'Hey everyone, I'm David Chalian, CNN's Washington Bureau Chief and Political Director, and welcome to the CNN Political Briefing. Next week, President Trump's second presidency will reach the 100-day mark. A lot has happened since his inauguration in January. Trump has issued nearly 200 executive actions. His administration has made aggressive moves on immigration, started a global trade war that has injected a ton of uncertainty into the country's economic health, and made major changes to the federal government. Trump has picked battles with the courts and elite universities, and he's testing the limits of presidential power. Kaitlan Collins is CNN's Chief White House Correspondent and hosts The Source at 9 p.m. Eastern here on CNN. Jeff Zeleny is CNN's Chief National Affairs Correspondent. They have both witnessed and reported on the defining moments of these first hundred days, and they joined me to share takeaways so far from covering Trump's second term and to give us some behind the scenes insights into this White House. Kaitlan, Jeff, thanks so much for being here.

Hey, it's my pleasure.

Thanks for having us.

'So I just want to start at the 30,000-foot level here, as we approach the 100-day mark of Trump's second presidency. How do you tell or encapsulate, Kaitlan, the story of Donald Trump's first 100 days? What do you think the story his first 100 days is?

I think what's notable is that we're entering a new phase of his presidency the second time around. The first 100 days have largely been marked by a lot of the things that they wanted to do that were relatively easy given, you know, it was a lot executive orders, pardons, things of that nature that he wanted to take on. I've been speaking to White House officials as they're reflecting on this period. They're entering the difficult time where the work is going to get a lot harder legislatively, but also when it comes into what's happening on the foreign policy front, with the U.S. economy and the president's trade war that's underway, and there is an acknowledgment that the fun part is over. The glow of being back in the White House and the excitement of being back on the campus and in the grounds and in the Oval Office, that is starting to fade a bit, which obviously is going to happen with any presidency. Sometimes it happens a lot sooner than a hundred days. And so they are in an acknowledgement that they are entering a much more difficult period of this, which they're still hopeful will be successful. The question is also, is it as disciplined as the first 100 days, if you would define it that way. They certainly would. There's a real question of how that looks. And I think also just the enormity of it and the scrutiny is wearing on staff in a way that it had not been in the last few weeks.

I think back to that very first day on January 20th when he walked back into the Oval Office, and it was not an unfamiliar place, and we have never seen that in our modern day history. Of course, only one other time. And I think the bottom line is he knows how to do the job. That doesn't mean that there are not pitfalls and hurdles along the way. There are. There may be more of them. But I think just overall from the president, just really throughout the administration to even young staffers who have sort of been in the West Wing before, just that sort of rush to be back. And I think in some ways that has benefited him. I think, in some ways, it has caused him more challenges of being so assured at how this job works. I think it's caused him to potentially take more risks, and I think that we do not know yet the outcome of his return, but I think without a doubt he knows how to do the job.

'I think within the first hundred days, and, to Kaitlan's point, I mean, I remember some White House advisors early on, a few weeks in, they're big, every time you would go chat with them, it would be like, we're having so much fun; we're having so much fun. And then also, I had a senior advisor say to me, we're kind of wrapping up on the 80-20 issues. I don't know that his math was exactly right of where popular opinion was on all of those issues, but you get the point, the easy stuff that was more popular than not, and now heading into a lot of stuff that is actually more unpopular than popular. I kind of look at it, and I'd love to hear you guys respond to this, like there were the first 63 days, like the first almost two-thirds of this hundred days, where it really was just daily him ticking through a lot of campaign promises and agenda items. And then I was just writing a list right before I started chatting with you of the last 37 days of this first 100 days. Signalgate 1, Liberation Day, tariff blink number 1, followed by, and some may argue this is a positive for the administration, the battle with the courts and Abrego Garcia dominating, followed by attack on Fed Chair Powell and tariff blink number 2 and then throw in the Hegseth chaos and all of that. That's in the last third of the 100 days, and so it felt to me like there was a distinct sort of turn for them in managing the administration.

'Yeah, that's why there's been a shift in the attitude also of the people who were insisting that they were having so much fun, because that is what, and I've spoken to other White House reporters about this, they also were hearing that from officials about this emphasis on the fun that they we're having and being back in the Oval. Trump has been spending all this time redecorating. He's just announced he's putting 100-foot flagpoles, the American flag in front of the White House that he says he's paying for. He's really spent a lot of time making it look more like he wants it to this time around. But in terms of where it's going, and I think the last few weeks have been that reality check for them in terms of, one, what is of their own making, especially with Liberation Day and the tariff war that the president himself firmly believes in and has enacted. But, obviously, we've seen how the economy has reacted to that. That's been a huge concern for them over the last few weeks because it's not just the stock market's down. It's the dollar, it's the bond markets, it's everything that is kind of happening at once. That's really been a big emphasis for them. But also, it's on the foreign policy front what is unexpected, Ukraine and Russia and what that looks like. And it's not as easy to solve as the president repeatedly promised on the campaign trail. And so, the last few weeks have been a shift for them. That doesn't mean that they think it's not going to ultimately end up in their favor. They're looking forward to the international travel and whatnot. But yeah, the 80-20 issues that they have, they've pretty much ticked through all of them.

Jeff, on the economy, specifically, I mean, given how we know strong the support is among the president's base, no matter where his poll numbers are, I'm not even sure that that, I mean I know he follows them, but I don't know that that sort of infiltrates in the way that it used to in American politics, you know, whether with his own fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill or inside the administration, because of how much support he has within the party. That's different than the first time around when it was Speaker Paul Ryan and, you know, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. Like, that's just not the scenario that he's in anymore. And so, with that unanimity or near unanimity, it seems that like the one thing that is checking him right now, the markets, and that they are responding to economic indicators, that that's the pressure point that may alter behavior.

'I think certainly it's the biggest pressure point. I mean, we have seen him back away again and again from specific movements on the economy on tariffs. I'm mean, we saw him standing in the Rose Garden announcing Liberation Day, and it wasn't, you know, that many days longer, a couple of weeks, I guess, when he was sort of pulling back. And I think we've seen that again and again. So this just a yo-yo policy on tariffs. Yes, he has believed in tariffs as a practical matter for a very long time, but this is not the country of the 1980s when he first started formulating these views. So one thing I'm sort of struck by as we sort of look through a longer lens at this is who he's surrounded by this time is very different than the first term. There were so many guardrails we talked about, and for all the criticism that his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, got from being in the West Wing, they were also key guardrails in the first term, there's no doubt about it. That does not exist in the second term. But, as we are nearing the 100 days, we are seeing other forces, and that's the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. He has emerged as one of the market whisperers, calms the markets, and really the president has turned to him as a key advisor. My question is, how long will that last? Because this is something that is very fraught. The economy is something that he was elected with, you know, on lower prices and things, and this is his biggest challenge. And it could define his presidency in ways that I would have never imagined just three months ago.

Do you believe he believes it is the economy that elected him president a second time?

To a degree, certainly. I mean, he knows that that's a huge part of it. I don't know if he attributes that to everything. Like, obviously, he thinks he achieved that. Two other things I will say to watch play out now that we're getting to the 100 days and passing it. One, the other restraint has been the courts. That has been only thing, and the mindset has kind of been, F it, just do it, and we'll let it, battle it out in the courts. They've kept the Justice Department incredibly busy over the last few weeks. But now, you know, the courts take a little bit of time. We're seeing that come to a head with some of the immigration cases and other fronts where the president has been like, just let it be fought in the courts. But eventually that time comes due, and Trump doesn't always succeed, and so if it makes it to the Supreme Court, we're starting to see that play out, which is something key to watch in terms of how that tempers their decisions or emboldens them. The other thing is staffing. You mentioned Secretary Pete Hegseth of the Pentagon. The president is extremely reluctant to fire any cabinet member, much less Hegseth, who he fought so hard to get confirmed. But I do think, once you get through this period, there are some staffers who are not working out the way that they had hoped, that they're unhappy with. There are some like Secretary Bessent who have done better than people expected because he was kind of in this holding period of getting that job. So that's another key thing to watch is who does Trump have his eye on once he feels like he gets to a safe enough place where it's been enough time that it won't chaotic that he can replace them.

Which is so fascinating, because when you think back to Trump 1.0, the drama around the staff and the personnel was a major, major storyline of the beginning of that administration, almost all the way through that administration quite frankly, and that just hasn't been as central to this one. We're going to take a quick break. We'll have a lot more with Kaitlan Collins and Jeff Zeleny in just a moment. One of the big storylines at the front half of this first hundred days was everything Elon Musk was doing and his centrality to the administration, and not only what he was trying to implement in DOGE but also the reaction to it and the pushback from it, even from perhaps some friendly quarters, Jeff, and yet, the DOGE things, I don't know if this is us in the press that just like lost interest in it as much. It seems to have taken a backseat to these other larger stories that have been front and center, but it doesn't mean that that work is not still happening.

'Look, I think the work is happening, and this will be one of the lasting legacies, for better or worse, depending on your point of view, of this administration, what has happened to the federal bureaucracy, sort of the mind share, just this institution of public thought, has been largely changed, perhaps changed forever in terms of layoffs and other things. But I think one thing, and we've really tracked it and seen it day by day as Kaitlan and I are at the White House with our team every day. You can just see the level of visibility of Elon Musk has decreased, certainly in the last few weeks. Initially he was omnipresent. Elon Musk was in the Oval Office, he was in a Cabinet Room, he was going to Mar-a-Lago, and he's still around much more than a lot of advisors, but it's not near as much as it was. And we've now heard Elon Musk, of course, his company has taken a massive, massive hit. So he is saying that he will not be around quite as much of course his time is nearing an end as a special government employee. That's what he is, technically is, but I think we don't know yet how involved he will be going forward. He said he will be involved as long as the president wants him. He's still very key friend and advisor, but he definitely ruffled feathers. And I think...

Inside the cabinet, right?

Inside the cabinet, among Republican senators, that's because DOGE to me, one of my biggest surprises of this entire first 100 days, how much of a local matter this became in every district across the country. Every town, big and small, had some example of funding was cut, and this and that, and it caused a lot of consternation for people. It's not just cutting Washington. It's cutting a lot things in my home state of Nebraska, in Kaitlan's home state of Alabama. It really has become a big national story, and that's, you know, he's a lightning rod.

Things got cut in New Jersey, too, Jeff. My home state, sorry. That image, though, of Musk with the chainsaw, I mean, that's going to be in every Democratic ad. We already see it a lot because of exactly what Jeff is describing. Is there any sense inside the administration that, like, they didn't calibrate the DOGE/Musk thing properly?

'I think there will be some people who are happy to see him leave because of the presence he has, because he does have a lot of influence. I mean, he was just lamenting that he didn't have enough influence to stop Trump from implementing tariffs. Now, there are others who love Elon Musk and like him being around and like what he's doing. But there's been a point where, you know, Elon Musk is going to these cabinet secretaries, some of who have only been on the job for, you know, six weeks, eight weeks since they were confirmed, and are essentially being told, here's your budget you've gotta slash, here's the people you've gotta slash. And they're like, hold on a minute, I just got here, and I'm looking at this, I'm making this decision. So that has been a point of frustration. But also I think, two things, one, Elon Musk came into this initially saying two trillion dollars we were hearing. Then it was slashed to one trillion. Then we heard 250 billion. I'm not even sure he's gotten to that. They say they're so transparent. They put out numbers, and then they remove them quietly when they've been fact-checked or debunked. And so, yes, they have certainly canceled a lot. We've seen them shutter USAID. But it's not even clear fully what the reach of DOGE has been. We know we can hear it from people, and lawmakers are getting an earful. But in terms of what they told people they were getting, there is a question of that. The other thing with Elon Musk being a special government employee where he has a certain amount of days, it's not clear he'll fully have run that out. And so there is a thinking that he could come back and use them later on and fulfill that if you don't do it consecutively. That's a real question, I think, if he returns. But Tesla's profits dropping 72%, I think, you know, was a huge wake-up call.

'And a lot of it was low-hanging fruit. We've not even really gotten to the big cuts and the biggest part of discretionary spending, and that's the defense budget. So he will effectively be taking his leave before most of that gets started. So I think at the end of this administration, you know, years from now, we will still be trying to figure out exactly how this whole DOGE wrecking ball worked. I'm not sure we know that yet.

'The other place, obviously, that we've seen Donald Trump try to disrupt the previous order of things is on the world stage. He had promised a solution and resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war on day one. He loves to say it never would have happened if he were still president. Same thing with Israel-Gaza. And yet, we've see both of those global conflicts become, I would argue, perhaps more intractable than less over the course of these first hundred days, not to say that resolutions can't be found, but they certainly got more complicated, not less, in this first stint. So what do you make, Kaitlan, of how, and that Oval Office meeting, of course, that you were in covering with Zelensky sticks in mind, like the first hundred days of Trump on the world stage this time around, given Jeff's note that he's more comfortable in the clothes of the presidency, if you will.

He certainly is. And in terms of, I mean, Ukraine obviously also is still shaping his perception of that from what happened the first time he was in office when he was impeached after his phone call with President Zelensky. And so that is obviously still very much looming in the background of all of this. But if you look at the words of the Secretary of State, the Vice President and the President himself on this, they are growing increasingly frustrated with what is playing out. They are way more public with their criticisms of Ukraine, but also Russia is there as well in the background because other world leaders are talking to President Trump saying, don't get played by Putin here, don't let him get the upper hand, kind of phrases that they know will work with his psyche. And I do think he's getting frustrated because there is a conventional wisdom that Putin is dragging his feet here and is not trying to end this quickly. And so, they are getting increasingly frustrated, and it is the question of how this ends. And do they ultimately walk away from the table as they're threatening now with the negotiations? What does that look like if they do? Because obviously no one thinks the status quo would remain between the United States and Ukraine. And so that is the real question here that people in the White House are not sure how it's going to end.

I think in terms of how world leaders view the president, that's something that we've also noticed. I mean, there has been a parade of world leaders coming to have that Oval Office meeting, even if they don't agree necessarily with the Trump administration. They know that personal relationships are very helpful to him. But I recall thinking back eight years ago to the very beginning of the first Trump administration. The world was uncertain what they were getting. Because Donald Trump at that point, he was not expecting to win the presidency. It was all new to him, and now they know exactly what they're getting. World leaders from allies to adversaries alike have expressed they're afraid of him in some respects of his unpredictability but also the exasperation factor, I think, is also pretty clear, but what he says about Ukraine and Russia, he's long said that Ukraine would be the more difficult side to make a deal. That has not proved to be true. And so the question of Putin, like it did in the first term, hangs over this presidency in ways that at this moment, we do not know how that storyline will end.

'You guys obviously both covered Trump 1. You're both covering it this time around. And I do, as I'm sitting here thinking of all these topics we're discussing, I know the word unprecedented gets so overutilized, especially as it relates to Donald Trump. But we are seeing like economic disruption, based on his 40-year commitment to this tariff regime and tariff policy, not working out to the way I think he initially designed it. We do see increased tension or at the very least distance from some reliable allies of the United States. And we do have this constant looming threat, to your point, Kaitlan, about the courts. And yes, the administration rushing to court to get these battles fought, but also this looming constitutional crisis issue, and I just wonder, like, do you, in covering this, how do you separate how norm-busting he can be and his administration can be from the norm of your job of covering the administration? Like, do those two things fit in your brain space at the same time as you're doing your jobs?

'I think there's often a criticism of the press that they don't know how to cover President Trump. I think it's actually shifted a lot from the first time around and from how we covered him, and I think because of the norm-busting things or the things that were just, you know, unheard of or unthinkable for a sitting U.S. president to do or say, they got so much attention in the first administration. I think the second time around, his second term, we're more used to it. We understand the Trump style. That doesn't mean that people are saying, you know, this is an endorsement of him saying this or doing this. But I think people just understand it more. And so when they look at the coverage of him, certainly from what I think of our colleagues and our team, we look at it in terms of what actually matters. What is important to the voters? What's going to break through with them at the end of the day? And what is something that's going to be more defining of the Trump legacy because, yes, there were so many stories from the first time that you probably couldn't even remember at this point, but you remember the big ones and the decisions that mattered, and so our job is to sort through what actually hurts people: egg prices, being able to build a home, the tariffs that are squeezing small businesses and what that looks like. Those things obviously matter more than the day-to-day drama among staff, and so I think it's just, in terms of triaging, what's important, what's urgent in this moment and looking at it from that perspective.

'I think that's right. And also we see, I see many differences, and this is one: He has not traveled out into the country to do a sales pitch for his agenda. He really, aside from going to Florida virtually every weekend, occasionally in New Jersey, he's gone to some sporting events like the Super Bowl and NASCAR. He's only twice traveled to a non-sporting or non-home state. That was once in North Carolina on his first Friday in office and then to California that evening to look at the wildfire. So he, I believe, is approaching this job differently. He does not travel as much. He's not running for reelection. I also think that his age is very apparent. He's 78 years old, the oldest president ever to be sworn into office, still a couple of years younger than President Biden when he was in office. But I think the age of the president is something that is notable to me. He certainly has high energy at some points, but I think going forward in the rest of these next three and a half years that will be something to watch because I think he is a very different man in that respect.

Kaitlan, Jeff, it is such a pleasure to call you colleagues. You do tremendous work for us every day at CNN. Really appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time.

Thanks, David.

Thanks, David.

That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. Remember, you can reach out to us with your questions about Trump's new administration. Our contact information is in the show notes. CNN Political briefing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Emily Williams. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director, and Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. Support from Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.