night worried about vulnerable economies.
And the developer behind a $20 billion pledge to build data centers in the United States. DAMAC Properties Chairman, Hussain Sajwani is with me
tonight.
From the World Government Summit live in Dubai on Tuesday. It is February the 11th. I am Richard Quest in Dubai. Oh, yes, I mean business.
Good evening.
It may be freezing in other parts of the world, London and New York, but we are live at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where it is a very
pleasant shirt sleeves evening.
Well, President Donald Trump and his policies are hanging over every discussion in some shape or form. For instance, his newly imposed tariffs
on steel and aluminum, his recent comments on Gaza, his influence and of course, the discussions about him are everywhere.
So tonight, you'll hear my discussions and conversations with people like the managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva and the chief
executive of IBM, all still to come.
What a spectacular shot. I always think the Burj Al Arab standing there, that building is just beautiful to look at.
Let's begin tonight with the high stakes meeting that has been taking place, discussing the fate of two million Palestinians in Gaza.
President Trump welcomed Jordan's King Abdullah to the White House, and during the meeting, reiterated his plan to redevelop Gaza into premium
housing, offices, and buildings and the like.
His majesty suggested that Arab leaders would not support such a plan. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, is the way the King said.
Despite those comments, President Trump insisted that Jordan and Egypt should house displaced Palestinians.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I believe we will have a parcel of land in Jordan. I believe well have a parcel of land in Egypt. We
may have someplace else, but I think when we finish our talks, we will have a place where they are going to live very happily and very safely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
QUEST: Kevin Liptak is at the White House.
Kevin, I want to take this slowly, point by point, if we may because I want to dissect it.
Going into the meeting, which was always going to be difficult and arguably uncomfortable. The president stuck by his plan, and the King was forced, in
a sense, to be diplomatically polite, saying no.
KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, and it was interesting. This meeting was not originally meant to be on camera, it was meant to be
entirely behind closed doors. And from my perspective, it looked like there was a degree of discomfort on the part of the King as he was sitting there
in the Oval Office listening to President Trump expound on this plan to raise Gaza, move the Palestinians out, build some premium housing, and
invite the world to come live there.
And so really, from the get go, there was this obvious gulf between the two men and their two positions. Clearly, the King has practiced his flattery
with Trump. He talked about the president being a president for peace, looking for peace, but when it came time for Trump to talk about this plan,
it was very evident that he was serious about it and he was not backing off given the obvious concerns of king Abdullah and his other counterparts in
the Arab world.
You heard the King talk about the necessity of coming up with a plan that would work for everybody. Of course, in his mind, this plan will not work
for him, in part because it would require a potentially millions of Palestinians to move into Jordan, which for him could be an existential
problem, could potentially destabilize that country.
[16:05:07]
QUEST: Now, we then get to this interesting question of threatening to withdraw aid. There is no question that Donald Trump had made exactly that
threat, that he was going to use aid against Jordan and Egypt, but in the Oval Office, he is sort of saying, I don't think it is going to come to
that. We will find a way or words to that effect.
LIPTAK: Yes. He said, I think we are above that, essentially saying that this threat to withdraw aid would be beneath him with an ally there in the
Oval Office, but you're right, just 24 hours before, he said yes, I would consider withdrawing the billions of dollars in American assistance, not
only to Jordan, which gets about a billion-and-a-half dollars a year from the United States, but also from Egypt, that would be devastating for
Jordan.
That country really relies on American assistance to prop up its budget. You know, unlike a lot of the other Arab states, like where you are in the
Emirates, it is not sitting on a wealth of oil reserves, and it does rely on those American dollars, not only for its own economy, but for its own
security as well.
And so if the King is coming from this meeting looking for a silver lining, looking for a glimmer of cooperation, I think he probably got it in that
one stray comment by the president.
But certainly, in every other area, they seemed like they were very, very far apart.
QUEST: Kevin, can I just ask you? I mean, it seems sort of almost undiplomatic, bordering on crass that the president made those comments
knowing the difficulty that the King is in, and waxing lyrical about this Gaza project instead of just basically doing what they used to call Rose
Garden rubbish, just sort of sitting there smiling sweetly and saying nothing.
He ladled it on the King.
LIPTAK: Yes, I don't know, Richard, if you're all that surprised that President Trump is being undiplomatic here, that has not necessarily been a
trait of his in his first presidency or in this presidency. I think the real question, you know, efforts of diplomacy aside, that King Abdullah had
as he entered this talk, was whether President Trump is actually serious about this Gaza plan or whether he views it as a negotiating position,
whether he thinks that this is a place for him to start with, the hope that other leaders in the world will come together with their own alternative
plans, because his plan is so unacceptable to them going forward.
So if you're looking at it from that perspective, I think, you know, maybe the King had some hope when he talked about this plan that Egypt is putting
together with Saudi Arabia that will be eventually presented to Donald Trump.
But, you know, these two men are very far apart, I think, in the Oval Office today, President Trump, you know, wasn't necessarily hearing some of
the concerns that were raised by some of the Arab reporters in the room, certainly, that were raised by King Abdullah, that this is just not a plan
that is feasible to work if all of these countries are to accept a new wave of Palestinian refugees.
But the president certainly plowed forward with it, no matter what.
QUEST: Kevin, at the White House. I am grateful to you, sir. Thank you.
Now, President Macron of France says he doesn't agree with Mr. Trump's plan to take control of Gaza. I spoke to President Macron in Paris last Thursday
before some of the developments over the weekend, obviously.
President Macron told me that Gaza is not a real estate operation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EMMANUEL MACRON, FRENCH PRESIDENT: Look, I think President Trump took a very bold and important decision in the past regarding this region with the
Abraham Agreements. And I have to say that these moves were very smart and efficient moves and did change the situation.
Again, a lot of military operations targeted against Hezbollah and Shia militias and top leaders in Iran launched by, obviously Hamas leaders
launched by Israel did change the landscape and weaken these strategic enemies.
But we are in a situation which is absolutely terrible for everybody in Gaza since more than one year. Obviously, we did condemn the terrorist
attack launched by the Hamas against Israel, and we are very much attached to the right of Israel to live in peace and security in this region, and we
do support its existence and security of the state of Israel and all the Israeli people.
But I always reiterated my disagreement with Prime Minister Netanyahu and my condemnation of the operations launched in Gaza, because I don't
believe, once again, that such a massive operation targeting sometimes civilian people is the right answer.
This is a political -- this is today a humanitarian situation. So we have the ceasefire, we have to preserve it. We have to restore humanitarian
operations, and we have to save maximum number of people.
But now, the right answer is not a real estate operation. This is a political operation.
[16:10:07]
Just because this is not a free land, this is a place where two million people live and want to live, and just because international rights and a
lot of treaties and agreements we negotiated and even the US did recognize this right, so you cannot say to two million people, okay, now guess what?
You will move.
So the whole story of humanity is made of tiny parts of places where even less than two million people were ready to go till the end, because they
wanted just to stay.
So I think, we have to stick to our principles. Sometimes in this world you have the feeling to be so old fashioned when you speak about principles.
But I will tell you, this is the humanity and the civilization is a process, and the process of the civilization is that you learn generation
after generation, and this is how you improve yourself.
And we did learn that you can't get rid of people and just push them out of their place when they have a legitimate right to live in their place, being
recognized by everybody.
So I think we have to respect the willingness of Palestinian people to have a state, and we have to respect Jordan, Egypt, these sovereign countries
because they want their security, they want to keep their borders, and they just say, what are you doing? What are you proposing? You want to push them
to my country.
So let's be collectively respectful because it will be the precondition to be efficient, and I think being efficient doesn't mean automatically that
you should lack of respect to people or countries.
So I think what we need now is a collective approach by Arab and Gulf leaders with European leaders, when they are ready to do so, to work
together and to build, and I think it would be great if the US could join, the day after in Gaza, which political system and leadership, what type of
security guarantees and obviously, which type of reconstruction?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
QUEST: That's Emmanuel Macron.
Now, Donald Trump's policy of protectionism is a major point of discussion here at WGS. The president has now slapped tariffs on all steel and
aluminum imports into the United States, and he says he wants more companies to do business in the United States.
They are securing of a few high profile deals, including one from DAMAC Properties. The Emirati developer is planning to spend $20 billion building
data centers in the United States.
With me, Hussain Sajwani, friend of the program, been with us on many occasions and the founder and chairman of DAMAC Properties.
Sir, it is good to see you.
HUSSAIN SAJWANI, FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, DAMAC PROPERTIES: Thank you.
QUEST: Thank you for coming.
Look, it is -- I have to, you know, kudos to you, it is quarter past one in the morning.
SAJWANI: I know you're keeping me awake.
QUEST: If we look at, you are known, and I think it was "The Financial Times." They call you the Donald of Dubai because you are one of the
largest real estate developers here. But you are now developing in the United States, and you have the data centers that you're looking at. What's
the plan there?
SAJWANI: Well, we have already 15 data centers in ten countries under construction already -- Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Turkey, Spain,
Greece, Saudi Arabia, and with the leadership of Donald Trump now, and his more business friendly policies, we are going to expand in the United
States and we have ambitious plans to invest $20 billion.
QUEST: Is it important for DAMAC to expand into the States because you're everywhere here. There are buildings all over the place, and you have
London and you have other places, but is the United States important for you?
SAJWANI: The demand in the United States and the scale of the volume is huge. US, this year alone, four large hyperscalers -- Microsoft, Amazon,
Meta are going to spend $300 billion only this year on data centers.
QUEST: You went to the Inauguration. You've known Donald Trump for a decade or more. You get along well with him. Would you agree? You get on well with
the president.
SAJWANI: Yes, we get along.
QUEST: And you have sort of a developer's mind together in a sense. He likes what you're doing. He likes the way your buildings and your designs
come together.
SAJWANI: Yes, indeed. And I tell you, he has still developer's mind. On New Year's Eve, I was standing next to him in the evening, like 5:00, and he is
looking at where the setup is, and he was taking a lot of details, even the setup of the New Year's Eve dinner.
[16:15:06]
So I told him, Mr. President, he says, that's me. I go to the details of everything.
QUEST: So when you build these data centers, he is going to want to know every last bit about it. He is going to want to know what's going on.
Do you expect to do a lot more business in the States?
SAJWANI: Already, I have more than a few billion dollars invested in private equity. I am invested in OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, SpaceX of Elon
Musk.
I am already doing a project in Miami in surfside, which is $1.6 billion development.
QUEST: And what about here? Everybody always says with Dubai, how much more can it grow? How bigger can it get? How much more?
I mean, look, there are buildings going up everywhere. What -- when is too much, too much?
SAJWANI: The demand on the city is crazy. I was in Mar-a-Lago in December. Half a dozen very wealthy people I met in the States, they want to move
their families here.
Now I understand people from Europe coming here because of the taxation, security, but now even some wealthy people from the States coming here, a
lot of people from Asia coming here.
So you remember, if you have at least half a billion or a billion wealthy people around the world, and Dubai is still very small. We still are, you
know, 34 million people. We still are, you know, I don't know, six, seven hundred thousand homes.
So to grow from here and double is not a big deal.
QUEST: You are the person that sort of the establishment in Dubai, they sort of, oh, that's Sajwani, there he is being a troublemaker. Oh, there he
is doing that again.
You enjoy that, don't you? You like being the --
SAJWANI: No, I am a businessman. I wake up in the morning, look for opportunity, find the land, develop, create jobs. You know, build something
beautiful and I don't see anything wrong with that.
QUEST: Thank you very much, sir.
SAJWANI: Thank you.
QUEST: I am very grateful to you. Stay seated there for a moment, while I continue to talk.
Now in just -- in just a few moments, we are going to listen to President Trump, who has been speaking in the Oval Office.
You'll remember, this is the conversation that he has been having with his Majesty King Abdullah and an awkward start to the meeting.
We know that it was difficult when they began their conversations, but we are now able to bring you those moments in the Oval Office between
President Trump and his majesty King Hussein of Jordan.
ELON MUSK, CO-DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: I come here often.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: X are you okay? This is X and he is a great guy. High IQ. He is a high IQ individual.
MUSK: And he has got this -- check out his cool -- car.
TRUMP: So thank you very much. We had a busy day today. The King just left and we had a great discussion. Terrific discussion concerning Gaza and
everything else.
We had discussions also about Saturday at 12 o'clock. It is going to be a big moment. We will see what happens. I don't expect much happening with
these people, but we will see what happens.
And we are going to be signing a very important deal today. It is DOGE and I am going to ask Elon to tell you a little bit about it and some of the
things that we found, which are shocking. Billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse, and I think it is very important, and that is
one of the reasons I got elected.
I said, we are going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick and that corrupt and it seems hard to believe that judges want to try
and stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars' worth, much more than that in just a short period
of time.
We want to weed out the corruption, and it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don't want you to do that.
So, maybe we have to look at the judges, because that's very serious. I think it is a very serious violation.
I will ask Elon Musk to say a few words and we will take some questions.
Elon, go ahead.
MUSK: Sure, so at a high level, you say what is the goal of DOGE or -- and I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy.
This may seem like well, are we in a democracy? Well, if you don't have a feedback loop, okay, we have to if you -- it is all right.
Gravitas can be difficult sometimes.
If there is not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge and
then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form
of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.
[16:20:17]
So it is incredibly important that we close that feedback loop. We fix that feedback loop, and that the public, the public's elected representatives,
the president, the House and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.
This is not to say that there aren't some good -- there are good people who are in the federal bureaucracy, but you can't have an autonomous federal
bureaucracy. You have to have one that is responsive to the people, that's the whole point of a democracy.
And so -- and if you looked at the -- if you look at the founders today and said, what do you think of the way things have turned out? Well, we have
this unelected, fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has in a lot of ways, currently more power than any
elected representative.
And this is a -- this is not something that people want and it is not -- it does not match the will of the people. So it is just something we've got to
fix and we've also got to address the deficit.
So we've got a $2 trillion deficit, and if we don't do something about this deficit, the country is going bankrupt. I mean, it is really astounding
that the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we've got a lot of -- we spend
a lot of money on Defense.
And if that just keeps going, we are essentially going to bankrupt the country.
So what I really want to say is like, it is not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses, it is essential. It is essential for America to
remain solvent as a country and it is essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens, and not simply be
servicing vast amounts of debt.
TRUMP: And also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found, some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with
about $30 million.
MUSK: Right.
TRUMP: Et cetera.
MUSK: Well, we are -- we do find it sort of rather odd that, you know, there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a
salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,
which is, you know, what happened at USAID. We are just curious as to where it came from.
Maybe they are very good at investing, in which case we should take their investment advice, perhaps, but just there seems to be mysteriously, they
get wealthier. We don't know why. Where does it come from?
And I think the reality is that they are getting wealthier at taxpayer expense. That's the honest truth of it.
So, you know, we are looking at, say -- well we would just -- if you look at say Treasury, for example, basic controls that should be in place that
are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes
the payment and that if a payment is on the do-not-pay list, that you don't actually pay it. None of those things are true currently.
So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It is like just a massive number of blank
checks just flying out the building. So you can't reconcile blank checks.
You've got a comment fields that are also blank. So we don't know why the payment was made and then we've got this truly absurd, a do-not-pay list,
which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a do-not-pay list.
And this, we are talking about terrorist organizations. We are talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not
match any congressional appropriation can take up to a year to get on the list, and even once on the list, the list is not used. It is mind blowing.
So what we are talking about here -- we are really just talking about adding commonsense controls that should be present that haven't been
present.
So you say like, well, how could such a thing arise? That seems crazy, when you understand that really everything is geared towards complaint
minimization, so then you understand the motivations.
So if people receive money, they don't complain, obviously. But if people don't receive money, they do complain.
And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest, so then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that's why everything just --
they approve all the payments at Treasury, because if you approve all the payments, you don't get complaints.
But now, we are saying that, no, actually, we are all going to complain. If money is spent badly, if your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible
and frugal manner, then that's not okay.
[16:25:17]
Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on the things that matter to the people. I mean, these things like -- it is just common sense. It is not --
it is not draconian or radical, I think. It is really just saying, let's look at each of these expenditures and say, is this actually in the best
interest of the people? And if it is, its approved. If it is not, we should think about it.
So, you know, there are crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 150 years old. Now,
do you know anyone who is 150? I don't. Okay. They should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. They're missing out.
So, you know, that's a case where, like, I think they're probably dead. It is my guess. Or they should be very famous, one of the two.
And then there are a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there is no identifying information, like, why is there no identifying information?
Obviously, you want to make sure that people who deserve to receive Social Security do receive it and that they receive it quickly and accurately.
I will tell you another crazy thing. So, you know, one of the things is like we are trying to sort of right-size the federal bureaucracy, just make
sure that there is -- obviously, there needs to be a lot of people working for the federal government, but not as many as currently.
So we are saying, well, okay, well, let's -- if people can retire, you know, with full benefits and everything, that that would be good. They can
retire, get their retirement payments and everything.
And then we were told this is actually, I think, a great anecdote because we were told that the most number of people that could retire, possibly in
a month is 10,000. We are like, well, why? Why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual, on paper. It is manually calculated.
They're written down on a piece of paper.
Then it goes down a mine and I am like, what do you mean a mine? Like, yes, there is a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.
That, and you look a picture of this mine, we will post some pictures afterwards.
And this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955. So it looks like -- it is like a time warp, and then the speed, the
limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government.
And the elevator breaks down, sometimes and then you can't -- nobody can retire. Doesn't that sound crazy? There is like a thousand people that work
on this. So I think if we can take those people and say, like, you know what, instead of working in a mine shaft carrying manila envelopes to, you
know, boxes in a mine shaft, you could do practically anything else and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful
way.
So anyway, so I think, you know, that's an example, like at a high level, if you say like, how do we increase prosperity? It is, we get people to do
to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles.
And so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there is a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's
the actual goal.
Everyone is very quiet, by the way.
Are you this quiet?
REPORTER: Your detractors, Mr. Musk.
MUSK: What?
REPORTER: Including a lot of Democrats.
MUSK: I have detractors?
REPORTER: You do, sir.
MUSK: I don't believe it.
REPORTER: Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a nontransparent way. What's your response to that
criticism?
MUSK: Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted -- you know, we have a majority of the public vote
voting for president trump. We won the House. We won the Senate.
The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The president spoke about that at
every rally. The people voted for major government reform and that's what people are going to get. They are going to get what they voted for.
And a lot of times, you know, people that don't get what they voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for and that
is what democracy is all about.
REPORTER: Mr. Musk, the White house says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean
that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and
transparency?
MUSK: Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions -- we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the
DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there has been -- I don't know of a case where an organization
has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.
[16:30:10]
And so, you know, the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic. They're not -- you know, what I mentioned, for example,
about Treasury, just making sure that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that
organizations on the do not pay list, which are -- takes a lot to get there.
They actually are not paid, which currently they are paid. These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible
checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So it's got nothing to do with like, say, a contract for some
company of mine at all.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in
federal contracts, when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the president I know has directed you to look into.
MUSK: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any
transparency for the American people?
MUSK: Well, all of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything, you say like, wait a second, hey, you know, that seems like maybe that's,
you know, there's a conflict there. It's not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately. You know?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Including you yourself.
MUSK: Yes. But what transparency is what builds trust, not simply somebody asserting trust. It's not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but
transparency. So you can see everything that's going on and you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally
obvious.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And if we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area, if we thought there
was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest, and we watched that also. He's big businessman. He's a successful guy. That's why we want him
doing this. We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this.
Now, one thing also that Elon hasn't really mentioned are the groups of people that are getting some of these payments. They're ridiculous. And
we're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse. I would say those two words, as opposed to the third word
that I usually use. But in this case, fraud and abuse. It's abusive because most of these things are virtually made-up or certainly money shouldn't be
sent to him.
And you know what I'm talking about. It's crazy. So -- but we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found. And now a
judge, who's an activist judge wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why? Why would they want to do that? I campaigned on this. I campaigned on
the fact that I said government is corrupt and it is very corrupt. It's very, very -- it's also foolish.
As an example, a man has a contract for three months and the contract ends, but they keep paying him for the next 20 years, you know, because nobody
ends a contract. You got a lot of that. You have a contract that's a three- month contract. Now, normally if you're in a small -- in all fairness, it's the size of this thing is so big. But if you have a contract and you're in
a regular business, you end the contract in three months. You know, it's a consultant.
Here's a contract for three months. But it goes on for 20 years, and the guy doesn't say that he got money for 20 years. You know, they don't say
it. They just keep getting checks month after month. And you have various things like that. And even much worse than that, actually much worse. And I
guess you call that incompetence maybe.
MUSK: Yes.
TRUMP: It could be corruption. It could be deals made on both sides. You know, where the guy gets the money, he kicks -- I think he has a lot of
kickback here. I see a lot of kickback here.
MUSK: Theres a lot of kickbacks.
TRUMP: Tremendous kickback, because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts. So he has to get a kickback. So, that's what I got
elected for. That and borders and military and a lot of things. But this is a big part of it, and I hope that the court system is going to allow us to
do what we have to do. We got elected to, among other things, find all of this fraud, abuse, all of this horrible stuff going on.
And we've already found billions of dollars, not like a little bit. Billions, many billions of dollars. And when you get down to it, it's going
to be probably close to $1 trillion. It could be close to $1 trillion that we're going to find. That will have quite an impact on the budget. And
you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge, and he has certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings
and he wants us to stop looking.
How do you stop looking? I mean, we've already found it. We have a case in New York where a hotel has paid $59 million, $59 million because it's
housing migrants, illegal migrants, all illegal, I believe.
[16:35:11]
MUSK: And they were being paid twice the normal room rate at 100 percent occupancy.
TRUMP: Unbelievable.
MUSK: So it's a racket.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Musk, can I ask you a question?
MUSK: Well, if I may sort of just going over the president's comments. At a high level, you say, well, how do -- what are the two ingredients that are
really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half, from $2 trillion to $1 trillion? And it's really two things. Competence and caring.
And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half. And I fully expect to be scrutinized and get, you know, a daily
proctology exam basically.
I sort of just camp out there. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop. And -- but with the support of the
president, we can cut the budget deficit in half from $2 trillion to $1 trillion. And then with deregulation, because there's a lot of sort of
regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good, we need to free the builders of America to build. And if we do that, that means I think we
can get the economic growth to be maybe 3 percent or 4 percent, maybe 5 percent.
And that means if you can get $1 trillion of economic growth and you can cut the budget deficit by a trillion between now and next year, there is no
inflation, there's no inflation in '26. And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So everyone's
mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills and their student debt, the monthly payments drop. That's a fantastic scenario for the
average American.
I mean, imagine they going down the grocery aisle and the prices from one year to the next are the same? And their, you know, their mortgage or their
debt payments dropped? How great is that for the average American? That's we're in here for.
TRUMP: We had no idea -- we had no idea we were going to find this much. And it's open. It's not like complicated. It's simple stuff.
MUSK: It's not that complicated. It's a lot of work. Yes.
TRUMP: It's like we can't believe it. A lot of work, a lot of smart people involved. Very, very smart people. But it's -- you're talking about
anywhere, maybe $500 billion. It's crazy the kind of numbers you're talking about.
MUSK: It is really crazy.
TRUMP: You know, normally when you're looking at something, you'll find -- you're looking for one out of 100. Here, you're almost reversing it. You
look for one. That's good. And you can look at the title and you say, why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? And the public gets it, you know,
the public gets it. You've seen the polls. The public is saying, why are we paying all this money? This is for years this has gone on.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Musk and President Trump --
TRUMP: Yes, go ahead please. Go ahead.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Senator Rand Paul today said that DOGE cuts will ultimately need a vote in Congress. Do you agree with that? Is that the
plan?
TRUMP: I really don't know. I know this. We're finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse,
it's fine with me. I think we'll get the vote, although there'll be some people that wouldn't vote. And how could a judge want to hold us back from
finding all of this fraud and finding all of this incompetence? Why would that happen? Why would even Congress want to do that now?
Now Congress, if we do need a vote, I think we'd get a very easy vote because we have a track record now. We've already found billions of dollars
of abuse, incompetence and corruption. A lot of corruption.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you comply?
TRUMP: Well, I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal it. But then what he's done is he slowed down the momentum and it gives crooked
people more time to cover up the books. You know, if a persons crooked and they get caught, other people see that and all of a sudden it becomes
harder later on. So yes, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them, and we'll appeal.
But appeals take a long time, and I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show them, here's a corrupt situation, we have a check to
be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want us to send this corrupt check to a person, or do you want us not to give it and give it back to the
taxpayer? I would hope a judge would say, don't send it. Give it back to the taxpayer.
MUSK: Yes. If I can add to that, what we're finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So I think we can all agree that if
there's going to be fraud, it should at least go to Americans. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in the United States and taking
advantage of the federal government, especially in the entitlement programs, are actually foreign fraud rings. They're operating in other
countries and actually exporting money to other countries. We should stop that. And this is big, big numbers. Talk about $100 billion to $200 billion
a year. Serious money.
[16:40:04]
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Musk, you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza but after
fact check this it apparently Gaza and Mozambique and the program was to protect them against HIV. So can you correct the statements? It wasn't sent
to Hamas, actually it was sent to Mozambique which makes sense why condoms was sent there.
MUSK: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you're saying?
MUSK: Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody is going to bat a thousand. I mean, any,
you know, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. So, you know, if the I'm not sure we should be sending $50
million worth of condoms to anywhere frankly. I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about.
And that is really an enormous number of condoms when you think about it. But, you know, if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like, OK,
that's not as bad. But still, you know, why are we doing that?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Can you talk a little bit about how closely you're working with agency heads as you're directing these cuts? Do they have the
-- how much input do agency heads have when you're making these decisions?
MUSK: Yes, we work closely with the agency heads. Yes. So there is -- there are sort of checks in place. So it's not us just going in and doing things
willy nilly. It's in partnership with the agency heads. And I check previously with the president to make sure that, you know, this is what the
president wants to have happen. So, you know, we talk almost every day and I, you know, I double check things to make sure is this something, Mr.
President, you want us to do this, well, then we'll do it.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: USAID has been one of your main targets. Are you concerned at all that some of the cuts or that shutting that agency
altogether may lead to diseases or other bigger problems starting in other countries that then come to the United States?
MUSK: Yes, so that's an interesting example. So that's something where we work closely with the State Department and Secretary Rubio. And we have,
for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention in.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)
MUSK: Yes, correct. And we are moving fast. So we all make mistakes, but we also fix the mistakes very quickly.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you think that's a worthy cause, USAID?
MUSK: I think that there are some worthy things. But overall, if you say what is the bang for the buck? I would say it was not very good. And there
was far too much of what USAID was doing was influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand the light of day.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I just have a follow up to the Pentagon contracts. If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon,
and the president is directing you to look into the Department of Defense, is that a conflict of interest?
MUSK: Yes, because we definitely need to do it -- are going to do at the president's request.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Does that present a conflict of interest for you?
MUSK: No, because you'd have to look at the individual contract and say, first of all, I'm not the one, you know, filing the contract. It's people
at SpaceX or somebody that will be bidding for the contract. And I'd like to say, if you see any contract where it was awarded to SpaceX and it
wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The president said the other day that you might look at treasuries. Could you explain that a little bit? What kind of fraud or -
- and that question goes to both of you. What kind of fraud are you expecting to see or do you see right now in U.S. treasuries?
MUSK: Yes, I think you mean the Treasury Department as opposed to treasury bills or --
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You also referenced treasuries on Air Force One the other night.
TRUMP: Go ahead.
MUSK: Well, the -- as I mentioned earlier, really the first order of business is to make sure we're actually collecting -- sorry for this.
Although my son might enjoy this, but he's sticking his fingers in my ears and stuff. So it's a bit hard to hear sometimes. Hey, stop that. So, no,
the stuff we're doing with the Treasury Department is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't exist already.
So, for example, like I mentioned, just making sure that when a payment goes out, it has to have the payment categorization code. It's like what
type of payment is this? You can't just leave the field blank. Currently many payments, the field is left blank. And you have to describe what's the
payment for some basic rationalization. That also is left blank. So this is why, you know, the Pentagon, when is the last time the Pentagon passed an
audit?
I mean, a decade ago? Maybe, or ever really? And we want to -- just in order to actually pass audits, you have to have financial information that
allows you to trace the payments. So, you know, and once in a while, the Treasury has to, it has to pause payments if it thinks the payment is going
to a fraudulent organization like if a company or an organization is on a do not pay list, we should not pay it.
[16:45:12]
I'm sure you would agree. Like, if it's quite hard to get on that payment, then do not pay list. It means that this is someone that is like dead
people, terrorists, known fraudsters, that kind of thing. We should not pay them. But currently we do, which is crazy. We should stop that.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: And by the way, hundreds, thousands of transactions like that. You know, we have a big team. And for the sake of the country, I hope that the
person that's in charge and the other people that report to me that are in charge are allowed to do the right thing, namely, make sure everything's
honest, legitimate and competent. But we're looking at just, when you look at USAID, that was -- that's one. We're going to look at the military.
We're going to look at education. They're much bigger areas.
But the USAID is really corrupt. I'll tell you, it's corrupt. It's incompetent and it's really corrupt. And I can't imagine a judge saying,
well, it may be corrupt, but you don't have the right. You got elected to look over the country and to, as we say, make America great again. But you
don't have the right to go and look and see whether or not things are right that they're paying or that things are honest that they're paying.
And nobody can even believe there's other people, law professors, they've been saying, you can't -- how can you take that person's right away? You're
supposed to be running the country, but we're not allowed to look at who they're paying it to and what they're paying? We have massive amounts of
fraud that we caught. I think we probably caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in, what, two weeks?
MUSK: Yes.
TRUMP: And it's going to go to numbers that you're not going to believe. And much, as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have
to catch it. And the only way we're going to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's
pretty sad for our country. I don't understand how it could even work.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Sir, can you personally guarantee that --
TRUMP: Which one?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The buyout program, the offer to operative federal workers. Can you personally guarantee that the workers who opt in to resign
now will be paid through September?
TRUMP: Well, they'll get their money, but they're getting a good deal. They're getting a big buyout. And what we're trying to do is reduce
government. We have too many people. We have office space. It's occupied by 4 percent. Nobody is showing up to work because they were told not to. And
then Biden gave them a five-year pass. Some of them, 48,000 of them, gave them a five-year pass that for five years you don't have to show up to
work.
And let me tell you, this is largely, much of this stuff is because of Biden. It's his fault that he allowed this country, what he did on our
border. What he did on our border is almost not as bad as what he did with all of these contracts that have come out. It's a very sad day when we look
at it. I can't even believe it. But many contracts just extend and they just keep extending and there was nobody there to correct it. And that
cannot be.
I can't imagine that could be held up by the court. Any court that would say that the president or his representatives, like secretary of the
Treasury, secretary of State, whatever, doesn't have the right to go over their books and make sure everything is honest, I mean, how can you have a
country? You can't have anything that way. You can't have a business that way. You can't have a country that way.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you. Thank you, press. Thank you, press.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on guys.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Vogel will be at the White House tonight at about 10:00. If you want to come over, you can say hello to him. All right?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. President, do you give anything in return?
TRUMP: Not much. No. They were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia actually. I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can
end that war and millions of people can stop being killed. They've lost millions of people. They lost, in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million
soldiers in a short period of time. We got to stop that war. And I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of death. We're losing all those
soldiers, and they're not American soldiers. They're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. But you're probably talking about a million and a half, I think.
I think we got to bring that one to an end. OK? Thank you. Thank you very much.
(CROSSTALK)
QUEST: Well, that was extraordinary one way or another. It's the first time, at least that I can recall where we've seen President Trump and Elon
Musk both together in the Oval Office, answering questions in such a way. It's the first time that we've heard the justifications from Elon Musk,
that federal government special employee, head of the DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, giving the rationale, giving details of the alleged
fraud and waste and corruption that he says has been found at USAID and U.S. Treasury and all the various other departments.
[16:50:22]
And also the first time in some time that we've heard President Trump acknowledge that the court decisions are coming against him and saying he
will abide by them.
Joan Biskupic is with us, our senior Supreme Court correspondent.
Let's take this closely, Joan. First of all, he admitted that he, the president admitted that he will abide by court decisions. He said I always
have. I always will. We will appeal. That is a relief in many quarters because the fear had been that he would just ignore the various judges.
JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: You know, that's right, Richard, and it's good to see you and it's good to see you especially after
that very fascinating pairing of Musk and President Trump on these issues. You're exactly right. He used those words, abide by those rulings. But he
also complained about judges slowing his momentum. So, you know, we've got him on record there.
And I think that there will still be some concern, some anxiety among people who are fearing some sort of constitutional breakdown just because
of what JD Vance has said, what President Trump has said in the past, and what Elon Musk himself has said, criticizing judges who've, again, you
know, just paused some of these executive orders where he said, you know, that judge is corrupt, needs to be impeached.
So there's plenty of rhetoric out there. But you're exactly right, at least for now, President Donald Trump is saying he will abide by federal court
rulings.
QUEST: As I watched Mr. Musk speaking, there were moments when I wanted -- he's talking about democracy. There's moments when I wanted to sort of
shout at the television, yes, but you've not been confirmed with anything and you've not been elected by anyone. Your power comes purely and simply
from the man sitting in front of you.
Now that is the system, I get that, but this is something we've never seen before. Is it heading towards a constitutional crisis?
BISKUPIC: Well, I'll tell you, that is something we haven't seen before. And I'll tell you what else we haven't seen before. It's not just that we
have, you know, Elon Musk standing up, you know, over Donald Trump, at least visually in those moments, right, Richard? But then also the actions
he's taken in many ways flout federal law. And that's the -- that's why so many judges have intervened here.
They haven't said these things are definitely unconstitutional, but they've said, wait a minute, you have to come to us with the justification. Elon
Musk and Donald Trump cannot present their legal justifications just in some news conference there. They actually have to make their case in legal
filings, and they're only at the start of that.
As you know, Richard, it's a three tier federal system that we have here. And right now, all the action is at the lowest tier with the federal
district court judges, you know, many of whom have said, wait, wait, make your case first, and we're going to try to preserve the status quo. We're
not going to let you get rid of all these federal workers. We're not going to let you freeze federal funds across the board in the many ways that
President Trump and Elon Musk want.
QUEST: Right.
BISKUPIC: You need to justify it, and it will go up on appeals. Now, the other thing we heard Donald Trump say in addition to saying he would abide
by court orders is that he will -- that he's acknowledging that there is an appeals process and that is something that will probably give at least some
people who are -- the Republicans a little bit of comfort. I'm not sure about some of Donald Trump's critics, though.
QUEST: Right. All right. You can plead the Fifth on this one because it's really asking for a view or a thought. Do you think the Supremes are
dreading the way this is going to end up on their desk in some shape, form or description? Major constitutional issues? Or are they just going to say,
this is our job, we'll get on with it?
BISKUPIC: I think you're going to have a twofold response. I do think there's a lot of trepidation up there. Look, this, you know, they have a
full agenda of other legal issues that they're trying to solve right now. And they can see these cases march toward them, and they can see how
politically charged they are. So Chief Justice John Roberts is not pleased that they're all coming toward him, especially when, as you know, Richard,
he, you know, has had a bumpy time with his own court in terms of, you know, controlling the majority.
[16:55:09]
But there's also the idea that, you know, they are the final arbiter of the law, and they take that seriously. So even though they have not appreciated
getting entangled in the business of Donald Trump and accelerating the politics and having more scrutiny on their nine-member bench, they know
that they are -- they have the last word, and I'm sure they hope that Donald Trump believes they have the last word.
And I think in the end, Richard, you're going to see a lot of mixed results from the Supreme Court. There are some things that Donald Trump has done
that could probably be upheld by this Supreme Court, but there are probably many others that a majority of the Supreme Court wouldn't be ready to
uphold -- Richard.
QUEST: Gosh, Joan, I'm so glad you were with us for tonight. Perfect person for the perfect story. Thank you very much. We'll talk more. Thank you.
Grateful.
BISKUPIC: Thank you.
QUEST: Now we will take a "Profitable Moment" after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
QUEST: Tonight's "Profitable Moment." The world's most powerful man, the world's richest man, and one of his children sitting on his shoulders,
playing with his -- sticking his finger in his ear. And that was the scenario with which we heard for the first time tonight about how this DOGE
and how government efficiency is being run.
There'll be many more occasions of this sort of thing, but frankly, I don't think we'll ever see anything quite like that. But then I may live to
regret saying those words before I'm finished. That was an extraordinary news conference, and we're pleased to bring it to you.
And that is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS for this Tuesday night. I'm Richard Quest in Dubai. Whatever you're up to in the hours ahead, I hope it's profitable.
I'll see you tomorrow.
JAKE TAPPER, Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.
In this hour it is a battle between the billionaires, and now it's getting personal. What is the beef between first buddy Elon Musk and Sam Altman,
the head of the company behind ChatGPT?
Well, it goes back further than you may think and it may be all about the Benjamins. Plus, this is the most severe flu season in the United States in
at least 15 years. Where is it most active? What's your family's risk?
END
