The Incredible Shrinking Government
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Today on Inside Politics, the incredible shrinking government. The president and his billionaire benefactor are barreling ahead with their plan to slash the federal workforce, which could include eliminating entire agencies. Plus, Secretary Kennedy. The Senate just confirmed RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

It's a tough pill to swallow for many Democrats, but not those who want to overhaul America's food and pharmaceutical industries. I have a special report on the Make America Healthy Again movement and the Musk Show. Two people who've covered Musk's entire career will tell you what they think is really behind his deep interest deep inside the federal government. I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines and inside politics.

Right now, Donald Trump's audacious overhaul of the U.S. government is facing some big challenges in courtrooms across the country. CNN's Paula Reid is tracking it all. Paula.

Yeah, Dana, the administration continues to defend its policies in courtrooms across the country amid dozens of lawsuits. Now, so far, the administration has lost most of these initial hearings as judges have paused or blocked their policies. But today alone, there'll be more cases heard, including in Maryland. There is a hearing challenging President Trump's move to allow ICE to operate in sensitive places like churches or schools.

There's also a hearing actually happening right now over Trump's move to dismantle USAID. Now, this judge that is hearing this case today previously blocked that plan until Friday. He is now considering whether to indefinitely block that plan. And that is a Trump-appointed

appointed judge hearing this challenge. It's underway right now. We don't have an answer, but we expect to get one soon. Also a challenge trying to revoke Trump's effort to eliminate gender affirming medical care to patients who are under 19. There's also a hearing on a government watchdog, Kathy Harris. She was the chairwoman of the Merits of Systems Protection Board. That's a significant agency because that's where federal workers go with complaints about their supervisors or the federal government.

She was fired and she's looking to have her job reinstated. Now, we'll note last night the Trump administration did get its first significant win when a judge in Boston said the federal buyout program for federal workers could go forward. Now, it's interesting the Trump administration did not wait for any appeals there from federal workers. They said that that offer ended at 7 p.m. About 75,000 workers have accepted that deal, Dana.

Wow. And this is a really important point that I want you to make, which is all of these court cases that you were talking about, that's just today and never mind what we've seen over the past few weeks. The Trump administration, those who played this out and planned this out, they expected the challenges in the courts, and that's part of their strategy.

Absolutely, Dana. Even before Trump was sworn in, I was told by the lawyers working on a lot of these executive orders that they knew these were going to be challenged in court. They were going to be challenged in jurisdictions where the Trump administration would likely lose. We know Republicans do the same thing when they challenge a Democratic policies. They said we expected to lose. The goal here is to push these questions to the Supreme Court, where they hope that conservative supermajority will agree with at least some of Trump's uses of executive power.

And then it would really be the law of the land. Thank you so much, Paula. I appreciate that reporting. And it's not just the buyouts of federal workers. We're also learning about scores of firings at federal agencies, including the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration. Just the latest move in this massive effort we've been talking about day in and day out to drastically shrink the federal workforce. Listen to what Elon Musk said overnight to a summit in Dubai.

We do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave part of them behind. Because if you leave part of them behind, it's easy. It's kind of like leaving a weed. If you don't remove the roots of the weed, then it's easy for the weed to grow back. But if you remove the roots of the weed, it doesn't stop weeds from ever growing back, but it makes it harder.

I am surrounded now by a terrific group of journalists to talk about all of this. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Frank Foer of the four, I know better than that, sorry, Frank, of The Atlantic and Leanne Caldwell of Puck. Thank you so much for being here. It's good to see you all. I just want to kind of start big picture with where we are and just to kind of reiterate that none of this is surprising.

given what we heard time and time again from Donald Trump. And yet it's so critical to try to keep following it and reporting on it and give the context around what it is that they're actually trying to do, Frank. Right. So this is an act of deletion, as Elon Musk just said. It is a

a purge. And what they're destroying are not just jobs and not just departments. They're destroying an idea. They're destroying an ethos which has infused American government for more than 100 years, which is this idea that we have these group of people who execute policies

They work in the service of the nation. They respond to whoever the president of the United States is and they follow their commands. But when they execute those policies, they're supposed to do it in a neutral way that doesn't favor the president's friends or penalize the president's foes, that prevents corruption from emerging. I mean, corruption really is the weed.

that keeps emerging. And these ethical rules, these standards, these procedures, the culture of the government was the thing that prevented corruption from really flourishing in Washington. And I think the danger is with what they're doing is not just that we're gonna lose

competence, not just that we're going to lose expertise and not just lose things that actually protect the American people, but it'll be replaced by a system that is fundamentally corrupt, where the president and people like Elon Musk are the ones who exploit the government for their own gain. And the argument that they make, of course, is that what is corrupt

is this sprawling federal government with agencies that people haven't heard of, with people who work there who are not accountable, which

you know, certainly makes sense on its face. They also argue that there's just too much money being spent and that the deficit and the debt are out of control. Also makes sense. But then the question is how they're going about it. And I want you to listen to what happened this morning on Capitol Hill. One of the picks for his cabinet, Linda McMahon, is getting her hearing and she is

going through the process of getting confirmed to lead a department, the Department of Education, that Donald Trump wants to eliminate. Do you agree that since the department was created by Congress, it would need an act of Congress to actually close the Department of Education? And certainly President Trump understands that we'll be working with Congress, but certainly does require congressional action. Long before there was a Department of Education,

we fulfilled the programs of our educational system. Are there other areas, other agencies where parts of the Department of Education could better serve our students and our parents on a local level?

I mean, the fact that she said it does require Congress to get involved, I mean, that's heartening. It seems pretty basic, but it's heartening. The question is whether they're actually going to mean it when they're also dismantling USAID, which is budgeted through the United States Congress and named through Congress. They want to dismantle FEMA, which is part of

DHS, which is definitely made clear that it is an agency through Congress.

And they're doing this, by the way, without nominated or people who have been confirmed in the Senate. These actions are happening despite these who's going to lead them. So whatever Linda McMahon says isn't necessarily how they administer how Donald Trump and Elon Musk are going to deal with the Department of Education. One thing that's interesting about what Elon Musk says is about accountability. These unnamed bureaucrats who are not accountable to the people

You know who's accountable to the people? Members of Congress, who are the ones who are supposed to represent also the bureaucracy and spend, send money to the bureaucracy on how they're supposed to spend that money. But the administration is making those decisions

uh... in spite and aside from what congress is already allocated you know this has been that wrestle vote has written about this of course in project twenty twenty five this is a theory that conservatives have really been uh... gaining a lot of uh... steam on as this expanded

the uh... executive power and to control the entire federal bureaucracy and that's exactly what donald trump is doing as my dear friend on another network said well you know i must was talking about an elected bureaucrats or an elected people uh... running government too much that was the moment irony really died

I want to get to your terrific reporting, which is the fact, and this is more about how it's being done, not what is being done, which is all of these agencies, even though they've been told by federal judges, stop, stop dismantling.

they're doing it anyway. I'm just going to read part of your story. FEMA has clawed back $80 million intended to help New York City house migrants. The EPA has paused more than 30 grant programs, including some providing money for schools to buy electric buses,

And USAID contractors say hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts have not been paid. Multiple lawsuits now accuse the administration of violating Congress's powers over government spending, as well as a federal judge's orders to turn funding back on after the White House freeze late last month.

Well, this has happened so abruptly and that there were lawsuits that followed that people are in a state of panic and confusion. According to all the sources that we spoke with, they don't know what to do with these funds. These are funds that were allocated by Congress because you have a pause from a federal court followed by guidance within the agencies to stop all funding. So what do you do? And a really

Crystallizing moment for officials was when this week the Department of Homeland Security fired four FEMA officials for providing funds to New York City, funds that were already allocated by Congress that are part of an ongoing and existing program. And that was a moment that sources say made it so clear that they could either

This is the conundrum. You either don't do what legally you're supposed to do or what a judge, a federal court says you're supposed to do, or you risk losing your job. Which path do you take? And the reality on the ground in our reporting is that the programs or the states, the cities, the organizations that are receiving these federal funds, they are also at a loss. I spoke to

one organization after this reporting that helps immigrants with their citizenship. So helping them essentially learn, educate them for the test and all that comes with it. They're firing people. They don't have, they don't know when these funds are going to be turned on. And they said it quite simply. They said, I can't tell my creditors that the government is not giving me money and I don't know when to expect it. So the reality is that this all trickles down. And I think to your point about members of Congress, that's where constituents are speaking up.

And where that bubbles up and how that plays out is still to be seen, I think. I encourage everybody to check out your story online. Don't go anywhere. Up next, a Kennedy in the cabinet. RFK Jr. is set to bring his Maha movement to the Department of Health and Human Services. This podcast is supported by Sleep Number.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now America's health secretary. The Senate voted 52 to 48 to confirm Kennedy to lead HHS. Mitch McConnell was the only Republican to vote against President Trump's pick. The former GOP leader explained in a scathing statement, quote, "I'm a survivor of childhood polio. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures. Mr. Kennedy failed to prove he is the best person.

possible person to lead America's largest health agency. My panel is back. Going to get to that McConnell beat in a second, but I just want to show everybody where we are when it comes to filling out Trump's Cabinet. He's doing really well. He's got most of the big jobs filled, not all of them. There are some who are unconfirmed. The secretary of agriculture, while we were on the air, was also confirmed.

It's now largely along party lines because Democrats are trying to push back against the other things going on. But the McConnell of it all. You've covered Mitch McConnell for a long time. As have I. And you wrote in Puck something I want to read to our viewers.

I mean, that's so genius, Leigh-Anne.

So McConnell is in this twilight era. This is the very last stage of his career. We all know he's 82 years old. We know that his health is, his body is not necessarily keeping up anymore. And he hasn't decided to run for reelection. And we also know he has a long history of, with Donald Trump. He has no regard for the former president.

He is looking at these confirmations as nominees, as a symptom of Donald Trump, as something that where the party has gone wrong, the party is moving in the wrong direction. But I will say the biggest priority for Mitch McConnell in his last phase is going to be defense funding and making sure that the isolationist movement and the Donald Trump Republican Party does not expand to defense funding.

The question I have is how much influence does he have in his party still, especially when he is the lone sole anti-vote against these nominees to influence on issues that really matter, including like this issue of defense that is absolutely so important to him.

I mean, really, if we were to go in and we were to deliver truth serum to Republican senators, you would find that there would be enough by probably a little bit of a margin to stop somebody like Kennedy from getting confirmed or to stop somebody like Tulsi Gabbard from getting confirmed.

But it hasn't happened. And so you have, I mean, we're back to like this whole scenario where suddenly in the first Trump term, the adults in the room were, you know, Mattis and Kelly and these people who were in the White House. Now, like the adults in the room are supposed to be like this block of senators, people like McConnell and Murkowski and the like.

And yet, I think they maybe learned some lessons from the first go around. And they're withholding their leverage points and their attempts to influence waiting for their moments. And you have this sense that their moments will never arrive because they just lack the courage to do it in a meaningful way. It also shows how...

As I said in the piece, I won't use the language, but McConnell is impervious to the challenges and the pressure that other senators are going to feel from Trump, from MAGA World. He's likely not running for reelection. He has been, as he has said, the spear catcher for the Republican Party for many years. So those things don't bother him, which separates him from the rest of the Congress. Well, and he voted against three nominees. Exactly. He was the only Republican.

I do want to get to the RFK Jr. of it all. You mentioned truth serum. Maybe you're channeling Angus King, as you are wont to do. Well, truth serum is suddenly unregulated. Oh, there you go. Well done, Frank. Angus King gave a Senate floor speech last night, and here's what he said. I haven't heard too many people come up on the floor and support this nominee and tell us why he should be approved. Because you know what, Mr. President? If this were a secret ballot, this man wouldn't get 20 votes.

Everybody in this body knows he's not qualified. He's a danger. We have physicians in the Senate. I believe that the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm, should apply to Senate votes. You should not be voting for somebody who you know is going to do harm to the public health. Well, we've learned over

over the course of these confirmations that what Donald Trump wants, Donald Trump gets. But there is a lot that happened behind the scenes here, particularly with RFK Jr. when we were all waiting to see where Bill Cassidy was going to land. And then he gave a speech on the floor where he described sort of what commitments he had received from RFK Jr. to make him comfortable. There was private calls with the vice president. So certainly while he has had a streak now of multiple confirmations, despite the controversy around some of these nominees,

there was a lot of work that went into all of them. I think the next question, though, is Donald Trump can be quite unpredictable. And how long will he stay loyal to those that he's picked? In the first term, I think I covered five Homeland Security secretaries. So right now, everyone seems to be getting along. The confirmations are happening. Doge is doing what Doge is doing. But I think there's still a lot to the story here that we just don't know yet.

I mean, I think a lot of these these picks have been pre vetted in a way. And everybody knows what they're getting into this time. Everybody knows that Trump can be capricious and that he can fire them for going off and deviating in any sort of way. And so you have you know, everything is moving in lockstep.

I'm glad that you teed up the question about who's supporting RFK Jr. because it turns out we have a story on it coming up. And I just want you to go back in time, not that long ago, to remember the political power of the soccer mom. Guess what? Now there is another force, the Maha Mom. We're going to take a closer look at the women and men, moms and dads, behind the influential Make America Healthy Again movement. Stay tuned.

Just this morning, what once seemed like a long shot, a vaccine critic running the nation's public health agencies, became a reality. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. owes his new title in large part to a coalition known as the Maha Movement. We spent time learning about how wellness influencers took their mission to make America healthy again, all the way to President Trump's cabinet.

October 2024, Battle Creek, Michigan. This is a monumental moment. An army of protesters delivered 400,000 petitions to Kellogg's headquarters, demanding the company make good on a pledge to remove artificial dyes from its food. I'm here for the mom.

all the moms who struggle to feed their children healthy food. The leader, Vani Hari, a food activist known as the Food Babe, who says cutting out the processed and fast food of her youth not only helped her shed weight, but curbed serious health struggles. She has a wellness brand and a massive online following.

I feel like my voice represents so many ordinary citizens, moms and activists and dads and so many people across the United States that have just had enough. Hari volunteered for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. She was a delegate at his 2012 convention where she wrote labeled GMOs on signs.

She got disillusioned with politics and turned to activism, pressuring restaurants like Chick-fil-A and Subway to take some additives out of their food. Why is it citizen activists like me and the people that follow me and all the grassroots movement holding these companies accountable? Why isn't there anybody in Washington doing this?

She and others livid about the American food system found common cause with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There's, I think, a real hunger for politicians across the aisle to be targeting this vote, our anxiety about why are we getting so sick? Callie Means and his sister Casey are well-known leaders in the so-called Maha, Make America Healthy Again movement. I got a call from a

a safe food advocate named Kelly Means. He was a GOP Trump critic who turned supporter and helped broker the first call between Kennedy and then-candidate Donald Trump last summer. Don't you want a president that's going to make America healthy again?

With that endorsement, the Maha movement came with him. They're kind of what I call red-pilled bombs. Many of them that voted for Obama looking for change there. The Maha movement, make America healthy again. Bobby Kennedy is the leader of that movement. And that's why I thought it was absolutely urgent

to get Bobby Kennedy across the finish line. Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior Obama aide, says Democratic leaders missed an opportunity. We're not living in the same social media internet spaces that a lot of the public is, where you have people talking about, you know,

what to feed your kids, what chemicals to avoid. Long before he even decided to run for president in 2024, RFK Jr. lived in those spaces. And when Trump nominated Kennedy for Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Maha network went to work. I was getting hundreds of messages saying,

a day personally and thousands through the office. Despite serious misgivings about Kennedy pushing conspiracy theories and regularly suggesting vaccines cause autism, which was scientifically debunked, Republicans like Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, saved Kennedy's bid for HHS secretary. Vaccines save lives. They are safe.

They do not cause autism. There are multiple studies that show this. Mr. Kennedy and the administration reached out seeking to reassure me regarding their commitment to protecting the public health benefit of vaccination. Are you completely confident that none of those theories that RFK Jr. has and he's expressed many times over the years

will be part of America's public health, as he promised to Senator Cassidy. I am completely confident that Bobby Kennedy will come in with opinions and believe those opinions do not matter. Bobby Kennedy is coming in to institute a process.

Expectations for Kennedy are extremely high among his supporters who want him to crack down on the food and pharmaceutical industries. But in an anti-regulation Trump administration, can he? The way that

the Trump administration is proceeding is to loosen the reins of the way government regulates clean air, clean water. So why are you so confident that they will be the opposite when it comes to the food industry?

This is not Bloomberg, Michelle Obama, Nanny State, soda taxes. You've got foundational conflicts of interest in our scientific guidelines. So there's a very conservative point there that's not ideological and not against conservative principles that we should just have accurate science. And then number two is we should stop subsidizing bad things. And I know

that many people on the left watching that can't stand Bobby Kennedy and stand President Trump, I know they resonate with something that's happening. I know they resonate that there's a strain that we're touching on childhood chronic disease, and I would just urge them. There's a mass opportunity in society to support the Trump administration on this sector.

Coming up, a no-holds-barred conversation about Elon Musk with the co-hosts of The Pivot podcast. Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway are here next.

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. People all over the place are experiencing jealousy because their partner is clicking too many hearts on the wrong person's profile. Psychologist and jealousy expert, Dr. Jolie Hamilton, with some research and advice that I think we could all use. We're getting real about a messy emotion, something all of us face at some point or another. What's the research? What do they tell us? Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Human intelligence will be a very small fraction of total intelligence. Digital intelligence will be more than 99% of all intelligence in the future. So hopefully the computers are nice to us.

What motivates the man who hopes the computers are nice to us and is actively trying to replace humans who work for the federal government with computers? Well, who better to talk to than two people plugged into Muskworld for years? Kara Swisher, the host of the podcast On and co-host of Pivot, and the other Pivot co-host, Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU and the host of another podcast, The Prof G.I.

pod. Okay, before we start, thank you so much for being here, but I just want to fact check something. Musk called you cruel and deceitful human beings. I know you both. You are neither. So fact check, false. So let's get that out of the way. Oh, you want to disagree with me? He said we were mean, and that's not inaccurate. Correct, Scott, don't you think? I'm mean-ish. Mean-ish. Mean adjacent. Okay, but let's talk about

why he called you this. And it's because you all, you get it. You understand Elon Musk. You understand the world from which he comes and everything that goes in between. Cara, you obviously met him when he was not Elon Musk. He was just Elon Musk. You don't believe that he is working as Donald Trump's wrecking ball out of a sense of altruism or even loyalty to Trump. What do you believe he's getting out of this deal? What does he want?

Well, I think he wants influence. He kind of likes that idea. I think he has some ideas in his head about the way the world should be, and he has the means to do it. And I think he's enjoying himself. I think this interests him. He's always been someone who gets quickly bored. And I think this is an interesting problem for him. And that's being charitable in that regard. And I do think in his self-interest, there's all kinds of things that are happening, including the State Department just announcing it was going to, I don't know if they announced it, it was in the line item that they were buying $400 million of Cybertrucks.

So he just has self-interest all over the place, getting rid of inspector generals, investigations, et cetera. Yeah, Cybertruck's part of Tesla, which somehow didn't make the chopping block. Scott, you have been sounding the alarm about what Musk is up to, but you also call, it's one of my favorite terms that you use, you say that we are following weapons of mass distraction. Elaborate.

Well, and corporations do this. Let's not talk about self-harming our teen girls. Let's talk about gender balance in the workplace. This is the ultimate strategy. The gulf of distraction is how I would call most of this stuff. There are three things that Musk wants here. One money, two money, and three money. His net worth has gone up by about $150 billion, despite the fact Tesla sales are crashing between 20% and 70% across Europe, down 15% year on year.

China because the market soberly predicts unfortunately They were now in a full kleptocracy and the shareholder value is a function of proximity to a corrupt president This is this is about money notice how they just fired the inspector general who was investigating musk. This is not Everything that tech brothers do can be reverse engineered to one thing and that is Benjamin's and

You both talked about Musk in the context of the unified CEO theory. Can you explain what that means, Kara? And what does it mean for his takeover of government?

Well, the idea that they know best. Dictator is another word for it, essentially. Most corporations are run by a compelling CEO. And sometimes in the case of tech companies, they have a complete control, like at Facebook, for example, or Meta. You cannot fire Mark Zuckerberg. He has total control over the company via the way he's organized operations.

the stock. And so the idea is that there's a single CEO who decides things. It's also sort of founder mode, that they get to make changes, they get to wreck things, and it's for the good of everybody. And so it's an idea that we should have a strong, it's very similar to what's happening with the presidency. There should be a stronger president rather than the other co-equal branches. It shouldn't be quite that equal. In fact, the executive should have more power. And that's something that's been growing in politics for a long time.

And Kara, I do have to ask about a change in his Twitter handle, which I noted, very deadpan earlier this week, which of course, you know, played right into the fact that he wants to make us all laugh like we're seven-year-old boys. I have a young voice, so maybe I get the humor. I guess I'm not going to repeat the HB handle, but talk about that vis-a-vis his personality, Elon's personality.

I think the seven-year-old is charitable. I mean, one of the things that he has is he loves dank memes and jokes, and he loves to make jokes himself and then laugh at his own jokes. And then all the people who work for him laugh at him, and therefore he thinks he's funny. And he's not funny. He's sometimes funny, I guess. He...

Well, I never thought so. But he likes to do this. He likes to engage in sort of these juvenile little pranks. And when he's not doing that, he likes to insult people. And all kidding aside, we don't mind being called these names, but it's a 53 year old man does not do this. I mean, or this one does. And so he just like this is what he likes. He likes to to to to slag people. I guess it's part of video game culture or something, but I find it.

unusual for someone of his age to be such a juvenile. Scott, let's talk about what can be done for people who don't agree with what is happening at the behest of and the leadership of Elon Musk.

You recommended, I was listening to your podcast last week, and you recommended Democrats should put up more of a fight and go down to these federal agencies, bang on the doors, demand access. Well, maybe they were listening. They did that. They've gone to USAID, the Department of Education. It hasn't had much of an impact. So what now? Yeah, Dan, I was wrong because it looked more like a senior's home on a canceled jello night. It just wasn't optically appropriate.

good moment for us in terms of what we should do is be more optimistic and be more optimistic and future-looking. Tax holiday for 20 to 30-year-olds, 10 million new homes built in the next 10 years. Take the cohort that is 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago, people under the age of 40, versus 70-year-olds who are 72% wealthier and level up

young people, UBI for industries or people affected by AI.

lower Medicare coverage two years a year for the next 20 years and move to nationalized health care that provides more access and lower costs. And also go a bit to the dark side, drop legislation that once we get control of the branches of government at some point, which we will, that removes the security detail of former advisors to the president. It decides we're renaming space as American space and potentially seizing

all invaders in space, including the 51 percent of satellites owned by SpaceX. Stop. Encourage consumers to not engage with T-Mobile or United, who are doing deals with SpaceX. When I get an Uber alert saying your Tesla Model S is on the way, I cancel and say I don't ride in Teslas. In sum, the Democratic Party needs to do the party— So from the consumer point of view.

The Democratic Party needs to be moved away from being the party of waving their cane at a building outside of it to the party of big ideas and not f***ing around.

Yeah. So one of the things Scott was talking about is true. I mean, I like Jell-O, so I think we should always protest when Jell-O is taken away from us. But one of the issues that they have is they've got it. It doesn't work just to insult these people. A certain portion of people love Elon Musk. They love President Trump. And so by telling them they're stupid doesn't really work and it doesn't give hope to anybody else. So you have to be, you know, proactively saying what you're for while at the same time

pointing out how ridiculous, how backward they are, you know, and mentioning egg prices and things like that. But telling people what you're going to do always is a better way to do it. And Musk and Trump do this even though they're not doing anything, right? They're not, they feel forward even if they're not forward. All they're doing is slashing and burning. You have to appeal to the hope of people and what you're actively going to do and at the same time not put up with this nonsense.

Cara and Scott, I can tell how angry you are, Scott, with the word that you just used. Thank you. You have so many jobs, such busy lives. Thank you for squeezing it in. Come back soon. They're just by the enemies we've made, Donna. FDR, FDR. Nice, nice.

Coming up, Donald Trump is forging ahead with his, what he calls his war on woke by taking a new top job at an iconic American cultural institution. We have some details after the break. The president of the United States is adding a new title to his resume, chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Trump's handpicked board elected him to the job yesterday. It's the first time a president has held it.

And that's after he removed board members appointed by the Democrats, replacing them with loyalists and supporters from the second lady, Usha Vance, to his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to a longtime aide who makes his media content, Dan Scavino. The executive director at the Kennedy Center is now Rick Grinnell, a former ambassador who, let's just say, is quite active and quite personal on social media.

Trump says the two share a vision for a "golden age of American arts." So what does that mean for the storied arts institution? My colleague Jake Tapper obtained audio of now-chairman Trump talking by phone with his new board.

It got very wokey and some people were not happy with it and some people refused to go and we're not going to have that. We're going to have something that will be very, very exciting and we'll do things both physically and in every other way to make the building look even better. I think we're going to make it hot. We made the presidency hot, so this should be easy.

Now, icons of the arts like Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds, and Renee Fleming are all stepping down from the roles at that iconic institution. Fleming shared a statement with me which said in part, quote, "I've treasured the bipartisan support for this institution as a beacon of America at our best. I hope the Kennedy Center continues to flourish and serve the passionate and diverse audience in our nation's capital and across the country."

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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