Transcript of Trump weighs more picks for incoming cabinet

As President-elect Trump prepares to name more people to his administration, perhaps including some of the names that we'll show you, there is new reporting tonight on some of the moves he's already making, as well as talks that some of the government are having about worst-case scenarios involving him as Commander-in-Chief. Defense officials tell us that informal discussions are underway at the Pentagon about how the Department might respond if the new President orders active duty troops onto US streets or fires large numbers of non-political staffers. That news coming as we learned that when the President-elect spoke by phone with Ukraine's President on Wednesday, Elon Musk joined the call. Ukraine's military, you'll remember, relies on Musk's Starlink communication satellite. It has been critical in the fight there. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Musk had also been in regular contact with Vladimir Putin since 2022. Both he and the President-Elect have talked publicly about Ukraine making concessions to end the war with Mr. Trump, arguing recently that Ukraine should have made a deal with Moscow even before Russian troops invaded.

Any deal, even the worst deal, would have been better than what we have right now. If they made a bad deal, it would have been much better, and it didn't need to happen. Those buildings are down, those cities are gone. They're gone. We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky.

According to Axios's Barack ravied, who broke the story, Trump told Zelensky he would support Ukraine but did not go into details on policy. Ravied reports, according to sources, that Ukraine's President came away from the call, quote, somewhat reassured by what he heard from the President-elect. Now, between that, the Pentagon reporting the behind-the-scenes shocking for new positions, the administration. There's a lot to get to tonight. With us is Kaitlyn Collins, anchor of the Source at the top of the next hour. She is just back from Mar-a-Lago. How much do you think you read into the fact that Elon Musk was on the phone call with Zelensky?

I think for people who have been covering Trump in this campaign over the last few months, Anderson, it's not surprising because Trump has become quite enamored with Elon Musk and often wants to keep him involved in the conversations and discussions he's been having. He was pretty heavily involved these last few weeks of the campaign, certainly in Pennsylvania. I think having him on the call with Zelensky just speaks to Elon Musk's influence and what that could look like in a second Trump term. Obviously, he has stake in the game here since Ukraine is using his Starlink satellite communications service, which I should note, that's a contract with the Pentagon that expires at the end of next month. We'll see what that looks like after that. But obviously, he has a lot of stake in this game. Just for his presence to be on that call is notable because it's on with a world leader and the president-elect and then the world's richest man who has major defense contracts, but it also just speaks to how much influence Elon Musk has right now in Trump's orbit.

What is the jockeying for position like right now in this transitional period at Mar-a-Lago?

It's remarkable because One, it's moving very quickly. That is what almost every single person I've spoken to about this, about just what's the current state of the jockeying. It changes sometimes by the hour, who's up and who's down as Trump is viewing who to put in these positions. Something he's taking really seriously, I should note this time around. He says that his staffing choices in his first term were some of his biggest mistakes that he ever made, citing people like Bill Barr, the attorney general. He's taking it very seriously. Because of that, people know that in order to influence Trump, You often need to be right in front of him, either on the phone with him or in front of him having these conversations. There is a lot of jockeying happening behind the scenes. A lot of alliances are being formed between people who are trying to say, If we stick together, we can kill this other person off for this job. Often, when Trump makes these calls, it depends on the person who has the biggest influence on him when it comes to that.

Are people literally at Mar-a-Lago? Yes. They're hoping to get FaceTime?

No, they're all over Palm Beach, Anderson. I mean, it's remarkable. I spent a lot of time there when Trump was President, covering him. It's everywhere you go, you see potential Trump cabinet members or West Wing officials hanging out at certain hotels or coffee shops or restaurants because a lot of them book flights after Tuesday Night's Wind because they knew how important it was to be down there. It's hard to get Trump on the phone right now, so a lot of them are just showing up and trying to get in front of him.

As we mentioned, CNN is reporting that Pentagon officials have been holding informal discussions about how the Defense Department would respond if President Trump issued orders to deploy active duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, which are obviously possibilities that came up on the campaign trail. What is your sense of how much he wants, how likely any of that might be?

I think it's very likely. I think that when it comes to... The way they talk about it is these career employees who are working at federal agencies. When you talk to a lot of those people, they're not majorly political, but they're people who have worked there for a long time. There are thousands kinds of positions. They have said, frankly, they don't know how certain facets of the Pentagon are going to work if those people just disappear in two weeks from now. I think that's a question of how much of the hollowing out they actually do, that Trump and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramiswami have promised to do when it comes to the federal government. But at the DOD, specifically, one thing I'm keeping an eye on is who Trump is going to pick as his defense secretary, because he was very frustrated with several of the ones that he picked the last time he was in office. He took at the end of Mark Esper's term as the defense secretary. He was calling him Mark Jesper, saying that he just says yes to everything and ridiculing him almost, not even almost, just outright in public.

He certainly wants someone that he has more cohesion with, as Trump people would put it, essentially someone who does more of what he wants and less pushing back at the Pentagon.

All right, Kaitlyn, we'll see you at the top of the nine o'clock hour. One of Kaitlyn's guests is going to be former Trump National Security Advisor, John Bolton. Join us now seeing the political commentator, as I know, Navarro, Scott Jennings, and Van Jones, also journalist Gretchen Carlson, co founder of Lift Our Voices. Scott, Elon Musk, obviously critical in the campaign. What do you make of him joining this call? Apparently, according to Barack Ravit, he was also on a call with the leader of Turkey.

It doesn't surprise me at all, actually. Of course, Donald Trump can put anyone on the phone that he wants. I assume a lot of these calls are congratulatory in nature. As further more policy-driven calls take place, I would expect there to be other policy and administration officials or designated officials on the calls. But at some juncture, Trump won, and he's got a cadre of advisors that's obviously going to include Elon Musk. And so I don't think anybody should be surprised by this or alarmed by it either way. Anna?

I think it's a little weird, right? I mean, Elon Musk seems to be everywhere at all times. He's like Secretary of everything, and at the same time, he's like first lady. The other day, I saw this picture of him. It was a picture of Trump with his entire family, except Melania. But Elon Musk was there. Now you hear about this. There's obviously also conflicts of interest. This is somebody who has contracts with the Department of Defense. This is somebody who has Starlink. That's a big part of what's going on in Ukraine. I find that a little weird, but as Scott said, they won. He gets to do whatever he wants. And if he wants Elon everywhere all the time, that's what's going to happen.

I mean, it is. It's unusual, but not surprising, I I think Elon Musk will go down as the single most important and influential person in the Trump administration.

He is in charge now of the information flow with X or misinformation, sometimes. He is in charge, as we saw, with what's going on in Ukraine. He's basically in charge of the entire communication system over there, so it lives and dies with him. Apparently, President Trump, elect, is going to put him in charge of slashing costs and getting into the federal bureaucracy and trying to figure out what departments and people to cut. I mean, he's basically going to be in charge and influencing every aspect of the government. I think that he will be the most influential advisor, nonpaid, that Trump will have.

It's also interesting, Dan, because, again, there's people who have to go through Senate confirmation. There's people who have to submit all their background information. It seems like there's going to be a number of people just with a portfolio, an open portfolio video without any really over- You're so old-fashioned, Anderson.

I'm not saying...

It's like a bedding of people to make sure they don't have conflicts of interest or to make sure they don't have foreign governments with dirt on them.

But that's old fashioned. You win, you do what you want. That's the new way. The reality is we're in a new... People are trying to calm you down. They'll say, This is no big deal. This is all normal. This is not normal. This is totally weird. This is bizarre. The privatization of certain parts of American life, including our space program, has real upsides because Elon Musk has done an incredible job with his space program. The problem is he also has a conflict of interest with having this many government contracts. Ordinarily, you wouldn't want anybody with those conflicts of interest helping to make policy. But we don't care anymore, apparently. But there are downsides to this new way. Also, Elon Musk has a disproportionate amount of power and leverage over Ukraine anyway. Ukraine wanted to go much more hard against Russia. Elon basically just pulled the plug and said, You cannot go hard against Russia. So you already have a private citizen dictating the terms of a war for a whole sovereign nation sitting next to the President of the United States on a phone call. This is all weird. It might work out great. It might work out perfectly.

But let's not pretend this is normal. This is all really weird stuff.