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White House: Trump has the Right to Express His Displeasure with the Fed; U.S. Naval Academy Cancels Speech that Would Have Criticized Book Bans; Nearly Half of Teens Say Social Media is Bad for Youth Mental Health; Russian Artist Reveals Kremlin-Commissioned Trump Portrait. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired April 22, 2025 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

SCOTT LINCICOME, VICE PRESIDENT, GENERAL ECONOMICS AT CATO INSTITUTE: It's one of the reasons why U.S. stock markets have outperformed the rest of the world. It's why the U.S. dollar remains the world's reserve currency. And so when the president talks about dismissing the Fed chair, you're going to ruffle a lot of feathers in the markets.

And quite frankly, if you look at the data we have, Powell has the better of the argument in terms of U.S. economy is not yet facing an imminent recession. Inflation is still a little too hot compared to what the Fed wants. And of course, we have all these tariffs and all this uncertainty that's making the Fed job even harder to predict what's coming down the pipe.

So Powell looks to have the better of the argument. And when Trump expresses his opinion, because he's the president, it carries a lot more weight, and in this case, some pretty bad weight.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yes, it certainly does. Scott Lincicome, thank you for joining us to exercise your right to express your informed opinion. We do appreciate it.

LINCICOME: My pleasure.

KEILAR: The U.S. Naval Academy canceling an author's lecture just an hour before he was scheduled to speak. And he says it's because he was planning to criticize the academy's decision to remove hundreds of books from its main library. That author will join us live next.

[15:35:00]

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A bestselling author says the U.S. Naval Academy abruptly canceled his lecture on wisdom and stoicism in ancient Greek philosophy over concerns that he would address the school's banning of nearly 400 books. Ryan Holiday, who's lectured at the Naval Academy more than a half dozen times since 2019, received a call about an hour before his lecture in April asking that he not bring up Donald Trump's executive order mandating the removal of all DEI related content from schools. To comply with that order in January, the Academy removed titles like Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and Janet Jacobs "Memorializing the Holocaust," among others dealing with gender and racism.

When Holiday refused to alter his presentation, which urged cadets to read critically and read dangerously, he was disinvited.

CNN has reached out to the Navy and the U.S. Naval Academy for comment. Joining us now to discuss is author and philosopher Ryan Holiday. Ryan, thank you so much for being with us.

I did want to start by getting clarity on something you mentioned in the essay that the Naval Academy was, quote, extremely worried about reprisals. Did they give you any specifics on what they feared might happen if you gave this lecture?

RYAN HOLIDAY, WRITER AND PHILOSOPHER: Yes, they're worried about being seen as undermining direct orders from the president and the secretary of defense as somehow doing an end run around something that I think at some level almost everyone involved with this elite academic institution knows is not how you teach and instruct young men and women. Who someday in the future may go into combat and certainly are going to be in positions of leadership. You don't hide ideas from them, but they can't say that.

And they're afraid that if they do say that they could lose their job, they could lose their pension, and they could also be, as so many public figures have been put on blast on social media. And that's not a thing anyone wants.

SANCHEZ: The argument from the Trump administration is that the content that's been removed undermines American values and cohesion among service members. In your eyes, is that not a valid concern?

HOLIDAY: There's 600,000 books in the university library. I imagine many of them are not good. I imagine many of them have controversial ideas in it, ideas that I would disagree with, that you would disagree with.

But the point of a university is to teach people to think. And I think the widely known belief is that the core strength of the American military is the mind, the ability to think critically and independently of our officers and our non-commissioned officers. And the Naval Academy is one of the crown jewels we have in this system.

And sure, there might be some ideas that I disagree with in that book, in those books that were removed. But ultimately, I trust these young men and women who someday are going to command aircraft carriers and fighter jets and lead people into dangerous situations. I trust that they're not going to be brainwashed.

And by the way, we're talking about Maya Angelou here. We're talking about great American thinkers and authors in some cases.

SANCHEZ: You do mention in a guest essay you wrote for The New York Times that they remove content from Maya Angelou, for example, but not Hitler's Mein Kampf. I wonder how removing poetry by Maya Angelou potentially hinders the Naval Academy's mission.

HOLIDAY: It gives you a sense of who's even making these decisions, that they couldn't even think of the optics of removing Maya Angelou and how that would be perceived, right. And then, of course, leaving Hitler in there. I think at the end of the day, somebody ran a search, some books ran afoul of some keywords, and they decided they had to be deleted.

[15:40:00]

And it's exactly that kind of deliberate ignorance, this fear of something you don't understand that you haven't even engaged with, that I was really trying to talk about in the speech.

I write about ancient philosophy, and one of the lines from the great philosopher Seneca was that we ought to read like a spy in the enemy's camp. He says even that he'll quote a bad author if the line is good. And so he quotes often from Epicurus, that great thinkers, wise people throughout history, have been able to not just engage with ideas they don't understand, or they disagree with, but find what they agree with in those ideas.

And they engage in what we call a steel man argument rather than a straw man argument. They're not afraid to discuss, think about, consider stuff that they don't like.

SANCHEZ: So what do you think the administration is trying to achieve, not only with this executive order, but also their actions against institutions of higher learning, like Harvard, for example?

HOLIDAY: Well, the argument is that the Naval Academy is supposed to be largely apolitical. And I agree, it should be largely apolitical. The problem is that by interfering with the books that these professors and students have access to, you are plunging them in the midst of a political fray.

And I think it says something about where we are today that the decision to say, hey, I think book banning is bad, in a talk I was supposed to deliver about wisdom, that that itself is dismissed as a political argument, says something about how skewed our politics have gotten.

So I think this is largely about control here. This is about deciding what people can and can't say. And then at some level, understanding that that is a tenuous position, they're now in the even stickier situation, which is they have to suppress criticism from faculty, from lecturers, from students, from parents, and they have to suppress criticism of their decision to enforce that order and not resist it or object to it. And I think at some level, this gives one pause to think about what leaders will do if asked to do even more unconstitutional and morally reprehensible things.

SANCHEZ: That's a really interesting point. I have to admit, Ryan, I'm a huge fan of your work on stoicism, and I know that you're a big history buff. So given the point that you just made, I wonder historically, what happens to societies and leaders that try to restrict or suppress ideas?

HOLIDAY: Well, there's a famous line that where they burn books, you can be sure they will eventually burn people. When we start to suppress and other send things away, we start to get in very dangerous territory. And I think that's what's striking about so many of the books on this list that were removed.

They were about some of the worst things that human beings have ever done to each other. The Holocaust, slavery, segregation, wars. The reason people wrote these books was not because they're woke and they're trying to brainwash people.

They're trying to open up people's minds to make sure that by studying this unfortunate and this disturbing bit of history, we can create and write a better future. I don't think that these young midshipmen are sensitive little snowflakes. I don't think when they hear about some of the sins of America's past, they will resign their commissions.

No, they want to be in a position to lead and make a better America. And that's why they have to be informed about the times that America has not been what America can be.

SANCHEZ: Ryan Holiday, it's a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for joining us.

HOLIDAY: Thank you so much.

SANCHEZ: Of course -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. The Department of Education says it will restart collecting student loans in default starting May 5th, and that's going to affect more than five million borrowers. As part of the move, officials will resume a program that collects debts by garnishing federal and state payments like tax returns or Social Security benefits. Additionally, borrowers could also see their wages garnished. Collections for those in default have been paused since March of 2020 as part of COVID relief efforts.

Plus, Walgreens has agreed to pay up to $350 million to settle an opioid case raised by the Department of Justice. The company is accused of illegally filling millions of prescriptions for opioids and other controlled substances between August of 2012 and March of 2023. The government alleged that Walgreens pharmacists knowingly filled these prescriptions and were pressured to fill them quickly despite the high chances of them being invalid.

[15:45:00]

In a statement, Walgreens says it admits no liability and disagrees with the government's claims.

And did you know that TGI Fridays only has 85 restaurants left in the U.S.? To put that into perspective, the company had about 600 locations at its peak back in 2008. The chain filed for bankruptcy last November, citing continued financial challenges from the pandemic. Turnaround efforts include bringing back its former CEO, who announced a revamped menu that may be more appealing to younger customers.

And still to come, teenagers weigh in on the impact that social media has on their mental health. We'll have the new study next.

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[15:50:00]

KEILAR: We are getting some new insight on how teenagers view social media's impact on their mental health. There's a new report from the Pew Research Center that says while most teens credit apps with feeling more connected to their friends, they're growing wary of social media's negative effect on them and their peers. CNN's Clare Duffy is here on this story.

Clare, this is fascinating. What did this report find?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, Brianna, I find this report so interesting because we hear a lot from adults, from parents and teachers and lawmakers about their concerns around kids and social media. But this report really gives us a look at how teens themselves feel about their social media use. And the big picture is that it's not great, and it actually seems to be getting worse over the past few years.

So nearly half of teens, 48 percent of U.S. teens now say they believe social media has a mostly negative impact for kids their age. That is up from 32 percent who said the same thing back in 2022. Now, just 14 percent say they think social media is mostly negative for themselves personally.

So there is some disconnect between what they perceive for their for their peers versus for themselves. But nonetheless, 44 percent of teens, almost half of teens, say they have cut back on time spent on social media and on smartphones.

Now, here's how one teen boy who was quoted in the report described the situation. He said: The overuse of social media in our society seems to be the main cause of depression among those in my age group. People seem to let themselves be affected by the opinions of people they don't know, and it wreaks havoc upon people's state of mind.

The report also showed that teen girls are slightly more likely than teen boys to report issues caused by social media with things like sleep and self-confidence.

So really a wide range of concerns here from the teens themselves about social media use.

KEILAR: I think what's clear is that we kind of need to operationalize some of the findings here. So what difference could this report make?

DUFFY: Yes, I do think that the report could add more fuel to the fire in terms of some of the regulatory efforts to crack down on teen social media use, teens' time spent on social media. We have seen a number of efforts on that front, although little action from U.S. regulators.

But I also think it's interesting that teens themselves are cutting back voluntarily on time spent as regulators have kind of dropped the ball on this issue. And so I also think that this could add more sort of incentive, more sort of teens feeling like they can cut back for themselves, perhaps take part in efforts like the "Wait Until 8th" movement that has been started by parents to pull back on the use of smartphones before eighth grade, or just the teens that have opted to switch to flip phones from smartphones.

I think you may see more teens feeling like it's OK to pull back and sort of let go of some of the FOMO that happens when you're not engaged on social media with your friends.

KEILAR: Yes. Razor phones are cool and you'll never convince me otherwise. Clare Duffy, thank you so much for that.

Ahead, an exclusive look at a portrait of President Trump gifted to him by Vladimir Putin. Stay with us for that.

[15:55:00]

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SANCHEZ: So last month we learned that President Donald Trump had been gifted a portrait by Russia's leader Vladimir Putin.

KEILAR: And now the artist behind the Kremlin Commission piece has given CNN an exclusive look at the artwork and he also shared what Putin thought of it. Here's CNN's Matthew Chance.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIKAS SAFRONOV, RUSSIAN ARTIST (through translated text): It was very important to me to show the blood, the scar and his bravery during the attempt on his life.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is the first glimpse of what we're told is a portrait gifted to President Trump by Vladimir Putin in March. You can see the Russian artist who we met in Moscow was pretty kind, showing Trump looking heroic, even trim.

SAFRONOV (through translated text): He didn't break down or become afraid, but raised the arm to show he is one with America and will bring back what it deserves.

CHANCE: The painting handed to Trump envoy Steve Witkoff was clearly meant to flatter, as Trump and Putin discuss ending the Ukraine war and rebuilding ties.

And apparently it worked. Witkoff said Trump was touched at what he called the beautiful portrait. Safronov is one of Russia's most famous artists and has painted dozens of world leaders before. The late Pope Francis and, of course, Vladimir Putin. The Trump painting, he told me, was commissioned by a patron he suspected was the Kremlin.

SAFRONOV (through translated text): I realized this could bring our countries closer.

CHANCE: Later, he says he was contacted by President Putin himself, who told him the flattering Trump portrait was an important step in Russia's relationship with the United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: A really fascinating perspective. Our thanks to Matthew Chance for that report. The Kremlin did confirm to CNN that that artwork was what was gifted to President Trump. There you get another look.

Let's take a quick look at markets because today the Dow especially rallied. It's up right now over 1,000 points.

This comes as we are on track for the worst April markets have seen since the Great Depression. So at least there's some relief for investors.

KEILAR: That's right. The Treasury Secretary reportedly during a closed door meeting talked about de-escalating with China.

[16:00:00]

That is music to the ears of the market. That's exactly what the market wanted to hear. Now, again, it was behind closed doors. And we often get these mixed messages coming from the administration.

But these are the kind of little crumbs that you see Wall Street trying to chase. And it's certainly working here for sure.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we should point out the White House has not indicated that there have been direct talks with China. So we'll see where that goes.

Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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