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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Appeals Court Temporarily Reinstates Trump's Tariffs; White House Pressure For More Immigration Arrests Strains Law Enforcement Agencies; Tech CEO Warns A.I. Could Cause Mass Unemployment; Bike Tour Company Says Tariffs Deter International Tourists; D.C. Jewish Museum Reopens After Fatal Shooting. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired May 29, 2025 - 18:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[18:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

This hour, a back and forth legal battle means President Trump's tariffs are back, at least for now. But how is all of this confusion affecting the U.S. economy? We're going to ask a Republican, a Democrat, and a small business owner all ahead.

Plus, brand new reporting from CNN about The White House's pushed to triple the number of daily immigration arrests as Mr. Trump tries to meet his goal of 1 million deportations a year. And now a surge of federal agents from across the government are focusing their efforts on deportations.

Also, RFK Jr. touted his team's work on the first Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA report. But today, MAHA had to publish an updated version of the document because the document was found to include quite a few embarrassing errors, citing studies that don't exist, for example. The Trump administration tries to explain, ahead.

The Lead Tonight, major whiplash to President Trump's economic agenda, a federal appeals court temporarily reinstating Trump's tariffs, this after rulings from two different federal courts saying Trump lacks authority to levy tariffs with emergency power.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is at the White House for us. Kristen, at this point, do you think the Trump administration's goal is to just get these legal challenges to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle them once and for all?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Jake, they have said as much. They have repeatedly said that they are willing to bring this to the Supreme Court to ask them to take emergency action.

Obviously, right now, this has all been put on pause because of the fact that there is this temporary pause overturning the decision and allowing these tariffs to take place right this second. But, again, that's just temporary while they sort through the various legal aspects. So, the big question is, what exactly are they going to do next?

Now, I talked to a number of administration officials who say they have been working on what they call a plan B, that they believe that there are several options that can help them work around the legalities here, although they won't tell us what exactly those options are.

Now, in the meantime, we've heard the administration go after these judges who made this decision in U.S. trade court, calling them activist judges, saying that this is politically biased, something we've heard before. This is Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process. America cannot function if President Trump or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive, diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: It is important though to point out one thing about this three-judge panel. These are three federal judges. They were not all Democrats or Democratically-appointed. There were two judges, one who was appointed by Reagan, one who was appointed by Trump himself and one Democrat judge who was appointed by Obama. So, this was a bipartisan panel, so just something to keep in mind amid these attacks.

TAPPER: So, President Trump also held a private meeting today with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. This took place at the White House. What came out of that meeting?

HOLMES: Well, we know this is the first time the two have sat down face-to-face, Trump and Powell, and said he hadn't been invited before. Now, Donald Trump extended this invitation and Powell accepted it. We did get a statement from the Fed saying that Powell did not discuss expectations for monetary policy.

We also heard from Karoline Leavitt who said that Donald Trump made it clear to him that he thinks that Powell is making a mistake by not lowering rates. Obviously, we have followed this. Donald Trump's Truth Social is filled with attacks on Powell, saying that he is a loser, that he's often missing the mark. Today was the first time the two men were face-to-face. Again, Karoline Leavitt saying that he did bring up, or that Trump did bring up the fact that he believed he should be lowering rates.

TAPPER: Kristen Holmes at the White House, thanks so much.

Let's bring in right now to discuss Everett Eissenstat. Mr. Eissenstat served on the National Economic Council during Trump's first term in office. Everett, thanks for joining us. So, as of now, Trump's tariffs are temporarily reinstated as this entire matter goes through the appeals process. What do you make of the initial court ruling saying that President Trump lacks authority to levy tariffs with emergency powers, as he's been doing?

EVERETT EISSENSTAT, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL UNDER TRUMP: It was certainly a dramatic ruling. I mean, as you noted, it's already been put on stay since the ruling came out. So, it was an important ruling. It's not definitive about the president's ability to use these authorities. And also, as you noted, I think there's other authorities that can be relied on.

So, the cornerstone of the president's economic agenda, which is tariffs, is a big part of it. I think is going to continue regardless of the ruling of the court last night and the ruling of the court today.

TAPPER: What do you make of the argument that the U.S. Constitution pretty explicitly grants Congress, the legislative branch, the power to impose tariffs? Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky posted on social media a tweet, quote, I have said time and time again that the founders wanted to prevent one person from having unilateral control and decision-making powers.

[18:05:07]

That's why the power of the purse and the ability to tax lie with Congress, not the president. This is a conservative argument. Do you agree with that?

EISSENSTAT: It is. I absolutely agree with it. The Constitution says that the power to levy tariffs is in the House of Representatives initially, but it lies in the Congress. Now, there's an interesting dynamic in the United States. We have shared authority between the president's power to speak for the nation with one voice and the tariff authority that rests with Congress.

So, the way that this has been dealt with is to have a blended authority where Congress delegates some of its authority to the United States with certain parameters, certain expectations and outcomes. And it's been done multiple times over many, many years.

This authority that was ruled to be unwarranted in this instance is an authority that Congress explicitly had delegated to the president. And the question is it being used in the manner in which it was anticipated? Can the Congress have the authority to do that? And that is what the courts are deliberating over, as we speak.

TAPPER: Let's talk about some of the other methods you referred to for Trump's tariffs to be imposed, if they are not upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. That could theoretically include using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which was unaffected by the trade court's initial ruling. Do you believe the Trump administration will go with that strategy if they need to? And can you explain it to our viewers?

EISSENSTAT: Absolutely. And, Jake, there's a number of other statutes as well. 232 is a statute that's enforced now. So, some of the tariffs that have been put in place, particularly on steel and aluminum, automobiles, auto parts are still in place under that authority. That's not a question here. So, there's a number of other investigations ongoing, including on pharmaceuticals, timber, copper. Those are all continuing forward. They may be challenged, but they're likely to be upheld in court.

This particular use of IEEPA is what's in question. Now, there's a number of other statutes, including a section 122 that deals with balance of payments that empowers the president to impose a limited tariff for a particular period of time. The president could turn to that statute. There's also another statute, Section 338. So, there's a whole plethora of different areas the president could go to if this statute is not upheld. And we still don't know ultimately how the courts are going to decide.

TAPPER: All right. Everett Eissenstat, thanks so much. I appreciate your time.

Joining us now to discuss Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. She, along with 11 other state attorneys general, were behind one of the lawsuits in the first court ruling that initially blocked most of President Trump's global tariffs. Attorney General Mayes, what's your reaction to the U.S. appeals court temporarily reinstating Trump's tariffs?

KRIS MAYES (D), ARIZONA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Hi, Jake, great to be with you. Well, you know, listen, what the appeals court did was put what's basically known as an administrative stay. It is a temporary stay to allow for the court to essentially address this issue. The stay does not address it on the merits.

And so we feel really, really good about our position. We feel good about the decision that the court of international trade issued, which is that it invalidated all of the Trump IEEPA tariffs, which are really taxes on the people of this country, upwards of $3,000 to $4,000 a year, taxes on our families, certainly have the potential to crush our small businesses. And that's why the Democratic attorneys general brought this lawsuit.

So, we're going to continue to press forward. IEEPA is absolutely the wrong vehicle. I think what you saw out of the White House today is frankly, Jake, and admission that IEEPA was and the IEEPA tariffs were illegal. If they're saying they have a workaround, what that means is they know that there are other statutes that they could do, which are frankly much more limited in their scope. They have time limits. They have reporting requirements. They have to do investigations before they can levy these tariffs.

And I would say this, probably for the first time ever, the Democratic Attorneys General of America agree with Rand Paul, that the tariff authority, first and foremost, rests with Congress and it's time to get back to enforcing and abiding by the separation of powers.

TAPPER: What are the next steps for you in this case, and are you concerned about it going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court? It's a conservative court and there definitely seem to be a majority of justices on the court who believe in a powerful executive.

[18:10:01]

MAYES: You know, honestly, Jake, I'm not concerned about it going to the United States Supreme Court, and I think most of us who were leading this case believe that it would end up there anyway. And I believe the United States Supreme Court believes in the rule of law.

I think they are going to understand that this decision came out of an expert court, the Court of International Trade, made up of two Republican-appointed judges. And they're going to say, look, wait a second, this is a vast expansion of presidential powers that goes beyond what our founding fathers envisioned and goes beyond what Congress delegated to the president.

So, you know, I think I'm not afraid of that and I think we're going to have a strong case, and I think we're going to win this case at the end of the day.

TAPPER: So, you told a local Arizona radio station that Trump's tariffs are already creating damage in Arizona. What are you referring to? What kind of damage?

MAYES: You know, we're hearing, especially from our small businesses that they're having trouble importing goods that -- you know, for instance, we've had, you know, coffee shops tell us that the coffee beans that they want to import from Mexico and Latin America are going to be massively more expensive. We have small businesses that don't know exactly what the cost of the goods are going to be once they make it through the Port of L.A.

We also have all seen the visuals of the Port of L.A. and the ports up in Oakland virtually empty, the ships coming in. So, I think we're very worried about what that means for, you know, stores and the ability of, frankly, people in Arizona and other states to gain access to goods.

So, this is not good for our economy. And it has the potential to crush, especially our small businesses. And that's why we're fighting so hard against these worldwide tariffs, China tariffs, Mexico, and Canadian tariffs.

TAPPER: The Democratic attorney general of the state of Arizona, Kris Mayes, thanks so much. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

How the Trump administration is trying to ramp up its deportation efforts and the strain this is putting on some law enforcement agencies. That story is next.

Plus, a top A.I. executive had a jaw dropping warning this week about just how many jobs he thinks A.I. will wipe out in the coming years. That CEO just sat down with our own Anderson Cooper, who will join us live in minutes to preview the interview.

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TAPPER: Our Politics Lead now, new reports at the Trump administration is having trouble building up the manpower to reach its goal of 1 million arrests a year for immigration violations. Sources tell CNN that the White House is putting intense pressure on federal law enforcement agencies across the government to meet this goal. But in some cases it is straining resources at agencies, including the FBI.

Now, let's discuss this goal and these problems with a couple of Washington veterans, David Urban and David Axelrod. So, gentlemen, thanks for joining us. This seems to highlight something every administration takes a little time to learn that there's a big difference between desire and reality when it comes to having the federal government meet goals. David Urban?

DAVID URBAN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, Jake, so rightfully so. You know, the Trump administration has a stated goal of deporting roughly a million this first year. It looks like they're going to fall short of that number because of right reasons.

As you point out lack of man powers is a big one because it takes a -- it's a very labor-intensive undertaking to locate and arrest and detain folks who are here illegally once they're, you know, in the United States, in the interior of the United States and kind of burrowed into jobs and communities. It's very labor-intensive and there's a shortage. This current Congress is being asked to provide lots of additional funding for DHS, and I think the administration is putting a great deal of pressure on that because they need additional agents and additional beds.

But, Jake, just one quick fact to kind of note that the border has been sealed up pretty tightly. In this March of 25, there was only 7,000 border encounters by the U.S. Border Patrol. In the height of the Biden administration, there are 250,000 in December of 2023. That's 7,000 number is the lowest number since the U.S. government started recording numbers.

So, the Trump administration has sealed up the border, they've stopped overflow, now the tough part, just finding the folks who are here and deporting them, much different.

TAPPER: But that is tough, right? I mean, David Axelrod, you know, it's not as though all the criminals who are in this country illegally, and I'm referring to the violent criminals that President Trump and his team promised would be the first ones. It's not like they're all just sitting in an arena somewhere. I mean, it's difficult investigative work to find a lot of them.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, it is. And, look, I'm not sure that that is what they're doing. It feels like they have quotas that they're trying to meet and whether everybody they're scooping up is actually a criminal, I think, is a very, very open question.

But, you know, the Obama administration was pretty vigorous about trying to -- about not trying but deporting criminals, and that was a focus of what they did and the numbers were better than Trump ever attained. But it took time. It took work. It took precision. And it wasn't motivated by trying to make some quotas for television purposes.

[18:20:01]

It was meant for good policy reasons and that's not really what's going on here. Everything is so performative and everything is about how the reality show plays.

By the way, I agree with David. I think they've done a good job of sealing off the border. I think they get credit for that. I don't think that what they're doing now is, from a political standpoint, all that helpful to them because they're disrupting communities. They're doing all kinds of things that I think disturb people. And, you know, I think you have to separate out these two issues. Border, he'll get high grades on. This stuff, not at all.

(CROSSTALKS)

TAPPER: Go ahead, David. Go ahead.

URBAN: I was going to say, you know, to Ax's point, he said, you know, they're not getting criminals. Well, you know, the MAGA base and others in the Republican Party think that everyone who crossed that border illegally is a criminal. So, they may not get, you know, a ten out of ten, like they get on sealing the border, they're still going to get high marks from many in the Republican Party for deporting folks who crossed the border illegally.

TAPPER: Yes. I think he is referring to violent criminals, the MS-13 types.

URBAN: Yes. No I -- yes.

AXELROD: I mean, listen, I --

(CROSSTALKS)

TAPPER: I want to ask you --

AXELROD: Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, Jake. Go ahead.

TAPPER: I just want to move on to Elon Musk because he just announced his time in the Trump administration has come to an end. And this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Musk's recent criticism of the big, beautiful tax cut and spending cut bill in Congress, which Musk says increases the deficit and undermines all the work of DOGE. We ran that clip yesterday. Here's Leavitt's response today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAVITT: The president commented on this, I commented on it. I told you that this bill saves $1.6 trillion, according to the Council of Economic Advisers, and the analyses that the president believes in. So, he gave a comment. I gave a comment. Just because you don't like that comment doesn't mean it's not a comment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, I mean, I guess what the White House reporters are trying to get is the idea that there really is this serious policy conflict between the first buddy and the president of the United States.

URBAN: Yes. You know, Jake, I think there's a policy conflict between, you know, a lot of Republicans, Rand Paul and others, you know, Massie in the House, people who are real budget -- they're fiscal conservatives. They think that the debt should be shrinking. Our deficit needs to shrink every year, not grow. And, you know, kind of a long time ago, the Republican Party used to care a great deal about that number. And now it appears that they don't care so much. There are a handful of people that do care.

The president, you know, is correct that the Council of Economic Advisers and others said that, you know, it does shrink. It does shrink it. And there, you know, there are other people that says that it doesn't. And this is the argument you get in, whether there's a Democratic president or Republican president about how you count the beans.

But I think some Republicans like to see more slashing. But the bill's not done yet. The big, beautiful bill has to get through the Senate and so we'll see.

TAPPER: David Axelrod, final word.

AXELROD: I don't know how beautiful the bill's going to look by the end of this. But, look, the Congressional Budget Office has said that this bill would add $3.8 trillion to the debt over ten years. And, you know, they're nonpartisan and their numbers are generally well- respected and many others have agreed with that. The Council of Economic Advisers is doing what the president wants them to do. But there's clearly a problem here.

And the problem is that these tax cuts are very expensive and so they don't know how to pay for them. And they're going to slash Medicaid. We know that. And do some other things that are going to be very harmful to people.

And the question I have is, why don't they follow through on the president's suggestion of a few weeks ago and just raise taxes on wealthy people, people he said over $2.54 million dollars. I would say, if I were a Democrat I'd take that deal today. Let's just do that. But, apparently, they can't even do that. That would be a good way to slash these deficits.

TAPPER: David Axelrod and David Urban, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

The very first Make America Healthy Again or MAHA report was supposed to lay out the government's plans for addressing chronic health problems in kids. But now the White House is admitting that the document included multiple errors, citations of papers that do not actually exist. We'll bring you the details, next.

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TAPPER: Our Tech Lead now, a stark warning from the CEO of one of the top artificial intelligence companies, the warning A.I. is coming for your job.

Let's get right to CNN's Anderson Cooper, who just sat down with that CEO. Anderson, tell us more.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it was fascinating. Dario Amodei is raising very serious concerns he has about the impact that A.I. is about to have on our society, saying that A.I. could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs and raise unemployment to 10 to 20 percent in the next one to five years. He's talking about jobs and technology paralegals, attorneys, financial businesses, consulting, the list goes on.

What's remarkable about this, Jake, is that he was formerly at OpenAI. He is now running Anthropic. He's the CEO, which is a leading A.I. company. Here's some of what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARIO AMODEI, CEO, ANTHROPIC: People have adapted to past technological changes, but I'll say again, everyone I've talked to has said this technological change looks different. It looks faster. It looks harder to adapt to, it's broader. The pace of progress keeps catching people off guard. And so I don't know exactly how fast, you know, the job concerns are going to come.

[18:30:04]

I don't know how fast people are going to adapt. It's possible it'll all be okay, but I think that's -- I think that's too sanguine an approach. I think we do need to be raising the alarm. I think we do need to be concerned about it. I think policymakers do need to worry about it. If they do worry and they do act, then maybe we can prevent it. But we're not going to prevent it just by saying everything's going to be okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: And Jake, he makes clear, he's convinced the benefits of A.I. will be many, finding cures for things like Alzheimer's, other diseases, incredible advances in society that we can't even really comprehend right now. But the potential disruption is also very real and the inequalities that can come with it.

TAPPER: Fascinating stuff, can't wait to watch. Anderson Cooper, thanks so much.

And you can catch much more of Anderson's interview on his show, AC360, which is tonight and every weeknight at 8:00 P.M. Eastern. Turning now to our Health Lead, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again sweeping 70 plus page report was released that last week. RFK Jr. calls it a milestone aimed at improving childhood health. But here's the problem. The paper is riddled with errors. It cites scholarly reports that do not exist. It attributes studies to the wrong journals and it misinterprets findings.

Joining us now to discuss, Science and Health Policy Reporter at NOTUS Margaret Manto. She and her colleague Emily Kennard were the first to report this incredibly important story. Margaret, I want you to take a listen to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt when asked about your reporting in the briefing earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAVITT: So I understand there were some formatting issues with the MAHA report that are being addressed and the report will be updated, and is backed on good science that has never been recognized by the federal government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, the White House calls it formatting issues. HHS calls it minor citation errors, and they say they've corrected them. What's your response?

MARGARET MANTO, SCIENCE AND HEALTH REPORTER, NOTUS: Yes. I think we found a little bit more than formatting issues when we looked at all 522 citations. We actually found five citations that don't appear to exist. So, that would be a little bit more than formatting issues.

TAPPER: Tell us about some of the specific examples in your investigation.

MANTO: Yes, So, we saw a couple different papers that, you know, were -- sounded real on the outset, but then once we actually tried to dig in and find them in the literature, they just didn't exist. So, one in particular was talking about mental health and substance use among teens during the pandemic. And when we reached out to the supposed author of that paper, you know, she told us that she was surprised to hear of the citation because she had never actually written that paper or worked with those particular authors. So, that was the level of unsureness we were finding.

TAPPER: A professor of bioethics, Dr. Art Caplan, tells CNN that the citations in the report were, quote, most likely an A.I. error, though Karoline Leavitt did not answer when she was asked explicitly if the report was created using A.I. It does seem like the kind of thing A.I. does, just invent reports and attribute them to real people. What do you think?

MANTO: Yes, you're absolutely right, that it does seem like the kind of thing that we know A.I. can do. When you ask it to generate scientific citations, it can sometimes come up with citations that aren't real. We don't know at this point if that's what was going on here. Like you said, Karoline Leavitt didn't directly answer when asked if HHS had used A.I. tools when generating this report. When I reached out to HHS to ask, they also didn't answer my questions. So, yes, we're not sure, but it does seem like the kind of thing that could be going on here.

TAPPER: RFK Jr.'s history of scholarship is pretty shoddy, whether it is the paper he wrote for Rolling Stone's and salon.com, I think in 2004 maybe, talking about vaccines that was riddled with errors and taken down by both publications ultimately and other things he has said. Did this lack of care in this report surprise you?

MANTO: You know, I think Kennedy and the MAHA movement within HHS are really working against a lot of criticism right now when it comes to their scientific credibility. You know, they have people in positions of leadership where, historically, the people in those positions have had M.D.s or have had experience in public health.

So, yes, I think they're really needing to kind of voice or boost their credibility and I don't know if a report with these kind of errors really helps that.

TAPPER: All right. Margaret Manto of NOTUS, thank you so much. Congratulations on the important scoop of you and your colleague.

[18:35:00]

Our small business series takes us to Las Vegas tonight to meet a business owner who leads private bike tours across the southwest. How have tariffs affected his company, which relies on domestic and international travelers? I'll ask him next,

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TAPPER: And we're back with our Law and Justice Lead. Officials have announced a $50,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of a convicted murderer and an experienced escapee. Derrick Groves and Antoine Massey are the last two remaining inmates from the successful New Orleans jailbreak early this month. More than 700 leads have poured in. But officials hope this high reward will bring the manhunt to an end.

In our World Lead, a Chinese paraglider is safely back on the ground after surviving a powerful updraft that carried him in the upper at atmosphere. Video shows the paraglider with ice on his face after he went soaring over 28,000 feet above the ground without oxygen.

[18:40:02]

He was able to regain control using radio communications with his teammates despite having nearly frozen hands.

In our Sports Lead, is Alexander Ovechkin retiring in 2026? The Washington Capital's debunked the viral rumor saying a decision has not been made of his future past the 2025-2026 season. The question rising after a sales staffer's email alluded to next season being his last. But the team posted on social media that that email was a mistake.

One week after the brutal murder of an Israeli couple in Washington D.C., a Jewish congressman who's received anti-Semitic threats since October 7th, 2023 all the time, threats against him and his family, is going to share his deeply personal fears and hopes for ending political violence. That's next

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[18:45:01]

TAPPER: And we're back with today's business leader, our series where we talk to the small business owners from coast to coast to see what they think about President Trump's tariffs. Some have been enthusiastic. Many are uncertain about what's to come and what they're going through.

Today, we're going to head to Vegas, to Las Vegas today, to a firm called escape adventures. They lead private bike tours for travelers from all over the southwestern United States and even abroad.

The founder's name is Jared Fisher. He launched Escape Adventures in 1992 and added on a bicycle retail store, Las Vegas Cyclery, in 1997.

And Jared joins us now.

Jared, your business relies a lot on people wanting to travel, people who have the money to travel, specifically choosing parts of the United States in which your business works to visit.

How have the tariffs impacted the way your business operates, if at all?

JARED FISHER, OWNER, LAS VEGAS CYCLERY: Yeah. Well, the first thing that we noticed we've been recovering since COVID with the tourism business and right away, a couple of years after COVID, the rebuilding really took place and we got to a really good place up until April this year.

And it felt like we went into another COVID again because our, one of our best clients is Canada and people from Canada. It's easy for them to get over to the states, get to the Southwest and we were alarmed with phone calls of our best customers canceling because they didn't want to support America.

And so, that's what we're seeing. It's not just us. It's every outfitter that I've spoken to in my -- in my industry. So --

TAPPER: Have you been forced to raise prices to make up for any lost clients or any supply chain issues?

FISHER: Yeah. On the retail side, we were approached by our suppliers that there was going to be an increase on all products because we, you know, we were facing that huge tariff to China and the other tariffs around the world to Taiwan and Mexico. And those are the key sources for the bicycle business. And so, that 10 percent minimum, we were approached by our suppliers, and they said, hey, look, we're going to -- we're going to add this on. There's no say no nothing about it. You're going to have to take it.

So, at first, we just applied that to the bottom of our price tags. We said, hey, look, this is the tariff tax. And as a small business owner in the retail business of bicycles, it's tough to take a 10 percent hit. And then we were once we printed all of our tags out for our retail business, we were told by our suppliers that, hey, we're just going to input it into the cost.

So, the truth of the matter is, if you go into a bike shop or maybe even in a sporting store, you're going to see a price increase just about across the board. Just before I got on the phone with you, I got another email from one of our suppliers saying their prices are going up because of tariffs. You're not going to see a tariff listing at the bottom, probably, but you're going to see that price go up for sure.

TAPPER: And, Jared, I'm not saying anything that Nevadans don't already know, but you're a Republican. You ran in the Republican primary for governor of Nevada in 2018.

I want to play you a little bit of what the Trump White House had to say today when asked about small businesses struggling because of these tariffs and needing some financial support.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Nobody understands the needs of business owners, and nobody has the backs of our small business community more than President Donald J. Trump. He believes -- I've heard him talk about this with small business owners himself, that small businesses are truly the backbone of our American economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Do you agree? Do you feel supported sufficiently by the Trump administration and by President Trump?

FISHER: Well, I absolutely agree that the small businesses are the backbone of our economy. However, we had the best economy going into this year. It's phenomenal. America is a great place.

We have the best scenery, the best places to go on adventures. We are the best economy. And now, the waters have been muddied.

The truth is, I don't need help running my business. I don't need somebody in Washington, D.C. to micromanage my company. There's nobody that knows how to manage my company better than me.

And I can tell you right now that every business owner out there, I don't care if the Republican, Democrat or whatever, independent, nobody knows how to run a company better than the owner of the company. So, we don't need people coming in and throwing monkey wrenches in the in the ball pit. Thats not needed.

We were doing great. We can fix this. On our own. We don't need this additional tax hitting us. It's just hurting things. And that just snowballs down the road.

The next thing you see, when we have increased costs is you're going to see our sales go down. And what happens when sales go down? We start to lose employees. And what happens when you start to lose employees? You don't have to be a rocket science to figure that out.

TAPPER: Jared Fisher from the Las Vegas Cyclery and also Escape Adventures, thanks so much for joining us today.

[18:50:02]

We really appreciate it.

FISHER: You got it. Thanks for having me. Have a great day.

TAPPER: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Today, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, along with other local officials, gathered at the Capital Jewish Museum for a reopening ceremony. This is one week after a man, a pro-Palestinian protester, shot and killed two Israeli diplomats as they left the building.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SUE STOLOV, VP OF AMERICAN JewISH COMMITTEE WASHINGTON: Six minutes after I passed that spot, two people were dead.

[18:55:05]

It could have been me.

MURIEL BOWSER, DC MAYOR: While I am saddened by the circumstances, outraged, actually, that bring us together today, I am grateful to look around and see the values of our city represented here and the resiliency that we heard, described in getting open.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: The murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky have had a profound impact on so many people across the country, including Democratic Congressman Greg Landsman of Ohio, who wrote a personal and emotional response yesterday. Quote, I have had a hard time getting the image of being shot and killed out of my head.

It happens almost every time I'm in a big crowd now, unquote. Thats because, and you can see in this video posted on Instagram, the congressman notes that he and his family have been continually harassed and threatened by anti-Israel, antisemitic protesters for the last year and a half.

And with me now is Congressman Landsman.

Congressman, thank you so much for being here.

Did you have any compunctions? Did you have any second thoughts about sharing such a deeply personal fear?

REP. GREG LANDSMAN (D-OH): Oh, sure. Yeah. Of course. It took me a couple of days, you know, after Wednesday's, you know, horrific executions, I mean, murders, they, you know, I wanted to sit down and try to make sense of it. And then, ultimately, for me, writing has helped.

And I wrote it as honestly as I could. And then I thought, you know, I could offer this as a perspective, hopefully a useful perspective, and offer an alternative path forward because we don't know if this is the beginning of something or the end of something.

And the worry is that this is the beginning of something.

TAPPER: I was talking to a Jewish public official just earlier today about the threat of antisemitic violence that so many of us who are Jews in public life get all the time for any number. I mean, we are held responsible for what is going on in Gaza, even though we are American citizens. And I'm sure all of us have different, complicated views of what's going on. And it's just rank antisemitism.

And I'm wondering, do you think it is to tolerated? I mean, obviously, we saw an explosion of antisemitism on the right years ago, Tree of Life synagogue, et cetera. But I'm wondering, do you think it's too tolerated on the left? Do you think it's tolerated by Democrats?

LANDSMAN: Yes. And I think it's tolerated on both sides. I mean, my hope is that, you know, antisemitism, Israel, middle. East peace all of this becomes nonpartisan again. It used to be, or at least I remember it being certainly a lot less partisan. And that's my -- that's what I was trying to lay out was one, you know, this is my experience.

This is as honest as I can be, which is, you know, I've had these. These very vivid images of being shot and one so intense that it didn't leave me, has not left me. And then a few days later, that's what happened to Yaron and Sarah, that literally that's what happened to them.

And so, I think it's important for us to say, yes, this is -- this is wrong. And for anyone who's being at all tolerant of this, you know, make sure you understand as much as you can understand, which is learn the definition, learn what antisemitism is like. You know, you don't have to Google that much. The AJC, the American Jewish committee, has a ton of resources on this. Hopefully, we pass the antisemitism bill.

There's training and education. There's a line. There's a line between protesting and chaos. Theres a line between, you know, free speech, hate speech and violent speech. And I'm just asking everyone to try to figure out where that line is and stay on the right side of the line. TAPPER: It's just -- you know, one of the things that's interesting

about this, as somebody who's Jewish and has been targeted for personal attacks, protests in my face, targeting my family, targeting me is --

LANDSMAN: Yeah.

TAPPER: -- it's not a coincidence that they're targeting. There are much more strong -- like there are strong advocates for Israel on TV. There are stronger advocates for Israel than you in Congress. And stronger than Josh Shapiro. It's not -- it's not about our views. It's because we're Jewish.

LANDSMAN: Yes. I mean, you know, they came to my house and I had promised my son because they followed me around. And, you know, one of us -- one of them saw me at Target with my son. And he, you know, he said, you know, you're going to pay.

He said that. And my son got scared. He said, you know, I said, don't worry, they'll never come to the house. And that was his big thing.

And then they show up at the house and they slept outside of our house for days.

TAPPER: Congressman Greg Landsman, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts now.