Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: So much to happen here, to get through Monday and
Speaker 2: into a new Trump administration. She has provided leadership at
Speaker 2: CBS in driving forward conversation. Margaret Brennan joins us now,
Speaker 2: of course with Face the Nation seat on the CBS
Speaker 2: television network Sunday morning and of course on Bloomberg Radio
Speaker 2: Sunday afternoon. Margaret, I'm going to cut to the chase
Speaker 2: Republicans and Democrats thunderstruck by the caliber of the talent,
Speaker 2: and then you know, with Secretary Treasury, I guess doing
Speaker 2: a good job yesterday. Enter stage right, Michael Waltz of
Speaker 2: the Virginia Military Institute. Who is Michael Waltz and why
Speaker 2: are you going to speak to him? Sunday?
Speaker 3: The Republican congressman from Florida, former Green Beret, is the
Speaker 3: incoming National security advisor to Donald Trump. We want to
Speaker 3: talk to him about the job he is about to
Speaker 3: take on, because he will be the man in the
Speaker 3: Oval Office providing that advice and really in many ways
Speaker 3: curating what gets to his desk from the cabinet cabinet officials.
Speaker 3: We want to talk to Walls about this really complex environment.
Speaker 3: Most immediately you have the question of who's going to
Speaker 3: implement and oversee this incredibly complex ceasefire and hostage deal
Speaker 3: that could see some hostages coming out as soon as
Speaker 3: Sunday into Monday, Which official diplomats with deep regional knowledge
Speaker 3: will take over from Bradan Burk and the CIA director.
Speaker 3: We want to talk to him about China. Why did
Speaker 3: President Trump invite Shijinping, who just is now sending his
Speaker 3: vice president to the inauguration, an inauguration at which the
Speaker 3: CEO of TikTok will be an honored guest, at the
Speaker 3: same time that TikTok is deemed a national security threat
Speaker 3: and the Supreme Court's trying to decide whether or not
Speaker 3: it goes dark. And immediately, I mean, there's just such
Speaker 3: a list of things. It is such an important moment.
Speaker 2: Margaret within the CBS reporting, how will the first weeks
Speaker 2: forget about the one hundred day shtick? How will the
Speaker 2: first four weeks of Trump to differ from Mattis, Kelly
Speaker 2: McMaster and others in the first term. To me, there's
Speaker 2: a radical set of different people, with Mike Waltz being
Speaker 2: one of the few common features of what we saw
Speaker 2: eight years ago.
Speaker 3: It will be different, and we are already getting a
Speaker 3: sense of that, in part because we don't have people
Speaker 3: who are completely without clue as to how government works. Right,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is bringing with him stack Ye wait wait.
Speaker 2: Margaret, stop, Damien, do you see how diplomatic Miss Brennan
Speaker 2: is compared to Margaret? Please continue.
Speaker 3: No, But so that's where the sort of learning the process.
Speaker 3: Some of his advisors who don't require Senate information may
Speaker 3: be able to offset some of those who do. We
Speaker 3: know Mattis had such experience both on the battlefield in
Speaker 3: terms of dust on his boots. Pete Hegseith, I think
Speaker 3: tried to get people to forget that that Maddis was
Speaker 3: actually a general and the first Secretary of Defense in
Speaker 3: the in the Trump administration, when he claimed he'd be
Speaker 3: a new set of set of blood with you know,
Speaker 3: a completely different perspective. We will see a bunch of
Speaker 3: cabinet officials who might not have ever been up for
Speaker 3: a job like this had Donald Trump not president of
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 2: Damiens jump in here and say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Margaret, you mentioned Mike Waltz, and I remember Mike
Speaker 1: Waltz because he boycotted the twenty two Beijing Olympics, the
Speaker 1: Winter Olympics. Right, So another notorious China hawk, and there's
Speaker 1: so many of them in this administration. And you know
Speaker 1: now we're hearing all this news about ten cents been
Speaker 1: added to the list of China military firms expert controls
Speaker 1: on rarers. China's preventing Applin and BYD from shipping production
Speaker 1: across Asia this morning. So talk to us about this
Speaker 1: cold war that's sort of lingering in the background here
Speaker 1: in the minds of America and China. I mean, how
Speaker 1: do we get through this? What comes next?
Speaker 3: It's the big question. I mean, you have Marco Rubio,
Speaker 3: who could be the next Secretary of State, who's actually
Speaker 3: like sanctioned in China. Does that mean he could ever
Speaker 3: trouble there? You have, yes, China hawks, But this is
Speaker 3: not a very hawkish first approach on day one to
Speaker 3: be asking Shijin paying to send his best representative to
Speaker 3: Washington and to be embracing TikTok the way Donald Trump
Speaker 3: now is and reversing his past position. Perhaps that has
Speaker 3: to do with the one hundred and seventy million users
Speaker 3: who want to stream the Trump inauguration on social media.
Speaker 3: But we will see how this actually translates into policy.
Speaker 3: Is this the charm offensive by Beijing to try to
Speaker 3: convince Trump not to go ahead with the tariffs that
Speaker 3: he promised on the campaign trail? What is does this
Speaker 3: actually mean? That's one of the things we want to
Speaker 3: ask Mike Waltz, is makes sense of all these discordant
Speaker 3: things for us? What's the strategy? What's the approach?
Speaker 2: It's gonna be fascinating in your line up here. You've
Speaker 2: got somebody stuck in the middle, which is a Senator
Speaker 2: from Carolinas, Lindsey Graham. I'm fascinated, Margaret, how you initiate
Speaker 2: a conversation with a gentleman torn between a Trump GOP
Speaker 2: and a mainstream GOP. How are you going to do that?
Speaker 3: And Lindsay Graham has gone between them time and time again.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, at this moment in time
Speaker 3: where he is in relation to the Trump orbit, We'll
Speaker 3: ask him that we'll talk to him because he is,
Speaker 3: for example, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, something that Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is not, and we want to talk to him about. Okay,
Speaker 3: by the way, what do we actually learn from that
Speaker 3: hearing with Pete Heike Sith We didn't actually get a
Speaker 3: lot on policy or vision for the Pentagon, or innovation
Speaker 3: or changes. There was more about who he is as
Speaker 3: a person. Yeah, and character is important, no doubt. Tim Kine,
Speaker 3: one of my other guests, will be on with us,
Speaker 3: and he was a Democrat with some of the sharpest
Speaker 3: questions on that front of you know, why wouldn't oath
Speaker 3: to the Constitution be different than breaking an oath to
Speaker 3: your first and second wives. That was pretty sharp. We'll
Speaker 3: talk to him about that.
Speaker 2: Extraordinary, an amazing four or five days for Facination, Chris
Speaker 2: Margaret Brennan, host of CBS Facination. Hear it on the
Speaker 2: CBS Television network Sunday morning, and you can hear it
Speaker 2: again Bloomberg Radio on Facination Sunday two PM in New York, Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: in Bloomberg ninety two nine FM across all of New
Speaker 2: England and Boston. We thank Margaret Brennan for that time
Speaker 2: here on a Friday morning