Sex, Spies and Politics 

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1:20Now, former NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been a frequent flyer on President Trump's In His Orbit. Here are the president and Jensen Huang in late September at the White House. A few days earlier, Huang sat at the president's head table at a state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. In May, there was a last-minute Air Force One ride to Beijing, and this from a U.S.-Saudi investment forum last year. And this is just a small sampling. The president and Huang are, at least were, close. But now reports of two affairs, most alarmingly with an alleged Chinese spy and Huang's resignation this morning from his multi-trillion dollar company are raising serious questions about the relationship between Nvidia and the Trump administration.

2:11Now, why does this matter? Well, until today, Jensen Huang was essentially controlling the chips, powering the entire AI arms race and had extraordinary access to the president, which means this scandal could have a major impact on many things. National security, global politics, the world economy and, of course, the politics of the Trump White House. CNN's Elena Treen is at the White House. Elena, the president, as we mentioned, the two of them have been very close. The president, just shortly before coming on air, put out on social media that he is endorsing Tim Cook to lead NVIDIA. Here's what the president wrote.

2:54Now that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong, who has done a fantastic job, has resigned, there is only one man to take his place. Tim Cook of Apple, a legend replaces a legend. Now, this is not Dana White being press secretary. This is a far more realistic and serious proposal. What are you hearing from the White House? There's a lot to say about this. Just to touch on that response from the president, which is the first White House response, I should say, in regard to Jensen Huang resigning effective media from NVIDIA amid this entire scandal. One, Tim Cook, like Jensen Huang, very close to the president.

3:34I'd argue Huang is actually closer to the president than Cook is, but I think that's why that name came to mind. We should also note that Tim Cook is still very much involved in Apple, even though he resigned from his role as CEO a couple months ago recently. I think it's unlikely Tim Cook would actually take him up on this offer. But to get into more of just why this is so important from a White House perspective, why I'm the one actually talking to you about this, Dana, is because of how close the president was to Jensen Huang. There are few people in Silicon Valley that have a closer tie or direct line to Trump than Huang.

4:08There were many times when I've been in the White House having meetings, seeing Huang in his signature leather black jacket going into the Oval Office to meet with the president. We know that he often calls the president. Trump often calls him. He once did so publicly, you know, dialed him up at a press conference or some sort of meeting recently. And so that's why I think there's a lot of questions about this, because, of course, we know that this relationship to Huang had the potential to really shape this administration's policy, particularly when it comes to the future of artificial intelligence, but also the sale of the sale of AI chips, the NVIDIA's most advanced chips to China and the export controls around that.

4:48a lot of controversial decisions and conversations, Dana, that had been going on behind the scenes about whether or not that could continue. And that's why there's so many questions about this. I also want to bring up to you something you mentioned as well about Huang flying with the president. The last time Trump went to China, he's actually going a couple of days, but his last trip to Beijing was back in May. During that trip, he had a layover, the president, in Alaska before carrying on. He summoned, essentially, Huang to Alaska to finish that leg of the journey to go to Beijing. And that was when, actually, we were told the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, had given the president an intelligence briefing informing him of this, you know, that the fact that Huang was suspected of having an affair with a suspected Chinese spy.

5:33So a lot to get into about who knew what, when, and all of the national security implications of it. Yeah. And we were all, everybody was asking why at that point back in May, why wasn't Jensen Huang going on the trip? It didn't make a lot of sense. And the president, you know, it seems didn't know until he knew it before before he invited him on that trip. Lots of questions about their relationship, but also really big questions about how the White House, how the national security arm of the White House handled the knowledge or allegations of the spy who was involved here. Thank you so much, Elena.

6:16I really appreciate it. Phil Mattingly, you've done amazing work on this. I was just listening to your podcast, which I think everybody should listen to, to understand why this matters so much. We are where we are right now. He has resigned. But there are so many questions, including what Elena was just talking about at the end there, which is the chips and whether or not the United States should have all of its eggs in that basket. And there is now a tussle inside, or was almost physically apparently a tussle inside the Trump cabinet over this. Shockingly involving Scott Besson, which seems to be the consistent through line of any potential tussle in the administration.

7:05To what Elena was just detailing, I think what people need to understand right now is this is the first chapter, and it is not about one CEO or one company or a fall from grace. It is about to completely engulf Washington. It's already in the process of engulfing Washington. And the reason why, Fred's very closely to what you and Elena were laying out, in a relationship that did not exist prior to inauguration, their first meeting was January 31st in the Oval Office of 2025. Over the course of just 18, 19 months, more than at least 15 meetings that I could pin down between reporting and public identification between the two, in the Oval Office, in Riyadh, at Windsor Castle, in Mar-a-Lago.

7:51Regular phone calls, oftentimes late at night. Elena was talking about how the president called in when Jensen was at the All In Summit, a big kind of tech summit. He also called in to an all-hands meeting at NVIDIA on an earnings day just to congratulate him on earnings. So it's extremely close, like no other relationship with any other CEO. And I think the elements as to why are really important to understand, because it's transactional in a way that underscores NVIDIA's singular importance, not just to the U.S. economy, but to the global economy. Trump was always very aware of that. but also the leverage that NVIDIA's chips provided the administration in the negotiations with China, which Howard Lutnick, who's very deeply involved in this, utilized in a way that I think was very unprecedented for export controls in general, but also the degree to which, because of that, Wong, you can literally trace meeting face-to-face with the president and a decision within hours or within the next day that directly affects NVIDIA's bottom line or NVIDIA's products or NVIDIA's business operations in the exact way that Jensen was lobbying for.

8:56And so I've counted at least four meetings and several rulemakings. You can go deep into export policy, which I'm going to save all of you from that at this moment. But the degree to which their priorities and their policy desires matched up with what actions were taken because of that relationship is going to be a central point of investigation going forward. In addition to, and I don't want to lose sight of why we're even talking about this, why he fell from grace, because of an affair with, as you said in your podcast, it's not about the sex, it's about who it was with, an alleged Chinese spy.

9:32And that is going to be something that no question is going to be reported on and investigated. But back to the issues going on inside the cabinet about Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, and the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant. Francesca, you cover the White House, and I want to get you on this, but first I want to read a little bit of CNN's reporting on this. Besant challenged Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over his department's reluctance to label NVIDIA customer Megaspeed a possible national security threat in a Situation Room confrontation last week. Senior Trump officials, including Lutnick, also were briefed months ago about Huang's relationship with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive who the intelligence community suspected of being a Chinese spy.

10:17People familiar with the matter said. But despite these warnings, commerce has so far refused to put Megaspeed on the entity list. Megaspeed being, as it sort of suggests in this reporting that I just read, the company of Alice Huang, who's the alleged Chinese spy, who was still, even though the suspicion was already there inside the Trump administration, Howard Lutnick kept the U.S. relationship going with that company. But this also does go back to the president, though, and how much the president did or didn't want this to happen. This is now what you see Hakeem Jeffries, who we expect to be Speaker of the House, saying that who knew what when, you know, is something that they're going to be investigating heavily.

11:05You've already seen members of Congress asking for classified briefings on this, promising probes on this in the next Congress. And I don't think you're overstating the relationship between the former NVIDIA CEO and the president of the United States at all. When I interviewed him last July, the former NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Wang, he told me that he had come to the White House, that he had spoken to President Trump. This was leading into one of his trips to China. He told me that every time that he was in Washington, D.C., he tried to sit down with the president of the United States and read him in and have the president read him in on what was going on with China.

11:43And then he went to China immediately after that. So that's just one example, I think, of what that relationship was like. And the irony is that this is a president who wants to have his foot on the gas on AI because of the arms race, the AI arms race with China. And now this person who he trusted so much allegedly was having a relationship with a Chinese spy. Yeah. And a lot of the president's opinions about AI and the arms race with China when it comes to AI comes from Jensen, who's one of his closest people that he talks to about this. He talks to other AI tech titans as well. But Jensen was in his ear.

12:26And it's interesting when it comes to the Lutnik of it all. There have been factions within this administration on how to address China when it comes to AI. And that is absolutely true. It's at a staff level, at a cabinet level. But with the questions of Lutnik's decision and attempted influence, even after knowing about Megaspeed and the situation, it's going to raise a whole host of additional questions into Lutnik's intentions and why he had that position. And I know that Congress, that's something that they're going to want to look into as well. Here's what Republican Senator John Kennedy said on that.

13:10The obvious question is why did he choose to sell advanced chips? Secretary Lutnik needs to answer that in front of God and country. The degree to which commerce was the vehicle for anything policy-wise NVIDIA thought was the priority or wanted, it was commerce's game. Like commerce keeping the alleged spy's company off the entity list, it's commerce. Commerce's ability to open the door or remove a ban for a particular chip to be sold, it's commerce. Commerce was responsible for all of it. Jensen Wong met the – his entree to the president was Howard Lutnick. Jensen Wong worked with Howard Lutnick for NVIDIA to propose a$500 billion investment commitment, which you know is very important to the president as well.

13:56And so Lutnick was always the linchpin of the relationship. He was also the person who could execute on whatever needed to happen. And I want to stress this because I think it's important. One, Jensen's view, the perspective, which was shared by Lutnik and is often shared by the president about you sell and anchor the entire world to the U.S. tech stack on video. That's the idea, not blocking everybody from it because they're going to match the tech anyway. Isn't just a NVIDIA revenue position that is shared by that is a very particular perspective. It clashes with the perspective to land point that other administration officials have and a lot of Republicans on Capitol Hill have.

14:31Which is? Which is the idea that you should have a very high fence and a small yard. You keep your best tech in that small yard. You don't make it expansive, but you don't allow them to use your technology at all because they're just going to tech transfer it, steal it all, essentially, and build off that. And actually, we're going to sneak in a quick break. Still ahead, Democrats aren't budging on investigating President Trump. What we were just talking about is already very clearly going to be one of them. So how do they balance the accountability part of their mandate with the affordability demands from voters?

15:04And we're standing by for a briefing from New York City Mayor Zora Mamdani as rescuers search the rubble for survivors after a horrible, deadly building collapse in Brooklyn.

15:28Sometimes even your week. Want that feeling month after month? Well, new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to Progressive save hundreds. Cue your happy dance. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states. The secret society of semi-homemade? Listen up. Sam's Club has pre-made dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours. all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary. Once we're able to get a better and clearer picture of what goes on the floor as debris is moved away.

16:10Okay, we've been listening to a press conference by the New York City Mayor Zoram Amdani, the head of the FDNY and other officials there, giving an update on the horrific building collapse in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. yesterday, which happened around four o 'clock. What they said was as of now, there are eight people who have died, 18 injured. Of those who died, six adults and two children. You saw the horrible weather there. It's pouring rain. They say that this is still very much an active search and rescue situation. That is the phase they are in. They are still hoping that they can find people who are alive in the rubble, and that is very much what they're doing right now.

17:02I want to bring in Bryn Gingrass, who is live at the scene and has been for some time, Bryn. And I know you've been talking to family members who are understandably devastated by this collapse. And this collapse was of a building next to a construction site. So understandably, those officials were getting questions about the permitting and such that went into the construction. Yeah, I mean, that's that's a question not only that officials want to answer, but also just to reassure this community, Dana. We've been meeting so many people who live around here and are just like, is my building OK? You know, there's a lot of concern here.

17:47I did find it interesting. You heard from the mayor there. he did say that there are five entities that were associated with this construction site. And with those five entities, there is about 100 other buildings in New York City that they are now sweeping to make sure, to ensure residents who live in these areas that everything is okay. And that is just the first step. As you heard, this investigation is going to be a while. But, Danny, you talk about the people who are finding about their loved ones or are in the hospital right now next to their loved ones. I can't get it out of my head, the wailing that me and my producer, Jeff Winter, heard this morning from a woman who had been here since last night, waiting on the sidelines as there were FDNY firefighters going methodically through the rubble that you can see here across the street.

18:38And then she found out this morning that her husband was a construction worker, one of those fatalities that they just announced. two construction workers among those eight fatalities, as you mentioned, Dana, two children also among those fatalities, eight in total. I will say throughout the morning, we first, when we arrived here early this morning, we were seeing firefighters with buckets, like I said, methodically sort of chipping away at the construction site, the pit, as we are watching and looking over right now from where we are at this vantage point. That has sort of turn into these big machinery equipment going in and taking out chunks of debris and then kind of going through it on the side before putting in dumpsters and being hauled away.

19:25So it did from our vantage point look like, okay, maybe they moved away from a recovery effort, but that is not at all what the FDNY said. They said they will not stop here, even in this rain and in this weather, until they can see ground, until they can be sure that everyone has been rescued or recovered at this point. So this is again going to take several days as you can imagine as they've been telling us ever since this happened Yesterday afternoon, but a horrifically tragic Scene here and and it really is just heartbreaking You heard the mayor talk about that Dana going to the hospital and meeting some of these families And and and just sort of some of them not even knowing where their loved one is at this point I'm still getting updates from this one woman who I talked to this morning who was rushing to the hospital looking for her brother after she came here asking if he was alive, and I'm still waiting to see if she's actually located him.

20:14So it's heartbreaking. That's the only word I can think of as I stand here and look at this and been here all morning, Dana. Yeah, absolutely devastating. Thank you for being there. Really appreciate it. And we've been showing some pictures that your team got this morning of the first responders there, and the number of them is remarkable. and the mayor and other leaders were right. The first responders in New York City, they've been through a lot and sadly they know how to deal with this kind of tragedy. The fact that it is still search and rescue is definitely good news. So we'll keep on it and appreciate your terrific reporting, Bryn.

20:58Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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21:43Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary. The president and his top allies are in full through the looking glass mode, promising to investigate the Democrats who say they'll use their big majorities to investigate Trump officials. To be more specific, the Trump Justice Department sent letters to congressional Democrats threatening criminal probes into their congressional oversight investigations. I know, just stop and think about it for a second and you'll get it. My next guest, Virginia Democratic Representative Suhas Subramaniam is here. And before I get to him, I want you to listen to how he responded.

22:26I just got a mean letter from Trump's lawyer who's saying that our investigations that we might have into the corruption and the self-dealing and all of the crimes happening in the Trump administration would be criminal themselves to ever investigate them. The whole nine yards, we're going to investigate all of it. It's all going to have a legislative purpose. Don't you worry. And Congressman Subramaniam is a member of the House Oversight Committee. Thank you so much for being here. How seriously are you taking the Trump administration investigating you because you are trying to investigate them?

23:00Well, he had his lawyers send us what seemed like a threat, but it's an empty threat. I think he's used to threatening Congress because we had a Republican majority in Congress who did whatever he said, but we're not going to be threatened as Democrats. We're going to do our job, which is to provide oversight and accountability to the administration when there is wrongdoing. It's a long and growing list, and I do want to ask about the big news of today, which is that the now former NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang, a close ally of President Trump, a big donor, even flew with the president to China, despite, according to the New York Times, a warning from Marco Rubio about his ties to an alleged spy.

23:42Is your committee already, well, I know you don't have a control of the committee yet, but are the staffers who already worked on the minority side already looking into it? Well, we want to know what the administration knew. It seems like they knew a lot, right? They knew about the spy. They knew something was going on. I've already been very concerned about the lack of enforcement of export controls. Remember, when these chips go to China, that's their way of catching up to us. They put it in their weapons. This is a very serious issue. It's more than just an affair. And it's more than just the spy novel.

24:13It's really, really bad for our country. And so then you see the administration doing nothing about it. And then you see the$25 million donation to the ballroom. And you have to ask questions about whether there's pay for play happening in the administration. Talk more about not necessarily pay for play, but about the chips and the concerns that you have on a national security level. Yeah. One of the big reasons why we are ahead of China and other countries is because we have American companies making these very, very important chips that power AI. And when those chips. Company, yeah. Mostly just NVIDIA.

24:49And so when NVIDIA is backdoor selling them to China, an adversary, they catch up to us and surpass us potentially in AI development. And so this continues to be our advantage as a country and a very important advantage. And to see them selling to other countries that could be adversarial to us is a very serious concern. It's a national security concern. So what do you think that the committee will do once you're in power in January? We first have to know what the Trump administration knew about this and why they didn't act upon it. NVIDIA is doing an internal investigation, but they're doing what's best for their shareholders.

25:24We need to do what's best for the American people. So the folks at NVIDIA, we don't need to wait till next Congress. This needs to happen now. They need to come and answer the questions from all the relevant committees about why this could have possibly happened, how much NVIDIA benefited from this financially, and how we prevent it from happening ever again. You are part of the new Democratic coalition, and that coalition put out a comprehensive affordability agenda. A lot of proposals, a minimum wage hike, bringing ACA tax credits back, rolling back tariffs, which would really all of it would require working with President Trump.

25:59His administration is certainly signaling, as we mentioned at the top, they're going scorched earth. How do you ensure that Democrats, that you, can focus on the economic issues that voters so clearly said they want you to focus on while also doing what your job is on oversight? We can easily do both. We've got two committees, Oversight and Judiciary, as well as many other subcommittees of committees that do oversight over the administration. But a lot of our work is surrounding affordability. In fact, we were introducing affordability bills to all Congress, but Republicans wouldn't put it to the floor.

26:37And so we're going to absolutely prioritize health care, housing, other affordability issues, jobs as well, AI. We've got to address AI while still doing the investigations we need to do. And the two are related, too. Affordability and accountability are related because if you have the president's family going around negotiating deals for themselves and selling our foreign policy and you have an Iran war that won't end, the two are related. You end up with higher costs back here. And so we have to make sure we do both. I want to show you a new poll out today from Reuters. 40 % of Americans, according to this poll, about support investigations into President Trump.

27:1240 % say Congress shouldn't focus on them too much or at all. About 18 % of Americans are in between saying they'd support some focus on investigations. So there's a split, but there's also that almost 20 % who are open to the work that you're going to do on your committee. how would you convince them with your actions that it is going to be not just perceived or actually be political retribution? Yeah, it's not just about getting back at the president. This is about focusing on the corruption, all of the things happening in the administration that impacted the American people, that raised their costs, that made it hard for them to get jobs.

27:51Those are the things that we need to look at. So if there's corporate favoritism or corruption happening in the administration that's leading to companies having essentially monopolies in certain industries or not being regulated properly, that affects prices. It raises prices on people. And so those things are the things we need to focus on. And we need to make sure that we relate the affordability with the accountability. And that's going to be a priority? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you so much for coming in. Congratulations on your reelection and all the new colleagues you have on the Democratic side.

28:21Thank you. Thank you. And coming up, how did Senator-elect Scott Cologne defy more than a century of history in Mississippi? That's next.

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29:14Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary. Democrats picked up their 55th Senate seat from one of the reddest states in the entire country, that is Mississippi, where President Trump won by nearly 23 percentage points just two years ago. It did seem unthinkable only a few weeks ago, but Scott Cologne pulled off a political upset for the history books. Here's what he told supporters last night. It's not something that I did, y 'all. It's something that we did.

29:52All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this. I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to understand that we could show the country that Mississippi matters.

30:13Leanne, you've been covering the Hill a long time. I mean, I think all of us have. You know, if I told you however many months ago that you would be covering a Democratic African-American senator from Mississippi, I'm sure you wouldn't have believed it. No. But here we are. Yeah, this is the land of Tad Cochran, you know, very powerful former Republican senator, head of the Appropriations Committee for many years. So it is pretty remarkable. It's also remarkable that he won with very minimal assistance from the National Democratic Party. They decided to go in very late in the game in just the last week with a very minimal amount because they saw that they had some extra cash and maybe it might be possible.

30:57It was a couple million, which goes further than it does in other places. That is true. But that's also last minute spending. That absolutely was. But, you know, I remember talking to the National Democrats, Senate Democrats in early August about this race. And they just were like, you know, Leanne, it's on our radar. But the chances of this actually becoming competitive is just so slim. And so just in the span of three months, how it has changed. And that, you know, Senator Schumer put out a statement that Scott Colom was the perfect candidate for the perfect time. The only person who could have gotten this done, I knew it from the moment I met him.

31:38Yeah, and Cindy Hyde-Smith also was a weak candidate. She doesn't necessarily have a high profile in the state. She didn't raise a lot of money, and Republicans had been warning her that this could be an issue. But the question for me is how much the party is going to invest in the state in the future. And those are questions that I have out to the party, actually. I want you to listen to Raphael Warnock, who, of course, is the Democratic senator from Georgia. who was in Mississippi October 14th. Listen to what he said. This is video from Mississippi Today. Mississippi is a blue state. It just doesn't know it yet.

32:14I'm here because I am tired of the South being overlooked or diminished in terms of its electoral importance. We ignore the South at our own peril. Democrats are investing here. I would like to see more. I mean, he established a beachhead in Georgia, and now we've seen Mississippi, obviously South Carolina. And it's not just him. I mean, you look at Maryland Governor Wes Moore. He has also made this argument, too. A number of black Democrats have made the argument that there is a very high population of African-American voters in the South, and that's their base. And so there's a number of these states, if you look at Georgia as the model, for instance, where they could be pulling off the same sort of victories in both the United States Senate, but also in the presidential race.

33:04I mean, there is a there's a push heading into 2028 to try and make some of these other states battlegrounds. And that was that was even before this. I mean, you look at a state like South Carolina, where Democrats are poised to have their first 2028 presidential primary contest. There are some people who had said, well, that's not a competitive state. Why would we put South Carolina first in line? This is exactly why. And this is exactly why you put a South Carolina first in line. I think credit to Warnock, credit to Cory Booker, too, who was also early on the idea of trying to pitch. I'd heard from a number of donors who were like, one or the other of them had been like, hey, you should give it a shot.

33:41To your point, it doesn't take a ton of money, but this is worth some investment. It's within the range right now. So the thing I've thought about since this and also watching black majority counties in places like South Carolina and Atlanta, kind of across the southeast in particular, was I had a conversation when I was out in the field down in Georgia, actually reporting on something else where somebody pulled me aside. A community activist, a black community activist woman who said, I don't think you understand how motivated we are in the wake of the Supreme Court VRA case. and I said this not dismissively, I said, you know, national Democrats say that every single cycle and a lot of times they don't put up the candidates, the resources or the attention to actually earn it in the end and she was unyielding.

34:29She's like, just watch. She was right. We still have Alaska. It is still out and might be for some time. I think we have on the screen, well, they're still counting votes. The Democrat has 48.9 Dan Sullivan, the incumbent, 47.3. It's not even a 4 ,000-vote difference between Mary Peltola and Dan S. Sullivan, who's behind her. Yeah, so the reason this takes a long time is, well, it always does. But we just usually don't care because it's usually not that close. and a Democrat is not usually about to win the statewide Senate seat. Alaska counts. It takes a while for ballots to be flown in from the rural areas.

35:21They count for a few days. They take a few-day break. They start counting again. But it's the ranked-choice voting that won't be tabulated until November 18th. So that's the earliest we'll know. All right. Well, we'll keep watching. Thank you all so much. Thank you for joining Inside Politics today. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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36:17Listen up. Sam's Club has pre-made dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours, all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary.