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Fallout from Trump-Zelensky clash still spreading across globe; Europe welcomes Zelensky after Oval Office disaster; Education Department offering employees buyouts up to $25,000; Melania Trump touts anti-revenge porn, deepfake bill; Smoke blankets Carolinas as crews fight to contain fires. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 03, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Pressure campaign. U.S. official suggesting that Ukraine needs a new president after Zelensky's combative meeting at the White House. But the wartime leader isn't backing down and European leaders insist they have his back. Wildfires across the Carolinas, hundreds of acres burned and the fire threat isn't over yet.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Plus, inflation remains a persistent problem. So, why are some companies actually lowering prices? We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here in "CNN News Central."

KEILAR: President Trump is lashing out at Ukrainian President Zelensky again today, blasting him for comments that Zelensky made after this weekend's European summit, saying the end of war with Russia is very, very far away. In a social media post, Trump questioning whether Ukraine's leader wants peace, he said, "This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky and America will not put up with it for much longer." This is unfolding as that fallout from Trump's heated Oval Office meeting with Zelensky keeps spreading across the globe.

The Kremlin is celebrating the verbal takedown, believing American foreign policy now aligns with Moscow. In the meantime, Europe is projecting a united front in solidarity with Ukraine. Leaders there holding a summit over the weekend, welcoming Zelensky while suggesting various ways that Europe can help his country defend against Russia. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is with us now from Kyiv. Nick, tell us how Ukraine is responding to this.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: Yeah, look, I mean it's fair to say that the quote from Volodymyr Zelensky that President Trump was responding to is reasonably selective and he obviously didn't hear Zelensky in the same press conference talk about how he wished that peace wouldn't come to Ukraine today, that it would come to Ukraine at the start of the war, that the war had indeed never happened.

In fact, we've seen, a social media posting from Volodymyr Zelensky in just the last hours in which he says, we're working together with American -- our European partners and very much hope for U.S. support on the path to peace. Peace is needed as soon as possible. He says talks and other steps are underway to try and get that to happen. Now, clearly it's important to point out that no country, I think, it is fair to say, wants peace faster than this than Ukraine, significantly damaged nightly by drone strikes by Russia regardless of the damage done to their armed forces in the frontlines.

But the key affair is that a fast piece, a rushed piece, a piece which encourages a ceasefire that Russia exploits to refit and then re- attacks again will leave Ukraine in a much more vulnerable position. And so, there's clearly a big gap between how Zelensky feels peace needs to be implemented with the need for security guarantees, with the need to show strength, so Russia does not, as it has Ukraine says with factual evidence to back it up, allow Russia to ignore the ceasefires that it signed up to over the past years, 25 instances Ukrainian officials often cite in the past decade.

So that comes to with a continued, I think it's fair to say, barrage of concerns from Trump cabinet officials about Zelensky's position in office, suggesting maybe Ukraine needs another leader. This all comes after Lindsey Graham, Senator Lindsey Graham suggested perhaps he needed to resign or find a way to fix this relationship. That hasn't let up, and indeed Trump's Truth Social posting suggesting that America would not put up with it much longer, referring to that quote about the piece being very far away adds to that idea.

Conversely, the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has suggested that Trump is not interested in changing Ukraine's president. I just need to point out to people how incredibly complicated Ukrainian officials, analysts say the idea of changing a presidency in wartime would indeed be. On the constitution, you get the parliamentary speaker if the president resigns, until you can hold elections, but you can't hold elections in wartime. So you would really need peace to lift martial law.

And then most officials, including the deputy head of the election commission here, say you need six months to prepare because so much of the electoral infrastructure is being disrupted by war. And then there are 7 million Ukrainian refugees abroad. How do they get to vote? How do the million in the army get to vote? You would essentially end up, if rushed, with a pretty illegitimate sounding result that would just fuel the Kremlin narrative. So Zelensky, I think baffled by this persistent talk about his position, knowing fully well that the chances of him stepping away without causing chaos here are very low. Yet still that persists.

KEILAR: Yes, it does. Nick Paton Walsh live for us in Kyiv. Thank you so much for the report. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's expand the conversation about these developments with Kurt Volker. He's a Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. He also served as the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations during the first Trump administration. Ambassador, thank you for being with us. You heard over the weekend Republicans from Speaker Johnson to the National Security Adviser Mike Waltz suggesting that Zelensky needs to change his posture or step aside. What change specifically do you think the White House needs to see?

[14:05:00]

KURT VOLKER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: Well, I think Zelensky actually ought to think about how he is communicating right now. It's very important that we turn the focus of the discussion here back on Vladimir Putin, his aggression, his attacks, his unwillingness to have a just peace. By engaging the way he has the past few days, it's making everything about Zelensky himself. And even this tweet, even though it was taken out of context or this statement taken out of context where he says peace is a long way away, he should be flipping that around and saying, we are ready for peace today. We want to have a ceasefire. The problem is that Vladimir Putin wants to keep fighting. That's how he needs to flip that.

And I do think we need to get back on track, put the emotions aside, and get back on track with where we were before Friday's meeting. And that is to get a ceasefire in Ukraine, a minerals deal with the United States that benefits both countries and provides sustainable support for Ukraine that Ukraine can pay for, and then deter future attacks through security assurances, through a European force presence such as Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are putting together. That's a good formula. We've got to get back to that, and away from this personalization and tit-for-tat.

SANCHEZ: I do wonder, it seems like you're suggesting that part of this is an issue with the way that Zelensky is communicating and not perhaps a fundamental disagreement about how Zelensky and the White House view Vladimir Putin. A big part of the reason that things blew up on Friday was because Zelensky referred to Putin as a terrorist. Do you think that that fundamental disagreement is malleable or that is a bridge that can be fixed by Zelensky speaking differently?

VOLKER: Yes, well, clearly, there are differences and there are going to be differences, but that doesn't mean you can't agree to do certain things together. And in this case, I think the United States and Europe and Ukraine have a shared interest, which is stopping Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine, stopping it there before he goes elsewhere, stopping before more people are killed, and then finding a long-term solution. I think that's a shared interest.

So we may have different assessments, probably do have different assessments about Putin or how to deal with him. If you're Ukraine, you think he has to be defeated. If you are United States, well, we can work with him. That is President Trump thinks that. Either way we ought to be able to agree on certain steps that are in both of our interests.

SANCHEZ: If the White House determines that it cannot move forward with Zelensky as the leader of Ukraine, would he step aside? What happens then?

VOLKER: Well, it's not for us to say who should be the leader of Ukraine. That's for the Ukrainian people. Zelensky won the election and then once they were attacked by Russia, they had to put in place martial law, so they can't have a new election right away. And he enjoys widespread support throughout Ukraine, especially after this Friday meeting where Ukrainians rallied around him as they saw him standing up for the country.

SANCHEZ: So, the White House is essentially going to have to broker a deal through him?

VOLKER: Well, yes. He's going to be the president of Ukraine until this war is over. Now, I think there are things that could be done. You could have emissaries come and meet privately and turn down the temperature a little bit. You do a little bit less public speaking. You could have a serious private meeting rather than a press focused meeting with President Trump. There's a lot of things that can be done to get us back on track, but the reality is there's no way for Ukraine in any realistic scenario to change leaders. And it would be against the wishes of the Ukrainian people, which would be completely wrong and again, not for us to say.

SANCHEZ: Ambassador Kurt Volker, appreciate you. Thanks for joining us.

VOLKER: Thank you,

SANCHEZ: Brianna?

KEILAR: Today, President Trump's goal to eliminate the Department of Education appears to be taking a step forward. People who have been continuously employed at the department for at least three years have until midnight to accept buyout offers of up to $25,000, which is according to an email obtained by CNN. In the meantime, we're learning new details about what some current and former employees are describing as a total DOGE takeover of a once obscure federal agency. We're talking about the Office of Personal Management or OPM.

CNN's Rene Marsh has some new reporting on this. She's with us now. Renee, OPM is the equivalent of HR for the federal government, but it is taking on a much different role than it has before. Tell us about it.

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. So Brianna, multiple OPM sources tell me that DOGE members with deep ties to Elon Musk and his businesses have been isolated on the fifth floor of the agency in an office guarded by security, and they are the ones who are in charge.

[14:10:00]

Sources say that career employees have been sidelined, and some have had their administrative authority on critical data systems tied to personnel information for the more than 2 million federal workers revoked. Sources also add that DOGE is driving the messaging and instructions to federal agencies to conduct these mass firing, something a judge recently said is likely illegal. And one recently departed employee put it like this. They said the federal workers at OPM don't even know what's going on, and we're getting blamed for allowing Elon Musk and DOGE into OPM.

It's very well known within the agency that it's the shadow OPM, not the career employees, pushing the buttons. Brianna, this is highly unusual. Career employees work from administration to administration, and they are often the ones with the institutional knowledge, the expertise. And as we have reported, DOGE members have had really no government experience, but at OPM, they are the ones in charge.

KEILAR: And the OPM -- or OPM for the first time started sending out these emails that everyone in the government practically is getting, including the, what did you do last week email, the deferred resignation offer. They're sending these emails from hr@opm.gov, but I know you're hearing that career staff at OPM, they were actually not aware of the email before it was sent. These are the folks who normally would be aware of an email sent out to the staff of the federal workforce.

MARSH: Right. So, that is what these sources are telling us, that career HR officials, they weren't even aware of these email communications until they heard about it, in some cases, on the news or heard about it from other employees who had received it. They didn't draft the messages or even have access to this new account that DOGE set up, hr@opm.gov. Here's why we care about all of this.

This once obscure agency is producing the blueprint for federal agencies to essentially dismantle certain program offices and carry out these mass firings at the direction of people who, again, have been a part of Musk's business enterprises and in some cases for decades, with little to no input from these apolitical career employees. And these are agencies that touch every aspect of Americans lives, impacting not just federal jobs, but services, whether it's our tax returns, our safe airspace, clean air, or clean water.

So, it was quite revealing to hear about what is happening behind closed doors at this agency that really is center stage for what we're seeing with the reshaping of the federal government. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right, Rene Marsh, excellent reporting. Thank you for that. And happening right now, First Lady Melania Trump making her first public remarks since her husband returned to office. Details on the new bill that she wants Congress to pass. Plus, dozens of wildfires now burning in parts of North and South Carolina, including areas that are still recovering from Hurricane Helene. And then, later why some companies are lowering prices despite inflation and looming tariffs. All that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:18:00]

KEILAR: Happening right now, for the first time since returning to the East Wing, First Lady Melania Trump is making a public speech, throwing her support behind a Congressional bill called the "Take It Down Act", which seeks to protect Americans from deepfake and revenge porn.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the bill has already been passed by the Senate, but not the House. And it would criminalize the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery, including AI-generated images. The First Lady is holding a round table on Capitol Hill right now. Here she is moments ago

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELANIA TRUMP, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In today's AI-driven world, the threat of privacy breaches is alarmingly high. As organization harness the power of our data, the risk of unauthorized access and misuses of personal information escalates. We must prioritize robust security measures and uphold strict ethical standards to protect individual privacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's bring in Anita McBride, the Former Chief of Staff for First Lady Laura Bush. She's the author of "Remembering The First Ladies," and the Director of the First Ladies Initiative at American University. Anita, thank you so much for joining us. What do you make of this as the first lady's choice of her first speech in Trump's second term?

ANITA MCBRIDE, THE FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF FOR FIRST LADY LAURA BUSH: Well, thank you for having me on. I think this, I can't think of an issue that is more relevant for a first lady to be engaged and clearly connected to an initiative that she tried to elevate the first time that she served in the role of first lady and could not get people to join her at a round table or join her in partnership. So to go to Capitol Hill to talk about a bill that has already passed the Senate and now needs House approval is a great use of her time.

KEILAR: And how much does a push like that help? Because so many times, we know about these bills that pass one chamber and don't pass the other.

[14:20:00]

MCBRIDE: Right, exactly. And certainly, this, every bill is at risk for that to happen. But it's hard to imagine an issue or an area where all sides can't come together on this. I mean, children's wellbeing, and an issue with AI and the dangers and challenges that it presents for adults as well, but especially for children. And frankly, this was an issue that Senator Klobuchar did raise with Mrs. Trump at the inauguration.

So I think it was interesting too, Trump mentioned in this round table that she was sorry not to see the Democratic sponsors or supporters of this there. But I think with Speaker Johnson sitting there, I would imagine this puts a little bit more pressure to get this passed and get it on the president's desk.

SANCHEZ: How do first ladies go about deciding where to weigh in on policy matters?

MCBRIDE: Yes, you know, that's a very good question. I mean, generally, first ladies will weigh in on an issue that they care about, that marries up with an interest of the administration, generally. But, this is one that I think was pretty clear cut. It fits an area and issues that she cares about, the wellbeing of children. It was discussed with her by members of the Senate. And so, that's a pretty easy call to -- for a first lady to then step out and shine a light on this issue.

KEILAR: And she appears to be revitalizing her "Be Best" platform which she launched during Trump's first term, but it took her quite a while to do that. Talk to us a little bit about what you made of the "Be Best" platform and what you think she can do with it in his second term.

MCBRIDE: Well, I think you're right. The second term does give her an opportunity to revive the initiative and actually drill down a little bit deeper and work with partners who maybe were reluctant to work with her before. And also, second time around the block, Brianna, she's a lot more comfortable, I would imagine, in her role. She knows what to expect. She knows what levers can be pulled and where she can make a difference.

I think the staffing around it in her office will make a difference too for or policy director that's going to be coming on board soon, that is very steeped in these issues and can be very helpful to her to actually make a difference this time out.

SANCHEZ: Anita McBride, thanks so much for sharing your perspective.

MCBRIDE: Well, thank you so much for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course. So, dry and windy conditions are fueling dozens of wildfires in North and South Carolina. Many residents forced to evacuate their homes. We're going to bring you the very latest. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:28:00]

SANCHEZ: For a third day, fire crews in the Carolinas are battling intense wildfires fueled by dry conditions and above-average temperatures. Evacuations were ordered in areas across both states over the weekend. Heavy low-hanging smoke is blanketing the region, creating visibility hazards along busy roadways, as you can see. One fire in a community just five miles north of Myrtle Beach, has charred 1,600 acres and that blaze is only about 30 percent contained. CNN's Nick Valencia joins us now live from Myrtle Beach. Nick, what is the situation there?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're in the Carolina forest, Boris, and this is the terrain here that's giving firefighters here a very difficult, very challenging time here. Rough terrain, especially as they get in their heavy equipment, they're dealing with these smoldering hotspots. You mentioned 1,600 acres burned. Right now, it's these fires, it's seemingly just sort of pop up out of nowhere, that's giving them the most challenging time.

The good news though is that they're making some progress, 30 percent containment, but they believe it's much more than that. We'll have numbers released later today. The other thing is just in the last hour, we saw Blackhawks up in the sky, single-engine aircraft continuing with those water drops. That, of course, is going to give firefighters on the ground more of a chance to get this controlled and contained.

But we did talk to some residents. This is an area, this subdivision back here, they're doing a lot of work here. Residents here were evacuated. They were allowed to come back. But some of them, as I'm about to show you, the Smith family, they came back to flames in their backyard. We caught up with him as he was holding a bucket of water, putting out those flames by himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: It's got to be pretty scary that it's so close to your house and it's got --

ROBERT SMITH, MYRTLE BEACH RESIDENT: Yes.

VALENCIA: -- all this fuel of this fire here.

SMITH: Yes. It actually started melting the back of the house here.

VALENCIA: So they kicked your door in, not knowing whether or not you were evacuated?

SMITH: Yes, because we were out of town in Charlotte. We got back yesterday and I guess, because both of our vehicles were here, they didn't know if we were asleep and they kicked the door in to check on us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:30:00]