morning. >> i wanted to find somebody smarter than him. i searched all over. i just couldn't do it. >> a budding buddy bromance. president trump's first joint interview of his second term, not with his vice president, but first buddy, elon musk. plus. >> we weren't invited. well, you've been there for three years. you should have ended it three years. you should have never started it. >> that's trump speaking to ukraine, which was invaded by russia. trump blaming ukraine for the full scale invasion of their own country. and later. >> you could see kind of row by row or area by area. people were checking one another out. >> grateful to be alive. passengers recount the moment boy, a scary one. their plane flipped upside

new york officials weighing removing eric adams from his post as a judge prepares to consider a motion to dismiss his corruption charges. >> at. >> 6 a.m. here on the east coast live. look at the best city in the world my hometown, new york city. good morning everyone. i'm jim sciutto in again for kasie hunt. great to have you with us. donald trump and elon musk are signaling they are on the same page. and the department of government efficiency doge continues to slash and burn the federal workforce and federal agencies. although officially, the white house says musk is a senior advisor to the president, not the administrator of doge. president trump does not seem too concerned about what what musk's title is. >> elon is, to me, a patriot. so, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him

a consultant, you could call him whatever you want. but he's a patriot. >> another informal title musk has given himself tech support for the president. the two sitting down for a joint interview on fox showing very little daylight between one another as they took turns heaping praise on each other. >> the president i want to be clear about that. i don't care about that. i know i love the i love the president. i think i think president trump is a good man. >> elon called me. he said, you know, they're trying to drive us apart. i said, absolutely, you know, i wanted to find somebody smarter than him. i searched all over. i just couldn't do it. i couldn't i. >> really tried hard. >> i couldn't find anyone smarter. right. >> the interview comes as the white house is issuing a new executive order aimed at bringing once independent government agencies firmly under white house control. the new order puts more political control over agencies such as the fcc, securities and exchange commission, meaning that any draft regulation will now be put

under white house review. musk says his team is making sure the flurry of executive orders signed by the president are getting followed. >> one of the biggest functions of the doge team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out, and this is i want to point out, this is a very important thing because the president is the elected representative of the people, so is representing the will of the people. >> he would take that executive order that i signed, and he would have those people go to whatever agency it was. when are you doing it? get it done, get it done. and some guy that maybe didn't want to do it all of a sudden he's signing. >> joining me now to speak about all this, jonah goldberg, cnn political commentator, co-founder of the dispatch, lula garcia navarro, cnn contributor, journalist for the new york times karen finney, cnn political commentator, senior adviser to hillary clinton's campaign, and kristen soltis anderson, cnn political commentator, republican

strategist and pollster. good to have you all here. lots to talk about this morning. karen, i want to ask you what the politics are. where are the politics on this? because elon musk is, of course, a billionaire with an enormous amount of business himself before this government. certainly potential for conflict of interest here. uh, in terms of him leading these cuts of key government agencies, do trump and he have the politics right? >> i think in terms of cutting agencies, you will always see people say in general, government needs to be shaken up. we need to cut spending. they will say that things like foreign aid are top of the list that they want to cut. but when the rubber meets the road, that's when the politics become different. and i think if right now what elon musk is doing is shaking up washington, making people in this town agitated, i don't think that hurts him. i think, frankly, that is what voters are looking for. it's when the effects of that begin to bleed outside this town and affect things that hit people in their real lives. and the risk to trump is that there's going

to be a bit of, you break it, you bought it to all of this, that if elon musk is not perceived as tinkering with and improving and making more efficient, but rather going in with a sledgehammer, then all of a sudden when somebody's check arrives late, all of a sudden when that service someone relies upon isn't there right away, or they have trouble accessing it. when a plane falls out of the sky, you can no longer blame someone else for something like that. and even something like this plane crash in canada that truly has absolutely nothing to do with the united states, the faa, donald trump, what have you. the political risk is that people like lulu are able to try to blame things like this on trump more, because he's come in with a sledgehammer. it creates a more politically vulnerable situation. >> by the way, i wasn't blaming. i know, you know, what i'm saying is i've heard this over and over again. i mean, people casually are saying, oh, i don't want to fly any more because i'm worried about the cuts to the faa. this bleeds out actually to people and their real lives. and this is the issue that i think is coming up more and more. you know, one thing is destroying twitter.

ultimately twitter disappears. is that going to really upset the american people? i don't think so. but if you start affecting people and our nuclear arsenal, if you start affecting how the fbi is run and criminals getting prosecuted, if you start cutting things that actually affect americans lives, how we look at bird flu, i mean, there's been discussions about how bird flu has been affected and how the monitoring part of that monitoring. >> department of energy example is a good example, because i think folks have always misunderstood. a big portion of the doj's job is to monitor nuclear weapons systems, and it appears that the doge folks did not know that either, because they fired the folks overseeing those systems, and then they had to bring them back. >> and there have been a couple of instances like that. there was an instance yesterday, there were some back and forth about some social security administration data that that some were saying, well, they don't understand the code. they didn't know what they were looking at. but here's the other place where i think the politics become, you know, to

what kristen was saying about the rubber meets the road, then those folks are calling their members offices. and those folks, members of congress, they both have to figure out this budget debacle. right. and it's already a mess between republicans in the house and senate. but they're accountable to the people in a year and a half in the midterm elections. and so i think it also creates a wedge where you have members, where their constituents are not happy, potentially with certain cuts, but they're being told, well, if you don't do what we want, guess who? elon musk has a pac that's going to primary. i think when we talk about elon musk we can never forget he spent $260 million to help the president get elected. he's spending millions of dollars on a very important judges race in wisconsin. and he has a pac, and he has said anybody who doesn't support the president and. >> don't don't understand the influence of that on skeptical republican senators in terms of their confirmation votes, the threat that if you don't get on board with rfk, et cetera., i will i will destroy you.

>> i mean, i don't disagree with anything people have said, but i think there's another front in the politics that's not getting a lot of attention. um, elon musk is just making this stuff up as he goes along. right? and it's sort of it's a little someone was saying, comparing it to the search for wmd in iraq. right? he's constantly looking for stuff and then declaring he's found something. and it turns out he didn't find what he's declared. >> he found the social security example that claimed that millions of people who are 150 years old, which was a misreading of the data, which, by the way, in the current disinformation environment that we occupy, is repeated as fact, not just by him, but as the going back to like the gaza condoms example. >> so my point is, is that right now, anybody who knows anything about public policy can see where he's getting stuff wrong. and eventually that will become manifest outside, sort of to kristen's point about this town. eventually they're going to start doing stuff that, like normal people will realize is just wrong. and it will it will

take the veneer of expertise off of all this. at the same time, there is a serious rift on the maga, right? steve bannon, who i am not a fan of. um, uh, wants a new deal style big welfare state kind of government. he's anti-libertarian he's he's sort of nativist. and he sees musk as basically a globalist libertarian. and those two things are hard to reconcile. and every day bannon is saying more and more, this guy is a is a fraud and all that kind of stuff. those tensions are eventually going to play out within trump's coalition. >> let me quote steve. >> i disagree. >> just to a point. i'm going to quote steve bannon on elon musk. musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. he wants to impose his freak experiments and play act of god without any respect for the country's history, values, or traditions. that's not a small public disagreement. >> i just don't think bannon has the influence on this white house. i mean, what we just saw, there were, um, is president trump and his billionaire backer. it was very touching. you know, they seem absolutely to have a sort of father son

relationship or. couple or something. i mean, if i were vance, i would be slightly concerned. this is this is a very close relationship. i don't think that we are seeing the bannon wing of the party ascendant. >> i agree with that. i agree that first of all, if i were vance, i'd be drinking at this point. but, um, but there's going to come a moment where the musk trump show hits the point of diminishing returns. they're going to have some embarrassment. i don't know if it's a i don't know, it's going to be fair or unfair plane falling out of the sky, whatever. and at that moment you're going to see, i think, a section of the maga. right, saying that we backed the wrong horse with this guy. can we be done with it? >> and to the. >> point about bannon backing the, you know, being the more, uh, how much power does his wing have? when i test out all of the things donald trump has done in this first month in office, among the most popular things are things like some of his more socially conservative executive orders around things like gender, as well as his efforts to really ramp up deportations

and his efforts on illegal immigration. the doge stuff is much further down the list. is it really? it's above taking over gaza and turning it into beachfront real estate, but it's not the top of the list, that's for sure. and i think that's where this vulnerability really is. >> we have much more to discuss later this hour. coming up on cnn this morning, placing the blame on ukraine. ukraine invaded by russia, president trump falsely claiming, though, that ukraine started the war just minutes ago. ukraine's president reacted to those comments. plus not guilty. the moment that a$ap rocky learned his fate. that's one of the five things you have to see this morning. and investigators trying to determine what caused a delta passenger jet to burn and flip over. look at that and yet everyone survived. >> all of a sudden, everything just kind of went sideways. and then next thing i know is kind of a blink and i'm upside down, still strapped in. >> cookbooks, corporate fat cats, swindling socialites,

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the new samsung galaxy s25 ultra with xfinity mobile. you just pick a date, pick a cleaner and enjoy a spotless house for $19. >> it's the news. >> welcome back. >> but it's also kind of not the news. >> all the information on this show. so terrible. >> have i got news for you. new saturday on cnn. >> the people of crimea, from what i've heard, would rather be with russia than where they were. >> putin's a killer. >> a lot of killers got a lot of killers. why, you think our country's so innocent? president putin, he just said it's not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it wouldn't be. it was the g8. and, you know, i said, what are you doing, you guys, all you talk about is russia and you, they should be sitting at the table. i think putin would love to be back. >> president donald trump there repeatedly echoing russian talking points about a number of

things, including the war in ukraine. just hours after a u.s. delegation sat down with russian negotiators, negotiators in saudi arabia to discuss plans to end the war in ukraine without, we should note, any representative from ukraine, the country that was invaded in that room. trump went so far as to falsely claim that somehow ukraine and ukrainians started the war. >> i think i have the power to end this war, and i think it's going very well. but today i heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. well, you've been there for three years. you should have ended it three years. you should have never started it. you could have made a deal. >> the talks between the u.s. and russia lasted for hours this morning. the kremlin says talks between trump and putin could take place by the end of this month. that's quite soon. while ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy is very much pushing back against trump's latest comments. >> unfortunately, president trump, i have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for the

american people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation space. >> the u.s. president says living in a disinformation space, trump's inclination towards russian president vladimir putin is drawing bipartisan criticism. democrats pushing back against trump's false claims about the war. >> now, with president trump saying, well, the ukrainians shouldn't have started a war. it is shocking to have the leader of the united states of america not know the most fundamental elements of of how this crisis came to be. >> republican senator roger wicker also rightly called those comments false. back to the panel now. kristen, i'm going to ask you about the politics, because you you have your finger on this and you test this. do republicans do republican voters like to see the u.s. president endorse kremlin talking points? >> no. so republicans are not contrary to, i think, those who are on the other side of the

aisle. they're not they don't love vladimir putin. they don't they're not supporting russia in this conflict. however. republicans and increasingly, democrats do wonder what's the end game here with the conflict in that region that they don't necessarily see the possibility of ukraine taking back all of its territory. and there's a ticker tape parade and everybody is excited, and they want that. that no longer feels like a possibility. and so there's this tension between, on the one hand, very few, if any voters say, yes, i hope russia prevails in this conflict or yes, i'm sympathetic to vladimir putin. on the other hand, does trump have a little bit of leeway because so many voters say, i don't know where this is going. let's just get us out of this. >> but that is fundamentally different because that is true. and for instance, on the nato thing, i wrote about this in my book, it was a dirty little secret in europe and even in the states that ukraine getting membership in nato was largely off the table, at least in the near term. but it is different to have a u.s. president say ukraine is responsible for russia's invasion. and it's not

entirely new, because this president has never definitively blamed russia for the invasion. >> so, you know, having worked in the clinton administration, when leonid kuchma, the second democratically elected president of ukraine, came to the white house, we had a state visit. it was a very big deal. it was important because we were trying to bolster ukraine. we had there were, you know, president clinton went the first lady, hillary clinton went. so to now see some 20 years, 30 years dating myself here later, you have our president. so we were there to support ukraine. now our president is undermining the ukrainian president and siding with russia. i think at a bare minimum, people see that. they may not see the end game, but also i wonder, do they see that and say, okay, but what about the problems here in our country? what about california? what about asheville, north carolina? what about the fact that, you know, grocery prices are still going up and inflation is still high? why are we

spending so much time on that? why at some point that there's going to be that question as well? >> i mean, there's i think a wider issue here about what is donald trump's foreign policy? what are we looking at here? are we looking at a complete change in who our traditional allies are? um, this is the question that i keep on asking myself, who are america's allies now, when you are praising vladimir putin and you are offending canada, the european union, um, denmark. >> over greenland? >> yeah. this becomes the broader question of who is the united states actually allying themselves with, and what does that actually mean for our security in the world? >> i mean, that is the thing that jonah that came out of munich, right, is that this was not just europe worrying about trump abandoning ukraine, it's europe worried about trump abandoning europe. and by the way, saying so in so many words, europe, it's up to you right now which which was the worry

prior to the election. i heard it frequently. and now this is the reality they're dealing with. >> yeah. i want to be really clear. i think that donald trump has a goldfish's memory of historical, you know, fair stuff. but he is very similar to a 19th century imperial leader that when you talk about his allies, i think he comes from he describes organically, instinctually to a 19th century notion of spheres of influence, where we're the boss of the americas and western europe, and we can boss them around and we can treat our allies as really like underlings, because this is our zone. putin has his own. he's another strong man. he has his zone. and that's one of the things that helps explain why trump likes to talk, what he heaps praise on dictators and adversaries while heaping scorn on friends, is that he thinks our friends are actually subordinates, right? he thinks nato is basically a protection racket or a country club, and they're not paying enough dues to him. they're not kicking up

to the boss enough. but he sees xi and putin as basically rival crime families, and they deserve respect because they are equal strongmen. >> and perhaps a recognition of their own spheres of influence. and the u.s. then ceding them, which would be. >> they get taiwan, they get ukraine, we get panama. >> that would it would be a dramatic upset of what had been bipartisan u.s. policy and approach to the world for 80 years, right. going back to world war two. uh, more to discuss. coming up, new york city's embattled mayor about to find out if a judge will agree to throw out his corruption case. plus, a fiery crash in arizona. one of the five things you have to see this morning. >> i'm hanako montgomery in tokyo, and this is cnn. >> jay-z. i'm sure you're wondering why your mother and i asked you here tonight. it's

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this morning, just terrifying. new video of what it was like inside the delta jet that crashed and flipped over on the runway there. plus, president trump now repeating russian talking points, dropping the hammer on ukraine. >> so when they're worried about not being seated, you mean somebody that should have gone in and made a deal a long time ago? >> our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives were tragically taken. the dots all start to connect together. >> somebody did this purposely to these people. >> lockerbie. >> the bombing of pan am flight 103. >> sunday at nine on cnn. >> let's get you home. country roads. take me home. to the place. i belong. west virginia.

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>> canadian investigators have now recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the delta passenger jet that crashed, burned and flipped upside down at toronto's pearson international airport. a new video shows the harrowing moments that followed. here's cnn's jason carroll with the latest. >> new video. >> capturing the. >> shocking moment. >> a delta commuter jet crash. >> landed and. >> flipped, leaving passengers strapped in. >> their seats. >> hanging upside. >> down monday. >> at toronto's. >> pearson airport. >> the crew of delta flight 4819. >> heroically led passengers to safety. i thank each and every one of these heroes. >> everything. drop it. come on. >> those heroes swiftly and. >> efficiently evacuated. >> all 76. >> passengers off the aircraft after it crashed. as they crawled one by one out of the

plane. passengers helped each other along the way. >> you could see kind of row by row or area by area. people were checking one another out, making decisions about whether we would help one another with their straps, or if by doing that would they be landing on somebody else. >> one passenger told outfront that all seemed normal as the aircraft was on its final descent, but then suddenly a hard landing. the new video, filmed from another plane on the tarmac, captures the jet erupting in flames as it skids down the runway and flips over. >> when we hit. >> it was just a super hard like hit the ground and the plane went sideways and i believe we skidded like on our side and then flipped over on our back. where we ended up, there was like a big fireball. there was no like real indication of anything. and then, yeah, we hit the ground and we were sideways and then we were upside down hanging like bats. >> in the few days leading up to the crash, toronto received more snow than it had the entire

previous winter. but officials say it's too early to answer if that was a factor in the crash. >> this would not be a time for us to have theory or to speculate on what caused the crash. >> canadian officials say 21 people on board were injured. none were life threatening, and on tuesday afternoon, officials said only two remained in the hospital. the incident comes as the aviation industry is still reeling from recent accidents involving an american airlines commuter jet and a military chopper near washington, dc. a medevac jet in philadelphia and a bering air flight near nome, alaska. passengers on board flight 4818 say it's remarkable everyone survived. >> i think the most powerful part of today was there was just. just people. no countries, no nothing. it was just people together, um, helping each other. >> what a relief for all those passengers and their families. now, turning to the ukraine war,

a four hour long meeting between u.s. and the u.s. and russia to discuss an end to the war there, with both countries agreeing to appoint a team to help negotiate an end to the fighting. earlier this morning, the trump administration's russia ukraine envoy keith kellogg arrived in the ukrainian capital kyiv for more talks. there. >> we understand the need, uh, for security guarantees. we are very clear that the importance of sovereignty of this nation and independence of this nation as well. and we're going to and part of my mission is to sit and listen and say, okay, what are your concerns? where are we at? so we can go back to the united states, talk to president trump. uh, and with secretary rubio and the rest of the team and, uh, just ensure that we are that we get this one right. >> the kremlin says talks between president trump and russian president vladimir putin could take place before the end of the month. let's bring in cnn's global affairs analyst,

kim dozier. uh, first to to the big picture here. regardless of what keith kellogg says there about the importance of security guarantees, the the man that matters, the president, the commander in chief has endorsed russia's framing of the war. what does that mean? which is false, by the way. what does that mean for this administration's approach to this negotiations? and is it likely that they force or attempt to force ukraine's hand? >> well. >> uh. >> general kellogg is going to get an earful. like you and i both have been getting from ukrainian and european officials since trump's comments. and i think president zelenskyy is speaking about it right now. um, they are bewildered. they are angry. um, they don't understand how president putin apparently got inside trump's head. um, and i'm thinking about trump's national security team. he's got, um, you know, steve witkoff

trump has known forever and he's new to this. but, um, marco rubio, as a senator was strong on russia. and mike waltz as vice president cheney's deputy national security advisor, got to see the whole incident where, um, putin seemed to be reaching out to the bush administration and then betrayed them on a number of levels, most importantly, with the 2008 surprise invasion of georgia. and, um, cheney's office thought that bush hadn't been strong enough and tough enough on putin. waltz and rubio both, i'm sure, will be trying to get to trump behind closed doors to explain. you don't want to get rolled by this master manipulator. you can't trust him. >> but the recent history of trump, right? is is that, um, first of all, there aren't a lot of folks willing it seems to speak truth to power when it comes to trump, because they

look at others who have and they're gone. yeah, right. and trump's attitude in this second administration seems to be, i'm not going to be hemmed in by these mainstream or deep state or old school guys. like he perceives he was during his previous administration. so what is the what is the likely effectiveness, even if if a ruby or a waltz goes to him and says, don't get snowed by putin. >> so this is where witkoff is. a new comer may be very useful because trump is more surrounded by maga types now, because waltz and rubio are also firmly in the maga camp. so they may be able to make an argument to trump that you don't want to get rolled. um, we've seen this guy before. let's let's road test the offers he's making. but that still, i. the the opposite side of what's going to happen because of this is that the

ukrainians, europeans, the brits, they're all in a way, as never before saying we really do have to be prepared to go it alone because we're not going to sacrifice our democratic principles. and if ukraine falls, we may be next. >> democratic principles and national and national security, their national security. and i think i agree with you. that's the other headline from munich, is that it's not just the fear that ukraine is being abandoned, it's that the u.s. is abandoning europe or preparing to remarkable times. kim dozier, thanks so much for joining this morning, just after the break on cnn this morning, dismissing the case today, a judge will consider a motion to throw out corruption charges against new york city mayor eric adams. plus, widespread government layoffs hitting now the national park system, raising concerns about how these parks will operate. will they be open in peak tourist season? >> how dare we? we treat the people that work in yosemite like this. it felt merciless. i you know, i felt violated. um,

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>> from this moment on we have the power. >> aew collision. >> saturdays at eight. >> on tnt. >> and now streaming on. >> max closed captioning brought to you by facebook.com. >> if you or. >> a loved one have. >> mesothelioma. >> we'll send. >> you a. >> free book. >> to. >> answer questions you may have. call now and. >> we'll come to you. >> 821 4000. >> he may be. >> mayor, but these are the people that actually administer the city. the resignations were from the first deputy mayor, the deputy mayor for health and human services, deputy mayor for operations and deputy mayor for public safety. so at this point, the city is evidently being run by the remaining deputy mayor. 100 rats in a trench coat. >> wow. that's scary. new york mayor eric adams political career on the line this morning, after several of his top deputies stepped down, the new york governor is now weighing whether to remove him from his post, a power the new york governor has today. a judge will

consider a motion from the department of justice to drop the federal corruption case against him. that move from the doj set off a series of resignations, including the acting u.s. attorney, who said the order amounted to a quid pro quo. getting his charges dropped in exchange for helping the trump administration with its immigration crackdown. adams has denied any quid pro quo. it is something that democrats are concerned about. >> it's a deeply disturbing development. mayor adams. >> has a responsibility. to decisively. >> demonstrate to the people of new york city that he has the capacity to continue to govern in the best interest of new yorkers, as opposed to taking orders from the trump administration. >> my panel back with me and karen finney, i have to ask you, would it be a good thing, a good look for a democratic governor of the state of new york to remove him from office? or should she leave it to the

voters? there's a primary coming up. >> well, i think the judge's decision is going to give her a little bit of political cover. if the judge comes out and says, this is a sham, this case should have gone forward. it certainly, as i say, gives her cover. and i think we have to remember politically, adams has been in political trouble for a while in the city and has been losing confidence, obviously, with the individuals who left and people had great confidence in those four individuals. the challenge, though, is in new york city. uh, andrew cuomo is going to run for mayor. he has the money. >> he knows that that's that's not. >> just well, okay, he's saying he's going to let's put put it that way. he's he's got the money. and so the question becomes if you push adams out, what does that do to the dynamics of the mayor's race? and who then would ascend and who might end up being the mayor? and so there's some tension there that she's also navigating, in addition to

whether or not people have confidence in adams. >> kristen, would that give republicans ammunition politically in the state of political interference, et cetera.? >> i think republicans, while the idea of republicans winning statewide say in new york is, is still fairly farfetched. it's less far fetched than it was five, ten years ago. um, you saw republicans do better than expected in the 2024 election, and anything that is democratic and democratic political conflict is something republicans will love. but i also think there's the question is, is this all coming up? because mayor adams has been accused of corruption? because that's been around for a while now. or is this because he's engaging with the trump administration? he's showing up on fox. and to me, that doesn't feel like a reason to remove a mayor. >> is that do you think that's what's behind i mean, he does have it's not just him, right? several members of his administration under investigation as well. >> no, i don't think that's what's going on here. i think even though that has been discussed for a while, there is a very credible case that was

moving forward. and this is actually we saw the fallout in the doj about this. so no, i don't think that's it. i think what's happening now is that donald trump is meddling in this and has dangled a pardon. and the bigger context within which this sits is the power of the presidency. to issue pardons usually is kept to the end of a term. he seems to be indulging in this now as a sort of political, political favor. and what exactly is to stop donald trump from, you know, offering this kind of pardon to all sorts of people that might do his bidding? >> good point. >> and that is the question, i think, that worries people who worry about the rule of law. >> andrew cuomo, former mayor of new york. >> uh, look, i'm not a huge andrew cuomo fan, but i think he'd be better than than eric adams. um, uh, i think you flip this around, and you can also say, look, trump is dangling pardons, as you say, and all that, but new yorkers are watching eric adams seek pardon. right? i mean, like, there was

this fantastic story where the night before inauguration. adams gets a call at one in the morning saying, okay, you can come to the inauguration. so he ghosts all of his martin luther king day events that he was supposed to do throughout the day in new york city, gets in a car at 2 or 3 in the morning and drives to washington just so he can suck up for a pardon. new yorkers saw that, right? i mean, so, like, there's there's this you know, new york is i grew up in new york city. i love new york city, but it can be really, really parochial. and it could be that this is not so much a trump story for a lot of these people as it is. it's an adams story. and he's an embarrassment. >> and at the end of the day, right. new yorkers, they they they look to how the city is operating. right. is the garbage being collected or the rats, you know, running over my my restaurant? >> well, now the deputy mayor is 100 rats. >> yeah. >> exactly. >> all right. thanks so much. my panel will be back. french president emmanuel macron will host another round of talks with global leaders today on russia's ongoing invasion of ukraine. european and ukrainian officials were, we should note,

sidelined from this week's talks between the u.s. and russia and saudi arabia, also sidelined ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy, who has postponed his own visit to saudi arabia until march 10th. zelenskyy emphasized that no deal can be made to end the war without understandably so. ukraine's participation. >> in ukraine. >> putin is waging this war inside ukraine. putin is killing ukrainians, not americans and not europeans. but ukrainians are dying. our pain is immense and cannot be negotiated without us. you can meet whoever you want, but you can't talk about us without us. i make it clear that we will not accept this. >> president trump's russia ukraine envoy, keith kellogg, arrived in kyiv just a few hours ago to meet with ukrainian leaders. cnn's nick paton walsh joins us live from kyiv. and i wonder, do ukrainians believe that keith kellogg speaks for the president here and has their interests at heart?

>> ultimately. >> they have little. >> choice, obviously, but to have faith in everything that they speak to general keith kellogg about during his likely three day visit here, feeds back to the president of the united states and influences his decision. he arrived early morning at a railway station here, and i asked him what his message would be. and he did say, look, you know, part of this is going to be about listening, but also about security guarantees. and that is something we hear again from the united states. but at the same time, it does appear that their policy is less american military involvement. certainly no boots on the ground here too. but he was also asked president zelenskyy in a later press conference about the remarks we heard last night from trump. president trump himself suggesting that zelenskyy himself had very low poll ratings of 4%, and indeed also suggesting that some of the weapons sent to ukraine had indeed gone missing. zelenskyy responded quite forcefully here, essentially suggesting that the

white house chief has around him a pretty bad information. here's what he said. >> unfortunately, president trump, i have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for the american people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation space. >> now, this, of course, increases that sense of tension. i think it's fair to say between trump and zelenskyy on a day in which trump's envoy finally arrives here. zelenskyy went on to say that the meeting in saudi arabia had indeed ended the long isolation of putin. putin, by trump's predecessor, the biden administration. so a lot of really steep questions to be answered here. the issue of security guarantees for mount, certainly when it comes to conversations, will be having with general kellogg. and really a heartfelt plea from zelenskyy when i asked him what security guarantees look like, he said, send us air defenses if you don't want to send us boots on the ground, then use your ships.

send us patriot missiles so we can defend ourselves. increasing air attacks nightly here in ukraine. that's the civilian toll that so often referred to, i think a real sense of zelenskyy standing up for ukraine's interests here, knocking aside the notion of his polling being so low. he said it was 57% and they'd be presenting in the weeks ahead. data to consolidate that. elections are very tricky issue to contemplate during wartime. but that sense, i think, of increasingly fraught relationship building, particularly after saudi arabia. >> and russia, of course, a long history of interfering in ukrainian elections. nick paton walsh in kyiv, thanks so much. 55 minutes past the hour and here's your morning roundup. pope francis diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs following a ct scan on tuesday. the vatican says the tests continue to indicate a complex picture for the 88 year old pontiff. despite that diagnosis, the vatican says the pope remains in good spirits. federal prosecutors have charged seven

chilean men with stealing millions in valuables from nfl and nba players homes. this selfie allegedly shows some of the men inside the home of a milwaukee bucks player holding his collection of watches. the alleged victims also include the cincinnati bengals joe burrow and the kansas city chiefs travis kelce and patrick mahomes. >> ask not what your country can do for you. ask what you can do for your country. >> that speech by president john f kennedy, one of the many in the archives of his presidential library in boston. but the library abruptly closed on tuesday after a wave of federal employee firings. the trumps latest target for cuts, the national park system, 1000 newly hired national park service employees were fired just over the past week, with peak season just around the corner. permanent staff cuts will leave

many national parks understaffed, forcing them to make tough decisions about when they stay open. also about public safety, local rangers say they're already feeling the impact. >> it's devastating to lose this opportunity that i worked so hard for, and i know the same is true for so many other people. >> it seems like a cheap shot. >> very challenging to. >> lose a. >> stable income and to lose my insurance and to try and, you know, feel that i can comfortably and confidently take care of my, my family. >> panel back with me and kristen. this strikes me as one of those. this will touch the lives of voters decisions here, right? you want to turn up with your family at yellowstone, and there's no one there to check your ticket. >> and i think it's also because this is mostly outside of this beltway bubble, that this has the potential for more resonance. right? when you test how people feel favorably or unfavorably about a range of different federal agencies. i mean, the national parks are something that is so unifying and brings people together. and

again, it's outside of this bubble. and so do i think that most americans feel a ton of sympathy for someone who has a white collar, middle management job in the bureaucracy, who now is going to be furloughed. i really don't think that your average voter has as much sympathy, but for, hey, what are you doing to these folks who are working at these parks? the local rangers? am i going to be able to go on my vacation? i do think that there's. >> and by the way, they would care if that person in the office in washington is signing a check for them. i might just say that that might that might factor into their thoughts. >> in. >> terms of. >> i hear you. yeah, i hear you. >> i think what we're learning, though, is that the people who work in our federal government aren't just these white collar bureaucrats. they are people who work in our parks service or at the national library or v.a. centers, or social security administration. >> americans are getting an education on what the federal government actually does. and it's happening in real. >> time, you know, in your community. >> and there are people, you know, in your community, the actually, the majority of federal workforce does not in washington. >> a lot of republican lawmakers

have made that very point that the majority are in, and they might very well be in my home district. you've heard from some republican senators. >> yeah. i mean, there's a you know, there's a medical research stuff in alabama where people are freaking out about the cuts to all of that. um, i do think it's funny, though, because this goes this is sort of like the shutdown fights we get in washington every too often. um, it is there are all these stories saying americans will the backlash will come when they close down the national parks. there's a cautionary tale there for republicans, and we've all made it. and i understand it. there's a cautionary tale for democrats there. if americans don't notice, the federal government is being slashed until it affects the national parks. it means the government is doing a lot of things that americans aren't paying any attention to at all. >> and that's and there will be some cuts, frankly, that that american people welcome. uh, thanks so much to all of you for joining me this morning. i'll buy your coffee. thanks to all of you for joining us. i'm jim sciutto, cnn news central starts right now.