Speaker 1: Presidential inaugurations are a lot about optics. Donald Trump's second inauguration on Monday was no exception. For one, it just literally looked different since it was moved indoors because of freezing temperatures, but it was also fascinating to see who was in attendance. For example, if there was any doubt how much big tech is cozying up to Trump this time around, all you had to do was look behind him. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, just to name a few, they all had better seats for the swearing-in than some of Trump's cabinet picks. But more important, of course, than the guest list is what Trump actually

Speaker 2: said and did. From this moment on, America's deadline is over.

Speaker 1: Trump gave a State of the Union-esque speech in the Capitol Rotunda, ticking off a partisan list of grievances and priorities while casting himself as the

Speaker 2: solution to America's problems. I was saved by God to make America great again.

Speaker 1: But later in the day, after addressing thousands of his supporters at Capitol

Speaker 3: One Arena, he got down to business. Sure, the first item that President Trump is signing is the rescission of 78 Biden-era executive actions, executive

Speaker 1: orders. The president signed a flurry of executive orders right there in front of his fans, even tossing the pens he used into the crowd. Trump then went to the

Speaker 2: White House to sign more orders. So this is January 6th. These are the hostages.

Speaker 1: Capping off the day by issuing blanket pardons for nearly all of the convicted January 6 rioters, violent and nonviolent offenders both. The move infuriated some police officers who were there that day, like Michael Fanone. My family, my

Speaker 4: children, and myself are less safe today because of Donald Trump and his

Speaker 1: supporters. This is an emboldened Trump, primed for payback. And he has wasted no time using the power of the presidency to enact his sweeping vision. But which of these executive actions are just posturing, and which ones are actually making an impact right now? My guest is CNN senior White House producer Betsy Klein. We're going to talk about what this flurry of executive action could tell us about right now, and the next four years. From CNN, this is one thing. I'm David Rind. So Betsy, just to timestamp this conversation, we're talking at 12.07 p.m. on Tuesday. So it's been just a little bit more than 24 hours since Donald Trump took office officially for the second time. We could see some more announcements later today. You know, things are happening quick. But there was this wave of activity right after he took the oath on Monday. So I'd like you to help us zero in on what's most important here. Where should we

Speaker 5: start? Well, to your point about the flurry of activity, I think that flooding the zone with content is a hallmark of the Trump strategy. Most presidents would let their inaugural address speak for itself. But right away, we see Trump feeling really like he is his own best spokesperson. And, you know, as someone who has covered both the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, and now the first 24 hours of Trump 2.0, it really does underscore that Trump feels he is most qualified to get his message out. But in these first 24 hours, we've seen roughly 200 executive actions and 200 now flooding the zone with content. And none of this should really be a surprise. He is doing exactly what he campaigned on what he said he was going to do. So there are moves on the economy, moves on climate, things addressing the culture wars. A lot of this was about retribution and vengeance. He pulled security clearances for those involved with writing a letter about Hunter Biden's laptop. He's removed people his administration perceives as enemies. So he's teeing up some efforts to investigate the last four years of the Biden administration. We've seen him withdraw from the World Health Organization. He's rolled back 78 Biden era executive actions. So exited the Paris climate accords. He put Cuba back on the state sponsored terrorism list. He revoked an EO that required federal agencies to prohibit sex discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We also saw some broad economic orders, including a move to expand domestic energy production. But really previewing there's more to come there. He established the long promised Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. And really, though, a big focus on immigration. He declared a national emergency on the southern border that unlocks some Pentagon resources. He also issued an order that redefines birthright

Speaker 1: citizenship. I mean, that's like a head spinning list, to be quite honest. Not to mention just all the Biden administration orders that he kind of rescinded and took back. So we see executive orders from every president and a lot of them are challenged in court, tied up in legal battles for a long time. But do any of these actions that you mentioned, like have immediate, tangible impacts that people will feel right now?

Speaker 5: Well, you're totally right. So many of these moves are going to be challenged in court. And we saw just after noon on Monday, the Doge was sued in court. But some of them are going to have an immediate impact. And we saw the ending of the CBP one app. This was a border app that helped migrants enter the U.S. legally. And it has essentially shut down the border to asylum seekers. My colleagues have already started to hear from migrants who had scheduled appointments canceled and they're really unsure about their own path forward.

Speaker 1: Like this was a legal pathway for them. Yeah, that option is just closed.

Speaker 5: Totally closed. It's if you had an appointment, you got a notification. It's

Speaker 6: canceled. And just before the show began, I sat down with the new White House. Borders

Speaker 5: are Tom Holman. Trump is inheriting a relatively quiet border in the past few months, the Biden administration really handing off a period of relative slowness. But a lot of experts we've talked to, former Biden officials, are really warning that this could create a problem that didn't exist and more people might try to cross illegally.

Speaker 7: Now, there's going to be more collateral arrests in sanctuary cities because they forced us to go in the community and find and find the guy we're looking for.

Speaker 5: So we do expect increased ICE personnel targeting undocumented immigrants with criminal backgrounds in some of these major metropolitan areas. That's something to watch in the coming days. Places like Washington, Denver, Chicago.

Speaker 6: But you are also saying that those who are undocumented in the U.S., also who don't have criminal records, people who are working in their communities, maybe even have spouses who are American citizens, they could be swept up with ICE today as well?

Speaker 7: What I'm telling you is when we go find our priority target, which is a criminal alien, if he's with others in the United States illegally, we're going to take enforcement action against him. We're going to force immigration law.

Speaker 5: There's also a change in nomenclature. CBP agents have now been instructed to call migrants illegal aliens after the Biden administration had changed that. Trump changing it back. It's going to be just another way they are changing the rhetoric here in Washington.

Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously a lot more extreme. And obviously that's a term seen as pretty derogatory to to migrants trying to come to America just to, you know, find more opportunities.

Speaker 5: Right. And there's also significant changes to the refugee process. And I think that's something we're going to see not just in the U.S., but across the globe in migrant patterns.

Speaker 8: Just hours into a second term, President Trump signed his name and implodes the largest criminal investigation in U.S.

Speaker 5: history. And we're also seeing the January 6th pardons, some immediate impacts there.

Speaker 1: Tell me about these pardons and commutations to write like who exactly is getting these pardons. So President Trump issued a full pardon to approximately 1,500 people charged

Speaker 5: with crimes related to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. This drops the charges for those with prosecutions that are still pending in courts. And additionally, there are 14 people, including a few high profile leaders of the far right, Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, who were convicted for their roles in the attack. They had their sentences commuted. It sounds like you're uncomfortable, uneasy with the blanket pardons.

Speaker 2: I know you. Is that fair?

Speaker 7: I'm uncomfortable that a former president, while the new president's given his inauguration speech, pardons his entire family. Now, hearing from Trump himself and other officials, they're saying this is nothing

Speaker 5: compared to what Joe Biden did when he was leaving office. And we saw Joe Biden's decision to issue those preemptive pardons to some family members and members and staff of the January 6th committee. But Trump's pardons do cover people who were convicted of crimes like assaulting police officers, destroying property. We'd heard in recent weeks from now Vice President J.D. Vance that those who had committed violence obviously shouldn't be pardoned. But this went much further than many people had expected. But again, was exactly what Trump had previewed. Yeah, he had been promising this. But I think some people were caught off guard by just how sweeping this was.

Speaker 1: Right. Certainly. Well, so what should we make of other actions that won't necessarily have an impact right away? Can they tell us anything about what we might see in the coming months? So I think we had expected some day one actions on tariffs.

Speaker 5: It was something the president campaigned on. He issued a placeholder order on tariffs, but promised late last night that tariffs on Mexico and Canada, 25 percent are coming. And that is going to significantly impact the way we think about the future of our country. Impact prices for American consumers. I mean, Mexico and Canada are two of America's top three trading partners.

Speaker 1: So considering a universal tariff, Mr. President, for all countries.

Speaker 2: I may. Yeah, but we're not ready for that yet. We may put it, wrap it. Because essentially all countries take advantage of the U.S.

Speaker 5: On universal tariffs, something, again, he previewed on the campaign trail. He indicated last night he's not ready for that just yet. But we're also seeing some rhetorical moves. He took action to rename American landmarks. He's shifted Denali back to Mount McKinley. He wants to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. That order calls for a review of the members of an actual board that's responsible for geographical names. So we'll be seeing those kinds of moves going forward. And he's also setting up significant changes coming to the federal workforce. I mean, he's enacting a hiring freeze on federal government employees. He's ending remote work for federal workers. And that's going to dramatically shift the pool of talent that's able to serve in the federal government.

Speaker 1: What about TikTok? There was this back and forth over the weekend where the app kind of shut down momentarily, came back online. The CEO was at the inauguration. Trump said he was going to save TikTok in his words. Was he able to do that?

Speaker 5: I mean, this is sort of a classic Trump playbook, right, where he promises he's going to do something and creates a problem and then comes in and solves it. So we saw, you know, that very brief period on Saturday night into Sunday morning, where if you were trying to open your TikTok app, it said, sorry, you can't. Maybe President Trump can fix it. And and he did. He issued this pause that ByteDance has to make significant progress towards selling TikTok. If there is significant progress, he can issue a pause on a ban.

Speaker 2: And we have 90 days to make that decision. But I could see making a deal where the U.S. gets 50 percent of TikTok, polices it a little bit or a lot, depends on them.

Speaker 5: But ByteDance has indicated that they're not intending to sell TikTok. And Trump here wants to come in, sweep in, make a deal. And so far, it's been a really quite smart public relations ploy for the millions of Americans who use TikTok and are seeing him get credit on their home screens.

Speaker 2: Every rich person has called me about TikTok. He wanted to block TikTok. Why did it change your mind? Because I got to use it.

Speaker 1: So like for the moment, TikTok is still technically available, could go away, still kind of in limbo, kind of back to where we were a few weeks ago.

Speaker 5: I mean, he says himself he he changed his mind on the app because he used it. And I think he recognizes that this is a very powerful public relations tool for him.

Speaker 1: Well, so this flooding the zone thing that we talked about, you covered the last couple of White Houses, as you mentioned. So what has struck you over the last few days about this new Trump administration as they come back to Washington?

Speaker 5: Well, for me personally, I feel like I have been taking my finals in the final days of college. And I've graduated. And instead of getting a break, I am starting grad school the same day, but a much more challenging course of work. I mean, the pace and the source of information flow in this administration is just so markedly different from how Biden communicated. And this Trump administration is, frankly, very different from the first in that they know how to use the levers of the federal government to accomplish what they need to get done. And I think no one illustrates this point better than Melania Trump, actually. I mean, I think we have seen her in the last few months really embrace the public curiosity about her. I think in the first term, she was very shy. She was very hesitant to to be a public player and very mistrustful of the media. And we are seeing now that she really understands that people are curious about her. They want to know more. And we have seen her sign this deal with Amazon. And they are currently in the process of filming a documentary about her life and her transition back to the White House. And I think that's sort of this public reintroduction that is just completely different from how she approached the first term, sort of underscores how they understand how to use the media, how to use the resources of the federal government and and really lean into that.

Speaker 1: There's like a comfort level, but there's also an enmeshing of all these various powers and media entities like Jeff Bezos was basically front row at the inauguration on Monday. And, you know, his company is making this documentary. That's kind of a weird setup, right?

Speaker 5: Totally. It's completely unprecedented. It's also quite lucrative for the Trumps, frankly. I mean, it's a it's tens of millions of dollars of a deal.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And whether it's that or these meme coins, you know, the cryptocurrency that the president and Melania Trump issued just before taking office, experts continue to sound the alarm about conflicts of interest or just flat out personal enrichment that the presidency could bring to the Trump family. Well, thanks for keeping track of all of this, Betsy. Appreciate it. Thank you. One Thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paolo Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Fez Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan DiZula is our technical director. And Steve Liktai is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, John Deonora, Lainey Steinhardt, Jameis Andres, Nicole Passereau, and Lisa Namarow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage and Katie Hinman. All the very latest on the new Trump administration over at CNN.com, the CNN app or the CNN Five Things podcast. If you like this podcast, make sure you leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen. It really helps us out. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Sunday. Talk to you then.