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Powerful 7.7-magnitude Earthquake Rocks Myanmar, Thailand and China; VP Vance, Second Lady in Greenland for Controversial Visit; Trump Says We Need Greenland for National, International Security; Senate Republicans Hit Overdrive on Push to Advance Trump Agenda. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 28, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:37]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": It may only be a short visit, but Vice President Vance and the second lady on their trip to Greenland, it has been shrouded in controversy as the Trump administration eyes the island for takeover. In the meantime, President Trump targets the Smithsonian Institution ordering his vice president to remove "improper ideology" from its museums, research centers and zoo.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And breaking news out of Southeast Asia, a powerful earthquake. Look at that -- look at that right there, as buildings, structures collapse, including this one that had been under construction. We're following all those major developing stories and many more coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

KEILAR: Breaking news now, we're waiting to hear from Vice President J.D. Vance. He is in Greenland right now with the second lady visiting a U.S. Space Force outpost. He is there with his wife, Usha, who was initially supposed to be traveling there by herself, without her husband, on a cultural visit. But the trip changed and it has stoked already high tensions with outrage growing across the island as President Trump continues to insist his administration will gain control of the Danish territory. Here's what the President said just last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We need Greenland very importantly for international security. We have to have Greenland. It's not a question of do you think we can do without it? We can't. If you look at Greenland right now, if you look at the waterways, you have Chinese and Russian ships all over the place, and we're not going to be able to do that.

We're not relying on Denmark or anybody else to take care of that situation. And we're not talking about peace for the United States. We're talking about world peace. We're talking about international security. (END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: All right, a lot to talk about here. With us now, as we wait for the Vice President to speak, is CNN Chief National Security Analyst, Jim Sciutto and CNN Senior Political Analyst, Mark Preston.

Mark, I'm going to start with you, because look, obviously we're waiting to hear from -- from the Vice President. Trip scaled back, but what do we expect to hear from Vice President Vance?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I would actually argue that scaled back, but really intensified --

(LAUGH)

PRESTON: -- very quickly, you know?

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

PRESTON: It's -- you know, they didn't just throw one firecracker into the room, they threw like a couple of boxes of firecrackers into the room. Listen, we expect him to be critical, quite frankly, of how Greenland has operated as this autonomous entity of Denmark. And basically, I -- from what we're told anyway from our White House team is that he's going to talk about how infrastructure is not being taken care of necessarily from the home country.

Look, this is a stress test right now. This is a stress test by Donald Trump. He's done it all across government. He's done it with USAID. He pushes the boundaries as far as he can. The boundaries snap sometimes, we heard just an hour ago or so, USAID is gone, right? Sometimes they bounce back. We've seen the court cases now, bouncing back a bunch of things that he has tried to do. And in this case, right now, what I would say is that people better take him seriously because for the longest time, we did not take him seriously.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: What's different here? This is not a matter of U.S. domestic policy. It is not the U.S. president's choice to take another country's territory. And by the way, that other country, Denmark is a U.S. Treaty ally. It is a member of NATO. It fought alongside the U.S. and Afghanistan. It lost an enormous number of troops fighting in Afghanistan based on the size of its military here.

I spoke to a senior Danish lawmaker last night, who's the equivalent of the Chair of the their Armed Services Committee. He said, we're not going to back down. And I asked him, can you imagine a scenario where Danish forces go face-to-face with U.S. forces if it reaches that point, if it's not just economic pressure or rhetorical pressure, but military pressure? And he said, I certainly hope not, but that's up to the American government. He didn't take that possibility off the table.

So Trump can say, we're going to have Greenland. But to do so, he will have to defy. And by the way, not just Denmark who has -- it's a Danish territory, much like Puerto Rico is part of the United States, but the public will of the people of Greenland, the people of Denmark. The polling shows they have no interest in America taking over.

[14:05:00]

KEILAR: Yeah. They might not be thrilled with Denmark, right now.

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: But --

SCIUTTO: Right.

KEILAR: It's very clear, they also don't want to be part of the U.S. What is with his Greenland obsession?

SCIUTTO: So, two things from what I can tell. Yes, there is a new great game underway in the Arctic among the great powers, the U.S., China and Russia, particularly the U.S. and Russia. And Russia of course has a giant coastline up there. And the U.S. is overmatched in that sense, in that we just don't have the coastline, we don't have the military bases up there, we don't have the icebreakers, et cetera. We have a lot of subs in action up there.

So, it's a key geopolitical part of the world. And there's also, it might be as the ice melts, new trading passages right up there, plus there's talk of oil and gas, and all this kind of stuff. So, he sees that piece, there's a national security piece, there's a minerals and natural resources piece. There also seems to be a territorial expansionist piece of this for the U.S. president. He wants to go down in history as being a president who grew the size of America, that's his way to have a historical legacy.

And by the way, it's not the only way he's talking about it, right? There's Panama. He's talking about unilaterally redrawing the border between the U.S. and Canada.

PRESTON: West Bank.

SCIUTTO: Another treaty ally.

PRESTON: Another one.

SCIUTTO: Plus Gaza. I mean, but Gaza, you could dismiss as a million miles away.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: He's talking about expanding America in its hemisphere.

JIMENEZ: Well, and there is the politics in this, which Jim, I knew you were getting at, but Mark, when Trump says things like we're going to have Greenland one way or another. We're going to start trade wars with Canada and Mexico, saying that you're using it to negotiate over the border. I mean, what is the political strategy here? Because clearly, he seems to think that if he picks fights even with friends, that he can use that to get results.

PRESTON: I think he just explained his strategy.

JIMENEZ: All right. That's all the time we have.

PRESTON: All he has to do is --

JIMENEZ: See you guys later.

(LAUGH)

PRESTON: All he has to do is go right after you and he can make any threat. You know what's interesting about the Greenland --

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

PRESTON: -- situation is that, the U.S. operates that base, right? But it's under like NATO and Denmark is a NATO country. So the idea that we don't actually, I mean, we don't have a U.S. presence there, but if NATO is -- if Trump is talking about getting out of NATO, for instance, that would then put us in an incredibly tough position, right? Because then we could probably just get booted out of there.

SCIUTTO: I mean, the thing is, countries have their limits, right? I mean, Trump's strategy seems to be to browbeat and pressure into submission, partly with economic means, I mean, punishing tariffs, et cetera. But as we're seeing with Canada, for instance, the Canadian Prime Minister saying the cooperation between the U.S. and Canada is over, right? That that period is over. They have their limits. And Denmark appears to have its limits as well.

KEILAR: This isn't the same thing of saying, oh, I'd like to acquire Canada or Greenland, or I don't know, even take over control of certain Ukrainian electric stuff and nuclear stuff, or Gaza, all of these things. It's not like buying a property on Park Avenue.

KEILAR: But that seems to --

SCIUTTO: Yeah.

KEILAR: There seems to be kind of like a reference point for him, Mark, of that almost it being like a real estate expansion, but that's not what it is.

PRESTON: It's always a financial component to it though, right? As Jim was talking about Greenland and what is the significance up there, and really the significance is, of course, location and what the future holds. But then you throw in there, there's the mineral rights, and then of course, you talk about gas and oil and what have you. You saw what he did with Ukraine, saying we're going to cut a deal and you're going to give us this and that, even though that wasn't the deal when we went into say we were going to bolster up Ukraine. It's just interesting how everything has a dollar sign --

SCUITTO: Yeah.

PRESTON: -- on his decision making. Some people actually like that. I mean, they think it does come down to the bottom dollar. Life is too complicated for it to be coming down to the bottom dollar. And I do think that this is another situation we're seeing Donald Trump take a very complicated situation and acting as if it's very simple --

SCUITTO: Yeah.

PRESTON: -- and it's not.

SCUITTO: Yeah.

JIMENEZ: Mark Preston, Jim Scuitto.

SCUITTO: Thanks.

JIMENEZ: Appreciate you both. Thanks for being here. Meanwhile, we've showed you some of the images. We've been following the breaking news out of Southeast Asia after a deadly 7.7-magnitude earthquake rocked Myanmar today, at least 144 people have been killed in that country alone. You see buildings like that collapsing, that one believed to be under construction. More than 700 others injured during (ph) this.

The powerful aftershocks and tremors though have rippled across the region, collapsing buildings hundreds of miles away, showed you this stunning video out of Bangkok, Thailand, showing that high-rise building crumble in seconds as people are trying to escape. More than a hundred people are believed to be trapped under the rubble. So far, 12 people have been rescued from the site of that collapsed building as emergency crews frantically search for more survivors.

I'm joined now by Bella Pawita Sunthornpong. She lives in Bangkok, Thailand, and witnessed this powerful earthquake firsthand. Thank you for being here and taking the time. As I understand, you were on the 30th floor of your high-rise apartment building when this earthquake struck.

[14:10:00]

Can you just walk us through what you experienced?

BELLA PAWITA SUNTHORNPONG, EARTHQUAKE WITNESS: Yeah, of course, Omar, thank you for having me here. I was on the 33rd floor. It is my room in the apartment. And at first, I thought I was having a light headed because I was seeing everything was swaying. But I was walking out to another room and I start seeing the lamp from the ceiling was like literally swinging together. And that's when the moment I realized that it is an earthquake.

So I ran, grabbed my phone, grabbed my important stuff, and then I ran outside. I see another person and I was telling him, I was like, I think there's an earthquake. I think we need to run, which honestly was kind of crazy to say because there's not a lot of earthquake in Thailand. And I was on the 33rd floor, so we were running down from the top all the way down. And I was -- as we were going down, I remember seeing ceiling painting was falling off. I feel like I was on a boat. It was still really much swaying.

And then, I don't know, I was thinking, whatever happened, I just need to keep running until I hit the ground.

JIMENEZ: You know, I can't imagine. And as you've been talking, I don't know if you can see the imagery. We've been showing some live images of rescue crews in Bangkok still trying to find more than a hundred people trapped in the rubble of a building that collapsed. You're there now. Can you just tell us how the rest of the city is doing? I mean, what is it like when you walk outside? Obviously, you were in the epicenter of this, but still definitely felt the effects of this in a significant way, as you just told me.

SUNTHORNPONG: I think a lot of people were really scared. There's a lot of fear around this, a lot of confusion as well. When I was walking out, people were still kind of like looking up to the building and just kind of saying like, what's going on? What's next? When is -- is there going to be a next wave? Like, is this going to crumble? There's a lot of confusion going around this, especially the building that was collapsed. I think there's a lot of fear and just like uncertainty, I would say.

JIMENEZ: I'm guessing you're back in your apartment right now, maybe not, but do you feel safe right now being back in your building?

SUNTHORNPONG: Yeah, so right now, I'm actually at home. It's about 20 -- 40 minutes from Bangkok. But, some buildings do allow people to go back and some doesn't. But I would say a lot of my friends, who I saw are -- they don't really feel safe going back, especially a lot of the building, there's a lot of cracks everywhere. So, people are still in a little bit of fear tonight.

JIMENEZ: Yeah, and rightfully so. We've been showing just the awful images out of there in the surrounding area. Bella, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know it's late there, but also thanks for taking the time and I know you've been -- you've been through a lot.

SUNTHORNPONG: Thank you so much.

JIMENEZ: All right. We're also following much more news ahead. Vice President Vance is about to take questions in Greenland. You're seeing National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, speaking right now as well. We'll bring you the questions portion of this live when it happens. Stay with us.

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[14:18:00]

KEILAR: Rush is on, on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans trying to finalize plans to adopt a budget blueprint, so they can quickly move ahead with President Trump's agenda in one huge policy bill.

JIMENEZ: Now, it could be a game changer because if they're able to pass a budget framework, the Senators could then write a tax immigration and defense bill that only needs a simple majority to pass. CNN's Lauren Fox is following this. So Lauren, where do things stand? What can we expect? LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. For months, there's really been this impasse between House Republican leaders and Senate Republican leaders over the best course forward. But what we're finding right now is that the Senate is largely going to follow in the House's footprints when it comes to trying to move forward with the budget blueprint that gives them the allowance to pass a tax package, defense and immigration, and cuts and spending package, all in one major bill.

Now, this is really a two-step process because the first thing they have to do is pass this non-binding budget blueprint. After they do that, then they can get to work on the really hard decisions involved in figuring out what tax cuts they want to include, figuring out how much they're going to spend on immigration enforcement, figuring out how much they are willing to try to cut to the federal spending and federal budget. Those are the kind of tough decisions that are likely going to get punted until a couple of weeks from now.

But just to give you a sense of the timeline that Republican and Senate leaders are trying to work towards. Speaker Mike Johnson has said repeatedly, he wants this entire process to be done by Memorial Day. And we are hearing from Senate leaders that they are hoping in this session, so in the next couple of weeks, that they can pass their budget blueprint, the House can pass an amended budget blueprint and they can get to work on that larger tax package.

So obviously, a lot of moving parts here and some of the hardest decisions and some of the biggest differences between the House and Senate are really going to get kicked down the road. But, Senators are really trying to accelerate this process right now.

KEILAR: And what are some of the possible other obstacles here?

[14:20:00]

FOX: Yeah. One of the hardest things right now, Brianna, is deciding how much you want to actually cut to federal spending. You can understand why that's a really tough decision because as much as Republicans like to talk about curbing federal spending, the reality is that every Senator, every House member has a project or has some kind of priority that they want to try to protect. So House Republicans say that they want somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion in cuts.

Right now, Senators are saying that they might be willing to get there, but their budget blueprint might only include instructions for $3 billion in cuts. They can obviously, always go beyond that, but that just gives you a sense of some of the daylight between the House and the Senate right now.

KEILAR: Yeah, certainly. Lauren Fox, thank you so much. Let's go now to Greenland and Vice President, J.D. Vance.

J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: -- and the security mission, and better understand what you guys do each and every day. For that, I'm grateful for your service. I'm even more grateful. I love you guys. I'm proud of you guys. And President Trump stands behind you and will for the remainder of his administration. Thank you all. God bless you.

(APPLAUSE)

VANCE: All right. Now, we'll take a few questions. Both you guys have your hands up, whoever can go first. Red scarf go first.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Do you have any plans? Or are there plans to expand the U.S.' military presence in Greenland beyond this base?

VANCE: Well, are there immediate plans to expand our military presence? No. But are there -- are there general objectives that we want to accomplish that will certainly require us investing more resources, investing in additional military, icebreakers, investing in additional naval ships that will have a greater presence in Greenland? Absolutely. And we know that's necessary because we know, as Mike talked about and certainly I talked about, there has been an expansion of the security footprint and the security interest of Russia and China.

They're doing what they believe is in their interest. The United States must do what I know is in our interest, which is to make sure that Greenland is safe. If Greenland doesn't have self-determination, if the people of Greenland have their future controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, it's not going to make their lives better off. And most importantly, it's going to make American and world national security -- world security much, much weaker.

We can't -- in some ways, need to wake up. We need to wake up from a failed 40-year consensus that said that we could ignore the encroachment of powerful countries. As they expand their ambitions, we can't just bury our head in the sand or in Greenland, bury our head in the snow, and pretend that the Chinese are not interested in this very large landmass. We know that they are. They've taken steps to put Greenland and ridiculous debt traps to invest and exploit the resources here. And we know that they're sending a lot of military resources here.

Yes, over the medium term, the United States will meet that challenge. We will put our own resources here. We already have a lot of great resources here, but we know we're going to have to do more to counter some of our -- some of the nations that we know that we're competitive with. Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you so much, Mr. Vice President. And the president said today that we have to have Greenland. By being here today, are you also conveying that message that the U.S. is very serious in its desire to acquire Greenland?

VANCE: Well, the president said we have to have Greenland and I think that we do have to be more serious about the security of Greenland. We can't just ignore this place. We can't just ignore the president's desires. But most importantly, we can't ignore what I said earlier, which is the Russian and Chinese encroachment in Greenland. We have to do more.

Now, what the president said in his State of the Union address, and he was very clear about this, is we respect the self-determination of the people of Greenland. But my argument again to them is, I think that you'd be a lot better having -- coming under the United States security umbrella than you have been under Denmark security umbrella. Because what Denmark security umbrella has meant is effectively, they've passed it all off to brave Americans and hope that we would pick up the tab.

We're simply saying to the people of Greenland, when the president says, we've got to have Greenland, he's saying this island is not safe. A lot of people are interested in it. A lot of people are making a play. We know that America cares about the security of this island for the people, for the sake of the people of Greenland, but also for the sake of the national security interest of the United States of America.

So, our message is very simple. Yes, the people of Greenland are going to have self-determination. We hope that they choose to partner with the United States because we're the only nation on earth that will respect their sovereignty and respect their security because their security is very much our security, as these brave Americans show.

JOHN PARKINSON, WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, ABC NEWS: Thank you. John Parkinson with ABC News. Thanks for bringing us along on this historic trip. I wanted to ask you about last week's news with The Atlantic.

[14:25:00]

We've had a couple questions on Greenland, I feel like you've answered that. But I did want to ask, did you express your concerns to the President that you were opposed to the Houthis strike? And also, what did you mean when you asked, or when you said in that thread that the president wasn't aware that his directions for Yemen were inconsistent with his message on Europe?

VANCE: Well, I didn't quite say that. I think that's a slight misunderstanding of what I said, but we've talked of course in the American media about Signal Gate, as I called it for the past week. And here's what I told the president and the entire national security team is that, yes, it is in the interest of the United States of America to preserve navigation. Yes, it is in the interest of the United States to kill terrorists who are preventing navigation in the Red Sea, but we got to make sure that we do it right.

We have to be careful; we have to make sure the timing is right. And of course, what that leak revealed, I think, is a private communication between the president, senior advisors about how best to prepare the American people for what we all thought we had to do, about the right timing of when we should do something. And of course, surfacing the strategic questions that we needed to decide and brief the president on, so that he could ultimately make the decision about what we would do. What I saw in that Signal chat, and of course, what I've seen in the president's senior national security team is that sometimes we all agree and sometimes we all disagree, but it's important that we all have an honest conversation amongst ourselves and with the president of the United States about what we think is the best interest of the national security of the United States of America.

I support the President's decision to strike the Houthis. I always supported the president's decision to strike the Houthis, and I support the National Security team having the argument about how best to serve the American people. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In your security briefing today, did you see specific threats coming from China and Russia? Things that you did not know about before. Are we talking battleships, icebreakers, any type of military equipment, or is it economic?

VANCE: Well, I don't want to get too specific, but yes, we know that the Chinese are very, very interested in this island. We've seen some of the economic pressures that they've tried to place on Greenland. We know that they're increasingly engaging in military training and military interest. Certainly, they've started to describe themselves as a near-Arctic power. And I think part of that is justifying taking a further interest in Greenland and some of the surrounding territories.

So, we've seen very strong evidence that both the Chinese and the Russians are interested in Greenland. And why wouldn't they be interested in Greenland? It's a beautiful place. It has incredible people. It has a -- its geographic placement makes it very important for the national security of the United States, but for world security. What we have to recognize is that if the Chinese and the Russians are going to pursue their national interest, we need a president who's going to pursue the American national interest. And that means ensuring that Greenland is safe.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When can we expect an update on the internal investigation into that Signal chat leak? Has that investigation concluded? And what are the findings?

VANCE: I think we'll get an update soon. Look, we take it very seriously. We all accept that a journalist should not have been invited into the chat, and members of the administration, including my dear friend Mike, have taken responsibility for it. But, I find the American media's obsession with this issue very, very interesting, because I happen to remember about four years ago, when American military leadership made a catastrophic error that got 13 innocent Americans killed in Afghanistan and had about $80 billion of military equipment turned over to one of the worst terrorist organizations in the world.

And four years, the American media ran cover, ran cover for a Biden administration that refused to fire any generals or even launch an internal investigation that was meaningful and substantive about what happened. And now, the same American media that covered for the Biden administration after the untimely death and the unnecessary death of 13 brave Americans is really, really interested in forcing the president of the United States to fire someone because of a Signal chat. Because of a Signal chat, that is not honest behavior from the American media.

And if you think you're going to force the president of the United States to fire anybody, you've got another thing coming. President Trump has said it on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, and I'm the vice president saying it here on Friday, we are standing behind our entire national security team.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can I just ask you about --

VANCE: Yeah, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- the tariffs? There's been some retaliation, some signals at least in the media that Canada is going to respond, some of these others are going to respond to the president's tariffs. What's your message for Americans that are going to see cost increase on auto manufacturing, new cars, that kind of thing? Is it buy America or what's the message going forward there?

VANCE: Well, let me say a couple of things. First of all, for the Canadians and we have many dear friends in Canada, and of course, we love the Canadian people.