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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Fact-Checking Trump's Claims About The Prices Of Groceries & Gas; China Calls Suggestions Of U.S. Trade Talks "Fake News"; Economic Uncertainty Expected To Drive Up Prices For Consumers; Trump Sits For Interview With "Signalgate" Journalist; DNC Pushes Back On David Hogg's Plan To Primary Dem Incumbents; Trump: Russia Not Taking All Of Ukraine Is A "Big Concession"; Reporter Calls Out Politicians Who Criticized Her For Wearing Mask. Aired 5-6p ET
Aired April 24, 2025 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: -- are really terrifying. The best way to get rid of it, officials say, is to cut its head off. Or if you can't bring yourself to do that, they say you can put it in a sealed plastic bag and throw it in the trash.
Jake Tapper, I'm sitting here with Marc Short (ph) and having a very long conversation about these fish, which I had never heard of, but apparently there's a lot of them in the Chesapeake Bay where I have spent time boating. And I just sort of wish I didn't know anything about them at all.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Kasie, I just saw like five of them in the hallway on their way to your office.
HUNT: Oh, great. Thanks.
TAPPER: I'll be honest, I actually gave them directions to your office. I didn't know this was something you didn't want.
HUNT: Are you going to come down and chop their heads off for me, please?
TAPPER: No, I'm sorry. I have -- I have to -- I have to do the news. I apologize. But thank you, Kasie. Appreciate it.
HUNT: Bye. Have a good show.
TAPPER: Hopefully, hopefully, we'll see you back in "The Arena" tomorrow.
HUNT: Fingers crossed. See you.
[17:00:46]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: President Trump insists he's going to make a deal with Russia. The Lead starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You don't know what pressure I'm putting on Russia. They're dealing. You have no idea what pressure I'm putting on. We're putting a lot of pressure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: That insistence that he's putting a lot of pressure on Russia as Russia is dropping its deadliest bombs in months on Ukrainian civilians. At least 12 killed, 90 wounded in the capital of Kyiv overnight. How long is President Trump going to try to negotiate peace as Vladimir Putin carries out his own battle plans?
Plus, party problems. David Hogg, the young Democratic National Committee vice chair who came here on The Lead last week and urged his party to spend $20 million to primary Democrats he thinks are worthless. Well, he was given a talking to today by his DNC elders.
But first, major questions about Trump's trade war with China and what is really going on. The president claiming that his administration is meeting with Chinese officials to try to get tariffs lowered. But that's not what the Chinese are saying.
Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.
We're going to start in our money lead. China insinuating today that President Trump is lying. Just this moment, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry saying that as far as he knows, China and the United States have not held any consultations or meetings or negotiations on tariffs. And the idea that China and the U.S. have been engaged in talks, which President Trump has been asserting is, quote, "fake news." But President Trump repeated his claim.
Here's what he said when asked about it this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you clarify with whom the U.S. is speaking with China? They're saying it's "fake news" that trade talks are happening.
TRUMP: Well, they had a meeting this morning. So --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who's they?
TRUMP: -- I can't tell you. It doesn't matter who they is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning and we've been meeting with China. And so I think you have, Jeff, as usual, I think you have your reporting wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: We should note that the Communist Chinese government has a long history of lying. Although, anyway, while the president continues to assert that negotiations are very active with China, it appears the U.S. is no closer to striking any sort of trade deal. What may be even more telling is that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday that it could take two to three years, two to three years to fully rebalance trade with China, which they say is the goal, or at least one of the goals of this tariff situation. Let's start our coverage today with CNN's Kaitlan Collins at the White House.
And Kaitlan, first of all, Jeff was doing there was quoting what the Chinese were saying, and he was quoting them accurately.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
TAPPER: What is the Trump administration telling you about this back and forth between China and President Trump?
COLLINS: Yes, Jake, that wasn't some anonymously sourced report. It was the Foreign Ministry spokesperson and the Commerce Ministry. We're hearing from them on the record in this regard.
Now, maybe there's some nuance here and who is doing the negotiating because the president was saying that the teams were meeting today, the U.S. teams and Chinese officials. He declined to say which members of the team were going into that. He said maybe he would reveal that later, but did not ultimately say. And essentially what Chinese officials had been saying in response to the president saying that there were active negotiations happening every day is that that's not how they would describe it. No active negotiations, much less anywhere close to an agreement between the United States and China.
And so, that's really the question here in terms of what this looks like and whether they're actually making any real progress. We've seen Wall Street looking at the president's comments. Any time he strikes even a little bit of a softer tone on China, the numbers go up. But there's a real question of what that looks like. And we're starting to see people warning about the longer this goes on, the more damaging it could potentially be.
We saw that from Republican senators. We saw it from people like Ken Griffin, the billionaire who is one of the Republican Party's biggest donors, if not the biggest donor. And so, that's really the question here as this seems to be getting to a situation where it's the United States and China seeing who is going to blink first. One thing that has been made clear at the White House is they would at least like them to blink at the same time. But obviously, Jake, that's still an open question at this point.
TAPPER: You aware, Kaitlan, of any trade deals that the White House has unquestionably made progress on.
[17:05:00]
COLLINS: The only thing that we heard today that stood out was the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, saying inside the Oval Office that he believes South Korea is actually moving a lot faster than he expected. As he described it, he said South Korean officials brought their A game to the negotiations and he expects them to have a memorandum of understanding. Now, of course, Jake, getting to that point and having a top line is nowhere near the same thing as having an actual trade deal which is incredibly complicated and layered hammered out. And so that's a key area to watch. He seemed very hopeful and optimistic about that.
But it is certainly something to watch, especially as the president put the number at 90 countries yesterday that the Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, is speaking to. Lutnick himself saying that number as well. Obviously, that's a lot to do in 90 days, Jake, with the clock already counting.
TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, thank you. And Kaitlan will be back, of course, with more on her show "The Source with Kaitlan Collins," tonight at 9:00 Eastern only here on CNN. Her guest will be DNC Vice Chair David Hogg, who we're going to talk about later in the show.
Perhaps President Trump has been trying to dismiss concerns that his tariffs will spur inflation. He's claimed several times over the last week that prices on gas and eggs and groceries have dropped dramatically. Here's what he has said today about energy and gas prices as well as earlier this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Energy just hit $1.98 in a couple of states. It's way down. You have gasoline that hit $1.98 yesterday in a couple of states.
Gasoline yesterday in three states hit $1.98 a gallon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Here to fact check for us is CNN's fact checker Daniel Dale.
Daniel, is there truth in this?
DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: No truth to any of those claims, Jake. So on the days the president was referring to there last Wednesday and Thursday, there was not a single state that had its average gas price any lower than $2.70. So, nowhere near $1.98.
Now people might say, well, the president didn't say average prices. He said prices. So maybe there were some gas stations in some states selling for $1.98. I asked the firm GasBuddy about this. GasBuddy tracks tens of thousands of stations across the country. They found zero stations, zero stations anywhere in the country anywhere below $2.19. So that's wrong, too.
Now I'll add -- but I asked the White House about this, they not only couldn't corroborate the president's claim, but they introduced another lie in sending me a response about the previous lie. They said that if big city reporters actually went out to Middle America, they would see that gas prices there are at record lows. Well, I looked into that as well, Jake, also not true. We're nowhere near record lows anywhere in this country.
TAPPER: Oh, you city slicker. Daniel Dale.
DALE: Terrible. TAPPER: President Trump also has been talking about egg prices, which spiked under President Biden, we should note, and President Trump, largely because of this bird flu outbreak and steps that have been taken. Here's what President Trump said on Tuesday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We just had a big Easter egg hunt at the White House. Thousands and thousands of eggs and the price was down 87 percent.
As you know, the cost of eggs have -- has come down like 93 percent, 94 percent since we took office. And they're pretty much normally priced now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: OK, I just went to the grocery store. That is not my personal experience. Now, I am a big city reporter.
DALE: You are indeed.
TAPPER: And it's possible that he's being misinformed by people. But a 93 percent or 94 percent or 87 percent drop in egg prices since he took office?
DALE: Yes. So as you know, having gone to a store and everyone else has gone to a store, knows none of those numbers is anywhere close to correct. So let's start with retail prices, the prices that shoppers are actually paying. In March, those rose to a record high, a $6.23 per dozen. That's about a 26 percent increase from the month to President Trump returned to office in January.
Now, we don't yet have the April data. That's important. We may well have seen, I would say probably saw a decline this month, we don't know how much.
TAPPER: Because they're importing some eggs, right? I mean --
DALE: They are importing. There's a whole plan to raise the prices.
TAPPER: Yes.
DALE: However, we know that it's nowhere near 87 percent, 93 percent --
TAPPER: Yes.
DALE: -- 94 percent. If it was a 93 percent drop, Jake, from the week president -- from the month President Trump took office, eggs will be selling for less than 38 cents per dozen. We know that's not the case. Now, if you talk to the White House about this, they'll point to wholesale prices, not the prices people are actually paying. Those wholesale prices have dropped dramatically since the week he took office, about 52 percent. But again, those aren't the prices consumers are paying. Second of all, 52 percent, while big is not 87 percent, 93 percent or 94 percent. TAPPER: For eggs you're talking?
DALE: For eggs, yes.
TAPPER: For 52? OK.
DALE: Yes, yes.
TAPPER: The president has also just generally been talking about grocery prices going day down -- way down. Way down, that's his term, way down. This is something we've heard him say multiple times over the past week, including today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Groceries are down.
Groceries have come down. It's all coming down.
Prices are down. Groceries are down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So look, it's April. I'm not saying any of this is his fault. Like, in terms of the current prices, he's only been president for not even 100 days.
DALE: Right.
TAPPER: But our grocery prices down?
DALE: They are not down.
TAPPER: OK.
DALE: Absolutely not down. First of all, they generally rise, just with normal inflation. Leaving aside the tariffs he imposed on pretty much every country in the world, 10 percent in early April.
[17:10:04]
But even through March, before the tariffs took effect, prices were up. So in March, we had a 0.49 percent increase over February average grocery prices. People might say, oh, 0.49 percent, that's not very big. That's actually the biggest month to month jump, Jake, since 2022, October 2022. In terms of year over year comparison, that March price was about a 2.4 percent increase over the previous March.
So we're talking substantial increases. Again, I'm not blaming President Trump for that. You're not blaming President Trump, but it's going up, not going down.
TAPPER: All right, Daniel Dale, keeping them honest. Thank you so much.
With me now to discuss is Joe Moglia. He's the former CEO and chairman of TD Ameritrade.
Joe, thanks so much for joining us. So turning back to the conversation we were having with Kaitlan --
JOE MOGLIA, FORMER TD AMERITRADE CEO/CHAIRMAN: Happy to be on, Jake.
TAPPER: Thank you so much. Turning back to the conversation we're having with Kaitlan Collins about this back and forth about China --
MOGLIA: Yes.
TAPPER: -- and the U.S. and whether or not the trade negotiations are happening. So China's denying it. President Trump is saying it's true. How does this back and forth affect the market at all?
MOGLIA: I think if you look at what took place today, Jake, the markets were up. So it looks like the market, I think should be is used to hearing China lie about things and they're used to hearing the president exaggerate about things. So whatever took place today, the markets responded very, very positively. Now, from a longer term perspective, if the tariffs are going to continue for much -- for a long period of time, the probability of a recession becomes very, very real.
TAPPER: I want to play something that Citadel CEO and Donald Trump mega donor Ken Griffin said yesterday. Keep in mind this is a quote from somebody who is a huge supporter of President Trump. Roll the tape.
MOGLIA: Yes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN GRIFFIN, CEO, CITADEL LLC: Right. The United States was more than just a nation. It's a brand. It's a whether it's our culture, our financial strength, our military strength, America rose beyond just being a country. It was like an aspiration for most of the world.
And we're eroding that brand right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Ray (ph), do you think President Trump is damaging the brand of the U.S. and the U.S. economy? And do you think that's signaling to the world that the U.S. is no longer a safe place to park investments as we've seen with the bond market going down?
MOGLIA: I think I have a lot of respect for Ken. I think there's certainly some validity into that. I think my perspective on this is that the president is a narcissist and he wants to look good and he wants to win. And I think he -- and he brags about being a great dealmaker and he looks at the stock market as going back to 2016 as a very real indication of what his success has been. So that type of personality, I think there's a pretty good chance that he's using the tariffs as a negotiating ploy to be able to bring people to the table. And if he gets anything out of that, he will -- he will be able to claim a series of wins. If indeed he's able to do that, I think he backs off and I think we're OK. If he's not able to do that, there's going to -- there's going to be an issue. I don't know if our brand is suffering, although I do think a lot of -- a lot of other countries are annoyed at us because of the president and because of the tariffs.
TAPPER: So we've been talking to small business men and women all over the country since this tariff thing started just to hear what they think. Some of them love Trump, some of them not so much. Some of them love the tariffs, some of them not so much. One thing that they all say is they're concerned about stability and the need for stability and predictability in the markets so that they can do long range and long term planning. Do you share those concerns?
MOGLIA: Yes, I do. I mean, we don't have that now, but kind of the point is make it a little while ago. I think there are a lot of reasons to be bullish, but it's long term. You've got a great impact with regard to AI. You've got lower, you've got deregulation, you've got lower taxes, you've got an accommodative Fed, you've got -- you've got a business oriented administration.
But so therefore, if indeed my perspective on this is accurate and he's using these for negotiating employees, that we could get this behind us over the span of next six, 12, 14, 16 weeks. If we do that, I think we're OK. If we don't do that, we're going to have a far more significant issue. But if we don't get it fixed, there's going to be a problem.
TAPPER: So --
MOGLIA: I believe we're going to get this fixed.
TAPPER: Yes, I guess the only concern is, you know, having listened to President Trump quite a bit, just it's my job, he seems to really believe in tariffs --
MOGLIA: Yes.
TAPPER: -- not just as a short term negotiating tool, but as a long term economic strategy. He looks at the McKinley era as successful not because of the Industrial Revolution and not because of mass migration and, you know, no regulations, no minimum wage, no OSHA standards, et cetera. He looks at that era as successful because of the tariffs. If that is his view and the tariffs are here to stay as long as he's president, what do you think then?
MOGLIA: That I think we're going to have a recession. I think if that's specifically his view, but the reason why air, again, I mentioned in the beginning of the segment is that the guy's a narcissist and he wants to look good.
[17:15:08]
And it wasn't an accident that a week ago when everything -- when the S&P was below 5,000 and we had the 10-year note, you know, really, really significantly higher, you have Jamie Dimon complaining about what's going on, you have a couple of his friends come to the White House that were serious business leaders that kind of say, be careful here. He changed his mind, he changed his view on a lot of things. And we had a significant reaction the other way. I don't think he's going to allow himself for too long a period to look bad. And because of his personality, I think there's a reasonable -- there is -- there are good reasons for that to work out that way.
TAPPER: All right, Joe Moglia, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today, sir.
MOGLIA: All right, Jake.
TAPPER: Appreciate it.
President Trump revealed himself today that he plans to meet with Jeffrey Goldberg. That's the Atlantic magazine editor in chief who was accidentally added to that Signal group chat and who has had some pretty damning scoops about President Trump. What Trump says he wants to get out of today's meeting? That's ahead.
And what could be a breakaway moment for Canada just days away, its national elections on Monday. How much the actions of Donald Trump could define who wins and who loses?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:20:28]
TAPPER: I our politics lead, President Trump took a lot of questions today in the Oval Office, quite a change from the previous occupant. But he also just finished an interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who was of course added to that infamous Signal group chat where sensitive military operations were discussed. Earlier today, President Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote, "I am doing this interview out of curiosity and as a competition with myself just to see if it's possible for the Atlantic to be truthful. Are they capable of writing a fair story on Trump? The way I look at it, what can be so bad, I won."
This, of course, comes as CNN is learning that a new adviser for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, quote, "pushed to get Hegseth an extra desktop computer in his office that he could use Signal on, ostensibly for personal communication so he could more easily text friends and family from the Pentagon, the sources said."
Let's go straight to the panel. Erin Maguire, we'll start with you. So far, one House Republican, one congressional Republican, let's include the Senate, too. Don Bacon was on the show he called for -- he said if he was in charge, if he was the president, he would fire Hegseth because it just upsets him so much, especially as a former Air Force general, that this information would be shared so irresponsibly. Do you think Hegseth should keep his job?
What do you think? ERIN MAGUIRE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST, AXIOM STRATEGIES: As of right now, all indications from the Trump administration and from Republicans in D.C. is Hegseth still on good standing. Now, we all know that could change at literally any second --
TAPPER: Yes.
MAGUIRE: -- at any moment, but he's doing what Trump wants him to do. One, anytime a story comes out, he is fighting back. At the Easter egg roll, he went straight to camera and made his appeal to the president pretty much to be able to keep the job as this firestorm continues. They're using Twitter for rapid response right now or X about the story about the green room and whether or not he was adding lights to a makeup studio. Again, pushing back, they're being aggressive.
That's what Donald Trump wants to see. But if you start to hear more whispers, more names come forward, because we're not even hearing it off the record, right, because there is always times where in reporting it's oh, one Republican's public, but behind the scenes they're all saying --
TAPPER: Right.
MAGUIRE: -- the same thing. You're not hearing that yet. So Hegseth is still on solid ground across the board. And the White House continues to push back against that NPR reporting from earlier in the week that said that the White House was looking to replace him.
TAPPER: Yes. So, Jonah, I mean, Hegseth did go out on the Easter egg roll day and give this defiant appeal perhaps directly to President Trump. I mean, he said things that people in the know told me were just obfuscator, just misleading, like the idea that second Signal group chap was about media appearances and casual stuff. It was. It was until he started sharing war plans and then it became something else.
JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, look, I mean, if the question is, should he be fired, he shouldn't have been appointed in the first place. And if you just go by the standards that Pete Hegseth, my former Fox News colleague, said about Hillary Clinton and all -- and about national security and about, you know, maintaining secrets and stuff, by his own previous standards, he should be fired. The reason why I don't think you're going to see a lot of -- I agree with Erin that there are a lot -- not a lot of Republicans who are clamoring for him to go is first of all, who are you going to replace him with and will he better? And can you get anybody through the Senate right now? They just don't want to deal with it.
So until Trump gets tired of him, they're just going to say they're going to roll their eyes a lot.
TAPPER: For what it's worth, I've heard a lot of Republicans saying really nice things about the Deputy Defense Secretary Feinberg, for whatever it's worth.
OK, here comes the fun stuff for you. So Democrats are still struggling on the future for the party. DNC Vice Chair David Hogg was on The Lead last week talking about his plan to raise $20 million to unseat Democrats in safe seats in primaries. Now, the DNC chairman, Ken Martin, weighed in and here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEN MARTIN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON: No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger. While, you know, certainly, you know, I understand what he's trying to do. As I've said to him, if you want to challenge incumbents, you're more than free to do that, but just not as an officer of the DNC.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: From Minnesota, if you can't tell. So Hogg's argument is, just because he's not here to defend himself, there's a lot of dead weight in this party and we're talking about safe Democratic seats. So whoever wins is going to end up winning anyway. And, you know, we need to rise to meet the moment. That's what he would say.
MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: Great. You don't do that as a member of the DNC. You are an elected person on the DNC. Leave the party and go do that. The DNC is not an idea.
That is a Democratic Party. The DNC is an institution with a job to do. People vote in primaries, not the DNC.
[17:25:00]
TAPPER: Are you sympathetic to his argument at all?
HAYS: No. Then don't be part of the DNC.
TAPPER: Well, what about the idea that there should be --
HAYS: Absolutely. There should be primaries. People should be primaried if -- that is -- that is how our democracy works. But if you want to help the primary challengers, then leave the DNC. That is not your role as the DNC.
TAPPER: All right, thanks to one and all. Appreciate it.
Despite Russia dropping more bombs on Ukraine, just last night Trump said today Putin has already offering -- been offering a quote, "pretty big concession for peace." How can both be true? We're going to talk about that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: In our faith lead, in moments, St. Peter's Basilica is set to close for the night after tens of thousands of people showed up for today's public viewing of the Pope.
[17:30:01] More than 90,000 have visited since the Pope began lying in state Wednesday, according to the Vatican. The Vatican announced today that the Pope's tomb is made of marble from the small northern Italian seaside town where his grandparents lived. Pope Francis will be buried outside Vatican City at a different basilica in Rome named after St. Mary Maggiore.
CNN Will of course have special coverage of the pope's funeral live from Rome that begins early Saturday morning starting at 3:00 a.m. Eastern.
In our world lead, quote, "Vladimir stop," unquote. That's President Trump's message to Russian leader Vladimir Putin after Putin launched the deadliest attack on Ukraine's capital in nine months. A clear message a day after the latest public spat between Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and President Trump. Ukraine says at least 12 people were killed and more than 90 were injured and even more people may be trapped under the rubble, according to the country's emergency services. Let's get right to CNN National Security Analyst Beth Sanner.
Beth, thanks so much for being here. So take a listen, if you would, as to what President Trump said in the Oval Office today during a meeting with the prime minister of Norway.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Concessions has Russia offered up thus far to get to the point where you're closer to peace.
TRUMP: Stopping the war. Stopping, taking the whole country. Pretty big concession.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: Do you think that's a pretty big concession for Putin to stop the war and stop taking the whole country?
BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Oh, it's wrong on a couple of levels. I mean, one is that Russia failed to take the whole country. It wasn't a concession. They literally flew into Hostomel Airport with the plan on finding Zelenskyy and killing him. And then they got pushed back by Ukraine over the summer.
And so they failed. And at this point we, you know, conventional wisdom is that they've lost so many heavy weapons that they could not physically take all of the country now. And it also, you know, just historically the Ukrainians fought back. He gives no credit to the Ukrainians. The people of Ukraine literally, you know, threw bicycles in front of tanks and laid down and, you know, they did Molotov cocktails and all of that.
So of course not. That is -- that is not what that is.
TAPPER: And I want you to take a listen to NATO's Secretary General Mark Rutte right after he met with President Trump this afternoon. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK RUTTE, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: We all agree in NATO that Russia is a long term threat to NATO territory, to the whole of the Euro Atlantic territory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANNER: Yes.
TAPPER: Does everybody in NATO think that? I mean, is that what the United States thinks officially right now, that Russia is the long term threat to NATO territory, to the whole of the Euro Atlantic territory? Is that the United States official position?
SANNER: I don't think it is. I mean, President Trump said today or yesterday that he didn't want to pick sides. I mean, this is like saying like, I have two children, I don't want to pick sides. But one of them is like Dracula, you know, or Freddie or something.
TAPPER: Right.
SANNER: Right? I mean, you know, so like, no, we would pick sides if one of our kids was Hannibal Lecter and the other one was like an angel. Well, not that they are. That's not fair to Ukraine. But a normal person, right?
TAPPER: Yes.
SANNER: So, yes, no, that's not right. Look, you know, one of the things that we have here that we're setting ourselves up for, Jake, is a real breakdown in the transatlantic relationship. There is so much at stake here. Yes, the lives of Ukrainians, but the entire post World War II order where we had friends and allies, because we are putting the Europeans in a position of an ultimatum to accept along with Ukraine capitulation.
TAPPER: So Trump, when he was running, said that he would solve the problem of this war, get a peace deal on day one. That obviously didn't happen. We're -- it does seem clear that President Trump wants this done, a peace deal.
SANNER: Right.
TAPPER: And let's assume he's motivated by the finest things, that he wants peace. He wants the killing to stop.
SANNER: I think he does.
TAPPER: What?
SANNER: I do think he does.
TAPPER: Yes, I agree. He wants the killing to stop.
SANNER: Yes, yes. TAPPER: Putin does not seem to be on that timetable.
SANNER: Not at all. And I think it's not actually a great negotiation when the president said today, I have my own timeline, we've got to get this done fast. I mean, that's not actually how really complex negotiations take place. And also really complex negotiations between two parties do not happen when the United States is only negotiating really with one of them, Russia. That's what we're doing.
We're doing a bilateral relation -- negotiation with one party and then we're telling Ukraine and Europe how it's going to go. That's not mediation. And so it's very, very hard to get to an end in such a complex situation with so much at stake in some 100-day timeline.
TAPPER: Yes. And the other thing that's interesting about this is before Putin tried to seize all of Ukraine, it was very obvious that he wanted eastern Ukraine.
[17:35:07]
In 2014 under Obama, they seized Crimea. And then, according to the Mueller report, in 2016, and I'm not alleging anything about President Trump here, but in 2016, Russian agent Konstantin Kilimnik, quote, "requested a meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for Ukraine that Paul Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's Office was a backdoor way for Russia to control part of Eastern Ukraine, both Manafort and Kilimnik believed that the plan would require candidate Trump's assent to succeed."
And this is -- this is a plan, I think it was called, like, the Mariupol Plan or something like that. Basically, it's Putin gets more Ukrainian territory Eastern --
SANNER: Yes.
TAPPER: -- Ukraine. Not that dissimilar from what is being proposed right now, right?
SANNER: Yes. I mean, it's no -- Putin has been wanting to get not just eastern Ukraine. Like, I really think that that is a means to an end. What they want is a completely weak, battered, impossibly run country of Ukraine so Russia can guarantee that it will be subjugated, like Belarus is.
TAPPER: Right.
SANNER: And never be a member of the West. So, yes, owning parts, owning 20 percent, that's a path forward.
TAPPER: Or a power plant in Zaporizhzhia.
SANNER: Right. But what you do with the minerals deal, I mean, you don't know exactly what's on the table, but you actually are setting Ukrainian government up for economic and political failure in the future.
TAPPER: Why? Why would a minerals deal --
SANNER: Because --
TAPPER: -- set them up for failure and not success? There are some --
SANNER: Yes.
TAPPER: -- there's some who argue that minerals deal means the U.S. is in Ukraine.
SANNER: Yes.
TAPPER: Therefore, it's kind of like a hidden security guarantee.
SANNER: And that could be the case if it's done in a way that is really about joint investment. But it really sounds to me like reparations. Now, again, I don't know what the final deal is.
TAPPER: That's how they're presenting it. Give us these minerals because we've provided so much.
SANNER: They have to provide us payback until they repay us $100 billion. I mean, that is many, many decades of basically, when they need that money to rebuild their country, that they're somehow siphoning it off and giving it to us. That is not. Why are we making the victim pay for the aggression?
TAPPER: And I love whenever -- whenever anybody asks questions like this and about the Trump administration's proclivity to support Putin over Zelenskyy or Russia over Ukraine, the answer is always, you're a warmonger. You want this war to continue. No.
SANNER: No one wants the war to continue. And I think we have to give credit for the Trump administration trying, but how they do it, if it looks like the deal with the Taliban, for example, no.
TAPPER: Yes. Beth Sander, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Coming up next, a journalist singled out by President Trump and by Congresswoman Margie Taylor Greene of Georgia for wearing a mask. That journalist is going to be here to explain why she wears a mask and to talk about the shocking response she received after clips of those exchanges were posted online by Congresswoman Taylor Greene and the White House.
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[17:42:39]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Now I'm putting this video out just to make it aware for people that are going to watch this video that a reporter with a mask on in 2025 is arguing for an overpriced ridiculous piece of property that Nancy Pelosi herself wanted a $200 million earmark to continue to fund. (END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: That was Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Earlier this month, she did put that video out on social media showing her scolding a journalist for wearing a mask. The journalist in question was Shira Stein. She's the Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. We should point out she wears a mask because she's immunocompromised.
In fact, she had a stroke in 2022. Stein told Marjorie Taylor Greene that, and Greene apologized after she told her that. But for some reason, that apology was not included in what Marjorie Taylor Greene posted online. And this is not the only time that this journalist has been singled out by a politician for wearing a mask recommended by medical authorities.
Shira Stein's with me now. First of all, let's just explain to people, you come on The Lead, you don't wear a mask. Why are you not wearing a mask now? But you know, when you're out in Congress, at the White House, you do.
SHIRA STEIN, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: I do in some situations. I don't in others. It really depends on the amount of people that are in a room. This room is pretty wide. Not very many people in here.
But it's really -- it's not about the mask, Jake. What happened is Marjorie Taylor Greene decided to put this video out online without the full truth to show her audience that she was anti mask. But not to show the part where she apologize for my health struggles and not the part where she said that she respected the fact that I wore a mask because I'm immunocompromised and I had a stroke. And that's sort of the issue writ large, is sort of what is the truth, what are the facts that people are getting.
TAPPER: And you also wrote about -- and we should note that we asked you to come on, because you wrote about this for the San Francisco Chronicle. You also wrote about President Trump singling you out last month for wearing a mask in the Oval Office. Let's play that moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEIN: Return education control to the states.
TRUMP: Yes.
STEIN: How would you handle it if a state like California were to put in place education policies?
TRUMP: You know, I haven't seen a mask in so long. You're wearing a mask. So nice of you. I haven't seen anybody wearing a mask in a long time. It's good.
You feel more comfortable, right?
STEIN: Yes. TRUMP: Good. That's good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So that in itself OK.
[17:45:00]
But the rapid response account for the White House posted that exchange and then they added two laughing emojis, like their laughing at you. That's the rapid response. What was the response when Marjorie Taylor Greene and the White House rapid response, which I actually blame for this more than I do President Trump. What was the response from the public to this?
STEIN: I got a few people who sort of, you know, the typical comments about, you know, liberal wearing a mask, you must be a Democrat, et cetera. But I think I did get a good amount, especially when this piece published on the Chronicles website, a good amount of people who are saying, thank you for talking about this. Thank you for showing that it's not about the mask. It is about attacks on journalism. It is about attacks on individual journalists, not just folks who work at CNN or the Associated Press, The New York Times, but journalists who work at local newspapers like I do, journalists who cover school boards, who don't -- have never set foot in Washington, maybe are being attacked, and the truth is not getting out there to what people are hearing.
They're hearing this sort of cutoff version of what Marjorie Taylor Greene put out. They're not hearing what actually happened. The full scope of the interaction.
TAPPER: It's so weird to me because if Marjorie Taylor Greene, after you explained to her, hey, I am very young and I had a stroke in 2022 because I'm immunocompromised, and she showed a moment of humanity. The idea that they would then go and post something without that moment of humanity, because the humanity they would think, I'm guessing, exposes weakness or whatever, as opposed to the meanness or the cruelty, it's just so telling. Like, that they would not post the moment where she's actually like, oh, I'm so sorry.
STEIN: I mean, I sort of expected it, honestly, when I walked away from the interaction. And this was -- to my memory, the first time I had ever interacted with Marjorie Taylor Greene. I have -- just have not had the reason to talk to her before. She's from Georgia. I work for the San Francisco Chronicle, there's never been a good reason.
But in this situation, she decided that it was worth it. Knowing the risk, knowing that I and several other reporters had recorded it, that the audio would probably end up out there thinking that her audience would still support her or would only see the information that she put out there.
TAPPER: You see this in the context of attacks on journalism, and I agree with that. But I also think this is about how a certain segment of our society thinks it's cool to be mean, which I really worry about for our society going forward. And I really worry what our kids are learning.
STEIN: It's that. It's also how can we agree upon anything if we don't agree on a basic set of truth and facts.
TAPPER: And decency. Shira Stein, you're always welcome here, with or without mask. Thanks for being here.
STEIN: Thank you.
TAPPER: A major election just days away. Donald Trump's not on the ballot on this one, but he's very much part of the reason why millions are going to vote. That's next.
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[17:52:36]
TAPPER: Our world lead now Canadians, hey, Canada, hello, Canada from your friends down here, we still love you. Canadians go to the polls on Monday to vote in elections that will ultimately decide who becomes prime minister. And one thing is clear, President Trump is a huge factor, a huge factor on the minds of Canadian voters. And CNN's John King, in fact, traveled north of the border not just for some Molson, he wanted to find out what's going on. And he did find out that after months of dealing with tariffs and threats from Trump, Canadian voters are eager to have their voices heard.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The Trump effect on Canada's election cannot be overstated. You see more Canadian flags now. More of these signs, too. Federal elections here are often defined by east versus west, urban versus rural, English versus French, Liberal versus Conservative. But Trump versus Canada defines this one.
Just weeks ago, some of the flowers here at Lola Blooms came from the United States. Not anymore. Sisters in law Lindsay Smith and Caitlin Strain (ph) are buying elsewhere now. Their answer to Trump's threats of tariffs or making Canada the 51st state.
LINDSAY SMITH, CANADIAN WORKER: It's more Donald Trump, I feel like he's a bully in this situation. We're supposed to be allies. We thought we're on, like, a friendship level.
KING (voice-over): They both traditionally support the Green Party, but both are leaning Liberal this time.
KING: If the Liberals are going to win or the Conservatives are going to win, you want them to win by what, a healthy enough margin?
KAITLAN STRAIN, CANADIAN WORKER: Exactly.
KING: So that they're viewed as a strong leader?
STRAIN: Yes. Fair enough.
SMITH: Yes. You put your vote where it counts a little more in this situation.
KING: And is that just because of Donald Trump?
SMITH: Yes.
STRAIN: Yes. Unfortunately.
SMITH: Yes.
KING (voice-over): Canadians see this as much bigger than who gets the most seats in Parliament and gets to pick a prime minister. It's about spending more in the military, buying local, finding new markets and new partners, dropping any thought the ruts with Trump can just be smoothed over.
TOBY GORMAN, CANADIAN VOTER: I put up a flag myself. I never thought I would put up a Canadian flag, but I think when it comes down to crunch time, Canadians really gather up.
KING (voice-over): Toby Gorman is an environmental journalist and author and a pickup hockey player in the Canadian Beer League.
GORMAN: Just push it.
KING (voice-over): Gorman says he is hardly alone here in rethinking everything.
GORMAN: We're just sick of him, you know, and it's only been three months into the tournaments. You know, he's going to in excess. He wants to crush us economically. I think at first it was kind of like losing your best friend. Or it's like, you know what, what just happened?
[17:55:00]
Like, what's happening? But now I think we're at the point where it's like, well, we can move on.
KING (voice-over): That's a big shift. This election defined by the belief Canada and the United States are suddenly more rivals than neighbors. Suddenly no longer skating in the same direction.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING (on camera): Back at the beginning of the year, Conservatives held a giant 25 point advantage, and they said this race should be about the cost of living and about ending nearly a decade of liberals in power. But heading into the final weekend, liberals now hold a modest edge. Their candidates making the case to Canadians that standing up to Trump should be their number one issue. Jake.
TAPPER: All right, John King, thank you so much.
Just revealed in federal court a new look at how the Trump administration is using that 1798 Alien Enemies Act to carry out its mass deportations. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:00:02]
TAPPER: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. This hour, alarm from some U.S. allies at President Trump's plan to let Russia keep most of the land --
