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Mark Carney Sworn In As Canada's New Prime Minister; 2025, What a Year This Week Has Been: From Trump's Trade Wars and Tariffs to The Ukraine-Russia Ceasefire Proposal, To Tesla, DOGE And Measles; Venezuelans Who Backed Trump Now Fear Immigration Crackdown; "Twitter: Breaking The Bird" Airs Sunday At 10P ET/PT. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired March 14, 2025 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: For those who are not intimately familiar with the Canadian political process, how does that impact his duties and how he can carry them out as prime minister?
PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It doesn't affect his duties at all, but we always revolve around this word "mandate." What does mandate mean? It means you want the people to elect you so that you have the full power, the full backing of the Canadian people.
And whether you're in the Oval Office or anywhere else, you go there knowing that Canadians elected you. And that's why we will likely have an election campaign in Canada in the next few days.
As I said, his style, completely different. We did notice in the press conference -- and he has been this way before -- he can get a bit brittle and a bit short with questions.
It will be interesting to see how he campaigns and the pivot that he does make. As you said, from being a rookie politician, he is going to have to study up pretty quickly.
KEILAR: Yes, it can't be brittle in politics.
Paula Newton, thank you so much for that report.
Coming up, another tumultuous year -- Oh, I'm sorry -- week. It just felt like a year. A lot happened, as you know. We've got your play by play next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:35:40]
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: What a year this week has been. It kicked off with recession concerns sparked by these comments from President Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR: Are you expecting a recession this year?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition. Because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. That's a big thing. And there are always periods of -- it takes a little time. It takes a little time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: In response, stocks tumbled. Wall Street timid amid the volatility sparked by Trump's near-daily drama on tariffs.
Take, for example, the last few days. On Monday, the Chinese government began imposing tariffs on many U.S. farm products in response to last week's announcement of higher levies on Chinese imports.
Then on Wednesday, Trump imposed sweeping 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported into the U.S., a move that triggered swift countermeasures from Canada and the European Union.
Thursday, Trump upped the ante on the E.U., threatening a 200 percent tariff on its alcoholic beverages unless the E.U. rescinds their 50 percent tariff imposed on U.S. spirits the day before.
The tit for tat, causing one company to speak out. Tesla, the electric car maker run by Elon Musk, says that retaliatory tariffs against U.S. manufacturers could harm it's operations and that the U.S. should carefully consider its trade policies.
Notably, that comes as President Trump held a South Lawn event promoting Teslas alongside the company's CEO, Elon Musk. Tesla shares have been in a sharp slump amid Musk's role overseeing DOGE and it's drastic cuts to federal agencies.
By the way, Tesla stocks did climb on Tuesday after that appearance.
KEILAR: And then there's the push for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine. Talks took place in Saudi Arabia between U.S. and Ukrainian officials.
Those discussions, bearing some fruit, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine has accepted a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the U.S. As a result, the U.S. restarted aid and intel sharing with Ukraine.
Here was Secretary of State Marco Rubio following the talks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: We'll take this off for now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes. They'll say yes to peace. The ball is now in their court.
And, but again, the presidents objective here is, number one, above everything else, he wants the war to end. And I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard. We hope the Russians will reciprocate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: When asked about the proposal, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he supports the proposal for the ceasefire for the Ukraine war. But also, he outlined a lot of ways in which he actually did not. He said, ultimately, he has reservations.
This, though, is how President Trump characterized Putin's response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: No, he put out a very promising statement, but it wasn't complete. And yes, I'd love to meet with him or talk to him, but we have to get it over with fast.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: And then, last night, a key meeting between U.S. Special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Multiple members of the Trump administration saying there is cautious optimism about a potential ceasefire.
SANCHEZ: Meantime, on Capitol Hill, Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, seems to be backing down from a fight after saying on Wednesday that Democrats might stand up to Republicans on their government funding bill.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution without any input, any input from congressional Democrats.
Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House C.R.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Some Democrats wanted Schumer to stand his ground, potentially even forcing a government shutdown. But the Senator ultimately came around to vote in favor of it.
Here he is on the Senate floor this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SCHUMER: The C.R. is a bad bill. But as bad as the C.R. is, I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[14:39:59] SANCHEZ: That's a move that has some Democrats fuming, including Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, who erupted during a private meeting with members of his party.
Sources telling CNN that Bennett accused Democratic leadership of having no strategy, no plan and no message on the spending bill.
KEILAR: And as Democrats are searching for a way forward, the Trump administration keeps the cuts coming.
The Department of Education announcing it is slashing nearly 50 percent of its workforce through cuts that followed similarly other federal agencies as part of Trump and DOGE's efforts to shrink the size of the federal government.
DOGE also has it's sight set on the Internal Revenue Service. It's now proposing a dramatic downsizing of the IRS that would result in a nearly 20 percent reduction of its workforce by May 15th, a month after Tax Day.
In the meantime, the postmaster general says he's agreed to let DOGE work with the U.S. Postal Service as the Trump administration is working quickly to overhaul the government.
Those actions hit a legal roadblock this week. Two federal judges ruling that thousands of probationary employees laid off in mass by the Trump administration must be temporarily reinstated to their jobs.
One of those judges saying this about how the Trump administration went about firing thousands of employees. Quote, "Move fast and break things. Move fast? Fine. Break things? If that involves breaking the law, then that becomes problematic. Isn't that at the heart of what's going on here?"
SANCHEZ: As if all of that weren't enough -- and it is plenty -- there is the return of the measles three months into 2025. The U.S. has surpassed the total number of measles cases in the entire country for all of last year.
The majority of cases are linked to a multi-state outbreak in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.
When asked about the measles vaccine, the HHS secretary, RFK Jr, delivered this message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR, HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: But if people don't want it, they shouldn't be -- the government shouldn't force them to do it.
There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes -- it causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.
And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And -- and what we need to do is give them the best information and encourage them to vaccinate. The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Let's give people the best information, and be clear, adverse effects from vaccines are exceedingly rare.
In fact, the FDA and CDC reviewed reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Those agencies did not find any evidence to suggest a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine, the measles vaccine, and death.
And what -- oh, boy, what a year this week has been.
Stay with NEWS CENTRAL. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:47:14]
KEILAR: Many Venezuelans in Florida supported Trump because of his tough stance on government abuses in their homeland. But now many of them are having second thoughts.
Priscilla Alvarez has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROL DURAN PEREZ, VENEZUELAN IMMIGRANT AND TPS HOLDER (through translator): (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Carol Duran Perez, the routines of daily life have been thrown into chaos. She's a Venezuelan immigrant now terrified of being deported.
(on camera): Are you afraid of your son walking to school?
CAROL DURAN PEREZ, VENEZUELAN IMMIGRANT AND TPS HOLDER (through translation): Yes. Truly. Yes.
ALVAREZ: What are you afraid of?
PEREZ: That they'll pick him up and he won't have time to call me. Also, that it might happen when I'm not with him or he's not with me. That is the worst fear I have.
ALVAREZ (voice-over): Like so many other Venezuelans, she cheered when Donald Trump was elected because of his tough approach to policies, such as his promise to crack down on a violent Venezuelan criminal organization.
TRUMP: We will expel every single illegal alien, gang member and migrant criminal operating on American soil and remove the savage gang --
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: -- Tren De Aragua, from the United States.
ALVAREZ (on camera): You supported Donald Trump even though you couldn't vote for him.
PEREZ: Yes, yes. I believe there is a large community of Venezuelans who did.
ALVAREZ (voice-over): What she didn't expect is for those policies to throw her life in limbo and stoke fear in her community.
Carol is one of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants who were granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, under the Biden administration.
President Trump wiped that away for all Venezuelans.
(on camera): When they said the TPS is going to be revoked, were you surprised?
PEREZ: Yes, totally. And this was a hard blow because, practically, the same day he took office, he went against Venezuelans. It seemed personal.
ALVAREZ (voice-over): Carol is not alone.
This slice of Florida is affectionately called Doralzuela. Doral, a Miami suburb best known for its Trump golf resort, is home to 27,000 Venezuelan immigrants, more than any other city in the U.S.
(on camera): President Donald Trump handily won Doral in 2024, a place where 40 percent of its population has Venezuelan roots. And it's restaurants like these that have become staples of the community. Also, where they've protested his actions to revoke TPS.
(voice-over): In El Arepazo is a gathering place for Venezuelans. The restaurant is losing business. People are afraid to leave their homes.
Immigration attorney, Ros-Ana Guillen, says her phone hasn't stopped ringing since the decision to revoke deportation protections.
ROS-ANA GUILLEN, IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY: And there's actually people sobbing on the other line, crying and scared for their family members.
ALVAREZ: She says it's a mistake for the Trump administration to group all Venezuelans together with the criminal gangs.
GUILLEN: We have doctors, engineers, baseball players, musicians. We have a beautiful community. They came here legally. They pay taxes. They contribute to our economy.
[14:50:08]
ALVAREZ: Local officials have warned that the Doral economy could grind to a halt if Venezuelans lose their ability to work legally. MAUREEN PORRAS, VICE MAYOR OF DORAL, FLORIDA: Without that community,
I think Doral will cease to be what it is. We're going to turn into a city that is going to lose a lot of its residents.
ALVAREZ: A group of Venezuelans is suing the Trump administration for revoking TPS, arguing the decision was, quote, "illegal" for multiple reasons.
For Carol, time is running out.
(on camera): What are you most afraid of for you and your son?
PEREZ: Of being deported, that they separate me from my son.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Our thanks to Priscilla Alvarez for that report.
From Barack Obama's first presidential campaign and global political unrest, to the Miracle on the Hudson, Twitter has become a hub for news and politics.
A new episode of the CNN original series "TWITTER: BREAKING THE BIRD," explores the platforms growing influence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ASHTON KUTCHER, ACTOR: We now live in an age for media that a single voice can have as much power and relevance in on the web, that is, as an entire media network.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a race to a million followers between Ashton Kutcher, on one hand, and CNN breaking news. And it became sort of a media story of, like, which one was going to win.
KURT WAGONER, AUTHOR: This is a huge deal, right? I mean, you're reaching a new audience, a mainstream audience that you might not otherwise get access to.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ashton famously won, and it was a new medium. And there was like a new way of being entertaining that just hadn't existed before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: Let's discuss the influence of Twitter with former Vice President Jason Goldman.
Jason, thanks so much for being with us this afternoon.
This, the first tweet went out almost 20 years ago, in March 2006. I wonder what you remember about the Web sites early days and if there was one specific tweet that let you know the company had arrived. JASON GOLDMAN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF TWITTER: You know, the thing I
remember most from those early days was that the Web site didn't work very well.
Most of my job was trying to get the Web site to stop throwing fail whales, stop throwing those famous error messages. So those early days we're really about just trying to get the product to work at all.
I think though the one that stands out to me as having meant something different than what we had seen before, was when the Mars rover was tweeting on it's descent onto the Martian surface.
The idea that a Mars rover would be tweeting in the first person and saying, you know, my parachutes deployed seemed like something new and that had never happened before.
SANCHEZ: That seems like something so almost quaint, given what we've seen, not just from Twitter, but other social media networks in the way that folks have learned to manipulate these tools that are meant to connect us in order to divide.
Was there any moment that gave you pause to think about how social media might be used to spread disinformation?
GOLDMAN: Yes, absolutely. There were early signs that Twitter would be useful in a political context.
I think our error was thinking that those uses of misinformation or leading people astray or trying to whip up violence we're bugs of the system, were things that only happened on the margin, as opposed to that they could become the dominant use case, or a dominant use case of the system.
We were enamored of some of the more delightful instances of the product being used, whether that's Martian rovers or, you know, organizing peaceful protests.
And I think that led us to turn a blind eye to some of the more real risks that definitely existed and are ones that we're still contending with actively today.
SANCHEZ: I wonder, would you have done anything differently?
GOLDMAN: I think there's a number of things that could have been done differently. I think there's things that could have been done differently on the product side, a number of choices that were made, you know, that we made that came into the product were things that we're added over time.
A simple one is the algorithmic feed. You know, initially, when you started on Twitter, you just saw the tweets from the people that you follow.
And now because you see what gets engagement, that's created a set of incentives that can be exploited and can be used for nefarious purposes, even sometimes against the intent of the platform owners. And sometimes, as I think we're seeing on X now, explicitly with the
intent of the -- of those who are creating the platform.
But I think there's also been broader -- I think there's a broader Internet basis of what's going -- what's been going on in terms of people living in public, living online, in public, and having that kind of decreased connection with one another and seeing each other only through 280 characters.
That's changed the way in which discourse happens online. And discourse has spilled out into the public sphere as well.
[14:55:03]
So some of that was definitely related to Twitter product choices, and some of it's just related to broader trends in society.
SANCHEZ: Yes, social media has disrupted our lives in so many ways and will continue to looking forward.
Jason Goldman, we have to leave the conversation there. Really appreciate you sharing your perspective.
GOLDMAN: Thank you so much.
SANCHEZ: Be sure to tune in. A new episode of "TWITTER: BREAKING THE BIRD" airs Sunday at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific right here on CNN.
So we are still watching and waiting for President Trump, expected to speak at the Department of Justice in the next hour. We're going to bring you his remarks live.
Stay with CNN.
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