network. >> it's wednesday, february 26th. right now on cnn this morning. >> the president and elon is his entire cabinet are working as one unified team. >> who's in charge here? today elon musk, unelected and not confirmed, will be in attendance for president trump's first cabinet meeting. plus, this. >> a lot of hard work ahead of us. but we are going to deliver the america first agenda. >> after hours of back and forth, house speaker mike johnson flips multiple republican holdouts to pass his budget blueprint. but what comes next might be even more difficult. then later. >> it's a very big deal. it could be $1 trillion deal. >> is ukraine's president caving to trump? the deal he's ready to

runway. a southwest airlines pilot aborts landing to avoid a runway collision. 6 a.m. here on the east coast. you are looking at video from that aborted landing that we were just talking about. it is 6 a.m. here at 3 a.m. on the west coast. good morning everyone. i'm kayla tausche in for kasie hunt. it's wonderful to have you with us. in just a few hours, president trump will host the first cabinet meeting of his second term. 18 of his 22 cabinet level nominees have so far been confirmed, but no senate confirmation is needed for. elon musk, the world's richest man turned special government employee who will also have a seat in the room where it happens.

>> the president and elon is his entire cabinet, are working as one unified team, and they are implementing these very commonsense solutions. >> potentially on the agenda at this meeting. large scale firings, a source tells cnn the office of management and budget is issuing a memo to agencies to submit what they're calling reorganization plans. by march 13th. elon musk seems to have already gotten the memo threatening federal employees with their jobs if they fail to respond to his email asking them what they did last week. the white house says 1 million employees responded to the doge demand, but it may not be going over well with some cabinet meeting attendees. quote, a trump administration official tells cnn the move led to some annoyance among not only top officials, but even some cabinet secretaries, adding that the secretaries are in charge of their own agencies and need to conduct their own reviews for where cuts may be needed. doge now also facing blowback from team members within the government. 21 staffers from the

u.s. digital service, which is the precursor to doge, resigned in protest tuesday. the team members said in part, we will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems. despite the controversy, musk still seems to have the confidence of the only person he needs. >> i think it's a very smart thing and it says if you don't answer, essentially, you know there's a penalty to pay. like that's the end of the job. >> musk has said that the order itself doesn't say that. i think that's part of the confusion. is he speaking for you when he says you'll be terminated? >> everybody speaks for me. i'm the one i'll take responsibility. you know the old statement, the buck stops here, right? >> joining me now to discuss lulu garcia-navarro, cnn contributor and journalist for the new york times, megan hayes, former biden white house director of message planning. and matt gorman, former senior adviser to tim scott's presidential campaign. good morning. welcome to all of you. thank you for being here. megan, i want to start with you, because we've been talking a lot about the fact that elon musk will be in this cabinet meeting. but when you think

about the cabinet room, there is, uh, the the group of attendees at the table, which are the secretaries. but then there are also chiefs of staff and senior white house officials. it's not necessarily uncommon for some of these senior most officials to be on the outer loop of that room in seats. um, tell me about the dynamics here. >> right. and so i think that will be part of the dynamic of where elon musk is sitting. is he sitting at the table? is he going to backbench with the staff and the other special government employees that normally sit back in back behind these cabinet secretaries? it's it's all very well laid out and choreographed. they each have a chair with their name on the back of it. the president's chief of staff also sits at the table. so i do think that where elon musk sits will send a sign today. how close is he to the president? how close is he at the table? i think that will send a sign of where donald trump views elon in his cabinet. >> lulu, we now have learned about this executive order that's going to give some of these cabinet secretaries essentially, um, is a directive to reorganize their own

departments, giving them the keys to have some input on what these cuts look like. after there had been some pushback about exactly how elon musk was going about this. what do you make of that? >> yeah, i mean, that's the way it's always worked, right? i mean, you have a system in place where the president actually puts, uh, cabinet secretaries and then they oversee their own, um, departments, and then they decide what is going to happen there. what has been so unusual, why there has been so much outrage, is that elon musk is the person that's sort of been going in willy nilly and making these cuts. i think looking at this, it was kind of amazing to see donald trump say, the buck stops here. um, you're going to see i can promise you that. juxtaposed with elon musk and his, um, what was it that he was holding his chainsaw? thank you. his chainsaw. um, coming up for democrats. yeah. there we are. i mean, you're going to see those two things juxtaposed, i think, for, um, for democrats coming forward. you know, this is

increasingly unpopular. polling is showing it. it's starting to hit people in their communities, and many people don't like it. >> um, there has been a lot of public praise by the president for elon musk and what he was doing as recently as yesterday. but, matt, we know that the president likes to be the lead character in his productions. we remember the cabinet meetings from the first term, where all the secretaries went around and said, um, how wonderful he was. what are you watching for today in that meeting, for how the two of them interact and what it says about their their real relationship behind the scenes? >> i guess i kind of take a step back, disabuse myself of the sanctity of the cabinet meeting. i look, these are obviously, no matter what administration, mostly performative exercise, and so i tend not to put a lot of stock into this whole thing. again, where he sits. fine. interesting. you know, um, i think two things. i think a elon relishes being the quote, unquote bad cop in this. right. and i think trump likes being the good cop. they like that

sort of dynamic on this. and it seems to be working at least right now. i think we saw a little bit earlier in the year, even during the transition, where they tried to kind of place a wedge. democrats and some in the media between elon and trump doesn't seem to have worked. i think more than anything else, that likely, as long as that stays stable, i think this relationship could go a little while. >> one thing that's interesting to me, though, is when these cabinet secretaries are pushing back on these emails, who is donald trump going to be loyal to? is it going to be elon musk, or is it going to be the cabinet secretaries? because there might not be a wedge right now between the president and elon, but there could be coming coming up, a wedge between some of these cabinet secretaries. it will be interesting to see where donald trump falls. >> and i just also say that it's not the media, quote, unquote, that's doing this. what you're seeing is polling showing that everyday americans, something that republicans are loving to invoke this these days, um, are actually increasingly unhappy with this. elon musk is unpopular. he's underwater. and, you know, the question for donald trump is going to be how much political capital is he willing to invest

in? someone who is very unpopular, and if he is willing to invest that capital, why? what is the relationship really between these two people? let's not forget how much money elon musk put into donald trump's campaign. >> i think that's the point, though, right? like as long as if elon's numbers can do whatever they want, he's never his name will never be on the ballot as long as trump's stays high. and that's the key here. and look you know harvard harris poll out today that said 66% of people believe in kind of the idea of doge and what they're doing. so look, we can kind of play this all day, but i think the good cop bad cop routine, as long as the good cop numbers stay high, that's where this will be. >> i think congress is also concerned about this. and we're going to talk about the town hall specifically a little bit later on in the show. but john thune, who is the senate majority leader, also weighed in on this. and the senate is going to have to be and the house are going to have to be actually executing on what the agenda of the entirety of the federal government looks like. here's what john thune said. >> if that involves some reductions in force, it needs to

be done in a respectful way. obviously, that's respectful of of people involved. um, but i do think as they go through this process, the objective of doge is to try and figure out ways to make government run more efficiently, more effectively and reduce its cost. >> needs to be done in a respectful way. matt, is that what's happening right now? >> well, look, all of this stuff will be done in the reconciliation process. and look, look, all this talk about doge right now, i understand it. it's a it's a big thing. trump's second term will be succeed or fail based on what the reconciliation package goes through. like that was will define his term. it's what by and large, defined the first term with health care and with the tax bill. so really that is what i'm watching for. this is it's an appetizer so to speak. but what comes through and obviously mike johnson last night will be telling the tale. >> uh yeah i mean i, i agree um, and i actually think what you, what you saw was very impressive. i mean, you saw trump really actually being

incredibly engaged, calling up lawmakers, getting them to the table. this is actually where a president matters. um, this is actually something that was a big question whether trump was going to engage in and this granular level. and we've seen him do it. >> congressman tim burchett detailed for reporters a little bit of that conversation. i believe we have the congressman. if we can play that right now. we're going to get it in just a minute. but essentially, he was talking about the call that he received from the president and some of the the assurances he received. i believe we do have it. now. let's take a listen. >> so tell us why you changed your vote, congressman. >> because there are legitimate cuts and it's the right direction to go. it's not everything i wanted, but in this game, you're either at the table or on the menu, and it's time to get it to table. >> did they promise you anything? >> there's no quid pro quo. but the president assured me that he would work towards cuts. and and he's never lied to me. he's always been honest about it. and the speaker backed him up. >> so they got there. they got across the finish line for this

first hurdle. but there's clearly a lot of work yet to come meghan. >> yeah, absolutely. and that to me when there's no quid pro quo means i am not going to fund a challenger against you moving forward. so i think that that's a little bit, you know, they're getting to the table for different reasons. and it will be interesting to see how this all plays out. but back to your question about is this being done respectfully and firing? it is not being done respectfully. but i do agree with you that donald trump's term is going to be defined in what happens in this bill. >> and to that end, i mean, the reconciliation bill and many of those policies will last for years, if not decades, beyond this term. lulu, we tend to focus. history tends to focus on a president's first 100 days. but i'm wondering if this term we're going to focus on the first 130 days, because that's the length that elon musk will be serving as a special government employee. >> well, we don't know how long he's going to be serving as a special government employee. uh, let's be clear. but yes, um, elon musk has become a focus. and this is where i'd push back a little, um, because this is so unusual, when have we ever seen

someone like this, the richest man in the world, coming in and having such sway over the government, over the president, and over the first term of a new administration? we've never seen it before. and so therefore, it is legitimately fascinating, important and worthy of scrutiny. >> um, there is more to come from our panel and on this show ahead on cnn this morning. a peaceful night for the pope, the vatican releasing a new update on pope francis as the 88 year old spends another day in the hospital. plus, a massive sinkhole in the middle of a philadelphia neighborhood. it's one of the five things you have to see this morning. and a pilot avoids a runway collision in chicago with just seconds to spare. >> i just feel very thankful for who we had flying our plane. >> i was already anxious. and then when that happened, i was extra thankful. very thankful for the pilot and everyone who was involved.

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would like to sign it together with me. and i understand that's a big deal. very big deal. it's it's a very big deal. look, it could be $1 trillion deal. it could be whatever. but it's rare earths and other things. >> cnn's nick paton walsh is in kyiv with more. >> kayla, once again, ukraine's fate is going to rest on a meeting between ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy and president donald trump. really? about how well these two men get along. the rare earth minerals deal seems to be in a very final stage, with ukrainian officials suggesting that both sides have indeed agreed to final terms that are acceptable to both of them. that's not something we've had openly confirmed by the white house. but when asked about this, president trump said that he was willing to meet zelenskyy as he suggested he would in a matter of days earlier, and that zelenskyy wanted to sign that particular deal. and he called it a big deal, a very big deal. so positive indications, too.

but frankly, the volatile nature of all of this means that until those names are written on a piece of paper, it's going to be hard to know exactly what the final outcome is. the deal, as we understand it, does not contain security guarantees for ukraine. some of the language ukrainian officials said was more in favor of ukraine's security. but at the same time, two in ukraine's favor. it doesn't contain some of the more onerous things the trump administration wanted to see written down in paper. some of those harder discussions about ukraine's natural resources will likely be left to later deals later. uglier, harder talks. but really, it is still down to whether these two men are able to get along after an exceptionally acrimonious week that they went through. remarkable that french president emmanuel macron was able to get this meeting through and bring trump back more towards the european viewpoint as to ukraine's defense. but a very vital meeting on friday in the white house, not 1,000% guaranteed that it indeed will all happen as planned. so much has changed, but certainly a

more positive slant for ukraine in the last 24 hours, kayla. >> nick paton walsh in kyiv. nick. thank you. coming up, a near disaster at a major american airport. a southwest airlines jet barely avoiding a runway collision with a private plane. plus, if this isn't a tease, i don't know. what is. it wasn't rogaine that police found under this man's toupee. >> all there is with anderson cooper. listen, wherever you get your podcasts. >> dry, tired. itchy. burning my dry eye. symptoms got worse over time. my eye doctor explained the root was inflammation. it was made for that. so relief is lasting. >> treats the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease. don't use if allergic to hydra and seek medical help if needed. common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort, blurred vision and unusual taste sensation. don't touch container tipped, your eye or any surface before using to remove contact lenses and wait 15 minutes

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nordvpn and encrypt your online traffic. get 72% off nordvpn and up to one year for free. >> cnn news central. next. >> a southwest airlines flight nearly collided with another plane while landing in chicago on tuesday. the incident unfolding at midway airport, where video that you're looking at right now shows the southwest flight coming in for a landing. but just before touching down, a jet appears on the runway just ahead. the southwest pilot immediately pulls back up and then has some questions for air traffic controllers. >> southwest flight 2504 going around. 20 504. roger. maintain 3000 tara setmayer 20 504. how'd that happen? >> you can hear the southwest pilot asking how that happened. the faa and national transportation safety board have that same question and have

opened an investigation. passengers on the flight say the close call reminded them of what has already happened so far this year. >> i just feel very thankful for who we had flying our plane. >> yes, and i was already kind of anxious going on the plane just because of what's been happening this year so far with all the flights, you know, crashing and things happening. so i was already anxious. and then when that happened, i was extra thankful. very thankful for the pilot and everyone who was involved. >> joining me now is mary schiavo, cnn transportation analyst and former inspector general at the department of transportation. mary, there have been several incidents this year that have not been confidence inducing for american fliers. the new york times reporting that at ronald reagan national airport, american airlines flight 2246 arriving from boston, was making a final descent when it suddenly canceled its landing climb toward the skies and accelerated away from the airport. that was an aborted landing, and it was to avoid a plane getting ready for takeoff. both of these

incidents happened within 90 minutes of each other. um, and then there was also the same airport where the mid-air collision happened just last month. so what is going on here? are we just becoming more aware of these incidents because we're on high alert? >> well. >> no, we are certainly more aware because we're on high alert. but these airport near collisions, we call them near-misses, but obviously they're near collisions. they're called runway incursions. and every year we have for example, in 2024 we had 1758 of them. so that's more than three a day. and this has been a fairly consistent number. we had a little drop in the numbers, uh, last year or the year before last. but when we have, you know, 1500, 1700 of these every year, it is very alarming. and that is the worst, one of the worst statistics in aviation safety. everybody says it's safe to fly. well, the problem is, is it's safe to be at the airport because that's where the

greatest hours of exposure come to people, to this danger. and that is something that even when you have the equipment, for example, at midway, they had the most current equipment to alert the the tower, to alert pilots to avoid collisions. but in this case, the private jet pilot that, at least in my opinion, seemed very confused just from leaving the apron area from the private pad. uh, had to get instructions twice, repeated the instructions back wrong. was told to haud short, not cross the runway. and that's somewhat understandable because this particular airport, when you look at the airport map, it looks like a plaid kilt. i mean, there's just so many intersecting runways, taxiways, et cetera. um, so that one is explainable. but yes, we have a lot to worry about at our airports and near misses. >> so roughly three per day. and i take your point that it's not more than normal. but there was also another close call over the weekend at an airport in san francisco. it involved the same air carrier that came in too low

and crashed back in 2013 and killed three people. here's the air traffic controller telling that flight that they were coming in too low. let's listen to it. >> at two, one two chuck grassley immediately. 3026. two and two heavy. are you correcting? the. two one. two heavy. roger. go around. fly runway heading. >> so do you think that that is something that could have been a more serious incident than it was? >> yes. and and i worked on the crash of asiana flight 214 back in 2013. and there, you know, very similar communications with the with the tower there. in that case, they were not watching their airspeed and then their altitude deteriorated. they they literally had not engaged the autothrottle on that plane. and to see this, you know, uncoordinated and not stabilized landing, you have to ask several questions. one, one

of the things that came out of the asiana two 214 crash is big criticism over what's called crew resource management, what's going on in the cockpit, and are the pilots communicating with each other? are they double checking their altitude, airspeed, et cetera? and i think that is why that the ntsb might look at it. the faa is certainly looking at it to see if that resource management has or has not improved, especially in light of some accidents in korea where the airline is from. >> of course, the context for these incidents happening at this moment right now is that the faa and the ntsb are subject to the same personnel and technological overhauls as the rest of the federal government, and there are questions about the impact that those overhauls would have on operations. just this week, transportation secretary sean duffy was talking specifically about the needs of air traffic control. here's what he said. >> in a lot of these air traffic control centers, they're using

floppy disks. a lot of your young viewers don't even know what that is. but this is really old technology. the the communication system with the internet is not well served. so again, that doesn't go to air safety, but that does go to the technology that we use. government takes eight, ten, 15 years to upgrade systems. and that's the that's the enemy of progress. so we're going to do this very quickly. we're going to look at a year, year and a half timeframe and do massive upgrades, improve the systems, help air traffic controllers keep our skies safer. um, and again, time is the enemy. >> so now we're learning about how outdated some of these systems might be, mary. but we're also learning that elon musk's starlink has a new contract to assist the faa, raising some conflict of interest concerns. do you think that that the technology is so outdated that someone like musk can help it? what's your view here? >> well, technology is outdated, but even when i was inspector general, i had investigation after investigation of the not

only the outdated technology, but the fact that the faa had great difficulty managing these contracts. we were scrapping billion dollar air traffic control modernization contracts because the faa was simply not on top of the contractors. so yes, we need improvement. yes, we need more equipment and we need better investment. but most of all, we need oversight over these contracts and contractors. so if we're going to bring in starlink, somebody has got to be on top of this. and somebody at the faa has to be in charge and know what they're doing. and the problem is, we found when i was inspector general is we just didn't have the expertise within the department to run these contracts. and so contracts and contractors were running amok. it's going to take some great oversight. and i hope secretary duffy is prepared for that. he's got to have top people on it or. >> officials. hopefully officials will heed that warning from someone who has seen this firsthand. mary schiavo, our thanks to you this morning.

thank you. thank you. behind closed doors, several house republicans pleaded with leadership yesterday asking for guidance on how to respond to questions from their home districts on recent federal cuts, and calls for more involvement in the doge job cutting process. voters have been turning out to town halls across the country, expressing frustration over how doge is operating. cnn's tom foreman has more. >> are you. >> okay with chaos? are you okay? >> government employees. >> are going to be. >> let go. and that's just the reality of it. >> shouted down at town. >> halls. >> hey, hey, let's restore some order. >> so yelling. >> screaming, yelling at me is. not going to get any answer. okay. >> protested on their way to work. >> we've lost 10% of our workforce. >> shut up and let him talk. >> i will. >> not, sir. >> republican lawmakers are being hammered by voters, including their own. >> boy. >> over the department of

government efficiency, or doge, which is chainsawing federal jobs in blue and red states alike. >> right now, i think we should just be using a scalpel. >> and some elected leaders are now pushing back on doj's unelected cutter in chief. >> if i could say one thing to elon musk, it's like, please put a dose of compassion in this. these are real people. >> when you have a president who can affect somebody's business or somebody's livelihood. it just needs to be done with with deliberation. >> for weeks, the parade of departing workers has been growing from the faa to the irs, from health agencies to the small business administration, from veterans affairs to the national parks and more. and when elon musk demanded this past weekend that all remaining workers justified their employment in an email or be fired, president trump initially was all for it. >> i thought it was great because we have people that don't show up to work, and nobody even knows if they work for the government.

>> but around a dozen departments in trump's own administration effectively told their workers to ignore musk. as trump appeared to back down, leaving party bosses to put the best face on a bad situation. >> i think the vast majority of the american people understand and applaud and appreciate the doge effort. >> polls indeed show voters want less government waste, but a slim majority now think doge has gone too far. and by the hour, it seems more gop congress members are subtly backing the resistance. >> if i were a senate confirmed, head. of a department, and i had somebody from the outside undermining my ability to manage and demonstrate, there's one leader in every department. i'd have a problem with it. >> let's bring in the panel to discuss this. lulu, your reaction to what we just saw from voters? >> yeah. uh, americans don't. everyone is invoking the american people. let me invoke

the american people. americans don't like to have things taken away from them. that is a true thing. i think that you can all embrace. and when they see government not working for them, they want cuts. they want to take away fraud. but at the same time, they don't want the fear that planes are going to be falling out of the sky. they don't want their taxes not to be processed on time. they don't want to have their national parks shut down. and so i think what you're going to be seeing is everything that goes wrong in america at the moment is going to be pointed at elon musk. and that picture of him with that chainsaw, and they're going to say he's to blame for that. so this is a high risk strategy i think for the administration. >> that anecdotes are not data. but we're starting to get some data that puts numbers behind this. with 51% of respondents in a recent cnn poll saying that president trump's efforts to cut federal programs have gone too far. 54% say they do not support him, giving elon musk this prominent role and a full

53% are afraid or pessimistic about the rest of his term. how do you digest those numbers? >> a couple things. i mean, i think you're right. we talked we talked about this the other day as well. i was there in doing the house republican work in 2018 when you had the house, the health care town halls, and they were a lot more intense, a lot more well populated than this. and i think that was far more of the median voter. you didn't see the jail. my president, which is not indicative of the swing voters. what i will say is this what did ring true for me is i remember coming in and a lot of members of congress get very spooked very, very quickly based off this. they come in with reports rushing in and it really kind of overtakes them. so i would i would be very, very careful. and what i would counsel, you know, folks to do if you're on my side is you got to have a strategy to kind of counter this and calm these members down because they're going to go home and feel this exact same pressure. and again, i think they need to make sure that they're selling, whether it comes to the reconciliation bill and all the things that are going through congress in a really effective way, that's going to be key.

>> and as democrats strategy to combat this, james carville, who's an elder statesman in the party, has called for what he is describing as a strategic political retreat. he writes in the new york times, allow the republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the american people miss us. is that the right strategy? >> i mean, i don't think democrats have a lot that they can do right now. but watch all of this happen. there's not much that they can do to stop doge. right. the president is in charge of that. so i think that he's not wrong in letting this sort of happen. but this is why elections have consequences, and that's why the midterms will be so crucially important for democrats going into 2020, especially if they want to get any power back to have any power in the government again. so i do understand what he is saying there. i don't think democrats have another strategy, but to watch things sort of crumble. >> carville suggests that you need to let trump's approval rating fall by about ten points. and then, in his words, make like a pack of hyenas and go for the jugular. that never one to mince words. james carville ahead on cnn this morning, house speaker mike johnson exhaling a little bit this morning, his effort to jump start president

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holdouts, the votes flipped in speaker johnson's favor. >> a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the america first agenda. we're going to deliver all of it, not just parts of it. and this is the first step in that process. >> now, republican leaders in the house and senate have to get on the same page. both chambers have passed their own budget plans and have disagreed on the best way to advance the president's agenda. >> so the house has a bill in the senate has a bill. and i'm looking at them both. each one of them has things that i like. so we'll see if we can come together. >> we'll see if we can come together. it's going to be a weeks long process, matt. and yesterday, senate majority leader john thune, um, was chuckling a little bit when he said, yeah, the senate's going to be making some changes to this. so how does this process process play out? >> i mean, in the end, i think that they i expect thune to say something along those lines. but in the end, whatever johnson can do to land the plane in the house is what the senate will likely eat with minimal revisions. right? just the numbers are too thin there. it

did take two lessons broadly from last night. a it was a big win for johnson. i think he's been consistently underrated facing a lot of these challenges, from an accidental speaker to skillfully navigating a lot of these challenges. that's number one. and number two, i think to lula's point earlier in the show, if trump and i've said this consistently, too, if trump wants to get his agenda passed, no matter what it is, he has to get in the details, whether it's a speaker's vote, this he has to get in there and lobby those people and work the phones because that's how he's going to get it done. >> lulu, the devil will be in the details, as it always is. this is a blueprint. but even if, if and when the senate and the house get on the same page, they still have to figure out exactly what their new tax reform bill will look like, exactly where those $2 trillion in cost savings will come from. and then to win over some holdouts who don't necessarily support a $4 trillion hike to the debt ceiling. so how are they going to get there? >> i mean, i think that's going to be the real difficulty here, but i do think they're going to get there. i just see this as

it's you see this typically in any new administration, the wind is at donald trump's back. um, you know, they have the senate, they have the house, and they want to show that they know how to govern. but the devil's in the details in this. you're already seeing democrats pushing back on what is actually in this about cuts to medicaid, about cuts to other entitlements. this is something that is very worrying to a lot of people, and it fits this wider narrative the democrats are trying to push, which is to say, yes, they can do this, they can govern. but what is that going to mean to your bottom line, individual voters? and that is also going to be the legacy of this. >> to that point, i believe we do have some sound that we've heard from democratic lawmakers. exactly on that. let's listen to it. >> hundreds of thousands of people in ohio, tens of thousands in my district, are going to lose their health care if this budget passes. all so they can pay for these ridiculous, wasteful tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations. it is a very

unpopular budget, and i'm not sure they will ultimately have the votes to pass it. once people realize and they realize that it's $1 trillion out of health care, trillions more in deficit spending, all for what? to give elon musk and a bunch of billionaires and big corporations more tax giveaways. >> democrats, megan, are generally aligned on that. but do you think that that message is enough to give many republicans or independent voters buyer's remorse? >> i don't know if they'll have buyer's remorse, but i do think this is where the democrats have their bargaining power here. and also, it goes to show that what is doge actually cutting it? they're still going to add $4 trillion to the deficit. it doesn't make any sense what they're doing here. so i think the democrats really need to work on their messaging and really focus on getting that out there to the american people, because i do think to your point earlier, when people start calling in to their members offices, that makes a difference when they start showing up at town halls, members get spooked very easily. >> yeah. and we will see how it plays out in the coming months. and then, of course, the midterms will be here before we know it. i know we don't want to

think about another election already, but that's how it is. the panel will stay. you guys will be right back. it is 53 minutes past the hour. here's your morning roundup. the vatican says pope francis spent another peaceful night in the hospital. he is sitting in an arm chair today and continuing with his treatment for double pneumonia. despite showing slight improvement on tuesday. the pope remains in critical condition. a somber day in israel as the country lines up for the funeral procession of the bibas family. shiri bibas and her two young sons, kfir and ariel, were abducted during the october 7th terror attacks and were killed while in hamas captivity. they are being laid to rest today after their bodies were returned as part of the ceasefire agreement. >> they were brazen in using an nsa platform intended for professional use to. to conduct this kind of really, really horrific behavior. >> director of national intelligence tulsi gabbard

announcing that more than 100 intelligence officers will be fired for participating in sexually explicit conversations in internal chat rooms hosted by the national security agency. a senior trump administration official telling cnn that rank and file members of the intelligence community brought the issue to gabbard attention. plus, this. >> when a russian oligarch be eligible for a gold card. >> yeah, possibly. hey, i know some russian oligarchs that are very nice people. it's possible. >> president trump announcing plans to sell $5 million gold cards to wealthy foreigners, giving them the right to live and work in the united states and offering a path to citizenship. trump says gold card sales will start in about two weeks and suggests millions of them could be sold. howard lutnick, the commerce secretary, says that these individuals will have to go through vetting to make sure they are wonderful, world class, global citizens. i will.

>> say they have had the a version of this before. it was rife with fraud. there was not a lot of oversight. it is hard to have oversight of a program like this. you had people coming into this country, um, who were had criminal backgrounds, who were laundering money, um, all sorts of things. i'll also just say one other thing, because immigration is a specialty of mine. a lot of people who have a lot of money don't want to become american citizens, because america is the one, one of the few countries in the world that taxes you on your global income. so if you come here and your money is in belarus, um, you're going to get taxed on your money in belarus, even even if you are making money here. >> although trump has tried to change that. >> he has, but he hasn't yet. and so what i'm saying is it's not the the big fancy thing that's going to bring in. i think a lot of people in the way that he envisions. >> yeah. and if individuals thought that real estate prices in big cities were high now, that would surely make it worse. >> i remember the visa card commercials we saw before the break from the before. i mean, it was a derek jeter. george steinbrenner, those things were

great. actually had more take me back than that. more than anything else for those old commercials. >> um. moving on. monica lewinsky is reflecting on the events that made her a household name more than two decades ago, sitting down with call her daddy podcast host alex cooper lewinsky, sharing how she thinks the situation involving former president bill clinton should have been handled. >> i think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was, you know, nobody's business. and to resign, you know, or to find a way to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus. >> clinton has defended his handling of the scandal. this is what he told nbc news in 2018. >> i think i did the right

thing. i defended the constitution. >> let's bring the panel back in. megan, obviously, you know, those moments were in the fog of war, right in the middle of a scandal. now, with the benefit of hindsight, do you think lewinsky is right? >> i also think we view things differently now with the metoo movement. and there's a lot of different things that we've evolved. i think the way we view some of these issues culturally, i don't think that how we villainized her. i was very young when that happened, but i don't think how we villainize monica lewinsky was appropriate by any stretch. i don't think we would have done that. now. i'm not sure that he needed to resign. i don't know, i was very young, so i'm not sure about all the like constitutional issues and exactly. but i do think we villainize her in a way we would not do today. and i do think that we should take a look at how we did that. >> she's also, um, stepped into the limelight, defending herself, trying to reclaim her own reputation. i'll never forget adam grant, a psychologist and professor who's now a thought leader, tweeting. what's the worst advice you've ever received? and she responded, a white house internship will look great on your resume. >> and at the same time, bill clinton retreated. it wasn't

until this campaign that he came back because after that really disastrous interview with craig melvin where melvin asked him, point blank, would you apologize to her? and he really was very defensive about it. and you see his body. yeah, exactly. so his he went to hiding for, you know, relative hiding for about six years until really this campaign with biden, he didn't really emerge in the same way. >> it's i think it's hurt him in the party. i think it's hurt the clinton brand. you know, there was a lot of nostalgia in the democratic party about the 90s, about balanced budgets. et cetera. et cetera. and i think with the benefit of hindsight, is that actually it was sorted. he did not behave honorably. and whether or not he should have resigned or not, i will leave that to others to decide. but certainly no one views bill clinton in the same way now. >> but there's still no real standardized playbook for dealing with some of these situations. megan. i mean, i remember when al franken stepped down from the senate because of allegations against him, and some of those were founded allegations. and i think some democrats would say that was probably the wrong move. >> yeah, i think that it just is sort of in a moment of time.

right. like that wouldn't have happened. it probably, you know, cuomo had to step down too. and then they did investigations and now he's going to run for mayor. so i. >> just a president who has been credibly accused of sexual assault and found liable, um, in a in a civilian court. i mean, you know, on the other side of this, there's been a lot of things that have changed to where there's more permissiveness about what people do in public office. and so, i mean, we have elon musk, who is the father of 13 children and has his ex partner pleading for him to be a good father on social media. so, you know, i think, um, a lot to discuss about this. >> one thing that lewinsky interview will do is spur a conversation, as it has for sure. um, one quick programing note if you're missing kasie hunt in your day, as we all are, be sure to tune in to her new show. it is the arena with kasie hunt at 4 p.m. weekdays here on cnn. her unique perspective, her reporting to the day's most important stories will all